transactions+of+the+newcomen+society

SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Paper and printing

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Perkins's occupation was that of a gold-and silversmith; while he does not seem to have followed this after 1800, however, it gave him the skills in working metals which he would continue to employ in his inventions. He had been working in America for four years before he patented his nail-making machine in 1796. At the time there was a great shortage of nails because only hand-forged ones were available. By 1800, other people had followed his example and produced automatic nail-making machines, but in 1811 Perkins' improved machines were introduced to England by J.C. Dyer. Eventually Perkins had twenty-one American patents for a range of inventions in his name.

In 1799 Perkins invented a system of engraving steel plates for printing banknotes, which became the foundation of modern siderographic work. It discouraged forging and was adopted by many banking houses, including the Federal Government when the Second United States Bank was inaugurated in 1816. This led Perkins to move to Philadelphia. In the intervening years, Perkins had improved his nail-making machine, invented a machine for graining morocco leather in 1809, a fire-engine in 1812, a letter-lock for bank vaults and improved methods of rolling out spoons in 1813, and improved armament and equipment for naval ships from 1812 to 1815.

It was in Philadelphia that Perkins became interested in the steam engine, when he met Oliver Evans, who had pioneered the use of high-pressure steam. He became a member of the American Philosophical Society and conducted experiments on the compressibility of water before a committee of that society. Perkins claimed to have liquified air during his experiments in 1822 and, if so, was the real discoverer of the liquification of gases. In 1819 he came to England to demonstrate his forgery-proof system of printing banknotes, but the Bank of England was the only one which did not adopt his system.

While in London, Perkins began to experiment with the highest steam pressures used up to that time and in 1822 took out his first of nineteen British patents. This was followed by another in 1823 for a 10 hp (7.5 kW) engine with only 2 in. (51 mm) bore, 12 in. (305 mm) stroke but a pressure of 500 psi (35 kg/cm²), for which he claimed exceptional economy. After 1826, Perkins abandoned his drum boiler for iron tubes and steam pressures of 1,500 psi (105 kg/cm²), but the materials would not withstand such pressures or temperatures for long. It was in that same year that he patented a form of uniflow cylinder that was later taken up by L.J. Todd. One of his engines ran for five days, continuously pumping water at St Katherine's docks, but Perkins could not raise more finance to continue his experiments.

In 1823 one his high-pressure hot-water systems was installed to heat the Duke of Wellington's house at Stratfield Saye and it acquired a considerable vogue, being used by Sir John Soane, among others. In 1834 Perkins patented a compression ice-making apparatus, but it did not succeed commercially because ice was imported more cheaply from Norway as ballast for sailing ships. Perkins was often dubbed "the American inventor" because his inquisitive personality allied to his inventive ingenuity enabled him to solve so many mechanical challenges.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Werner von Siemens was the eldest of a large family and after the early death of his parents took his place at its head. He served in the Prussian artillery, being commissioned in 1839, after which he devoted himself to the study of chemistry and physics. In 1847 Siemens and J.G. Halske formed a company, Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens und Halske, to manufacture a dial telegraph which they had developed from an earlier instrument produced by Charles Wheatstone. In 1848 Siemens obtained his discharge from the army and he and Halske constructed the first long-distance telegraph line on the European continent, between Berlin and Frankfurt am Main.

Werner von Siemens's younger brother, William Siemens, had settled in Britain in 1844 and was appointed agent for the Siemens \& Halske company in 1851. Later, an English subsidiary company was formed, known from 1865 as Siemens Brothers. It specialized in manufacturing and laying submarine telegraph cables: the specialist cable-laying ship Faraday, launched for the purpose in 1874, was the prototype of later cable ships and in 1874–5 laid the first cable to run direct from the British Isles to the USA. In charge of Siemens Brothers was another brother, Carl, who had earlier established a telegraph network in Russia.

In 1866 Werner von Siemens demonstrated the principle of the dynamo in Germany, but it took until 1878 to develop dynamos and electric motors to the point at which they could be produced commercially. The following year, 1879, Werner von Siemens built the first electric railway, and operated it at the Berlin Trades Exhibition. It comprised an oval line, 300 m (985 it) long, with a track gauge of 1 m (3 ft 3 1/2 in.); upon this a small locomotive hauled three small passenger coaches. The locomotive drew current at 150 volts from a third rail between the running rails, through which it was returned. In four months, more than 80,000 passengers were carried. The railway was subsequently demonstrated in Brussels, and in London, in 1881. That same year Siemens built a permanent electric tramway, 1 1/2 miles (2 1/2 km) long, on the outskirts of Berlin. In 1882 in Berlin he tried out a railless electric vehicle which drew electricity from a two-wire overhead line: this was the ancestor of the trolleybus.

In the British Isles, an Act of Parliament was obtained in 1880 for the Giant's Causeway Railway in Ireland with powers to work it by "animal, mechanical or electrical power"; although Siemens Brothers were electrical engineers to the company, of which William Siemens was a director, delays in construction were to mean that the first railway in the British Isles to operate regular services by electricity was that of Magnus Volk.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

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The son of a "coal viewer", Curr was brought up in the West Durham colliery district. In 1777 he went to the Duke of Norfolk's collieries at Sheffield, where in 1880 he was appointed Superintendent. There coal was conveyed underground in baskets on sledges: Curr replaced the wicker sledges with wheeled corves, i.e. small four-wheeled wooden wagons, running on "rail-roads" with cast-iron rails and hauled from the coal-face to the shaft bottom by horses. The rails employed hitherto had usually consisted of plates of iron, the flange being on the wheels of the wagon. Curr's new design involved flanges on the rails which guided the vehicles, the wheels of which were unflanged and could run on any hard surface. He appears to have left no precise record of the date that he did this, and surviving records have been interpreted as implying various dates between 1776 and 1787. In 1787 John Buddle paid tribute to the efficiency of the rails of Curr's type, which were first used for surface transport by Joseph Butler in 1788 at his iron furnace at Wingerworth near Chesterfield: their use was then promoted widely by Benjamin Outram, and they were adopted in many other English mines. They proved serviceable until the advent of locomotives demanded different rails.

In 1788 Curr also developed a system for drawing a full corve up a mine shaft while lowering an empty one, with guides to separate them. At the surface the corves were automatically emptied by tipplers. Four years later he was awarded a patent for using double ropes for lifting heavier loads. As the weight of the rope itself became a considerable problem with the increasing depth of the shafts, Curr invented the flat hemp rope, patented in 1798, which consisted of several small round ropes stitched together and lapped upon itself in winding. It acted as a counterbalance and led to a reduction in the time and cost of hoisting: at the beginning of a run the loaded rope began to coil upon a small diameter, gradually increasing, while the unloaded rope began to coil off a large diameter, gradually decreasing.

Curr's book The Coal Viewer (1797) is the earliest-known engineering work on railway track and it also contains the most elaborate description of a Newcomen pumping engine, at the highest state of its development. He became an acknowledged expert on construction of Newcomen-type atmospheric engines, and in 1792 he established a foundry to make parts for railways and engines.

Because of the poor financial results of the Duke of Norfolk's collieries at the end of the century, Curr was dismissed in 1801 despite numerous inventions and improvements which he had introduced. After his dismissal, six more of his patents were concerned with rope-making: the one he gained in 1813 referred to the application of flat ropes to horse-gins and perpendicular drum-shafts of steam engines. Curr also introduced the use of inclined planes, where a descending train of full corves pulled up an empty one, and he was one of the pioneers employing fixed steam engines for hauling. He may have resided in France for some time before his death.

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WK / PJGR

SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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Jonathan came from a family with an engineering tradition: his grandfather Joseph had worked under Thomas Newcomen. Jonathan was the sixth child in a family of thirteen whose names all began with "J". In 1781 he was living at Penryn, Cornwall and described himself as a plumber, brazier and engineer. As early as 1776, when he wished to amuse himself by making a small st-eam engine, he wanted to make something new and wondered if the steam would perform more than one operation in an engine. This was the foundation for his compound engine. He worked on engines in Cornwall, and in 1778 was Engineer at the Ting Tang mine where he helped Boulton \& Watt erect one of their engines. He was granted a patent in 1781 and in that year tried a large-scale experiment by connecting together two engines at Wheal Maid. Very soon John Winwood, a partner in a firm of iron founders at Bristol, acquired a share in the patent, and in 1782 an engine was erected in a colliery at Radstock, Somerset. This was probably not very successful, but a second was erected in the same area. Hornblower claimed greater economy from his engines, but steam pressures at that time were not high enough to produce really efficient compound engines. Between 1790 and 1794 ten engines with his two-cylinder arrangement were erected in Cornwall, and this threatened Boulton \& Watt's near monopoly. At first the steam was condensed by a surface condenser in the bottom of the second, larger cylinder, but this did not prove very successful and later a water jet was used. Although Boulton \& Watt proceeded against the owners of these engines for infringement of their patent, they did not take Jonathan Hornblower to court. He tried a method of packing the piston rod by a steam gland in 1781 and his work as an engineer must have been quite successful, for he left a considerable fortune on his death.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology, Textiles

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Edmund Cartwright, the fourth son of William Cartwright, was educated at Wakefield Grammar School, and went to University College, Oxford, at the age of 14. By special act of convocation in 1764, he was elected Fellow of Magdalen College. He married Alice Whitaker in 1772 and soon after was given the ecclesiastical living of Brampton in Derbyshire. In 1779 he was presented with the living of Goadby, Marwood, Leicestershire, where he wrote poems, reviewed new works, and began agricultural experiments. A visit to Matlock in the summer of 1784 introduced him to the inventions of Richard Arkwright and he asked why weaving could not be mechanized in a similar manner to spinning. This began a remarkable career of inventions.

Cartwright returned home and built a loom which required two strong men to operate it. This was the first attempt in England to develop a power loom. It had a vertical warp, the reed fell with the weight of at least half a hundredweight and, to quote Gartwright's own words, "the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to throw a Congreive [sic] rocket" (Strickland 19.71:8—for background to the "rocket" comparison, see Congreve, Sir William). Nevertheless, it had the same three basics of weaving that still remain today in modern power looms: shedding or dividing the warp; picking or projecting the shuttle with the weft; and beating that pick of weft into place with a reed. This loom he proudly patented in 1785, and then he went to look at hand looms and was surprised to see how simply they operated. Further improvements to his own loom, covered by two more patents in 1786 and 1787, produced a machine with the more conventional horizontal layout that showed promise; however, the Manchester merchants whom he visited were not interested. He patented more improvements in 1788 as a result of the experience gained in 1786 through establishing a factory at Doncaster with power looms worked by a bull that were the ancestors of modern ones. Twenty-four looms driven by steam-power were installed in Manchester in 1791, but the mill was burned down and no one repeated the experiment. The Doncaster mill was sold in 1793, Cartwright having lost £30,000, However, in 1809 Parliament voted him £10,000 because his looms were then coming into general use.

In 1789 he began working on a wool-combing machine which he patented in 1790, with further improvements in 1792. This seems to have been the earliest instance of mechanized combing. It used a circular revolving comb from which the long fibres or "top" were. carried off into a can, and a smaller cylinder-comb for teasing out short fibres or "noils", which were taken off by hand. Its output equalled that of twenty hand combers, but it was only relatively successful. It was employed in various Leicestershire and Yorkshire mills, but infringements were frequent and costly to resist. The patent was prolonged for fourteen years after 1801, but even then Cartwright did not make any profit. His 1792 patent also included a machine to make ropes with the outstanding and basic invention of the "cordelier" which he communicated to his friends, including Robert Fulton, but again it brought little financial benefit. As a result of these problems and the lack of remuneration for his inventions, Cartwright moved to London in 1796 and for a time lived in a house built with geometrical bricks of his own design.

Other inventions followed fast, including a tread-wheel for cranes, metallic packing for pistons in steam-engines, and bread-making and brick-making machines, to mention but a few. He had already returned to agricultural improvements and he put forward suggestions in 1793 for a reaping machine. In 1801 he received a prize from the Board of Agriculture for an essay on husbandry, which was followed in 1803 by a silver medal for the invention of a three-furrow plough and in 1805 by a gold medal for his essay on manures. From 1801 to 1807 he ran an experimental farm on the Duke of Bedford's estates at Woburn.

From 1786 until his death he was a prebendary of Lincoln. In about 1810 he bought a small farm at Hollanden near Sevenoaks, Kent, where he continued his inventions, both agricultural and general. Inventing to the last, he died at Hastings and was buried in Battle church.

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SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering, Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Joshua Field was educated at a boarding school in Essex until the age of 16, when he obtained employment at the Royal Dockyards at Portsmouth under the Chief Mechanical Superintendent, Simon Goodrich (1773–1847), and later in the drawing office at the Admiralty in Whitehall. At this time, machinery for the manufacture of ships' blocks was being made for the Admiralty by Henry Maudslay, who was in need of a competent draughtsman, and Goodrich recommended Joshua Field. This was the beginning of Field's long association with Maudslay; he later became a partner in the firm which was for many years known as Maudslay, Sons \& Field. They undertook a variety of mechanical engineering work but were renowned for marine steam engines, with Field being responsible for much of the design work in the early years. Joshua Field was the eldest of the eight young men who in 1818 founded the Institution of Civil Engineers; he was the first Chairman of the Institution and later became a vice-president. He was the only one of the founders to be elected President and was the first mechanical engineer to hold that office. James Nasmyth in his autobiography relates that Joshua Field kept a methodical account of his technical discussions in a series of note books which were later indexed. Some of these diaries have survived, and extracts from the notes he made on a tour of the industrial areas of the Midlands and the North West in 1821 have been published.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Textiles

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Richard Roberts was the son of a shoemaker and tollkeeper and received only an elementary education at the village school. At the age of 10 his interest in mechanics was stimulated when he was allowed by the Curate, the Revd Griffith Howell, to use his lathe and other tools. As a young man Roberts acquired a considerable local reputation for his mechanical skills, but these were exercised only in his spare time. For many years he worked in the local limestone quarries, until at the age of 20 he obtained employment as a pattern-maker in Staffordshire. In the next few years he worked as a mechanic in Liverpool, Manchester and Salford before moving in 1814 to London, where he obtained employment with Henry Maudslay. In 1816 he set up on his own account in Manchester. He soon established a reputation there for gear-cutting and other general engineering work, especially for the textile industry, and by 1821 he was employing about twelve men. He built machine tools mainly for his own use, including, in 1817, one of the first planing machines.

One of his first inventions was a gas meter, but his first patent was obtained in 1822 for improvements in looms. His most important contribution to textile technology was his invention of the self-acting spinning mule, patented in 1825. The normal fourteen-year term of this patent was extended in 1839 by a further seven years. Between 1826 and 1828 Roberts paid several visits to Alsace, France, arranging cottonspinning machinery for a new factory at Mulhouse. By 1826 he had become a partner in the firm of Sharp Brothers, the company then becoming Sharp, Roberts \& Co. The firm continued to build textile machinery, and in the 1830s it built locomotive engines for the newly created railways and made one experimental steam-carriage for use on roads. The partnership was dissolved in 1843, the Sharps establishing a new works to continue locomotive building while Roberts retained the existing factory, known as the Globe Works, where he soon after took as partners R.G.Dobinson and Benjamin Fothergill (1802–79). This partnership was dissolved c. 1851, and Roberts continued in business on his own for a few years before moving to London as a consulting engineer.

During the 1840s and 1850s Roberts produced many new inventions in a variety of fields, including machine tools, clocks and watches, textile machinery, pumps and ships. One of these was a machine controlled by a punched-card system similar to the Jacquard loom for punching rivet holes in plates. This was used in the construction of the Conway and Menai Straits tubular bridges. Roberts was granted twenty-six patents, many of which, before the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1852, covered more than one invention; there were still other inventions he did not patent. He made his contribution to the discussion which led up to the 1852 Act by publishing, in 1830 and 1833, pamphlets suggesting reform of the Patent Law.

In the early 1820s Roberts helped to establish the Manchester Mechanics' Institute, and in 1823 he was elected a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. He frequently contributed to their proceedings and in 1861 he was made an Honorary Member. He was elected a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1838. From 1838 to 1843 he served as a councillor of the then-new Municipal Borough of Manchester. In his final years, without the assistance of business partners, Roberts suffered financial difficulties, and at the time of his death a fund for his aid was being raised.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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Little is known of the early years of Savery's life and no trace has been found that he served in the Army, so the title "Captain" is thought to refer to some mining appointment, probably in the West of England. He may have been involved in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, for later he was well known to William of Orange. From 1705 to 1714 he was Treasurer for Sick and Wounded Seamen, and in 1714 he was appointed Surveyor of the Water Works at Hampton Court, a post he held until his death the following year. He was interested in mechanical devices; amongst his early contrivances was a clock.

He was the most prolific inventor of his day, applying for seven patents, including one in 1649, for polishing plate glass which may have been used. His idea for 1697 for propelling ships with paddle-wheels driven by a capstan was a failure, although regarded highly by the King, and was published in his first book, Navigation Improved (1698). He tried to patent a new type of floating mill in 1707, and an idea in 1710 for baking sea coal or other fuel in an oven to make it clean and pure.

His most famous invention, however, was the one patented in 1698 "for raising water by the impellent force of fire" that Savery said would drain mines or low-lying land, raise water to supply towns or houses, and provide a source of water for turning mills through a water-wheel. Basically it consisted of a receiver which was first filled with steam and then cooled to create a vacuum by having water poured over the outside. The water to be pumped was drawn into the receiver from a lower sump, and then high-pressure steam was readmitted to force the water up a pipe to a higher level. It was demonstrated to the King and the Royal Society and achieved some success, for a few were installed in the London area and a manufactory set up at Salisbury Court in London. He published a book, The Miner's Friend, about his engine in 1702, but although he made considerable improvements, due to excessive fuel consumption and materials which could not withstand the steam pressures involved, no engines were installed in mines as Savery had hoped. His patent was extended in 1699 until 1733 so that it covered the atmospheric engine of Thomas Newcomen who was forced to join Savery and his other partners to construct this much more practical engine.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines, Textiles, Weapons and armour

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John George Bodmer (as he was known in England) showed signs of great inventive ability even as a child. Soon after completing his apprenticeship to a local millwright, he set up his own work-shop at Zussnacht. One of his first inventions, in 1805, was a shell which exploded on impact. Soon after this he went into partnership with Baron d'Eichthal to establish a cotton mill at St Blaise in the Black Forest. Bodmer designed the water-wheels and all the machinery. A few years later they established a factory for firearms and Bodmer designed special machine tools and developed a system of interchangeable manufacture comparable with American developments at that time. More inventions followed, including a detachable bayonet for breech-loading rifles and a rifled, breech-loading cannon for 12 lb (5.4 kg) shells.

Bodmer was appointed by the Grand Duke of Baden to the posts of Director General of the Government Iron Works and Inspector of Artillery. He left St Blaise in 1816 and entered completely into the service of the Grand Duke, but before taking up his duties he visited Britain for the first time and made an intensive five-month tour of textile mills, iron works, workshops and similar establishments.

In 1821 he returned to Switzerland and was engaged in setting up cotton mills and other engineering works. In 1824 he went back to England, where he obtained a patent for his improvements in cotton machinery and set up a mill near Bolton incorporating his ideas. His health failing, he was obliged to return to Switzerland in 1828, but he was soon busy with engineering works there and in France. In 1833 he went to England again, first to Bolton and four years later to Manchester in partnership with H.H.Birley. In the next ten years he patented many more inventions in the fields of textile machinery, steam engines and machine tools. These included a balanced steam engine, a mechanical stoker, steam engine valve gear, gear-cutting machines and a circular planer or vertical lathe, anticipating machines of this type later developed in America by E.P. Bullard. The metric system was used in his workshops and in gearing calculations he introduced the concept of diametral pitch, which then became known as "Manchester Pitch". The balanced engine was built in stationary form and in two locomotives, but although their running was remarkably smooth the additional complication prevented their wider use.

After the death of H.H.Birley in 1846, Bodmer removed to London until 1848, when he went to Austria. About 1860 he returned to his native town of Zurich. He remained actively engaged in all kinds of inventions up to the end of his life. He obtained fourteen British patents, each of which describes many inventions; two of these patents were extended beyond the normal duration of fourteen years. Two others were obtained on his behalf, one by his brother James in 1813 for his cannon and one relating to railways by Charles Fox in 1847. Many of his inventions had little direct influence but anticipated much later developments. His ideas were sound and some of his engines and machine tools were in use for over sixty years. He was elected a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1835.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Davidson, son of an Aberdeen merchant, attended Marischal College, Aberdeen, between 1819 and 1822: his studies included mathematics, mechanics and chemistry. He subsequently joined his father's grocery business, which from time to time received enquiries for yeast: to meet these, Davidson began to manufacture yeast for sale and from that start built up a successful chemical manufacturing business with the emphasis on yeast and dyes. About 1837 he started to experiment first with electric batteries and then with motors. He invented a form of electromagnetic engine in which soft iron bars arranged on the periphery of a wooden cylinder, parallel to its axis, around which the cylinder could rotate, were attracted by fixed electromagnets. These were energized in turn by current controlled by a simple commutaring device. Electric current was produced by his batteries. His activities were brought to the attention of Michael Faraday and to the scientific world in general by a letter from Professor Forbes of King's College, Aberdeen. Davidson declined to patent his inventions, believing that all should be able freely to draw advantage from them, and in order to afford an opportunity for all interested parties to inspect them an exhibition was held at 36 Union Street, Aberdeen, in October 1840 to demonstrate his "apparatus actuated by electro-magnetic power". It included: a model locomotive carriage, large enough to carry two people, that ran on a railway; a turning lathe with tools for visitors to use; and a small printing machine. In the spring of 1842 he put on a similar exhibition in Edinburgh, this time including a sawmill. Davidson sought support from railway companies for further experiments and the construction of an electromagnetic locomotive; the Edinburgh exhibition successfully attracted the attention of the proprietors of the Edinburgh 585\& Glasgow Railway (E \& GR), whose line had been opened in February 1842. Davidson built a full-size locomotive incorporating his principle, apparently at the expense of the railway company. The locomotive weighed 7 tons: each of its two axles carried a cylinder upon which were fastened three iron bars, and four electromagnets were arranged in pairs on each side of the cylinders. The motors he used were reluctance motors, the power source being zinc-iron batteries. It was named Galvani and was demonstrated on the E \& GR that autumn, when it achieved a speed of 4 mph (6.4 km/h) while hauling a load of 6 tons over a distance of 1 1/2 miles (2.4 km); it was the first electric locomotive. Nevertheless, further support from the railway company was not forthcoming, although to some railway workers the locomotive seems to have appeared promising enough: they destroyed it in Luddite reaction. Davidson staged a further exhibition in London in 1843 without result and then, the cost of battery chemicals being high, ceased further experiments of this type. He survived long enough to see the electric railway become truly practicable in the 1880s.

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PJGR / GW

SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Railways and locomotives

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Outram's father was one of the principal promoters of the Cromford Canal, Derbyshire, and Benjamin Outram became Assistant to the canal's Engineer, William Jessop. In 1789 Outram was appointed Superintendent in charge of construction, and his responsibilities included the 2,978 yd (2,723 m) Butterley Tunnel; while the tunnel was being driven, coal and iron ore were encountered. Outram and a partner purchased the Butterley Hall estate above the tunnel and formed Outram \& Co. to exploit the coal and iron: a wide length of the tunnel beneath the company's furnace was linked to the surface by shafts to become in effect an underground wharf. Jessop soon joined the company, which grew and prospered to eventually become the long-lived Butterley Company.

As a canal engineer, Outram's subsequent projects included the Derby, Huddersfield Narrow and Peak Forest Canals. On the Derby Canal he built a small iron aqueduct, which though designed later than the Longdon Aqueduct of Thomas Telford was opened earlier, in 1796, to become the first iron aqueduct.

It is as a tramroad engineer that Outram is best known. In 1793 he completed a mile-long (1.6 km) tramroad from Outram \& Co.'s limestone quarry at Crich to the Cromford Canal, for which he used plate rails of the type recently developed by John Curr. He was, however, able to use a wider gauge—3 ft 6 in. (1.07 m) between the flanges—and larger wagons than Curr had been able to use underground in mines. It appears to have been Outram's idea to mount the rails on stone blocks, rather than wooden sleepers.

Outram then engineered tramroads to extend the lines of the Derby and Peak Forest Canals. He encouraged construction of such tramroads in many parts of Britain, often as feeders of traffic to canals. He acted as Engineer, and his company often provided the rails and sometimes undertook the entire construction of a line. Foreseeing that lines would be linked together, he recommended a gauge of 4 ft 2 in. (1.27 m) between the flanges as standard, and for twenty years or so Outram's plateways, with horses or gravity as motive power, became the usual form of construction for new railways. However, experience then showed that edge rails, weight for weight, could carry greater load, and were indeed almost essential for the introduction of steam locomotives.

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SUBJECT AREA: Railways and locomotives, Steam and internal combustion engines

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Seguin trained under Joseph Montgolfier, one of the inventors of the hot-air balloon, and became a pioneer of suspension bridges. In 1825 he was involved in an attempt to introduce steam navigation to the River Rhône using a tug fitted with a winding drum to wind itself upstream along a cable attached to a point on the bank, with a separate boat to transfer the cable from point to point. The attempt proved unsuccessful and was short-lived, but in 1825 Seguin had decided also to seek a government concession for a railway from Saint-Etienne to Lyons as a feeder of traffic to the river. He inspected the Stockton \& Darlington Railway and met George Stephenson; the concession was granted in 1826 to Seguin Frères \& Ed. Biot and two steam locomotives were built to their order by Robert Stephenson \& Co. The locomotives were shipped to France in the spring of 1828 for evaluation prior to construction of others there; each had two vertical cylinders, one each side between front and rear wheels, and a boiler with a single large-diameter furnace tube, with a watertube grate. Meanwhile, in 1827 Seguin, who was still attempting to produce a steamboat powerful enough to navigate the fast-flowing Rhône, had conceived the idea of increasing the heating surface of a boiler by causing the hot gases from combustion to pass through a series of tubes immersed in the water. He was soon considering application of this type of boiler to a locomotive. He applied for a patent for a multi-tubular boiler on 12 December 1827 and carried out numerous experiments with various means of producing a forced draught to overcome the perceived obstruction caused by the small tubes. By May 1829 the steam-navigation venture had collapsed, but Seguin had a locomotive under construction in the workshops of the Lyons-Sain t- Etienne Railway: he retained the cylinder layout of its Stephenson locomotives, but incorporated a boiler of his own design. The fire was beneath the barrel, surrounded by a water-jacket: a single large flue ran towards the front of the boiler, whence hot gases returned via many small tubes through the boiler barrel to a chimney above the firedoor. Draught was provided by axle-driven fans on the tender.

Seguin was not aware of the contemporary construction of Rocket, with a multi-tubular boiler, by Robert Stephenson; Rocket had its first trial run on 5 September 1829, but the precise date on which Seguin's locomotive first ran appears to be unknown, although by 20 October many experiments had been carried out upon it. Seguin's concept of a multi-tubular locomotive boiler therefore considerably antedated that of Henry Booth, and his first locomotive was completed about the same date as Rocket. It was from Rocket's boiler, however, rather than from that of Seguin's locomotive, that the conventional locomotive boiler was descended.

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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Clerke, from Launde Abbey in Leicestershire, was involved in early experiments to smelt lead using coal fuel, which was believed to have been located on the Leicestershire-Derbyshire border. Concurrently, Lord Grandison was financing experiments at Bristol for similar purposes, causing the downfall of an earlier unsuccessful patented method before securing his own patent in 1678. In that same year Clerke took over management of the Bristol works, claiming the ability to secure financial return from Grandison's methods. Financial success proved elusive, although the technical problems of adapting the reverberatory furnace to coal fuel appear to have been solved when Clerke was found to have established another lead works nearby on his own account. He was forced to cease work on lead in 1684 in respect of Grandison's patent rights. Clerke then turned to investigations into the coal-fired smelting of other metals and started to smelt copper in coal-fired reverberatory furnaces. By 1688–9 small supplied of merchantable copper were offered for sale in London in order to pay his workers, possibly because of further financial troubles. The practical success of his smelting innovation is widely acknowledged to have been the responsibility of John Coster and, to a smaller extent, Gabriel Wayne, both of whom left Clerke and set up separate works elsewhere. Clerke's son Talbot took over administration of his father's works, which declined still further and closed c. 1693, at about the time of Sir Clement's death. Both Coster and Wayne continued to develop smelting techniques, establishing a new British industry in the smelting of copper with coal.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Vauclain entered the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1872 as an apprentice in Altoona workshops and moved to the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1883. He remained with the latter for fifty-seven years, becoming President in 1919 and Chairman of the Board in 1929.

The first locomotive to his pattern of compound was built in 1889. There were four cylinders: on each side of the locomotive a high-pressure cylinder and a low-pressure cylinder were positioned one above the other, their pistons driving a common cross-head. They shared, also, a common piston valve. Large two-cylinder compound locomotives had been found to suffer from uneven distribution of power between the two sides of the locomotive: Vauclain's system overcame this problem while retaining the accessibility of a locomotive with two outside cylinders. It was used extensively in the USA and other parts of the world, but not in Britain. Among many other developments, in 1897 Vauclain was responsible for the construction of the first locomotives of the 2–8–2 wheel arrangement.

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See also: Baldwin, Matthias William; Mallet, Jules Théodore Anatole

SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines

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A single-cylinder atmospheric steam engine had a power stroke only when the piston descended the cylinder: a means had to be found of returning the piston to its starting position. For rotative engines, this was partially solved by the patent of Matthew Wasborough in 1779. His father was a partner in a Bristol brass-founding and clockmaking business in Narrow Wine Street where he was joined by his son. Wasborough proposed to use some form of ratchet gear to effect the rotary motion and added a flywheel, the first time one was used in a steam engine, "in order to render the motion more regular and uniform". He installed one engine to drive the lathes in the Bristol works and another at James Pickard's flour mill at Snow Hill, Birmingham, where Pickard applied his recently patented crank to it. It was this Wasborough-Pickard engine which posed a threat to Boulton \& Watt trying to develop a rotative engine, for Wasborough built several engines for cornmills in Bristol, woollen mills in Gloucestershire and a block factory at Southampton before his early death. Matthew Boulton was told that Wasborough was "so intent upon the study of engines as to bring a fever on his brain and he dyed in consequence thereof…. How dangerous it is for a man to wade out of his depth" (Jenkins 1936:106).

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SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Mining and extraction technology

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John Coster, son of an iron-forge manager in the Forest of Dean, by the age of 38 was at Bristol, where he was "chief agent and sharer therein" in the new lead-smelting methods using coal fuel. In 1685 the work, under Sir Clement Clerke, was abandoned because of patent rights claimed by Lord Grandison, who financed of earlier attempts. Clerke's business turned to the coal-fired smelting of copper under Coster, later acknowledged as responsible for the subsequent success through using an improved reverberatory furnace which separated coal fume from the ores being smelted. The new technique, applicable also to lead and tin smelting, revitalized copper production and provided a basis for new British industry in both copper and brass manufacture during the following century. Coster went on to manage a copper-smelting works, and by the 1690s was supplying Esher copper-and brass-works in Surrey from his Redbrook, Gloucestershire, works on the River Wye. In the next decade he extended his activities to Cornish copper mining, buying ore and organizing ore sales, and supplying the four major copper and brass companies which by then had become established. He also made copper goods in additional water-powered rolling and hammer mills acquired in the Bristol area. Coster was ably assisted by three sons; of these, John and Robert were mainly active in Cornwall. In 1714 the younger John, with his father, patented an "engine for drawing water out of deep mines". The eldest son, Thomas, was more involved at Redbrook, in South Wales and the Bristol area. A few years after the death of his father, Thomas became partner in the brass company of Bristol and sold them the Redbrook site. He became Member of Parliament for Bristol and, by then the only surviving son, planned a large new smelting works at White Rock, Swansea, South Wales, before his death in 1734. Partners outside the family continued the business under a new name.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Fairlie worked on railways in Ireland and India, and established himself as a consulting engineer in London by the early 1860s. In 1864 he patented his design of locomotive: it was to be carried on two bogies and had a double boiler, the barrels extending in each direction from a central firebox. From smokeboxes at the outer ends, return tubes led to a single central chimney. At that time in British practice, locomotives of ever-increasing size were being carried on longer and longer rigid wheelbases, but often only one or two of their three or four pairs of wheels were powered. Bogies were little used and then only for carrying-wheels rather than driving-wheels: since their pivots were given no sideplay, they were of little value. Fairlie's design offered a powerful locomotive with a wheelbase which though long would be flexible; it would ride well and have all wheels driven and available for adhesion.

The first five double Fairlie locomotives were built by James Cross \& Co. of St Helens during 1865–7. None was particularly successful: the single central chimney of the original design had been replaced by two chimneys, one at each end of the locomotive, but the single central firebox was retained, so that exhaust up one chimney tended to draw cold air down the other. In 1870 the next double Fairlie, Little Wonder, was built for the Festiniog Railway, on which C.E. Spooner was pioneering steam trains of very narrow gauge. The order had gone to George England, but the locomotive was completed by his successor in business, the Fairlie Engine \& Steam Carriage Company, in which Fairlie and George England's son were the principal partners. Little Wonder was given two inner fireboxes separated by a water space and proved outstandingly successful. The spectacle of this locomotive hauling immensely long trains up grade, through the Festiniog Railway's sinuous curves, was demonstrated before engineers from many parts of the world and had lasting effect. Fairlie himself became a great protagonist of narrow-gauge railways and influenced their construction in many countries.

Towards the end of the 1860s, Fairlie was designing steam carriages or, as they would now be called, railcars, but only one was built before the death of George England Jr precipitated closure of the works in 1870. Fairlie's business became a design agency and his patent locomotives were built in large numbers under licence by many noted locomotive builders, for narrow, standard and broad gauges. Few operated in Britain, but many did in other lands; they were particularly successful in Mexico and Russia.

Many Fairlie locomotives were fitted with the radial valve gear invented by Egide Walschaert; Fairlie's role in the universal adoption of this valve gear was instrumental, for he introduced it to Britain in 1877 and fitted it to locomotives for New Zealand, whence it eventually spread worldwide. Earlier, in 1869, the Great Southern \& Western Railway of Ireland had built in its works the first "single Fairlie", a 0–4–4 tank engine carried on two bogies but with only one of them powered. This type, too, became popular during the last part of the nineteenth century. In the USA it was built in quantity by William Mason of Mason Machine Works, Taunton, Massachusetts, in preference to the double-ended type.

Double Fairlies may still be seen in operation on the Festiniog Railway; some of Fairlie's ideas were far ahead of their time, and modern diesel and electric locomotives are of the powered-bogie, double-ended type.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Froude was educated at a preparatory school at Buckfastleigh, and then at Westminster School, London, before entering Oriel College, Oxford, to read mathematics and classics. Between 1836 and 1838 he served as a pupil civil engineer, and then he joined the staff of Isambard Kingdom Brunel on various railway engineering projects in southern England, including the South Devon Atmospheric Railway. He retired from professional work in 1846 and lived with his invalid father at Dartington Parsonage. The next twenty years, while apparently unproductive, were important to Froude as he concentrated his mind on difficult mathematical and scientific problems. Froude married in 1839 and had five children, one of whom, Robert Edmund Froude (1846–1924), was to succeed him in later years in his research work for the Admiralty. Following the death of his father, Froude moved to Paignton, and there commenced his studies on the resistance of solid bodies moving through fluids. Initially these were with hulls towed through a house roof storage tank by wires taken over a pulley and attached to falling weights, but the work became more sophisticated and was conducted on ponds and the open water of a creek near Dartmouth. Froude published work on the rolling of ships in the second volume of the Transactions of the then new Institution of Naval Architects and through this became acquainted with Sir Edward Reed. This led in 1870 to the Admiralty's offer of £2,000 towards the cost of an experimental tank for ship models at Torquay. The tank was completed in 1872 and tests were carried out on the model of HMS Greyhound following full-scale towing trials which had commenced on the actual ship the previous year. From this Froude enunciated his Law of Comparisons, which defines the rules concerning the relationship of the power required to move geometrically similar floating bodies across fluids. It enabled naval architects to predict, from a study of a much less expensive and smaller model, the resistance to motion and the power required to move a full-size ship. The work in the tank led Froude to design a model-cutting machine, dynamometers and machinery for the accurate ruling of graph paper. Froude's work, and later that of his son, was prodigious and covered many fields of ship design, including powering, propulsion, rolling, steering and stability. In only six years he had stamped his academic authority on the new science of hydrodynamics, served on many national committees and corresponded with fellow researchers throughout the world. His health suffered and he sailed for South Africa to recuperate, but he contracted dysentery and died at Simonstown. He will be remembered for all time as one of the greatest "fathers" of naval architecture.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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After the death of his father, Seppings at the age of 14 moved to his uncle's home in Plymouth, where shortly after (1782) he was apprenticed to the Master Shipwright. His indentures were honoured fully by 1789 and he commenced his climb up the professional ladder of the ship construction department of the Royal Dockyards. In 1797 he became Assistant Master Shipwright at Plymouth, and in 1804 he was appointed Master Shipwright at Chatham. In 1813 Sir William Rule, Surveyor to the Navy, retired and the number of surveyors was increased to three, with Seppings being appointed the junior. Later he was to become Surveyor to the Royal Navy, a post he held until his retirement in 1832. Seppings introduced many changes to ship construction in the early part of the nineteenth century. It is likely that the introduction of these innovations required positive and confident management, and their acceptance tells us much about Seppings. The best-known changes were the round bow and stern in men-of-war and the alteration to framing systems.

The Seppings form of diagonal bracing ensured that wooden ships, which are notorious for hogging (i.e. drooping at the bow and stern), were stronger and therefore able to be built with greater length. This change was complemented by modifications to the floors, frames and futtocks (analogous to the ribs of a ship). These developments were to be taken further once iron composite construction (wooden sheathing on iron frames) was adopted in the United Kingdom mid-century.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering, Paper and printing

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It was intended that Bryan Donkin should follow his father's profession of surveyor and land agent, so he spent a year or so in that occupation before he was apprenticed to John Hall, millwright of Dartford, Kent. Donkin remained with the firm after completing his apprenticeship, and when the Fourdrinier brothers in 1802 introduced from France an invention for making paper in continuous lengths they turned to John Hall for help in developing the machine: Donkin was chosen to undertake the work. In 1803 the Fourdriniers established their own works in Bermondsey, with Bryan Donkin in charge. By 1808 Donkin had acquired the works, but he continued to manufacture paper-making machines, paying a royalty to the patentees. He also undertook other engineering work including water-wheels for driving paper and other mills. He was also involved in the development of printing machinery and the preservation of food in airtight containers. Some of these improvements were patented, and he also obtained patents relating to gearing, steel pens, paper-making and railway wheels. Other inventions of Bryan Donkin that were not patented concerned revolution counters and improvements in accurate screw threads for use in graduating mathematical scales. Donkin was elected a member of the Society of Arts in 1803 and was later Chairman of the Society's Committee of Mechanics and a Vice-President of the society. He was also a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1818 a group of eight young men founded the Institution of Civil Engineers; two of them were apprentices of Bryan Donkin and he encouraged their enterprise. After a change in the rules permitted the election of members over the age of 35, he himself became a member in 1821. He served on the Council and became a Vice- President, but he resigned from the Institution in 1848.

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