vital+support

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives, Weapons and armour

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The Brennan family, including Louis, emigrated to Australia in 1861. He was an inventive genius from childhood, and while at Melbourne invented his torpedo. Within it were two drums, each with several miles of steel wire coiled upon it and mounted on one of two concentric propeller shafts. The propellers revolved in opposite directions. Wires were led out of the torpedo to winding drums on land, driven by high-speed steam engines: the faster the drums on shore were driven, the quicker the wires were withdrawn from the drums within the torpedo and the quicker the propellers turned. A steering device was operated by altering the speeds of the wires relative to one another. As finally developed, Brennan torpedoes were accurate over a range of 1 1/2 miles (2.4 km), in contrast to contemporary self-propelled torpedoes, which were unreliable at ranges over 400 yards (366 in).

Brennan moved to England in 1880 and sold the rights to his torpedo to the British Government for a total of £110,000, probably the highest payment ever made by it to an individual inventor. Brennan torpedoes became part of the defences of many vital naval ports, but never saw active service: improvement of other means of defence meant they were withdrawn in 1906. By then Brennan was deeply involved in the development of his monorail. The need for a simple and cheap form of railway had been apparent to him when in Australia and he considered it could be met by a ground-level monorail upon which vehicles would be balanced by gyroscopes. After overcoming many manufacturing difficulties, he demonstrated first a one-eighth scale version and then a full-size, electrically driven vehicle, which ran on its single rail throughout the summer of 1910 in London, carrying up to fifty passengers at a time. Development had been supported financially by, successively, the War Office, the India Office and the Government of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which had no rail access; despite all this, however, no further financial support, government or commercial, was forthcoming.

Brennan made many other inventions, worked on the early development of helicopters and in 1929 built a gyroscopically balanced, two-wheeled motor car which, however, never went into production.

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See also: Behr, Fritz Bernhard; Lartigue, Charles François Marie-Thérèse; Palmer, Henry Robinson( monorails); Whitehead, Robert( torpedoes).

SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology

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Orphaned at an early age, Leblanc was sent by his guardian, a doctor, to study medicine at the Ecole de Chirurgie in Paris. Around 1780 he entered the service of the Duke of Orléans as Surgeon. There he was able to pursue his interest in chemistry by carrying out research, particularly into crystallization; this bore fruit in a paper to the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1786, published in 1812 as a separate work entitled Crystallotechnie. At that time there was much concern that supplies of natural soda were becoming insufficient to meet the increasing demands of various industries, textile above all. In 1775 the Academy offered a prize of 2,400 livres for a means of manufacturing soda from sea salt. Several chemists studied the problem, but the prize was never awarded. However, in 1789 Leblanc reported in the Journal de physique for 1789 that he had devised a process, and he applied to his patron for support. The Duke had the process subjected to tests, and when these proved favourable he, with Leblanc and the referee, formed a company in February 1790 to exploit it. A patent was granted in 1791 and, with the manufacture of a vital substance at low cost based on a raw material, salt in unlimited supply, a bright prospect seemed to open out for Leblanc. The salt was treated with sulphuric acid to form salt-cake (sodium sulphate), which was then rotated with coal and limestone to form a substance from which the soda was extracted with water followed by evaporation. Hydrochloric acid was a valuable by-product, from which could be made calcium chloride, widely used in the textile and paper industries. The factory worked until 1793, but did not achieve regular production, and then disaster struck: Leblanc's principal patron, the Duke of Orléans, perished under the guillotine in the reign of terror; the factory was sequestered by the Revolutionary government and the agreement was revoked. Leblanc laboured in vain to secure adequate compensation. Eventually a grant was made towards the cost of restoring the factory, but it was quite inadequate, and in despair, Leblanc shot himself. However, his process proved to be one of the greatest inventions in the chemical industry, and was taken up in other countries and remained the leading process for the production of soda for a century. In 1855 his family tried again to vindicate his name and achieve compensation, this time with success.

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SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology

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The son of a prosperous Sheffield manufacturer, Roebuck forsook the family business to pursue studies in medicine at Edinburgh University. There he met Dr Joseph Black (1727–99), celebrated Professor of Chemistry, who aroused in Roebuck a lasting interest in chemistry. Roebuck continued his studies at Leyden, where he took his medical degree in 1742. He set up in practice in Birmingham, but in his spare time he continued chemical experiments that might help local industries.

Among his early achievements was his new method of refining gold and silver. Success led to the setting up of a large laboratory and a reputation as a chemical consultant. It was at this time that Roebuck devised an improved way of making sulphuric acid. This vital substance was then made by burning sulphur and nitre (potassium nitrate) over water in a glass globe. The scale of the process was limited by the fragility of the glass. Roebuck substituted "lead chambers", or vessels consisting of sheets of lead, a metal both cheap and resistant to acids, set in wooden frames. After the first plant was set up in 1746, productivity rose and the price of sulphuric acid fell sharply. Success encouraged Roebuck to establish a second, larger plant at Prestonpans, near Edinburgh. He preferred to rely on secrecy rather than patents to preserve his monopoly, but a departing employee took the secret with him and the process spread rapidly in England and on the European continent. It remained the standard process until it was superseded by the contact process towards the end of the nineteenth century. Roebuck next turned his attention to ironmaking and finally selected a site on the Carron river, near Falkirk in Scotland, where the raw materials and water power and transport lay close at hand. The Carron ironworks began producing iron in 1760 and became one of the great names in the history of ironmaking. Roebuck was an early proponent of the smelting of iron with coke, pioneered by Abraham Darby at Coalbrookdale. To supply the stronger blast required, Roebuck consulted John Smeaton, who c. 1760 installed the first blowing cylinders of any size.

All had so far gone well for Roebuck, but he now leased coal-mines and salt-works from the Duke of Hamilton's lands at Borrowstonness in Linlithgow. The coal workings were plagued with flooding which the existing Newcomen engines were unable to overcome. Through his friendship with Joseph Black, patron of James Watt, Roebuck persuaded Watt to join him to apply his improved steam-engine to the flooded mine. He took over Black's loan to Watt of £1,200, helped him to obtain the first steam-engine patent of 1769 and took a two-thirds interest in the project. However, the new engine was not yet equal to the task and the debts mounted. To satisfy his creditors, Roebuck had to dispose of his capital in his various ventures. One creditor was Matthew Boulton, who accepted Roebuck's two-thirds share in Watt's steam-engine, rather than claim payment from his depleted estate, thus initiating a famous partnership. Roebuck was retained to manage Borrowstonness and allowed an annuity for his continued support until his death in 1794.

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пастбищные угодья
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[ http://www.eionet.europa.eu/gemet/alphabetic?langcode=en]

EN

grassland
Grassland cover nearly one-fifth of the Earth's land surface. They include savannah, the prairies of North America, and the steppes of Russia and Central Asia. Grassland ecosystems support thousands of different species, above and below the ground, and have a vital part to play maintaining the ecological balance of the world. (Source: WRIGHT)
[http://www.eionet.europa.eu/gemet/alphabetic?langcode=en]

Тематики

• охрана окружающей среды

EN

• grassland

DE

• Grünland

FR

• prairie