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81 Huygens, Christiaan
SUBJECT AREA: Horology[br]b. 14 April 1629 The Hague, the Netherlandsd. 8 June 1695 The Hague, the Netherlands[br]Dutch scientist who was responsible for two of the greatest advances in horology: the successful application of both the pendulum to the clock and the balance spring to the watch.[br]Huygens was born into a cultured and privileged class. His father, Constantijn, was a poet and statesman who had wide interests. Constantijn exerted a strong influence on his son, who was educated at home until he reached the age of 16. Christiaan studied law and mathematics at Ley den University from 1645 to 1647, and continued his studies at the Collegium Arausiacum in Breda until 1649. He then lived at The Hague, where he had the means to devote his time entirely to study. In 1666 he became a Member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris and settled there until his return to The Hague in 1681. He also had a close relationship with the Royal Society and visited London on three occasions, meeting Newton on his last visit in 1689. Huygens had a wide range of interests and made significant contributions in mathematics, astronomy, optics and mechanics. He also made technical advances in optical instruments and horology.Despite the efforts of Burgi there had been no significant improvement in the performance of ordinary clocks and watches from their inception to Huygens's time, as they were controlled by foliots or balances which had no natural period of oscillation. The pendulum appeared to offer a means of improvement as it had a natural period of oscillation that was almost independent of amplitude. Galileo Galilei had already pioneered the use of a freely suspended pendulum for timing events, but it was by no means obvious how it could be kept swinging and used to control a clock. Towards the end of his life Galileo described such a. mechanism to his son Vincenzio, who constructed a model after his father's death, although it was not completed when he himself died in 1642. This model appears to have been copied in Italy, but it had little influence on horology, partly because of the circumstances in which it was produced and possibly also because it differed radically from clocks of that period. The crucial event occurred on Christmas Day 1656 when Huygens, quite independently, succeeded in adapting an existing spring-driven table clock so that it was not only controlled by a pendulum but also kept it swinging. In the following year he was granted a privilege or patent for this clock, and several were made by the clockmaker Salomon Coster of The Hague. The use of the pendulum produced a dramatic improvement in timekeeping, reducing the daily error from minutes to seconds, but Huygens was aware that the pendulum was not truly isochronous. This error was magnified by the use of the existing verge escapement, which made the pendulum swing through a large arc. He overcame this defect very elegantly by fitting cheeks at the pendulum suspension point, progressively reducing the effective length of the pendulum as the amplitude increased. Initially the cheeks were shaped empirically, but he was later able to show that they should have a cycloidal shape. The cheeks were not adopted universally because they introduced other defects, and the problem was eventually solved more prosaically by way of new escapements which reduced the swing of the pendulum. Huygens's clocks had another innovatory feature: maintaining power, which kept the clock going while it was being wound.Pendulums could not be used for portable timepieces, which continued to use balances despite their deficiencies. Robert Hooke was probably the first to apply a spring to the balance, but his efforts were not successful. From his work on the pendulum Huygens was well aware of the conditions necessary for isochronism in a vibrating system, and in January 1675, with a flash of inspiration, he realized that this could be achieved by controlling the oscillations of the balance with a spiral spring, an arrangement that is still used in mechanical watches. The first model was made for Huygens in Paris by the clockmaker Isaac Thuret, who attempted to appropriate the invention and patent it himself. Huygens had for many years been trying unsuccessfully to adapt the pendulum clock for use at sea (in order to determine longitude), and he hoped that a balance-spring timekeeper might be better suited for this purpose. However, he was disillusioned as its timekeeping proved to be much more susceptible to changes in temperature than that of the pendulum clock.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1663. Member of the Académie Royale des Sciences 1666.BibliographyFor his complete works, see Oeuvres complètes de Christian Huygens, 1888–1950, 22 vols, The Hague.1658, Horologium, The Hague; repub., 1970, trans. E.L.Edwardes, AntiquarianHorology 7:35–55 (describes the pendulum clock).1673, Horologium Oscillatorium, Paris; repub., 1986, The Pendulum Clock or Demonstrations Concerning the Motion ofPendula as Applied to Clocks, trans.R.J.Blackwell, Ames.The balance spring watch was first described in Journal des Sçavans 25 February 1675, and translated in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1675) 4:272–3.Further ReadingH.J.M.Bos, 1972, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. C.C.Gillispie, Vol. 6, New York, pp. 597–613 (for a fuller account of his life and scientific work, but note the incorrect date of his death).R.Plomp, 1979, Spring-Driven Dutch Pendulum Clocks, 1657–1710, Schiedam (describes Huygens's application of the pendulum to the clock).S.A.Bedini, 1991, The Pulse of Time, Florence (describes Galileo's contribution of the pendulum to the clock).J.H.Leopold, 1982, "L"Invention par Christiaan Huygens du ressort spiral réglant pour les montres', Huygens et la France, Paris, pp. 154–7 (describes the application of the balance spring to the watch).A.R.Hall, 1978, "Horology and criticism", Studia Copernica 16:261–81 (discusses Hooke's contribution).DV -
82 Jackson, John Hughlings
SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology[br]b. 4 April 1835 Providence Green, Yorkshire, Englandd. 7 October 1911 London, England[br]English neurologist and neurophysiologist, discoverer of Jacksonian epilepsy and the neurological basis of speech defects; pioneer of the technique of the localization of the site of cerebral disease.[br]Jackson studied medicine at York and at St Bartholomew's Hospital, qualifying in 1856. For a while he practised in York and was dissuaded from abandoning medicine for philosophy by Jonathan Hutchinson. Upon his return to London, he was appointed Assistant Physician and later, in 1874, Physician to the London Hospital. He was also on the staff of Moorfields Eye Hospital and in 1874 was appointed to the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic in Queen's Square. It was particularly in connection with his association with cases at the latter that he was able to establish the association of designated areas of the brain with specific limbs and functions. He acknowledged that in the field of speech the work of Broca had shown the way.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1878. Gulstonian Lecturer and Croonian Lecturer, College of Physicians.Bibliography1869, Certain Points on the Study and Classification of Diseases of the Nervous System.1884, Evolution and Dissolution of the Nervous System.1931–32, Selected Writings (ed. J.Taylor et al.).MGBiographical history of technology > Jackson, John Hughlings
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83 Jobs, Steven Paul
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 24 February 1955 San Francisco, California, USA[br]American engineer who, with Stephen Wozniak, built the first home computer.[br]Moving with his family to Mountain View, Palo Alto, in 1960, Jobs entered Homestead High School, Cupertino, in 1968. At about the same time he joined the Explorers' Club for young engineers set up by Hewlett-Packard Company. As a result of this contact, three years later he met up with Stephen Wozniak, who was working at Hewlett-Packard and helped him with the construction of the first home computer based on the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor. In 1973 he went to Reid College, Portland, Oregon, to study engineering, but he dropped out in the second semester and spent time in India. On his return he obtained a job with Atari to design video games, but he soon met up again with Wozniak, who had been unable to interest Hewlett-Packard in commercial development of his home computer. Together they therefore founded Apple Computer Company to make and market it, and found a willing buyer in the Byte Shop chain store. The venture proved successful, and with the help of a financial backer, Mike Markkula, a second version, the Apple II, was developed in 1976. With Jobs as Chairman, the company experienced a phenomenal growth and by 1983 had 4,700 employees and an annual turnover of US$983 million. The company then began to run into difficulties and John Sculley, a former president of Pepsi-Cola, was brought in to manage the business while Jobs concentrated on developing new computers, including the Apple Macintosh. Eventually a power struggle developed, and with Sculley now Chairman and Chief Executive, Jobs resigned in 1985 to set up his own computer company, NeXt.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFirst National Technology Medal (with Wozniak) 1985.Further ReadingJ.S.Young, 1988, Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward: Scott Foresman \& Co. (includes a biography and a detailed account of Apple Company).M.Moritz, 1984, The Little Kingdom. The Private Story of Apple Computers.KF -
84 Koenig, Friedrich
SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing[br]b. 17 April 1774 Eisleben, Thuringia, Germanyd. 17 January 1833 Oberzell, near Würzburg, Germany[br]German inventor of the machine printing press.[br]Koenig became a printer and bookseller. Around 1800 he was among those who conceived the idea of mechanizing the hand printing press, which apart from minor details had survived virtually unchanged through the first three and a half centuries of printing. In 1803, in Sühl, Saxony, he designed a press in which the flat forme, carrying the type, was mechanically inked and passed to and from the platen. Whether this ma-chine was ever constructed is not known, but Koenig found little support for his ideas because of lack of technical and financial resources. So, in 1806, he went to England and was introduced to Thomas Bensley, a book printer off Fleet Street in London. Bensley agreed to support Koenig and brought in two other printers to help finance Koenig's experiments. Another German, Andreas Bauer, an engineer, assisted Koenig and became largely responsible for the practical execution of Koenig's plans.In 1810 they patented a press which was steam-driven but still used a platen. It was set to work in Bensley's office the following year but did not prove to be satisfactory. Koenig redesigned it, and in October 1811 he obtained a patent for a steam-driven press on an entirely new principle. In place of the platen, the paper was fixed around a hollow rotating cylinder, which impressed the paper on to the inked forme. In Bensley's office it was used for book printing, but its increased speed over the hand press appealed to newspaper proprietors and John Walter II of The Times asked Koenig to make a double-cylinder machine, so that the return stroke of the forme would be productive. A further patent was taken out in 1813 and the new machine was made ready to print the 29 November 1814 issue—in secrecy, behind closed doors, to forestall opposition from the pressmen working the hand presses. An important feature of the machine was that the inking rollers were not of the traditional leather or skin but a composite material made from glue, molasses and some soda. The inking could not have been achieved satisfactorily with the old materials. The editorial of that historic issue proclaimed, 'Our Journal of this day presents to the public the practical result of the greatest improvement connected with printing, since the discovery of the art itself Koenig's machine press could make 1,200 impressions an hour compared to 200 with the hand press; further improvements raised this figure to 1,500–2,000. Koenig's last English patent was in 1814 for an improved cylinder machine and a perfecting machine, which printed both sides of the paper. The steam-driven perfecting press was printing books in Bensley's office in February 1816. Koenig and Bauer wanted by that time to manufacture machine presses for other customers, but Bensley, now the principal shareholder, insisted that they should make machines for his benefit only. Finding this restriction intolerable, Koenig and Bauer returned to Germany: they became partners in a factory at Oberzell, near Würzburg, in 1817 and the firm of Koenig and Bauer flourishes there to this day.[br]Further ReadingJ.Moran, 1973, Printing Presses, London: Faber \& Faber.T.Goebel, 1956, Friedrich Koenig und die Erfindung der Schnellpresse, Würzburg.LRD -
85 Leonardo da Vinci
[br]b. 15 April 1452 Vinci, near Florence, Italy,d. 2 May 1519 St Cloux, near Amboise, France.[br]Italian scientist, engineer, inventor and artist.[br]Leonardo was the illegitimate son of a Florentine lawyer. His first sixteen years were spent with the lawyer's family in the rural surroundings of Vinci, which aroused in him a lifelong love of nature and an insatiable curiosity in it. He received little formal education but extended his knowledge through private reading. That gave him only a smattering of Latin, a deficiency that was to be a hindrance throughout his active life. At sixteen he was apprenticed in the studio of Andrea del Verrochio in Florence, where he received a training not only in art but in a wide variety of crafts and technical arts.In 1482 Leonardo went to Milan, where he sought and obtained employment with Ludovico Sforza, later Duke of Milan, partly to sculpt a massive equestrian statue of Ludovico but the work never progressed beyond the full-scale model stage. He did, however, complete the painting which became known as the Virgin of the Rocks and in 1497 his greatest artistic achievement, The Last Supper, commissioned jointly by Ludovico and the friars of Santa Maria della Grazie and painted on the wall of the monastery's refectory. Leonardo was responsible for the court pageants and also devised a system of irrigation to supply water to the plains of Lombardy. In 1499 the French army entered Milan and deposed Leonardo's employer. Leonardo departed and, after a brief visit to Mantua, returned to Florence, where for a time he was employed as architect and engineer to Cesare Borgia, Duke of Romagna. Around 1504 he completed another celebrated work, the Mona Lisa.In 1506 Leonardo began his second sojourn in Milan, this time in the service of King Louis XII of France, who appointed him "painter and engineer". In 1513 Leonardo left for Rome in the company of his pupil Francesco Melzi, but his time there was unproductive and he found himself out of touch with the younger artists active there, Michelangelo above all. In 1516 he accepted with relief an invitation from King François I of France to reside at the small château of St Cloux in the royal domain of Amboise. With the pension granted by François, Leonardo lived out his remaining years in tranquility at St Cloux.Leonardo's career can hardly be regarded as a success or worthy of such a towering genius. For centuries he was known only for the handful of artistic works that he managed to complete and have survived more or less intact. His main activity remained hidden until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, during which the contents of his notebooks were gradually revealed. It became evident that Leonardo was one of the greatest scientific investigators and inventors in the history of civilization. Throughout his working life he extended a searching curiosity over an extraordinarily wide range of subjects. The notes show careful investigation of questions of mechanical and civil engineering, such as power transmission by means of pulleys and also a form of chain belting. The notebooks record many devices, such as machines for grinding and polishing lenses, a lathe operated by treadle-crank, a rolling mill with conical rollers and a spinning machine with pinion and yard divider. Leonardo made an exhaustive study of the flight of birds, with a view to designing a flying machine, which obsessed him for many years.Leonardo recorded his observations and conclusions, together with many ingenious inventions, on thousands of pages of manuscript notes, sketches and drawings. There are occasional indications that he had in mind the publication of portions of the notes in a coherent form, but he never diverted his energy into putting them in order; instead, he went on making notes. As a result, Leonardo's impact on the development of science and technology was virtually nil. Even if his notebooks had been copied and circulated, there were daunting impediments to their understanding. Leonardo was left-handed and wrote in mirror-writing: that is, in reverse from right to left. He also used his own abbreviations and no punctuation.At his death Leonardo bequeathed his entire output of notes to his friend and companion Francesco Melzi, who kept them safe until his own death in 1570. Melzi left the collection in turn to his son Orazio, whose lack of interest in the arts and sciences resulted in a sad period of dispersal which endangered their survival, but in 1636 the bulk of them, in thirteen volumes, were assembled and donated to the Ambrosian Library in Milan. These include a large volume of notes and drawings compiled from the various portions of the notebooks and is now known as the Codex Atlanticus. There they stayed, forgotten and ignored, until 1796, when Napoleon's marauding army overran Italy and art and literary works, including the thirteen volumes of Leonardo's notebooks, were pillaged and taken to Paris. After the war in 1815, the French government agreed to return them but only the Codex Atlanticus found its way back to Milan; the rest remained in Paris. The appendix to one notebook, dealing with the flight of birds, was later regarded as of sufficient importance to stand on its own. Four small collections reached Britain at various times during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; of these, the volume in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle is notable for its magnificent series of anatomical drawings. Other collections include the Codex Leicester and Codex Arundel in the British Museum in London, and the Madrid Codices in Spain.Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Leonardo's true stature as scientist, engineer and inventor began to emerge, particularly with the publication of transcriptions and translations of his notebooks. The volumes in Paris appeared in 1881–97 and the Codex Atlanticus was published in Milan between 1894 and 1904.[br]Principal Honours and Distinctions"Premier peintre, architecte et mécanicien du Roi" to King François I of France, 1516.Further ReadingE.MacCurdy, 1939, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vols, London; 2nd edn, 1956, London (the most extensive selection of the notes, with an English translation).G.Vasari (trans. G.Bull), 1965, Lives of the Artists, London: Penguin, pp. 255–271.C.Gibbs-Smith, 1978, The Inventions of Leonardo da Vinci, Oxford: Phaidon. L.H.Heydenreich, Dibner and L. Reti, 1981, Leonardo the Inventor, London: Hutchinson.I.B.Hart, 1961, The World of Leonardo da Vinci, London: Macdonald.LRD / IMcN -
86 MacGregor, Robert
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 1873 Hebburn-on-Tyne, Englandd. 4 October 1956 Whitley Bay, England[br]English naval architect who, working with others, significantly improved the safety of life at sea.[br]On leaving school in 1894, MacGregor was apprenticed to a famous local shipyard, the Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company of Jarrow-on-Tyne. After four years he was entered for the annual examination of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, coming out top and being nominated Queen's Prizeman. Shortly thereafter he moved around shipyards to gain experience, working in Glasgow, Hull, Newcastle and then Dunkirk. His mastery of French enabled him to obtain in 1906 the senior position of Chief Draughtsman at an Antwerp shipyard, where he remained until 1914. On his return to Britain, he took charge of the small yard of Dibbles in Southampton and commenced a period of great personal development and productivity. His fertile mind enabled him to register no fewer than ten patents in the years 1919 to 1923.In 1924 he started out on his own as a naval architect, specializing in the coal trade of the North Sea. At that time, colliers had wooden hatch covers, which despite every caution could be smashed by heavy seas, and which in time of war added little to hull integrity after a torpedo strike. The International Loadline Committee of 1932 noted that 13 per cent of ship losses were through hatch failures. In 1927, designs for selftrimming colliers were developed, as well as designs for steel hatch covers. In 1928 the first patents were under way and the business was known for some years as MacGregor and King. During this period, steel hatch covers were fitted to 105 ships.In 1937 MacGregor invited his brother Joseph (c. 1883–1967) to join him. Joseph had wide experience in ship repairs and had worked for many years as General Manager of the Prince of Wales Dry Docks in Swansea, a port noted for its coal exports. By 1939 they were operating from Whitley Bay with the name that was to become world famous: MacGregor and Company (Naval Architects) Ltd. The new company worked in association with the shipyards of Austin's of Sunderland and Burntisland of Fife, which were then developing the "flatiron" colliers for the up-river London coal trade. The MacGregor business gained a great boost when the massive coastal fleet of William Cory \& Son was fitted with steel hatches.In 1945 the brothers appointed Henri Kummerman (b. 1908, Vienna; d. 1984, Geneva) as their sales agent in Europe. Over the years, Kummerman effected greater control on the MacGregor business and, through his astute business dealings and his well-organized sales drives worldwide, welded together an international company in hatch covers, cargo handling and associated work. Before his death, Robert MacGregor was to see mastery of the design of single-pull steel hatch covers and to witness the acceptance of MacGregor hatch covers worldwide. Most important of all, he had contributed to great increases in the safety and the quality of life at sea.[br]Further ReadingL.C.Burrill, 1931, "Seaworthiness of collier types", Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architechts.S.Sivewright, 1989, One Man's Mission-20,000 Ships, London: Lloyd's of London Press.See also: Ayre, Sir Amos LowreyFMW -
87 Mansfield, Charles Blachford
SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology[br]b. 8 May 1819 Rowner, Hampshire, Englandd. 26 February 1855 London, England[br]English chemist, founder of coal-tar chemistry.[br]Mansfield, the son of a country clergyman, was educated privately at first, then at Winchester College and at Cambridge; ill health, which dogged his early years, delayed his graduation until 1846. He was first inclined to medicine, but after settling in London, chemistry seemed to him to offer the true basis of the grand scheme of knowledge he aimed to establish. After completing the chemistry course at the Royal College of Chemistry in London, he followed the suggestion of its first director, A.W.von Hofmann, of investigating the chemistry of coal tar. This work led to a result of great importance for industry by demonstrating the valuable substances that could be extracted from coal tar. Mansfield obtained pure benzene, and toluene by a process for which he was granted a patent in 1848 and published in the Chemical Society's journal the same year The following year he published a pamphlet on the applications of benzene.Blessed with a private income, Mansfield had no need to support himself by following a regular profession. He was therefore able to spread his brilliant talents in several directions instead of confining them to a single interest. During the period of unrest in 1848, he engaged in social work with a particular concern to improve sanitation. In 1850, a description of a balloon machine in Paris led him to study aeronautics for a while, which bore fruit in an influential book, Aerial Navigation (London, 1851). He then visited Paraguay, making a characteristically thorough and illuminating study of conditions there. Upon his return to London in 1853, Mansfield resumed his chemical studies, especially on salts. He published his results in 1855 as Theory of Salts, his most important contribution to chemical theory.Mansfield was in the process of preparing specimens of benzene for the Paris Exhibition of 1855 when a naphtha still overflowed and caught fire. In carrying it to a place of safety, Mansfield sustained injuries which unfortunately proved fatal.[br]Bibliography1851, Aerial Navigation, London. 1855, Theory of Salts, London.Further ReadingE.R.Ward, 1969, "Charles Blachford Mansfield, 1819–1855, coal tar chemist and social reformer", Chemistry and Industry 66:1,530–7 (offers a good and well-documented account of his life and achievements).LRDBiographical history of technology > Mansfield, Charles Blachford
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88 Marshall, William
SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology[br]b. baptized 28 July 1745 Yorkshire, Englandd. 1818 Pickering, Yorkshire, England[br]English commentator and writer on agriculture who established the first agricultural college in Britain.[br]Little is known for certain about William Marshall's early life, other than that he was baptized at Sinnington in the West Riding of Yorkshire. On his own account he was involved in trade in the West Indies from the age of 15 for a period of fourteen years. It is assumed that he was financially successful in this, for on his return to England in 1774 he was able to purchase Addisham Farm in Surrey. Having sacked his bailiff he determined to keep a minute book relating to all transactions on the farm, which he was now managing for himself. On these entries he made additional comments. The publication of these writings was the beginning of a substantial review of agriculture in Britain and a criticism of existing practices. From 1779 he acted as agent on a Norfolk estate, and his five years in that position resulted in The Rural Economy of Norfolk, the first of a series of county reviews that he was to write, intending the somewhat ambitious task of surveying the whole country. By 1808 Marshall had accumulated sufficient capital to be able to purchase a substantial property in the Vale of Cleveland, where he lived for the rest of his life. At the time of his death he was engaged in the erection of a building to serve as an agricultural college; the same building is now a rural-life museum.[br]BibliographyOther titles in his Rural Economy series included Yorkshire in 1788, Gloucester in 1789, The Midland Counties in 1790, The West of England in 1796, and The Southern Counties two years later. Further titles included Experiments and Observations Concerning Agriculture and the Weather in 1779, Observations on the Different Breeds of Sheep in 1792, The General View of the Agriculture of Central HighlandScotland in 1794, and Planting and Rural Ornament in 1796. He also wrote On the Enclosure of Commonable and Intermixed Lands in 1801, On the Landed Property of England, an Elementary Practical Treatise in 1804, and On the Management of Landed Estates in 1806. He was not asked to write any of the County Surveys produced by the Board of Agriculture, despite his own claims to the origin of the idea. Instead in 1817 he wrote A Review and Complete Abstract of the Reports of the Board of Agriculture as his own criticism of them.Further ReadingJoan Thirsk, 1989, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. VI (deals with the years 1750 to 1850, the period associated with Marshall).Pamela Horn, 1982, William Marshall (1745–1818) and the Georgian Countryside, Beacon (gives a more specific account).AP -
89 Massey, Daniel
SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology[br]b. 1798 Vermont, USAd. 1856 Canada[br]American agricultural machinery manufacturer and co-founder of the Massey Harris Company (now Massey Ferguson).[br]In about 1800 Daniel Massey's family moved to Upper Canada. At the age of 6 he was sent back to stay with his grandparents in Waterton, USA, where he attended school for three years. He returned to his parents in 1807, and for the next twelve years he remained on his father's farm.At the age of 19 he forfeited his rights to his inheritance and rented land further west, which he began to clear. By the age of 21 he owned 200 acres, and during the next twelve years he bought, cleared and sold a further 1,200 acres. In 1820 he married Lucina Bradley from Water-town and returned with her to Canada.In 1830 he decided to settle down to farming and brought one of the first US threshing machines into Canada. From frequent visits to his family in the US he would return with new farm equipment, and in 1844 he handed his farm over to his eldest son so that he could concentrate on the development of his farm workshop. In 1845 he formed a brief partnership with R.F.Vaughan, who owned a small factory in Durham County near Lake Ontario. He began the production of ploughs, harrows, scufflers and rollers at a time when the Canadian Government was imposing heavy import duties on agricultural equipment being brought in from the USA. His business flourished and within six months he bought out his partner.In 1848 he bought another foundry in Newcastle, together with 50 acres of land, and in 1851 his son Hart joined him in the business. The following year Hart returned from the USA with the sole rights to manufacture the Ketchum mower and the Burrell reaper.The advent of the railway four years later opened up wider markets, and from these beginnings the Massey Company was to represent Canada at the Paris Exhibition of 1867. The European market was secured by the successes of the Massey reaper in the "World" trials held in France in 1889. Two years later the company merged with the Harris Company of Canada, to become the Massey Harris Company. Daniel Massey retired from the company four years after his son joined it, and he died the following year.[br]Further ReadingGraeme Quick and Wesley Buchele, 1978, The Grain Harvesters, American Society of Agricultural Engineers (gives an account of harvest machinery development, in which Massey Harris played a vital role).Merrill Denison, 1949, Harvest Triumphant: The Story of Massey Harris, London.AP -
90 Mole, Lancelot de
SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour[br]b. 13 March 1880 Adelaide, Australiad. 6 May 1950 Sydney, Australia[br]Australian engineer and early tank designer.[br]De Mole's father was an architect and surveyor and he himself followed a similar avenue as a draughtsman working on mining, surveying and engineering projects in Australia. It was in 1911, while surveying in particularly rough terrain in Western Australia, that he first conceived the idea of the tank as a tracked, armoured vehicle capable of traversing the most difficult ground. He drew up detailed plans and submitted them to the War Office in London the following year, but although they were rejected, not all the plans were returned to him. When war broke out in 1914 he tried without success to interest the Australian authorities, even after he had constructed a model at their request. A further blow came in 1916, when the first tanks, built by the British, appeared on the battlefields of France and looked remarkably similar in design to his own. Believing that he could play a significant role in further tank development, but lacking the funds to travel to Britain, de Mole eventually succeeded, after an initial rejection by a medical board, in enlisting in the Australian Army, which got him to England at the beginning of 1918. He immediately took his model to the British Inventions Committee, who were sufficiently impressed to pass it to the Tank Board, who promptly mislaid it for six weeks. Meanwhile, in March 1918, Private de Mole was ordered to France and was unable to take matters further. On his return to England in early 1919 he made a formal claim for a reward for his invention, but this was turned down on the grounds that no direct link could be established between his design and the first tanks that were built. Even so, the Inventions Committee did authorize a sum of money to cover his expenses, and in 1920 de Mole was a made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.Returning to Australia, de Mole worked as an engineer in the design branch of the Sydney Water Board. He continued to invent, but none of his designs, which covered a wide range of items, were ever taken up.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCBE 1920.Further ReadingAustralian Dictionary of Biography, 1918, Vol. 8.A.J.Smithers, 1986, A New Excalibur: The Development of the Tank 1909–1939, London: Leo Cooper (for illustrations of the model of his tank).Mention of his invention is made in a number of books on the history of the tank.CM -
91 Muybridge, Eadweard
SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics[br]b. 9 April 1830 Kingston upon Thames, Englandd. 8 May 1904 Kingston upon Thames, England[br]English photographer and pioneer of sequence photography of movement.[br]He was born Edward Muggeridge, but later changed his name, taking the Saxon spelling of his first name and altering his surname, first to Muygridge and then to Muybridge. He emigrated to America in 1851, working in New York in bookbinding and selling as a commission agent for the London Printing and Publishing Company. Through contact with a New York daguerreotypist, Silas T.Selleck, he acquired an interest in photography that developed after his move to California in 1855. On a visit to England in 1860 he learned the wet-collodion process from a friend, Arthur Brown, and acquired the best photographic equipment available in London before returning to America. In 1867, under his trade pseudonym "Helios", he set out to record the scenery of the Far West with his mobile dark-room, christened "The Flying Studio".His reputation as a photographer of the first rank spread, and he was commissioned to record the survey visit of Major-General Henry W.Halleck to Alaska and also to record the territory through which the Central Pacific Railroad was being constructed. Perhaps because of this latter project, he was approached by the President of the Central Pacific, Leland Stanford, to attempt to photograph a horse trotting at speed. There was a long-standing controversy among racing men as to whether a trotting horse had all four hooves off the ground at any point; Stanford felt that it did, and hoped than an "instantaneous" photograph would settle the matter once and for all. In May 1872 Muybridge photographed the horse "Occident", but without any great success because the current wet-collodion process normally required many seconds, even in a good light, for a good result. In April 1873 he managed to produce some better negatives, in which a recognizable silhouette of the horse showed all four feet above the ground at the same time.Soon after, Muybridge left his young wife, Flora, in San Francisco to go with the army sent to put down the revolt of the Modoc Indians. While he was busy photographing the scenery and the combatants, his wife had an affair with a Major Harry Larkyns. On his return, finding his wife pregnant, he had several confrontations with Larkyns, which culminated in his shooting him dead. At his trial for murder, in February 1875, Muybridge was acquitted by the jury on the grounds of justifiable homicide; he left soon after on a long trip to South America.He again took up his photographic work when he returned to North America and Stanford asked him to take up the action-photography project once more. Using a new shutter design he had developed while on his trip south, and which would operate in as little as 1/1,000 of a second, he obtained more detailed pictures of "Occident" in July 1877. He then devised a new scheme, which Stanford sponsored at his farm at Palo Alto. A 50 ft (15 m) long shed was constructed, containing twelve cameras side by side, and a white background marked off with vertical, numbered lines was set up. Each camera was fitted with Muybridge's highspeed shutter, which was released by an electromagnetic catch. Thin threads stretched across the track were broken by the horse as it moved along, closing spring electrical contacts which released each shutter in turn. Thus, in about half a second, twelve photographs were obtained that showed all the phases of the movement.Although the pictures were still little more than silhouettes, they were very sharp, and sequences published in scientific and photographic journals throughout the world excited considerable attention. By replacing the threads with an electrical commutator device, which allowed the release of the shutters at precise intervals, Muybridge was able to take series of actions by other animals and humans. From 1880 he lectured in America and Europe, projecting his results in motion on the screen with his Zoopraxiscope projector. In August 1883 he received a grant of $40,000 from the University of Pennsylvania to carry on his work there. Using the vastly improved gelatine dry-plate process and new, improved multiple-camera apparatus, during 1884 and 1885 he produced over 100,000 photographs, of which 20,000 were reproduced in Animal Locomotion in 1887. The subjects were animals of all kinds, and human figures, mostly nude, in a wide range of activities. The quality of the photographs was extremely good, and the publication attracted considerable attention and praise.Muybridge returned to England in 1894; his last publications were Animals in Motion (1899) and The Human Figure in Motion (1901). His influence on the world of art was enormous, over-turning the conventional representations of action hitherto used by artists. His work in pioneering the use of sequence photography led to the science of chronophotography developed by Marey and others, and stimulated many inventors, notably Thomas Edison to work which led to the introduction of cinematography in the 1890s.[br]Bibliography1887, Animal Locomotion, Philadelphia.1893, Descriptive Zoopraxography, Pennsylvania. 1899, Animals in Motion, London.1901, The Human Figure in Motion, London.Further Reading1973, Eadweard Muybridge: The Stanford Years, Stanford.G.Hendricks, 1975, Muybridge: The Father of the Motion Picture, New York. R.Haas, 1976, Muybridge: Man in Motion, California.B.Coe, 1992, Muybridge and the Chromophoto-graphers, London.BC -
92 Neri, Antonio Ludovico
[br]b. 29 February 1576 Florence, Italyd. 1614 Florence, Italy[br]Italian glassmaker.[br]Neri entered the Church and by 1601 was a priest in the household of Alamanno Bertolini in Florence. There he met the Portuguese Sir Emanuel Ximenes, with whom he shared an interest in chemistry. The two later corresponded and the twenty-seven letters extant from Ximenes, who was living in Antwerp, are the main source of information about Neri's life. At the same time, Neri was working as a craftsman in the Medici glasshouse in Florence and then in their works at Pisa. These glasshouses had been flourishing since the fifteenth century with the help of Muranese glassmakers imported from Venice. Ximenes persuaded Neri to spend some time with the glassmakers in Antwerp, probably from 1603/4, for the correspondence breaks off at that point. A final letter in March 1611 refers to Neri's recent return to Florence. In the following year, Neri published the work by which he is known, the L'arte vetraria, the first general treatise on glassmaking. Neri's plan for a further book describing his chemical and medical experiments was thwarted by his early death. L'arte belongs to the medieval tradition of manuscript recipe books. It is divided into seven books, the first being the most interesting, dealing with the materials of glassmaking and their mixing and melting to form crystal and other colourless glasses. Other sections deal with coloured glasses and the making of enamels for goldsmiths' use. Although it was noted by Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), the book made little impression for half a century, the second edition not appearing until 1661. The first Venice edition came out two years later, with a second in 1678. Due to a decline in scientific activity in Italy at this time, L'arte had more influence elsewhere in Europe, especially England, Holland and France. It began to make a real impact with the appearance in 1662 of the English translation by Christopher Merrett (1614–95), physician, naturalist and founder member of the Royal Society. This edition included Merrett's annotations, descriptions of the tools used by English glassmakers and a translation of Agricola's short account of glassmaking in his De re metallica of 1556. Later translations were based on the Merrett translation rather than the Italian original. Ravenscroft probably used Neri's account of lead glass as a starting point for his own researches in the 1670s.[br]Bibliography1612, L'arte vetraria, 7 vols; reprinted 1980, ed. R.Barovier, Milan: Edizioni Polifilo (the introd., in Italian, England and French, contains the most detailed account of Neri's life and work).LRD -
93 Nightingale, Florence
SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology[br]b. 15 May 1820 Florence, Italyd. 13 August 1910 London, England[br]English nurse, pioneer of the reform of nursing, hospital organization and technology.[br]Dedicated to the relief of suffering, Florence Nightingale spent her early years visiting civil and military hospitals all over Europe. She then attended a course of formal training at Kaiserwerth in Germany and with the Sisters of St Vincent de Paul in Paris.She had returned to London and was managing, after having reformed, a hostel for invalid gentlewomen when in 1854 the appalling conditions of the wounded in Turkey during the Crimean War led to her taking a party of thirty-eight nurses out to Scutari. The application of principles of hygiene and sanitation resulted in dramatic improvements in conditions and on her return to England in 1856 she applied the large sums which had been raised in her honour to the founding in 1861 of the St Thomas's School of Nursing.From this base she acted as adviser, goad and promoter of sound nursing common sense for the remainder of a long life marred by a chronic invalidism quite out of keeping with the rigorousness of her role in the nursing field. It was not only in the training and conduct of nursing that her influence was primal. Many concepts of hospital technology relating to hygiene, ventilation and ward design are to be attributed to her forthright common sense. The "Nightingale ward", for a time the target of progressive reformers, has been shown still to have abiding virtues.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsOrder of Merit 1907.Bibliography1858, Notes on Nursing.1899, Notes on Hospitals.Further ReadingC.Woodham-Smith, 1949, Florence Nightingale, London.MG -
94 Oeynhausen, Karl von
SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology[br]b. 4 February 1795 Grevenburg, near Höxter, Germanyd. 1 February 1865 Grevenburg, near Höxter, Germany[br]German mining officer who introduced fish joints to deep-drilling.[br]The son of a mining officer, Oeynhausen started his career in the Prussian administration of the mining industry in 1816, immediately after he had finished his studies in natural sciences and mathematics at the University of Göttingen. From 1847 until his retirement he was a most effective head of state mines inspectorates, first in Silesia (Breslau; now Wroclaw, Poland), later in Westphalia (Dortmund). During his working life he served in all the important mining districts of Prussia, and travelled to mining areas in other parts of Germany, Belgium, France and Britain. In the 1820s, after visiting Glenck's well-known saltworks near Wimpfen, he was commissioned to search for salt deposits in Prussian territory, where he discovered the thermal springs south of Minden which later became the renowned spa carrying his name.With deeper drills, the increased weight of the rods made it difficult to disengage the drill on each stroke and made the apparatus self-destructive on impact of the drill. Oeynhausen, from 1834, used fish joints, flexible connections between the drill and the rods. Not only did they prevent destructive impact, but they also gave a jerk on the return stroke that facilitated disengagements. He never claimed to have invented the fish joints: in fact, they appeared almost simultaneously in Europe and in America at that time, and had been used since at least the seventeenth century in China, although they were unknown in the Western hemisphere.Using fish joints meant the start of a new era in deep-drilling, allowing much deeper wells to be sunk than before. Five weeks after Oeynhausen, K.G. Kind operated with a different kind of fish joint, and in 1845 another Prussian mining officer, Karl Leopold Fabian (1782–1855), Director of the salt inspectorate at Schönebeck, Elbe, improved the fish joints by developing a special device between the rod and the drill to enable the chisel, strengthened by a sinker bar, to fall onto the bottom of the hole without hindrance with a higher effect. The free-fall system became another factor in the outstanding results of deep-drilling in Prussia in the nineteenth century.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsHonorary PhD, University of Berlin 1860.Bibliography1824, "Über die geologische Ähnlichkeit des steinsalzführenden Gebirges in Lothringen und im südlichen Deutschland mit einigen Gegenden auf beiden Ufern der Weser", Karstens Archiv für Bergbau und Hüttenwesen 8: 52–84.1847, "Bemerkungen über die Anfertigung und den Effekt der aus Hohleisen zusammengesetzten Bohrgestänge", Archiv fur Mineralogie, Geognosie, Bergbau und Hüttenkunde 21:135–60.1832–3, with H.von Dechen, Über den Steinkohlenbergbau in England, 2 parts, Berlin.Further Readingvon Gümbel, "K.v.Oeynhausen", Allgemeine deutsche Biographie 25:31–3.W.Serlo, 1927, "Bergmannsfamilien. Die Familien Fabian und Erdmann", Glückauf.492–3.D.Hoffmann, 1959, 150 Jahre Tiefbohrungen in Deutschland, Vienna and Hamburg (a careful elaboration of the single steps and their context with relation to the development of deep-drilling).WK -
95 Owen, Robert
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. 14 May 1771 Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Walesd. 17 November 1858 Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Wales[br]Welsh cotton spinner and social reformer.[br]Robert Owen's father was also called Robert and was a saddler, ironmonger and postmaster of Newtown in Montgomeryshire. Robert, the younger, injured his digestion as a child by drinking some scalding hot "flummery", which affected him for the rest of his life. He developed a passion for reading and through this visited London when he was 10 years old. He started work as a pedlar for someone in Stamford and then went to a haberdasher's shop on old London Bridge in London. Although he found the work there too hard, he stayed in the same type of employment when he moved to Manchester.In Manchester Owen soon set up a partnership for making bonnet frames, employing forty workers, but he sold the business and bought a spinning machine. This led him in 1790 into another partnership, with James M'Connel and John Kennedy in a spinning mill, but he moved once again to become Manager of Peter Drink-water's mill. These were all involved in fine spinning, and Drinkwater employed 500 people in one of the best mills in the city. In spite of his youth, Owen claims in his autobiography (1857) that he mastered the job within six weeks and soon improved the spinning. This mill was one of the first to use Sea Island cotton from the West Indies. To have managed such an enterprise so well Owen must have had both managerial and technical ability. Through his spinning connections Owen visited Glasgow, where he met both David Dale and his daughter Anne Caroline, whom he married in 1799. It was this connection which brought him to Dale's New Lanark mills, which he persuaded Dale to sell to a Manchester consortium for £60,000. Owen took over the management of the mills on 1 January 1800. Although he had tried to carry out social reforms in the manner of working at Manchester, it was at New Lanark that Owen acquired fame for the way in which he improved both working and living conditions for the 1,500-strong workforce. He started by seeing that adequate food and groceries were available in that remote site and then built both the school and the New Institution for the Formation of Character, which opened in January 1816. To the pauper children from the Glasgow and Edinburgh slums he gave a good education, while he tried to help the rest of the workforce through activities at the Institution. The "silent monitors" hanging on the textile machines, showing the performance of their operatives, are famous, and many came to see his social experiments. Owen was soon to buy out his original partners for £84,000.Among his social reforms were his efforts to limit child labour in mills, resulting in the Factory Act of 1819. He attempted to establish an ideal community in the USA, to which he sailed in 1824. He was to return to his village of "Harmony" twice more, but broke his connection in 1828. The following year he finally withdrew from New Lanark, where some of his social reforms had been abandoned.[br]Bibliography1857, The Life of Robert Owen, Written by Himself, London.Further ReadingG.D.H.Cole, 1965, Life of Robert Owen (biography).J.Butt (ed.), 1971, Robert Owen, Prince of Cotton Spinners, Newton Abbot; S.Pollard and J.Salt (eds), 1971, Robert Owen, Prophet of the Poor. Essays in Honour of theTwo-Hundredth Anniversary of His Birth, London (both describe Owen's work at New Lanark).RLH -
96 Palmer, John
[br]b. 1743 Bath, Avon, Englandd. 1818 Bath, Avon, England[br]English pioneer in mail transport.[br]He was the son of a brewer and maltster and part-owner of a theatre in Bath. In his early 20s his father sent him to London to organize the petition for a licence for the Orchard Street theatre, which was granted in 1768. He then organized a series of post-chaises to transport ac-tors between this and another theatre in Bristol in which his father also had an interest. By 1782 he had ready a plan for a countrywide service of mail coaches to replace the existing arrangements of conveying the mail by post-boys and -girls mounted on horseback who were by law compelled to carry the mail "at a Rate of Six Miles in the Hour at least" on penalty of one month's hard labour if found loitering. Lord Camden, Member of Parliament for Bath, put Palmer's plan before Prime Minister Pitt, who approved of it. An experimental run was tried on 2 August 1782, a coach leaving Bristol at 4 pm and arriving in London at 8 am the next morning, to return the following night from London at 8 pm and reaching Bristol at 10 am. In March 1785 the Norwich Mail Coach was started and during that year services were started to Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Shrewsbury, Chester, Holyhead, Worcester, South Wales and Milford Haven. A feature of importance was that each mail coach was accompanied by an armed guard. In August 1786 Palmer was appointed Surveyor and Comptroller-General of the Post Office at a salary of £1,500 per annum and a bonus depending on all revenue over £300,000 each year. The popularity of the new service is shown by the feet that by 1813 his 2 1/2 per cent bonus came to £50,000. Due to the intrigues of his deputy, he was removed from office, but he was given a pension of £3,000 a year. He received the freedom of some eighteen towns, was made Mayor of Bath and represented that constituency in Parliament four times.[br]Further ReadingE.Vale, 1960, The Mail-Coach Men, London: Cassell.IMcN -
97 Perry, John
SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering[br]b. 14 February 1850 Garvagh, Co. Londonderry, Ireland (now Northern Ireland)d. 4 August 1920 London, England[br]Irish engineer, mathematician and technical-education pioneer.[br]Educated at Queens College, Belfast, Perry became Physics Master at Clifton College in 1870 until 1874. This was followed by a brief period of study under Sir William Thomson in Glasgow. He was then appointed Professor of Engineering at the Imperial College of Japan in Tokyo, where he formed a remarkable research partnership with W.E. Ayrton. On his return to England he became Professor of Engineering and Mathematics at City and Guilds College, Finsbury. Perry was the co-inventor with Ayrton of many electrical measuring instruments between 1880 and 1890, including an energy meter incorporating pendulum clocks and the first practicable portable ammeter and voltmeter, the latter being extensively used until superseded by instruments of greater accuracy. An optical indicator for high-speed steam engines was among Perry's many patents. Having made a notable contribution to education, particularly in the teaching of mathematics, he turned his attention in the latter period of his life to the improvement of the gyrostatic compass.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1885. President, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1900. Whitworth Scholar 1870.Bibliography28 April 1883, jointly with Ayrton, British patent no. 2,156 (portable ammeter and voltmeter).1900, England's Neglect of Science, London (for Perry's collected papers on technical education).Further ReadingObituary, 1920, Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 58:901–2.D.W.Jordan, 1985, "The cry for useless knowledge: education for a new Victorian technology", Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 132 (Part A): 587– 601.GW -
98 Pickard, James
SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines[br]fl. c. 1780 Birmingham, England[br]English patentee of the application of the crank to steam engines.[br]James Pickard, the Birmingham button maker, also owned a flour mill at Snow Hill, in 1780, where Matthew Wasborough installed one of his rotative engines with ratchet gear and a flywheel. In August 1780, Pickard obtained a patent (no. 1263) for an application to make a rotative engine with a crank as well as gearwheels, one of which was weighted to help return the piston in the atmospheric cylinder during the dead stroke and overcome the dead centres of the crank. Wasborough's flywheel made the counterweight unnecessary, and engines were built with this and Pickard's crank. Several Birmingham business people seem to have been involved in the patent, and William Chapman of Newcastle upon Tyne was assigned the sole rights of erecting engines on the Wasborough-Pickard system in the counties of Northumberland, Durham and York. Wasborough was building engines in the south until his death the following year. The patentees tried to bargain with Boulton \& Watt to exchange the use of the crank for that of the separate condenser, but Boulton \& Watt would not agree, probably because James Watt claimed that one of his workers had stolen the idea of the crank and divulged it to Pickard. To avoid infringing Pickard's patent, Watt patented his sun-and-planet motion for his rotative engines.[br]BibliographyAugust 1780, British patent no. 1,263 (rotative engine with crank and gearwheels).Further ReadingJ.Farey, 1827, A Treatise on the Steam Engine, Historical, Practical and Descriptive, reprinted 1971, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles (contains an account of Pickard's crank). R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (provides an account of Pickard's crank).R.A.Buchanan, 1978–9, "Steam and the engineering community in the eighteenth century", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 50 ("Thomas Newcomen. A commemorative symposium") (provides details about the development of his engine).RLH -
99 Popescu, Elena
[br]b. 1877 Romaniad. 5 September 1944 Bucharest (?), Romania[br]Romanian inventor of the Romanian needle threader.[br]Popescu came from a fairly prosperous family. Outwardly she led a conventional life as wife of an army officer and mother of nine children; yet, as her unpublished diaries reveal, even when caught up in the fighting in the First World War she led an intense inner life isolated from her surroundings and hardly guessed at even by many members of her family. She seems to have had a mechanical turn of mind, for at the age of 14 she achieved the invention which should have earned her some fame. One day, when home for the school holidays, she saw an elderly servant struggling to thread a needle. Popescu resolved to devise some means of making life easier for the servant. She tried using various materials, including animal and human hair and plant fibres, but finally settled on fine steel wire fashioned into a kind of crochet needle. This did not work too well at first, until its shape had been modified with use. Helped by a mechanically minded younger brother, she made two or three further threaders, which immediately impressed the neighbouring needlewomen. Fired by success, she made 20 or 30 more, but then her return to school occupied her mind to the exclusion of needle threaders. Some twenty years later, when visiting a haberdasher's shop in Bucharest, she noticed on sale a needle threader very similar to her own, advertised as "recently invented in the USA".[br]Further ReadingA.Stanley, 1993, Mothers and Daughters of Invention, Meruchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 581–3, 912–6.LRD -
100 Robert, Nicolas Louis
SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing[br]b. 2 December 1761 Paris, Franced. 8 August 1828 Dreux, France[br]French inventor of the papermaking machine.[br]Robert was born into a prosperous family and received a fair education, after which he became a lawyer's clerk. In 1780, however, he enlisted in the Army and joined the artillery, serving with distinction in the West Indies, where he fought against the English. When dissatisfied with his prospects, Robert returned to Paris and obtained a post as proof-reader to the firm of printers and publishers owned by the Didot family. They were so impressed with his abilities that they promoted him, c. 1790, to "clerk inspector of workmen" at their paper mill at Essonnes, south of Paris, under the control of Didot St Leger.It was there that Robert conceived the idea of a continuous papermaking machine. In 1797 he made a model of it and, after further models, he obtained a patent in 1798. The paper was formed on a continuously revolving wire gauze, from which the sheets were lifted off and hung up to dry. Didot was at first scathing, but he came round to encouraging Robert to make a success of the machine. However, they quarrelled over the financial arrangements and Robert left to try setting up his own mill near Rouen. He failed for lack of capital, and in 1800 he returned to Essonnes and sold his patent to Didot for part cash, part proceeds from the operation of the mill. Didot left for England to enlist capital and technical skills to exploit the invention, while Robert was left in charge at Essonnes. It was the Fourdrinier brothers and Bryan Donkin who developed the papermaking machine into a form in which it could succeed. Meanwhile the mill at Essonnes under Robert's direction had begun to falter and declined to the point where it had to be sold. He had never received the full return from the sale of his patent, but he managed to recover his rights in it. This profited him little, for Didot obtained a patent in France for the Fourdrinier machine and had two examples erected in 1814 and the following year, respectively, neatly side-tracking Robert, who was now without funds or position. To support himself and his family, Robert set up a primary school in Dreux and there passed his remaining years. Although it was the Fourdrinier papermaking machine that was generally adopted, it is Robert who deserves credit for the original initiative.[br]Further ReadingR.H.Clapperton, 1967, The Papermaking Machine, Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 279–83 (provides a full description of Robert's invention and patent, together with a biography).LRD
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