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  • 21 Camm, Sir Sydney

    [br]
    b. 5 August 1893 Windsor, Berkshire, England
    d. 12 March 1966 Richmond, Surrey, England
    [br]
    English military aircraft designer.
    [br]
    He was the eldest of twelve children and his father was a journeyman carpenter, in whose footsteps Camm followed as an apprentice woodworker. He developed an early interest in aircraft, becoming a keen model maker in his early teens and taking a major role in founding a local society to this end, and in 1912 he designed and built a glider able to carry people. During the First World War he worked as a draughtsman for the aircraft firm Martinsyde, but became increasingly involved in design matters as the war progressed. In 1923 Camm was recruited by Sopwith to join his Hawker Engineering Company as Senior Draughtsman, but within two years had risen to be Chief Designer. His first important contribution was to develop a method of producing metal aircraft, using welded steel tubes, and in 1926 he designed his first significant aircraft, the Hawker Horsley torpedo-bomber, which briefly held the world long-distance record before it was snatched by Charles Lindbergh in his epic New York-Paris flight in 1927. His Hawker Hart light bomber followed in 1928, after which came his Hawker Fury fighter.
    By the mid-1930s Camm's reputation as a designer was such that he was able to wield significant influence on the Air Ministry when Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft specifications were being drawn up. His outstanding contribution came, however, with the unveiling of his Hawker Hurricane in 1935. This single-seater fighter was to prove one of the backbones of the RAF during 1939–45, but during the war he also designed two other excellent fighters: the Tempest and the Typhoon. After the Second World War Camm turned to jet aircraft, producing in 1951 the Hawker Hunter fighter/ground-attack aircraft, which saw lengthy service in the RAF and many other air forces. His most revolutionary contribution was the design of the Harrier jump-jet, beginning with the P.1127 prototype in 1961, followed by the Kestrel three years later. These were private ventures, but eventually the Government saw the enormous merit in the vertical take-off and landing concept, and the Harrier came to fruition in 1967. Sadly Camm, who was on the Board of Sopwith Hawker Siddeley Group, died before the aircraft came into service. He is permanently commemorated in the Camm Memorial Hall at the RAF Museum, Hendon, London.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    CBE 1941. Knighted 1953. Associate Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society 1918, Fellow 1932, President 1954–5, Gold Medal 1958. Daniel Guggenheim Medal (USA) 1965.
    Further Reading
    Alan Bramson, 1990, Pure Luck: The Authorized Biography of Sir Thomas Sopwith, 1888–1989, Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens (provides information about Camm and his association with Sopwith).
    Dictionary of National Biography, 1961–70.
    CM

    Biographical history of technology > Camm, Sir Sydney

  • 22 Cobham, Sir Alan John

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 6 May 1894 London, England
    d. 21 October 1973 British Virgin Islands
    [br]
    English pilot who pioneered worldwide air routes and developed an in-flight refuelling system which is in use today.
    [br]
    Alan Cobham was a man of many parts. He started as a veterinary assistant in France during the First World War, but transferred to the Royal Flying Corps in 1917. After the war he continued flying, by giving joy-rides and doing aerial photography work. In 1921 he joined the De Havilland Aircraft Company (see de Havilland, Geoffrey) as a test and charter pilot; he was also successful in a number of air races. During the 1920s Cobham made many notable flights to distant parts of the British Empire, pioneering possible routes for airline operations. During the early 1930s Sir Alan (he was knighted in 1926) devoted his attention to generating a public interest in aviation and to campaigning for more airfields. Cobham's Flying Circus toured the country giving flying displays and joy-rides, which for thousands of people was their first experience of flying.
    In 1933 Cobham planned a non-stop flight to India by refuelling his aircraft while flying: this was not a new idea but the process was still experimental. The flight was unsuccessful due to a fault in his aircraft, unrelated to the in-flight refuelling system. The following year Flight Refuelling Ltd was founded, and by 1939 two Short flying boats were operating the first inflight-refuelled service across the Atlantic. Inflight refuelling was not required during the early years of the Second World War, so Cobham turned to other projects such as thermal de-icing of wings, and a scheme which was not carried out, for delivering fighters to the Middle East by towing them behind Wellington bombers.
    After the Second World War the fortunes of Flight Refuelling Ltd were at a low ebb, especially when British South American Airways abandoned the idea of using in-flight refuelling. Then an American contract and the use of their tanker aircraft to ferry oil during the Berlin Airlift saved the day. In 1949 Cobham's chief designer, Peter Macgregor, came up with an idea for refuelling fighters using a probe and drogue system. A large tanker aircraft trailed a hose with a conical drogue at the free end. The fighter pilot manoeuvred the probe, fitted to his aircraft, so that it locked into the drogue, enabling fuel to be transferred. Since the 1950s this system has become the effective world standard.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1926. Air Force Cross 1926.
    Bibliography
    1978, A Time to Fly, ed. C.Derrick, London; pub. in paperback 1986 (Cobham's memoirs).
    Flight to the Cape and Back, 1926, London; Australia and Back, 1926, London;
    Twenty Thousand Miles in a Flying Boat, 1930, London.
    Further Reading
    Peter G.Proctor, 1975, "The life and work of Sir Alan Cobham", Aerospace (RAeS) (March).
    JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Cobham, Sir Alan John

  • 23 Dassault (Bloch), Marcel

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 22 January 1892 Paris, France
    d. 18 April 1986 Paris, France
    [br]
    French aircraft designer and manufacturer, best known for his jet fighters the Mystère and Mirage.
    [br]
    During the First World War, Marcel Bloch (he later changed his name to Dassault) worked on French military aircraft and developed a very successful propeller. With his associate, Henri Potez, he set up a company to produce their Eclair wooden propeller in a furniture workshop in Paris. In 1917 they produced a two-seater aircraft which was ordered but then cancelled when the war ended. Potez continued to built aircraft under his own name, but Bloch turned to property speculation, at which he was very successful. In 1930 Bloch returned to the aviation business with an unsuccessful bomber followed by several moderately effective airliners, including the Bloch 220 of 1935, which was similar to the DC-3. He was involved in the design of a four-engined airliner, the SNCASE Languedoc, which flew in September 1939. During the Second World War, Bloch and his brothers became important figures in the French Resistance Movement. Marcel Bloch was eventually captured but survived; however, one of his brothers was executed, and after the war Bloch changed his name to Dassault, which had been his brother's code name in the Resistance. During the 1950s, Avions Marcel Dassault rapidly grew to become Europe's foremost producer of jet fighters. The Ouragon was followed by the Mystère, Etendard and then the outstanding Mirage series. The basic delta-winged Mirage III, with a speed of Mach 2, was soon serving in twenty countries around the world. From this evolved a variable geometry version, a vertical-take-off aircraft, an enlarged light bomber capable of carrying a nuclear bomb, and a swept-wing version for the 1970s. Dassault also produced a successful series of jet airliners starting with the Fan Jet Falcon of 1963. When the Dassault and Breguet companies merged in 1971, Marcel Dassault was still a force to be reckoned with.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Guggenheim Medal. Deputy, Assemblée nationale 1951–5 and 1958–86.
    Bibliography
    1971, Le Talisman, Paris: Editions J'ai lu (autobiography).
    Further Reading
    1976, "The Mirage Maker", Sunday Times Magazine (1 June).
    Jane's All the World's Aircraft, London: Jane's (details of Bloch and Dassault aircraft can be found in various years' editions).
    JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Dassault (Bloch), Marcel

  • 24 Fokker, Anthony Herman Gerard

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 6 April 1890 Kediri, Java, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia)
    d. 23 December 1939 New York, USA
    [br]
    Dutch designer of German fighter aircraft during the First World War and of many successful airliners during the 1920s and 1930s.
    [br]
    Anthony Fokker was born in Java, where his Dutch father had a coffee plantation. The family returned to the Netherlands and, after schooling, young Anthony went to Germany to study aeronautics. With the aid of a friend he built his first aeroplane, the Spin, in 1910: this was a monoplane capable of short hops. By 1911 Fokker had improved the Spin and gained a pilot's licence. In 1912 he set up a company called Fokker Aeroplanbau at Johannistal, outside Berlin, and a series of monoplanes followed.
    When war broke out in 1914 Fokker offered his designs to both sides, and the Germans accepted them. His E I monoplane of 1915 caused a sensation with its manoeuvrability and forward-firing machine gun. Fokker and his collaborators improved on the French deflector system introduced by Raymond Saulnier by fitting an interrupter gear which synchronized the machine gun to fire between the blades of the rotating propeller. The Fokker Dr I triplane and D VII biplane were also outstanding German fighters of the First World War. Fokker's designs were often the work of an employee who received little credit: nevertheless, Fokker was a gifted pilot and a great organizer. After the war, Fokker moved back to the Netherlands and set up the Fokker Aircraft Works in Amsterdam. In 1922, however, he emigrated to the USA and established the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation in New Jersey. His first significant success there came the following year when one of his T-2 monoplanes became the first aircraft to fly non-stop across the USA, from New York to San Diego. He developed a series of civil aircraft using the well-proven method of construction he used for his fighters: fuselages made from steel tubes and thick, robust wooden wings. Of these, probably the most famous was the F VII/3m, a high-wing monoplane with three engines and capable of carrying about ten passengers. From 1925 the F VII/3m airliner was used worldwide and made many record-breaking flights, such as Lieutenant-Commander Richard Byrd's first flight over the North Pole in 1926 and Charles Kingsford-Smith's first transpacific flight in 1928. By this time Fokker had lost interest in military aircraft and had begun to see flight as a means of speeding up global communications and bringing people together. His last years were spent in realizing this dream, and this was reflected in his concentration on the design and production of passenger aircraft.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Royal Netherlands Aeronautical Society Gold Medal 1932.
    Bibliography
    1931, The Flying Dutchman: The Life of Anthony Fokker, London: Routledge \& Sons (an interesting, if rather biased, autobiography).
    Further Reading
    A.R.Weyl, 1965, Fokker: The Creative Years, London; reprinted 1988 (a very detailed account of Fokker's early work).
    Thijs Postma, 1979, Fokker: Aircraft Builders to the World, Holland; 1980, English edn, London (a well-illustrated history of Fokker and the company).
    Henri Hegener, 1961, Fokker: The Man and His Aircraft, Letchworth, Herts.
    JDS / CM

    Biographical history of technology > Fokker, Anthony Herman Gerard

  • 25 Gabor, Dennis (Dénes)

    [br]
    b. 5 June 1900 Budapest, Hungary
    d. 9 February 1979 London, England
    [br]
    Hungarian (naturalized British) physicist, inventor of holography.
    [br]
    Gabor became interested in physics at an early age. Called up for military service in 1918, he was soon released when the First World War came to an end. He then began a mechanical engineering course at the Budapest Technical University, but a further order to register for military service prompted him to flee in 1920 to Germany, where he completed his studies at Berlin Technical University. He was awarded a Diploma in Engineering in 1924 and a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering in 1927. He then went on to work in the physics laboratory of Siemens \& Halske. He returned to Hungary in 1933 and developed a new kind of fluorescent lamp called the plasma lamp. Failing to find a market for this device, Gabor made the decision to abandon his homeland and emigrate to England. There he joined British Thompson-Houston (BTH) in 1934 and married a colleague from the company in 1936. Gabor was also unsuccessful in his attempts to develop the plasma lamp in England, and by 1937 he had begun to work in the field of electron optics. His work was interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1939, although as he was not yet a British subject he was barred from making any significant contribution to the British war effort. It was only when the war was near its end that he was able to return to electron optics and begin the work that led to the invention of holography. The theory was developed during 1947 and 1948; Gabor went on to demonstrate that the theories worked, although it was not until the invention of the laser in 1960 that the full potential of his invention could be appreciated. He coined the term "hologram" from the Greek holos, meaning complete, and gram, meaning written. The three-dimensional images have since found many applications in various fields, including map making, medical imaging, computing, information technology, art and advertising. Gabor left BTH to become an associate professor at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1949, a position he held until his retirement in 1967. In 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on holography.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Royal Society Rumford Medal 1968. Franklin Institute Michelson Medal 1968. CBE 1970. Nobel Prize for Physics 1971.
    Bibliography
    1948. "A new microscopic principle", Nature 161:777 (Gabor's earliest publication on holography).
    1949. "Microscopy by reconstructed wavefronts", Proceedings of the Royal Society A197: 454–87.
    1951, "Microscopy by reconstructed wavefronts II", Proc. Phys. Soc. B, 64:449–69. 1966, "Holography or the “Whole Picture”", New Scientist 29:74–8 (an interesting account written after laser beams were used to produce optical holograms).
    Further Reading
    T.E.Allibone, 1980, contribution to Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 26: 107–47 (a full account of Gabor's life and work).
    JW

    Biographical history of technology > Gabor, Dennis (Dénes)

  • 26 Handley Page, Sir Frederick

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 15 November 1885 Cheltenham, England
    d. 21 April 1962 London, England
    [br]
    English aviation pioneer, specialist in large aircraft and developer of the slotted wing for safer slow flying.
    [br]
    Frederick Handley Page trained as an electrical engineer but soon turned his attention to the more exciting world of aeronautics. He started by manufacturing propellers for aeroplanes and airships, and then in 1909 he founded a public company. His first aeroplane, the Bluebird, was not a success, but an improved version flew well. It was known as the "Yellow Peril" because of its yellow doped finish and made a notable flight across London from Barking to Brooklands. In 1910 Handley Page became one of the first college lecturers in aeronautical engineering. During the First World War Handley Page concentrated on the production of large bombers. The 0/100 was a biplane with a wing span of 100 ft (30 m) and powered by two engines: it entered service in 1916. In 1918 an improved version, the 0/400, entered service and a larger four-engined bomber made its first flight. This was the V/1500, which was designed to bomb Berlin, but the war ended before this raid took place. After the war, Handley Page turned his attention to airline operations with the great advantage of having at his disposal large bombers which could be adapted to carry passengers. Handley Page Air Transport Ltd was formed in 1919 and provided services to several European cities. Eventually this company became part of Imperial Airways, but Handley Page continued to supply them with large airliners. Probably the most famous was the majestic HP 42 four-engined biplane, which set very high standards of comfort and safety. Safety was always important to Handley Page and in 1920 he developed a wing with a slot along the leading edge: this made slow flying safer by delaying the stall. Later versions used separate aerofoil-shaped slats on the leading edge that were sometimes fixed, sometimes retractable. The HP 42 was fitted with these slats. From the 1930s Handley Page produced a series of bombers, such as the Heyford, Hampden, Harrow and, most famous of all, the Halifax, which played a major role in the Second World War. Then followed the Victor V-bomber of 1952 with its distinctive "crescent" wing and high tailplane. Sir Frederick's last venture was the Herald short-haul airliner of 1955; designed to replace the ubiquitous Douglas DC-3, it was only a limited success.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1942. CBE 1918. Lord Lieutenant of the County of Middlesex 1956–60. Honorary Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
    Bibliography
    1950, "Towards slower and safer flying, improved take-off and landing and cheaper airports", Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
    Further Reading
    D.C.Clayton, 1970, Handley Page: An Aircraft Album, London (for details of his aircraft).
    C.H.Barnes, 1976, Handley Page Aircraft since 1907, London.
    JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Handley Page, Sir Frederick

  • 27 Oberth, Hermann Julius

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 25 June 1894 Nagyszeben, Transylvania (now Sibiu, Romania)
    d. 29 December 1989 Nuremberg, Germany
    [br]
    Austro-Hungarian lecturer who is usually regarded, with Robert Goddard, as one of the "fathers" of modern astronautics.
    [br]
    The son of a physician, Oberth originally studied medicine in Munich, but his education was interrupted by the First World War and service in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Wounded, he passed the time by studying astronautics. He apparently simulated weightlessness and worked out the design for a long-range liquid-propelled rocket, but his ideas were rejected by the War Office; after the war he submitted them as a dissertation for a PhD at Heidelberg University, but this was also rejected. Consequently, in 1923, whilst still an unknown mathematics teacher, he published his ideas at his own expense in the book The Rocket into Interplanetary Space. These included a description of how rockets could achieve a sufficient velocity to escape the gravitational field of the earth. As a result he gained international prestige almost overnight and learned of the work of Robert Goddard and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. After correspondence with the Goddard and Tsiolkovsky, Oberth published a further work in 1929, The Road to Space Travel, in which he acknowledged the priority of Goddard's and Tsiolkovski's calculations relating to space travel; he went on to anticipate by more than thirty years the development of electric and ionic propulsion and to propose the use of giant mirrors to control the weather. For this he was awarded the annual Hirsch Prize of 10,000 francs. From 1925 to 1938 he taught at a college in Mediasch, Transylvania, where he carried out experiments with petroleum and liquid-air rockets. He then obtained a lecturing post at Vienna Technical University, moving two years later to Dresden University and becoming a German citizen. In 1941 he became assistant to the German rocket engineer Werner von Braun at the rocket development centre at Peenemünde, and in 1943 he began work on solid propellants. After the Second World War he spent a year in Switzerland as a consultant, then in 1950 he moved to Italy to develop solid-propellant anti-aircraft rockets for the Italian Navy. Five years later he moved to the USA to carry out advanced rocket research for the US Army at Huntsville, Alabama, and in 1958 he retired to Feucht, near Nuremberg, Germany, where he wrote his autobiography.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    French Astronautical Society REP-Hirsch Prize 1929. German Society for Space Research Medal 1950. Diesel German Inventors Medal 1954. American Astronautical Society Award 1955. German Federal Republic Award 1961. Institute of Aviation and Astronautics Medal 1969.
    Bibliography
    1923, Die Rakete zu den Planetenraumen; repub. 1934 as The Rocket into Interplanetary Space (autobiography).
    1929, Wege zur Raumschiffahrt [Road to Space Travel].
    1959, Stoff und Leben [Material and Life].
    Further Reading
    R.Spangenburg and D.Moser, 1990, Space People from A to Z, New York: Facts on File. H.Wulforst, 1991, The Rocketmakers: The Dreamers who made Spaceflight a Reality, New York: Crown Publishers.
    KF / IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Oberth, Hermann Julius

  • 28 Rosenhain, Walter

    SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy
    [br]
    b. 24 August 1875 Berlin, Germany
    d. 17 March 1934 Kingston Hill, Surrey, England
    [br]
    German metallurgist, first Superintendent of the Department of Metallurgy and Metallurgical Chemistry at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, Middlesex.
    [br]
    His family emigrated to Australia when he was 5 years old. He was educated at Wesley College, Melbourne, and attended Queen's College, University of Melbourne, graduating in physics and engineering in 1897. As an 1851 Exhibitioner he then spent three years at St John's College, Cambridge, under Sir Alfred Ewing, where he studied the microstructure of deformed metal crystals and abandoned his original intention of becoming a civil engineer. Rosenhain was the first to observe the slip-bands in metal crystals, and in the Bakerian Lecture delivered jointly by Ewing and Rosenhain to the Royal Society in 1899 it was shown that metals deformed plastically by a mechanism involving shear slip along individual crystal planes. From this conception modern ideas on the plasticity and recrystallization of metals rapidly developed. On leaving Cambridge, Rosenhain joined the Birmingham firm of Chance Brothers, where he worked for six years on optical glass and lighthouse-lens systems. A book, Glass Manufacture, written in 1908, derives from this period, during which he continued his metallurgical researches in the evenings in his home laboratory and published several papers on his work.
    In 1906 Rosenhain was appointed Head of the Metallurgical Department of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), and in 1908 he became the first Superintendent of the new Department of Metallurgy and Metallurgical Chemistry. Many of the techniques he introduced at Teddington were described in his Introduction to Physical Metallurgy, published in 1914. At the outbreak of the First World War, Rosenhain was asked to undertake work in his department on the manufacture of optical glass. This soon made it possible to manufacture optical glass of high quality on an industrial scale in Britain. Much valuable work on refractory materials stemmed from this venture. Rosenhain's early years at the NPL were, however, inseparably linked with his work on light alloys, which between 1912 and the end of the war involved virtually all of the metallurgical staff of the laboratory. The most important end product was the well-known "Y" Alloy (4% copper, 2% nickel and 1.5% magnesium) extensively used for the pistons and cylinder heads of aircraft engines. It was the prototype of the RR series of alloys jointly developed by Rolls Royce and High Duty Alloys. An improved zinc-based die-casting alloy devised by Rosenhain was also used during the war on a large scale for the production of shell fuses.
    After the First World War, much attention was devoted to beryllium, which because of its strength, lightness, and stiffness would, it was hoped, become the airframe material of the future. It remained, however, too brittle for practical use. Other investigations dealt with impurities in copper, gases in aluminium alloys, dental alloys, and the constitution of alloys. During this period, Rosenhain's laboratory became internationally known as a centre of excellence for the determination of accurate equilibrium diagrams.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1913. President, Institute of Metals 1828–30. Iron and Steel Institute Bessemer Medal, Carnegie Medal.
    Bibliography
    1908, Glass Manufacture.
    1914, An Introduction to the Study of Physical Metallurgy, London: Constable. Rosenhain published over 100 research papers.
    Further Reading
    J.L.Haughton, 1934, "The work of Walter Rosenhain", Journal of the Institute of Metals 55(2):17–32.
    ASD

    Biographical history of technology > Rosenhain, Walter

  • 29 Wallis, Sir Barnes Neville

    [br]
    b. 26 September 1887 Ripley, Derbyshire, England
    d. 30 October 1979 Leatherhead, Surrey, England
    [br]
    English aeronautical designer and inventor.
    [br]
    Wallis was apprenticed first at Thames Engineering Works, and then, in 1908, at John Samuel White's shipyard at Cowes. In 1913, the Government, spurred on by the accelerating development of the German Zeppelins (see Zeppelin, Ferdinand von), ordered an airship from Vickers; Wallis was invited to join the design team. Thus began his long association with aeronautical design and with Vickers. This airship, and the R80 that followed it, were successfully completed, but the military lost interest in them.
    In 1924 the Government initiated a programme for the construction of two airships to settle once and for all their viability for long-dis-tance air travel. The R101 was designed by a Government-sponsored team, but the R100 was designed by Wallis working for a subsidiary of Vickers. The R100 took off on 29 July 1930 for a successful round trip to Canada, but the R101 crashed on its first flight on 4 October, killing many of its distinguished passengers. The shock of this disaster brought airship development in Britain to an abrupt end and forced Wallis to direct his attention to aircraft.
    In aircraft design, Wallis is known for his use of geodesic construction, which combined lightness with strength. It was applied first to the single-engined "Wellesley" and then the twin-en-gined "Wellington" bomber, which first flew in 1936. With successive modifications, it became the workhorse of RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War until the autumn of 1943, when it was replaced by four-engined machines. In other areas, it remained in service until the end of the war and, in all, no fewer than 11,461 were built.
    Wallis is best known for his work on bomb design, first the bouncing bomb that was used to breach the Möhne and Eder dams in the Ruhr district of Germany in 1943, an exploit immortalized in the film Dambusters. Encouraged by this success, the authorities then allowed Wallis to realize an idea he had long urged, that of heavy, penetration bombs. In the closing stages of the war, Tallboy, of 12,000 lb (5,400 kg), and the 10-ton Grand Slam were used to devastating effect.
    After the Second World War, Wallis returned to aeronautical design and was given his own department at Vickers to promote his ideas, principally on variable-geometry or swing-wing aircraft. Over the next thirteen years he battled towards the prototype stage of this revolutionary concept. That never came, however; changing conditions and requirements and increasing costs led to the abandonment of the project. Bit-terly disappointed, Wallis continued his researches into high-speed aircraft until his retirement from Vickers (by then the British Aircraft Corporation), in 1971.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1968. FRS 1945.
    Further Reading
    J.Morpurgo, 1972, Barnes Wallis: A Biography, London: Longman (a readable account, rather biased in Wallis's favour).
    C.J.Heap, 1987, The Papers of Sir Barnes Wallis (1887–1979) in the Science Museum Library, London: Science Museum; with a biographical introd. by L.R.Day.
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Wallis, Sir Barnes Neville

  • 30 Watson-Watt, Sir Robert Alexander

    [br]
    b. 13 April 1892 Brechin, Angus, Scotland
    d. 6 December 1973 Inverness, Scotland
    [br]
    Scottish engineer and scientific adviser known for his work on radar.
    [br]
    Following education at Brechin High School, Watson-Watt entered University College, Dundee (then a part of the University of St Andrews), obtaining a BSc in engineering in 1912. From 1912 until 1921 he was Assistant to the Professor of Natural Philosophy at St Andrews, but during the First World War he also held various posts in the Meteorological Office. During. this time, in 1916 he proposed the use of cathode ray oscillographs for radio-direction-finding displays. He joined the newly formed Radio Research Station at Slough when it was opened in 1924, and 3 years later, when it amalgamated with the Radio Section of the National Physical Laboratory, he became Superintendent at Slough. At this time he proposed the name "ionosphere" for the ionized layer in the upper atmosphere. With E.V. Appleton and J.F.Herd he developed the "squegger" hard-valve transformer-coupled timebase and with the latter devised a direction-finding radio-goniometer.
    In 1933 he was asked to investigate possible aircraft counter-measures. He soon showed that it was impossible to make the wished-for radio "death-ray", but had the idea of using the detection of reflected radio-waves as a means of monitoring the approach of enemy aircraft. With six assistants he developed this idea and constructed an experimental system of radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) in which arrays of aerials were used to detect the reflected signals and deduce the bearing and height. To realize a practical system, in September 1936 he was appointed Director of the Bawdsey Research Station near Felixstowe and carried out operational studies of radar. The result was that within two years the East Coast of the British Isles was equipped with a network of radar transmitters and receivers working in the 7–14 metre band—the so-called "chain-home" system—which did so much to assist the efficient deployment of RAF Fighter Command against German bombing raids on Britain in the early years of the Second World War.
    In 1938 he moved to the Air Ministry as Director of Communications Development, becoming Scientific Adviser to the Air Ministry and Ministry of Aircraft Production in 1940, then Deputy Chairman of the War Cabinet Radio Board in 1943. After the war he set up Sir Robert Watson-Watt \& Partners, an industrial consultant firm. He then spent some years in relative retirement in Canada, but returned to Scotland before his death.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1942. CBE 1941. FRS 1941. US Medal of Merit 1946. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1948. Franklin Institute Elliot Cresson Medal 1957. LLD St Andrews 1943. At various times: President, Royal Meteorological Society, Institute of Navigation and Institute of Professional Civil Servants; Vice-President, American Institute of Radio Engineers.
    Bibliography
    1923, with E.V.Appleton \& J.F.Herd, British patent no. 235,254 (for the "squegger"). 1926, with J.F.Herd, "An instantaneous direction reading radio goniometer", Journal of
    the Institution of Electrical Engineers 64:611.
    1933, The Cathode Ray Oscillograph in Radio Research.
    1935, Through the Weather Hours (autobiography).
    1936, "Polarisation errors in direction finders", Wireless Engineer 13:3. 1958, Three Steps to Victory.
    1959, The Pulse of Radar.
    1961, Man's Means to his End.
    Further Reading
    S.S.Swords, 1986, Technical History of the Beginnings of Radar, Stevenage: Peter Peregrinus.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Watson-Watt, Sir Robert Alexander

  • 31 Armstrong, Sir William George, Baron Armstrong of Cragside

    [br]
    b. 26 November 1810 Shieldfield, Newcastle upon Tyne, England
    d. 27 December 1900 Cragside, Northumbria, England
    [br]
    English inventor, engineer and entrepreneur in hydraulic engineering, shipbuilding and the production of artillery.
    [br]
    The only son of a corn merchant, Alderman William Armstrong, he was educated at private schools in Newcastle and at Bishop Auckland Grammar School. He then became an articled clerk in the office of Armorer Donkin, a solicitor and a friend of his father. During a fishing trip he saw a water-wheel driven by an open stream to work a marble-cutting machine. He felt that its efficiency would be improved by introducing the water to the wheel in a pipe. He developed an interest in hydraulics and in electricity, and became a popular lecturer on these subjects. From 1838 he became friendly with Henry Watson of the High Bridge Works, Newcastle, and for six years he visited the Works almost daily, studying turret clocks, telescopes, papermaking machinery, surveying instruments and other equipment being produced. There he had built his first hydraulic machine, which generated 5 hp when run off the Newcastle town water-mains. He then designed and made a working model of a hydraulic crane, but it created little interest. In 1845, after he had served this rather unconventional apprenticeship at High Bridge Works, he was appointed Secretary of the newly formed Whittle Dene Water Company. The same year he proposed to the town council of Newcastle the conversion of one of the quayside cranes to his hydraulic operation which, if successful, should also be applied to a further four cranes. This was done by the Newcastle Cranage Company at High Bridge Works. In 1847 he gave up law and formed W.G.Armstrong \& Co. to manufacture hydraulic machinery in a works at Elswick. Orders for cranes, hoists, dock gates and bridges were obtained from mines; docks and railways.
    Early in the Crimean War, the War Office asked him to design and make submarine mines to blow up ships that were sunk by the Russians to block the entrance to Sevastopol harbour. The mines were never used, but this set him thinking about military affairs and brought him many useful contacts at the War Office. Learning that two eighteen-pounder British guns had silenced a whole Russian battery but were too heavy to move over rough ground, he carried out a thorough investigation and proposed light field guns with rifled barrels to fire elongated lead projectiles rather than cast-iron balls. He delivered his first gun in 1855; it was built of a steel core and wound-iron wire jacket. The barrel was multi-grooved and the gun weighed a quarter of a ton and could fire a 3 lb (1.4 kg) projectile. This was considered too light and was sent back to the factory to be rebored to take a 5 lb (2.3 kg) shot. The gun was a complete success and Armstrong was then asked to design and produce an equally successful eighteen-pounder. In 1859 he was appointed Engineer of Rifled Ordnance and was knighted. However, there was considerable opposition from the notably conservative officers of the Army who resented the intrusion of this civilian engineer in their affairs. In 1862, contracts with the Elswick Ordnance Company were terminated, and the Government rejected breech-loading and went back to muzzle-loading. Armstrong resigned and concentrated on foreign sales, which were successful worldwide.
    The search for a suitable proving ground for a 12-ton gun led to an interest in shipbuilding at Elswick from 1868. This necessitated the replacement of an earlier stone bridge with the hydraulically operated Tyne Swing Bridge, which weighed some 1450 tons and allowed a clear passage for shipping. Hydraulic equipment on warships became more complex and increasing quantities of it were made at the Elswick works, which also flourished with the reintroduction of the breech-loader in 1878. In 1884 an open-hearth acid steelworks was added to the Elswick facilities. In 1897 the firm merged with Sir Joseph Whitworth \& Co. to become Sir W.G.Armstrong Whitworth \& Co. After Armstrong's death a further merger with Vickers Ltd formed Vickers Armstrong Ltd.
    In 1879 Armstrong took a great interest in Joseph Swan's invention of the incandescent electric light-bulb. He was one of those who formed the Swan Electric Light Company, opening a factory at South Benwell to make the bulbs. At Cragside, his mansion at Roth bury, he installed a water turbine and generator, making it one of the first houses in England to be lit by electricity.
    Armstrong was a noted philanthropist, building houses for his workforce, and endowing schools, hospitals and parks. His last act of charity was to purchase Bamburgh Castle, Northumbria, in 1894, intending to turn it into a hospital or a convalescent home, but he did not live long enough to complete the work.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1859. FRS 1846. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers; Institution of Civil Engineers; British Association for the Advancement of Science 1863. Baron Armstrong of Cragside 1887.
    Further Reading
    E.R.Jones, 1886, Heroes of Industry', London: Low.
    D.J.Scott, 1962, A History of Vickers, London: Weidenfeld \& Nicolson.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Armstrong, Sir William George, Baron Armstrong of Cragside

  • 32 Ayre, Sir Amos Lowrey

    SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping
    [br]
    b. 23 July 1885 South Shields, England
    d. 13 January 1952 London, England
    [br]
    English shipbuilder and pioneer of the inter-war "economy" freighters; Chairman of the Shipbuilding Conference.
    [br]
    Amos Ayre grew up on the Tyne with the stimulus of shipbuilding and seafaring around him. After an apprenticeship as a ship draughtsman and distinction in his studies, he held responsible posts in the shipyards of Belfast and later Dublin. His first dramatic move came in 1909 when he accepted the post of Manager of the new Employment Exchange at Govan, then just outside Glasgow. During the First World War he was in charge of fleet coaling operations on the River Forth, and later was promoted Admiralty District Director for shipyard labour in Scotland.
    Before the conclusion of hostilities, with his brother Wilfrid (later Sir Wilfrid Ayre) he founded the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company in Fife. Setting up on a green field site allowed the brothers to show innovation in design, production and marketing. Such was their success that the new yard was busy throughout the Depression, building standard ships which incorporated low operating costs with simplicity of construction.
    Through public service culminating in the 1929 Safety of Life at Sea Conference, Amos Ayre became recognized not only as an eminent naval architect, but also as a skilled negotiator. In 1936 he was invited to become Chairman of the Shipbuilding Conference and thereby virtual leader of the industry. As war approached he planned with meticulous care the rearrangement of national shipbuilding capacity, enabling Britain to produce standard hulls ranging from the legendary TID tugs to the standard freighters built in Sunderland or Port Glasgow. In 1939 he became Director of Merchant Shipbuilding, a position he held until 1944, when with typical foresight he asked to be released to plan for shipbuilding's return to normality.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1937. KBE 1943. Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau.
    Bibliography
    1919, "The theory and design of British shipbuilding", The Syren and Shipping, London.
    Further Reading
    Wilfrid Ayre, 1968, A Shipbuilders Yesterdays, Fife (published privately). James Reid, 1964, James Lithgow, Master of Work, London.
    Maurice E.Denny, 1955, "The man and his work" (First Amos Ayre Lecture), Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects vol. 97.
    FMW

    Biographical history of technology > Ayre, Sir Amos Lowrey

  • 33 Bailey, Sir Donald Coleman

    SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering
    [br]
    b. 15 September 1901 Rotherham, Yorkshire, England
    d. 5 May 1985 Bournemouth, Dorset, England
    [br]
    English engineer, designer of the Bailey bridge.
    [br]
    Bailey was educated at the Leys School, Cambridge, before going to Sheffield University where he studied for a degree in engineering. He joined the Civil Service in 1928 and was posted to the staff of the Experimental Bridging Establishment of the Ministry of Supply at Christchurch, Hampshire. There he continued his boyhood hobby of making model bridges of wood and string. He evolved a design for a prefabricated metal bridge assembled from welded panels linked by pinned joints; this became known as the Bailey bridge. Its design was accepted by the War Office in 1941 and from then on it was used throughout the subsequent conflict of the Second World War. It was a great improvement on its predecessor, the Inglis bridge, designed by a Cambridge University professor of engineering, Charles Inglis, with tubular members that were 10 or 12 ft (3.66 m) long; this bridge was notoriously difficult to construct, particularly in adverse weather conditions, whereas the Bailey bridge's panels and joints were far more manageable and easy to assemble. The simple and standardized component parts of the Bailey bridge made it highly adaptable: it could be strengthened by increasing the number of truss girders, and wide rivers could be crossed by a series of Bailey bridges connected by pontoons. Field Marshal Montgomery is recorded as saying that without the Bailey bridge we should not have won the war'.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1946.
    Further Reading
    Obituary, 1985, The Guardian 6 May.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Bailey, Sir Donald Coleman

  • 34 Bergius, Friedrich Carl Rudolf

    [br]
    b. 11 October 1884 Goldschmieden, near Breslau, Germany
    d. 31 March Buenos Aires, Argentina
    [br]
    [br]
    After studying chemistry in Breslau and Leipzig and assisting inter alia at the institute of Fritz Haber in Karlsruhe on the catalysis of ammonia under high pressure, in 1909 he went to Hannover to pursue his idea of turning coal into liquid hydrocarbon under high hydrogen pressure (200 atm) and high temperatures (470° C). As experiments with high pressure in chemical processes were still in their initial stages and the Technical University could not support him sufficiently, he set up a private laboratory to develop the methods and to construct the equipment himself. Four years later, in 1913, his process for producing liquid or organic compounds from coal was patented.
    The economic aspects of this process were apparent as the demand for fuels and lubricants increased more rapidly than the production of oil, and Bergius's process became even more important after the outbreak of the First World War. The Th. Goldschmidt company of Essen contracted him and tried large-scale production near Mannheim in 1914, but production failed because of the lack of capital and experience to operate with high pressure on an industrial level. Both capital and experience were provided jointly by the BASF company, which produced ammonia at Merseburg, and IG Farben, which took over the Bergius process in 1925, the same year that the synthesis of hydrocarbon had been developed by Fischer-Tropsch. Two years later, at the Leuna works, almost 100,000 tonnes of oil were produced from coal; during the following years, several more hydrogenation plants were to follow, especially in the eastern parts of Germany as well as in the Ruhr area, while the government guaranteed the costs. The Bergius process was extremely important for the supply of fuels to Germany during the Second World War, with the monthly production rate in 1943–4 being more than 700,000 tonnes. However, the plants were mostly destroyed at. the end of the war and were later dismantled.
    As a consequence of this success Bergius, who had gained an international reputation, went abroad to work as a consultant to several foreign governments. Experiments aiming to reduce the costs of production are still continued in some countries. By 1925, after he had solved all the principles of his process, he had turned to the production of dextrose by hydrolyzing wood with highly concentrated hydrochloric acid.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Nobel Prize 1931. Honorary doctorates, Heidelberg, Harvard and Hannover.
    Bibliography
    1907, "Über absolute Schwefelsäure als Lösungsmittel", unpublished thesis, Weida. 1913, Die Anwendung hoher Drucke bei chemischen Vorgängen und eine Nachbildung
    des Entstehungsprozesses der Steinkohle, Halle. 1913, DRP no. 301, 231 (coal-liquefaction process).
    1925, "Verflüssigung der Kohle", Zeitschrift des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure, 69:1313–20, 1359–62.
    1933, "Chemische Reaktionen unter hohem Druck", Les Prix Nobel en 1931, Stockholm, pp. 1–37.
    Further Reading
    Deutsches Bergbau-Museum, 1985, Friedrich Bergius und die Kohleverflüssigung. Stationen einer Entwicklung, Bochum (gives a comprehensive and illustrated description of the man and the technology).
    H.Beck, 1982, Friedrich Bergius, ein Erfinderschicksal, Munich: Deutsches Museum (a detailed biographical description).
    W.Birkendfeld, 1964, Der synthetische Treibstoff 1933–1945. Ein Beitragzur nationalsozialistischen Wirtschafts-und Rüstungspolitik, Göttingen, Berlin and Frankfurt (describes the economic value of synthetic fuels for the Third Reich).
    WK

    Biographical history of technology > Bergius, Friedrich Carl Rudolf

  • 35 Boeing, William Edward

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 1 October 1881 Detroit, Michigan, USA
    d. 28 September 1956 USA
    [br]
    American aircraft designer, creator of one of the most successful aircraft manufacturing companies in the world.
    [br]
    In 1915 William E.Boeing and his friend Commander Conrad Westervelt decided that they could improve on the aeroplanes then being produced in the United States. Boeing was a prominent Seattle businessman with interests in land and timber, while Westervelt was an officer in the US Navy. They bought a Martin Model T float-plane in order to gain some experience and then produced their own design, the B \& W, which first flew in June 1916. Westervelt was transferred to the East, leaving Boeing to continue the production of the B \& W floatplanes, for which purpose he set up the Pacific Aero Products Company. On 26 April 1917 this became the Boeing Airplane Company, which prospered following the US involvement in the First World War.
    In March 1919 Boeing and Edward Hubbard inaugurated the world's first international airmail service between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The Boeing Company then had to face the slump in aircraft manufacturing after the war: they survived, and by 1922 they had started producing a successful series of fighters while continuing to develop their flying-boat and floatplane designs. Boeing set up the Boeing Air Transport Corporation to tender for lucrative airmail contracts and then produced aircraft which could out-perform those of his rivals. The company went from strength to strength and by the end of the 1920s a huge conglomerate had been built up: the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation. They produced an advanced high-speed monoplane mailplane, the model 200 Monomail in 1930, which saw the birth of a new era of Boeing designs.
    The Wall Street crash of 1929 and legislation in 1934, which banned any company from both building aeroplanes and running an airline, were setbacks which the Boeing Airplane Company overcame, moving ahead to become world leaders. William E.Boeing decided that it was time he retired, but he returned to work during the Second World War.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Guggenheim Medal 1934.
    Further Reading
    C.Chant, 1982, Boeing: The World's Greatest Planemakers, Hadley Wood, England (describes William E.Boeing's part in the founding and building up of the Boeing Company).
    P.M.Bowers, 1990, Boeing Aircraft since 1916, 3rd edn, London (covers Boeing's aircraft).
    Boeing Company, 1977, Pedigree of Champions: Boeing since 1916, Seattle.
    JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Boeing, William Edward

  • 36 Caproni, Giovanni Battista (Gianni), Conte di Taliedo

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 3 June 1886 Massone, Italy
    d. 29 October 1957 Rome, Italy
    [br]
    Italian aircraft designer and manufacturer, well known for his early large-aircraft designs.
    [br]
    Gianni Caproni studied civil and electrical engineering in Munich and Liège before moving on to Paris, where he developed an interest in aeronautics. He built his first aircraft in 1910, a biplane with a tricycle undercarriage (which has been claimed as the world's first tricycle undercarriage). Caproni and his brother, Dr Fred Caproni, set up a factory at Malpensa in northern Italy and produced a series of monoplanes and biplanes. In 1913 Caproni astounded the aviation world with his Ca 30 three-engined biplane bomber. There followed many variations, of which the most significant were the Ca 32 of 1915, the first large bomber to enter service in significant numbers, and the Ca 42 triplane of 1917 with a wing span of almost 30 metres.
    After the First World War, Caproni designed an even larger aircraft with three pairs of triplane wings (i.e. nine wings each of 30 metres span) and eight engines. This Ca 60 flying boat was designed to carry 100 passengers. In 1921 it made one short flight lightly loaded; however, with a load of sandbags representing sixty passengers, it crashed soon after take-off. The project was abandoned but Caproni's company prospered and expanded to become one of the largest groups of companies in Italy. In the 1930s Caproni aircraft twice broke the world altitude record. Several Caproni types were in service when Italy entered the Second World War, and an unusual research aircraft was under development. The Caproni-Campini No. 1 (CC2) was a jet, but it did not have a gas-turbine engine. Dr Campini's engine used a piston engine to drive a compressor which forced air out through a nozzle, and by burning fuel in this airstream a jet was produced. It flew with limited success in August 1940, amid much publicity: the first German jet (1939) and the first British jet (1941) were both flown in secret. Caproni retained many of his early aircraft for his private museum, including some salvaged parts from his monstrous flying boat.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Created Conte di Taliedo 1940.
    Further Reading
    Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 1976, Vol. XIX.
    The Caproni Museum has published two books on the Caproni aeroplanes: Gli Aeroplani Caproni -1909–1935 and Gli Aeroplani Caproni dal 1935 in poi. See also Jane's
    fighting Aircraft of World War 1; 1919, republished 1990.
    JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Caproni, Giovanni Battista (Gianni), Conte di Taliedo

  • 37 Curtiss, Glenn Hammond

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 21 May 1878 Hammondsport, New York, USA
    d. 23 July 1930 Buffalo, New York, USA
    [br]
    American designer of aeroplanes, especially seaplanes.
    [br]
    Curtiss started his career in the bicycle business, then became a designer of motor-cycle engines, and in 1904 he designed and built an airship engine. The success of his engine led to him joining the Aerial Experimental Association (AEA), founded by the inventor Alexander Graham Bell. Working with the AEA, Curtiss built several engines and designed a biplane, June Bug, in which he won a prize for the first recorded flight of over 1 km (1,100yd) in the USA. In 1909 Curtiss joined forces with Augustus M.Herring, who had earlier flown Octave Chanute's gliders, to form the Herring-Curtiss Company. Their Gold Bug was a success and led to the Golden Flyer, in which Glenn Curtiss won the Gordon Bennett Cup at Rheims in France with a speed of 75.7 km/h (47 mph). At this time the Wright brothers accused Curtiss and the new Curtiss Aeroplane Company of infringing their patent rights, and a bitter lawsuit ensued. The acrimony subsided during the First World War and in 1929 the two companies merged to form the Curtiss-Wright Corporation.
    Curtiss had started experimenting with water-based aircraft in 1908, but it was not until 1911 that he managed to produce a successful float-plane. He then co-operated with the US Navy in developing catapults to launch aircraft from ships at sea. During the First World War, Curtiss produced the JN-4 Jenny trainer, which became probably his best-known design. This sturdy bi-plane continued in service long after the war and was extensively used by "barnstorming" pilots at air shows and for early mail flights. In 1919 a Navy-Curtiss NC-4 flying boat achieved the first flight across the Atlantic, having made the crossing in stages, refuelling en route. Curtiss himself, however, had little interest in aviation in his later years and turned his attention to real-estate development in Florida.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Robert J.Collier Trophy 1911, 1912. US Aero Club Gold Medal 1911, 1912. Smithsonian Institution Langley Gold Medal 1913.
    Further Reading
    L.S.Casey, 1981, Curtiss: The Hammondsport Era 1907–1915, New York. C.R.Roseberry, 1972, Glenn Curtiss, Pioneer of Flight, New York.
    R.Taylor and Walter S.Taylor, 1968, Overland and Sea, New York (biography). Alden Heath, 1942, Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Naval Aviation, New York.
    JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Curtiss, Glenn Hammond

  • 38 Ewing, Sir James Alfred

    [br]
    b. 27 March 1855 Dundee, Scotland
    d. 1935
    [br]
    Scottish engineer and educator.
    [br]
    Sir Alfred Ewing was one of the leading engineering academics of his generation. He was the son of a minister in the Free Church of Scotland, and was educated at Dundee High School and Edinburgh University, where he studied engineering under Professor Fleeming Jenkin. On Jenkin's nomination, Ewing was recruited as Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Tokyo, where he spent five years from 1878 to 1883. While in Tokyo, he devised an instrument for measuring and recording earthquakes. Ewing returned to his home town of Dundee in 1883, as the first Professor of Engineering at the University College recently established there. After seven years building up the department in Dundee, he moved to Cambridge where he succeeded James Stuart as Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics. In thirteen creative years at Cambridge, he established the Engineering Tripos (1892) and founded the first engineering laboratories at the University (1894). From 1903 to 1917 Ewing served the Admiralty as Director of Naval Education, in which role he took a leading part in the revolution in British naval traditions which equipped the Royal Navy to fight the First World War. In that war, Ewing made an important contribution to the intelligence operation of deciphering enemy wireless messages. In 1916 he returned to Edinburgh as Principal and Vice-Chancellor, and following the war he presided over a period of rapid expansion at the University. He retired in 1929.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1887. KCB 1911. President, British Association for the Advancement of Science 1932.
    Bibliography
    He wrote extensively on technical subjects, and his works included Thermodynamics for Engineers (1920). His many essays and papers on more general subjects are elegantly and attractively written.
    Further Reading
    Dictionary of National Biography Supplement.
    A.W.Ewing, 1939, Life of Sir Alfred Ewing (biography by his son).
    AB

    Biographical history of technology > Ewing, Sir James Alfred

  • 39 Lithgow, James

    SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping
    [br]
    b. 27 January 1883 Port Glasgow, Renfrewshire, Scotland
    d. 23 February 1952 Langbank, Renfrewshire, Scotland
    [br]
    Scottish shipbuilder; creator of one of the twentieth century's leading industrial organizations.
    [br]
    Lithgow attended Glasgow Academy and then spent a year in Paris. In 1901 he commenced a shipyard apprenticeship with Russell \& Co., where his father, William Lithgow, was sole proprietor. For years Russell's had topped the Clyde tonnage output and more than once had been the world's leading yard. Along with his brother Henry, Lithgow in 1908 was appointed a director, and in a few years he was Chairman and the yard was renamed Lithgows Ltd. By the outbreak of the First World War the Lithgow brothers were recognized as good shipbuilders and astute businessmen. In 1914 he joined the Royal Artillery; he rose to the rank of major and served with distinction, but his skills in administration were recognized and he was recalled home to become Director of Merchant Shipbuilding when British shipping losses due to submarine attack became critical. This appointment set a pattern, with public duties becoming predominant and the day-to-day shipyard business being organized by his brother. During the interwar years, Lithgow served on many councils designed to generate work and expand British commercial interests. His public appointments were legion, but none was as controversial as his directorship of National Shipbuilders Security Ltd, formed to purchase and "sterilize" inefficient shipyards that were hindering recovery from the Depression. To this day opinions are divided on this issue, but it is beyond doubt that Lithgow believed in the task in hand and served unstintingly. During the Second World War he was Controller of Merchant Shipbuilding and Repairs and was one of the few civilians to be on the Board of Admiralty. On the cessation of hostilities, Lithgow devoted time to research boards and to the expansion of the Lithgow Group, which now included the massive Fairfield Shipyard as well as steel, marine engineering and other companies.
    Throughout his life Lithgow worked for the Territorial Army, but he was also a devoted member of the Church of Scotland. He gave practical support to the lona Community, no doubt influenced by unbounded love of the West Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Military Cross and mentioned in dispatches during the First World War. Baronet 1925. Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire 1945. Commander of the Order of the Orange-Nassau (the Netherlands). CB 1947. Served as the employers' representative on the League of Nations International Labour Conference in the 1930s. President, British Iron and Steel Cofederation 1943.
    Further Reading
    J.M.Reid, 1964, James Lithgow, Master of Work, London: Hutchinson.
    FMW

    Biographical history of technology > Lithgow, James

  • 40 Mignet, Henri

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 19 October 1893 Saintes, France
    d. 31 August 1965 Bordeaux, France
    [br]
    French inventor of the Pou-du-Ciel or Flying Flea, a small aeroplane for the do-it-yourself constructor, popular in the 1930s.
    [br]
    Throughout the history of aviation there have been many attempts to produce a cheap and simple aeroplane for "the man in the street". The tiny Demoiselle built by Alberto Santos- Dumont in 1909 or the de Havilland Moth of 1925 are good examples, but the one which very nearly achieved this aim was Henri Mignet's Flying Flea of 1933. Mignet was a self-taught designer of light aircraft, which often incorporated his unorthodox ideas. His Pou-du-Ciel ("Sky Louse" or "Flying Flea") was unorthodox. The materials used in construction were conventional wood and fabric, but the control system departed from the usual wing plus tailplane (with elevators). The Flea had two wings in tandem. The rear wing was fixed, while the forward wing was hinged to allow the angle of incidence, and hence its lift, to be increased or decreased. Reducing the forward wing's lift would cause the Flea to dive. After Mignet's first flight, on 6 September 1933, and the publication of his book Le Sport de l'air, which explains how to build a Poudu-Ciel, a Pou-building craze started in France. Mignet's book was translated into English and 6,000 copies were sold in a month. During 1935 the craze spread to Britain, where a Flying Flea could be built for £50–£90, including the engine. After several fatal crashes, the aircraft was banned in 1936. A design fault in the control system was to blame, and although this was remedied the wave of popular enthusiasm vanished. Mignet continued to design light aircraft and during the Second World War he was working on a Pou- Maquis for use by the French Resistance but the war ended before the aircraft was ready. During the post-war years a series of Flying Flea derivatives appeared, but their numbers were small. However, the home-build movement in general has grown in recent years, a fact which would have pleased Henri Mignet, the "Patron Saint of Homebuilders".
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur. Médaille de l'Aéronautique.
    Bibliography
    1935, The Flying Flea: How to Build and Fly it, London (English edn).
    Further Reading
    Ken Ellis and Geoff Jones, 1990, Henri Mignet and His Flying Flea, Yeovil (a full account).
    Geoff Jones, 1992, Building and Flying Your Own Plane, Yeovil (describes the Flying Flea and its place in the homebuild story).
    JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Mignet, Henri

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