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121 Cookworthy, William
SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors[br]b. 1705 Kings bridge, Devon, Englandd. 16 October 1780 Plymouth, England[br]English pioneer of porcelain manufacture in England.[br]The family fortunes having been extinguished by the South Sea Bubble of 1720, Cookworthy and his brother had to fend for themselves. They set up, and succeeded, in the pharmacy trade. At the age of 31, however, William left the business, and after a period of probation he became a minister in the Society of Friends. In a letter of 5 May 1745, Cookworthy mentions some samples of kaolin and china or growan stone that had been brought to him from Virginia. He found similar materials at Treginning Hill in Cornwall, and between 1755 and 1758 he found sufficiently pure china clay and china stone to make a pure white porcelain. Cookworthy took out a patent for his discovery in 1768 which covered the manufacture of porcelain from moonstone or growan and growan clay, with a glaze made from china stone to which lime and fern ash or magnesia alba (basic carbonate of magnesium) were added. Cookworthy's experiments had been carried out on the property of Lord Camelford, who later assisted him, in the company of other Quakers, in setting up a works at Coxside, Plymouth, to manufacture the ware; the works employed between fifty and sixty people. In the absence of coal, Cookworthy resorted to wood as fuel, but this was scarce, so in 1770 he transferred his operation to Castle Green, Bristol. However, he had no greater success there, and in 1773 he sold the entire interest in porcelain manufacture to Richard Champion (1743–91), although Cookworthy and his heirs were to receive royalties for ninety-nine years. Champion, who had been working with Cookworthy since 1764 and was active in Bristol city affairs, continued the firm as Richard Champion \& Co., but when in 1775 Champion tried to renew Cookworthy's patent, Wedgwood and other Staffordshire potters challenged him. After litigation, the use of kaolin and china stone was thrown open to general use. The Staffordshire potters made good use of this new-found freedom and Champion was forced to sell the patent to them and dispose of his factory the following year. The potters of Staffordshire said of Cookworthy, "the greatest service ever conferred by one person on the pottery manufacturers is that of making them acquainted with china clay".[br]Further ReadingW.Harrison, 1854, Memoir of William Cookworthy by His Grandson, London. F.S.Mackenna, 1946, Cookworthy's Plymouth and Bristol Porcelain, Leigh on Sea: Lewis.A.D.Selleck, 1978, Cookworthy 1705–80 and his Circle, privately published.LRD -
122 Murdock (Murdoch), William
[br]b. 21 August 1754 Cumnock, Ayrshire, Scotlandd. 15 November 1839 Handsworth, Birmingham, England[br]Scottish engineer and inventor, pioneer in coal-gas production.[br]He was the third child and the eldest of three boys born to John Murdoch and Anna Bruce. His father, a millwright and joiner, spelled his name Murdock on moving to England. He was educated for some years at Old Cumnock Parish School and in 1777, with his father, he built a "wooden horse", supposed to have been a form of cycle. In 1777 he set out for the Soho manufactory of Boulton \& Watt, where he quickly found employment, Boulton supposedly being impressed by the lad's hat. This was oval and made of wood, and young William had turned it himself on a lathe of his own manufacture. Murdock quickly became Boulton \& Watt's representative in Cornwall, where there was a flourishing demand for steam-engines. He lived at Redruth during this period.It is said that a number of the inventions generally ascribed to James Watt are in fact as much due to Murdock as to Watt. Examples are the piston and slide valve and the sun-and-planet gearing. A number of other inventions are attributed to Murdock alone: typical of these is the oscillating cylinder engine which obviated the need for an overhead beam.In about 1784 he planned a steam-driven road carriage of which he made a working model. He also planned a high-pressure non-condensing engine. The model carriage was demonstrated before Murdock's friends and travelled at a speed of 6–8 mph (10–13 km/h). Boulton and Watt were both antagonistic to their employees' developing independent inventions, and when in 1786 Murdock set out with his model for the Patent Office, having received no reply to a letter he had sent to Watt, Boulton intercepted him on the open road near Exeter and dissuaded him from going any further.In 1785 he married Mary Painter, daughter of a mine captain. She bore him four children, two of whom died in infancy, those surviving eventually joining their father at the Soho Works. Murdock was a great believer in pneumatic power: he had a pneumatic bell-push at Sycamore House, his home near Soho. The pattern-makers lathe at the Soho Works worked for thirty-five years from an air motor. He also conceived the idea of a vacuum piston engine to exhaust a pipe, later developed by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company's railway and the forerunner of the atmospheric railway.Another field in which Murdock was a pioneer was the gas industry. In 1791, in Redruth, he was experimenting with different feedstocks in his home-cum-office in Cross Street: of wood, peat and coal, he preferred the last. He designed and built in the backyard of his house a prototype generator, washer, storage and distribution plant, and publicized the efficiency of coal gas as an illuminant by using it to light his own home. In 1794 or 1795 he informed Boulton and Watt of his experimental work and of its success, suggesting that a patent should be applied for. James Watt Junior was now in the firm and was against patenting the idea since they had had so much trouble with previous patents and had been involved in so much litigation. He refused Murdock's request and for a short time Murdock left the firm to go home to his father's mill. Boulton \& Watt soon recognized the loss of a valuable servant and, in a short time, he was again employed at Soho, now as Engineer and Superintendent at the increased salary of £300 per year plus a 1 per cent commission. From this income, he left £14,000 when he died in 1839.In 1798 the workshops of Boulton and Watt were permanently lit by gas, starting with the foundry building. The 180 ft (55 m) façade of the Soho works was illuminated by gas for the Peace of Paris in June 1814. By 1804, Murdock had brought his apparatus to a point where Boulton \& Watt were able to canvas for orders. Murdock continued with the company after the death of James Watt in 1819, but retired in 1830 and continued to live at Sycamore House, Handsworth, near Birmingham.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsRoyal Society Rumford Gold Medal 1808.Further ReadingS.Smiles, 1861, Lives of the Engineers, Vol. IV: Boulton and Watt, London: John Murray.H.W.Dickinson and R.Jenkins, 1927, James Watt and the Steam Engine, Oxford: Clarendon Press.J.A.McCash, 1966, "William Murdoch. Faithful servant" in E.G.Semler (ed.), The Great Masters. Engineering Heritage, Vol. II, London: Institution of Mechanical Engineers/Heinemann.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Murdock (Murdoch), William
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123 Petzval, Josef Max
SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics[br]b. 1807 Spisska-Beila, Hungaryd. 17 September 1891 Vienna, Austria[br]Hungarian mathematician and photographic-lens designer, inventor of the first "rapid" portrait lens.[br]Although born in Hungary, Petzval was the son of German schoolteacher. He studied engineering at the University of Budapest and after graduation was appointed to the staff as a lecturer. In 1835 he became the University's Professor of Higher Mathematics. Within a year he was offered a similar position at the more prestigious University of Vienna, a chair he was to occupy until 1884.The earliest photographic cameras were fitted with lenses originally designed for other optical instruments. All were characterized by small apertures, and the long exposures required by the early process were in part due to the "slow" lenses. As early as 1839, Petzval began calculations with the idea of producing a fast achromatic objective for photographic work. For technical advice he turned to the Viennese optician Peter Voigtländer, who went on to make the first Petzval portrait lens in 1840. It had a short focal length but an extremely large aperture for the day, enabling exposure times to be reduced to at least one tenth of that required with other contemporary lenses. The Petzval portrait lens was to become the basic design for years to come and was probably the single most important development in making portrait photography possible; by capturing public imagination, portrait photography was to drive photographic innovation during the early years.Petzval later fell out with Voigtländer and severed his connection with the company in 1845. When Petzval was encouraged to design a landscape lens in the 1850s, the work was entrusted to another Viennese optician, Dietzler. Using some early calculations by Petzval, Voigtländer was able to produce a similar lens, which he marketed in competition, and an acrimonious dispute ensued. Petzval, embittered by the quarrel and depressed by a burglary which destroyed years of records of his optical work, abandoned optics completely in 1862 and devoted himself to acoustics. He retired from his professorship on his seventieth birthday, respected by his colleagues but unloved, and lived the life of a recluse until his death.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsMember of the Hungarian Academy of Science 1873.Further ReadingJ.M.Eder, 1945, History of Photography, trans. E. Epstean, New York (provides details of Petzval's life and work; Eder claims he was introduced to Petzval by mutual friends and succeeded in obtaining personal data).Rudolf Kingslake, 1989, A History of the Photographic Lens, Boston (brief biographical details).L.W.Sipley, 1965, Photography's Great Inventors, Philadelphia (brief biographical details).JW -
124 Shillibeer, George
SUBJECT AREA: Land transport[br]fl. early nineteenth century[br]English coachbuilder who introduced the omnibus to London.[br]Little is known of Shillibeer's early life except that he was for some years resident in France. He served as a midshipman in the Royal Navy before joining the firm of Hatchetts in Long Acre, London, to learn coachbuilding. He set up as a coachbuilder in Paris soon after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and prospered. Early in the 1820s Jacques Laffite ordered two improved buses from Shillibeer. Their success prompted Shillibeer to sell up his business and return to London to start a similar service. His first two buses in London ran for the first time on 4 July 1829, from the Yorkshire Stingo at Paddington to the Bank, a distance of 9 miles (14 km) which had taken three hours by the existing short-stagecoaches. Shillibeer's vehicle was drawn by three horses abreast, carried twenty-two passengers at a charge of one shilling for the full journey or sixpence for a part-journey. These fares were a third of that charged for an inside seat on a short-stagecoach. The conductors were the sons of friends of Shillibeer from his naval days. He was soon earning £1,000 per week, each bus making twelve double journeys a day. Dishonesty was rife among the conductors, so Shillibeer fitted a register under the entrance step to count the passengers; two of the conductors who had been discharged set out to wreck the register and its inventor. Expanded routes were soon being travelled by a larger fleet but the newly formed Metropolitan Police force complained that the buses were too wide, so the next buses had only two horses and carried sixteen passengers inside with two on top. Shillibeer's partner, William Morton, failed as competition grew. Shillibeer sold out in 1834 when he had sixty buses, six hundred horses and stabling for them. He started a long-distance service to Greenwich, but a competing railway opened in 1835 and income declined; the Official Stamp and Tax Offices seized the omnibuses and the business was bankrupted. Shillibeer then set up as an undertaker, and prospered with a new design of hearse which became known as a "Shillibeer".[br]Further ReadingA.Bird, 1969, Road Vehicles, London: Longmans Industrial Archaeology Series.IMcN -
125 Smith, Sir Francis Pettit
SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping[br]b. 9 February 1808 Copperhurst Farm, near Hythe, Kent, Englandd. 12 February 1874 South Kensington, London, England[br]English inventor of the screw propeller.[br]Smith was the only son of Charles Smith, Postmaster at Hythe, and his wife Sarah (née Pettit). After education at a private school in Ashford, Kent, he took to farming, first on Romney Marsh, then at Hendon, Middlesex. As a boy, he showed much skill in the construction of model boats, especially in devising their means of propulsion. He maintained this interest into adult life and in 1835 he made a model propelled by a screw driven by a spring. This worked so well that he became convinced that the screw propeller offered a better method of propulsion than the paddle wheels that were then in general use. This notion so fired his enthusiasm that he virtually gave up farming to devote himself to perfecting his invention. The following year he produced a better model, which he successfully demonstrated to friends on his farm at Hendon and afterwards to the public at the Adelaide Gallery in London. On 31 May 1836 Smith was granted a patent for the propulsion of vessels by means of a screw.The idea of screw propulsion was not new, however, for it had been mooted as early as the seventeenth century and since then several proposals had been advanced, but without successful practical application. Indeed, simultaneously but quite independently of Smith, the Swedish engineer John Ericsson had invented the ship's propeller and obtained a patent on 13 July 1836, just weeks after Smith. But Smith was completely unaware of this and pursued his own device in the belief that he was the sole inventor.With some financial and technical backing, Smith was able to construct a 10 ton boat driven by a screw and powered by a steam engine of about 6 hp (4.5 kW). After showing it off to the public, Smith tried it out at sea, from Ramsgate round to Dover and Hythe, returning in stormy weather. The screw performed well in both calm and rough water. The engineering world seemed opposed to the new method of propulsion, but the Admiralty gave cautious encouragement in 1839 by ordering that the 237 ton Archimedes be equipped with a screw. It showed itself superior to the Vulcan, one of the fastest paddle-driven ships in the Navy. The ship was put through its paces in several ports, including Bristol, where Isambard Kingdom Brunel was constructing his Great Britain, the first large iron ocean-going vessel. Brunel was so impressed that he adapted his ship for screw propulsion.Meanwhile, in spite of favourable reports, the Admiralty were dragging their feet and ordered further trials, fitting Smith's four-bladed propeller to the Rattler, then under construction and completed in 1844. The trials were a complete success and propelled their lordships of the Admiralty to a decision to equip twenty ships with screw propulsion, under Smith's supervision.At last the superiority of screw propulsion was generally accepted and virtually universally adopted. Yet Smith gained little financial reward for his invention and in 1850 he retired to Guernsey to resume his farming life. In 1860 financial pressures compelled him to accept the position of Curator of Patent Models at the Patent Museum in South Kensington, London, a post he held until his death. Belated recognition by the Government, then headed by Lord Palmerston, came in 1855 with the grant of an annual pension of £200. Two years later Smith received unofficial recognition when he was presented with a national testimonial, consisting of a service of plate and nearly £3,000 in cash subscribed largely by the shipbuilding and engineering community. Finally, in 1871 Smith was honoured with a knighthood.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1871.Further ReadingObituary, 1874, Illustrated London News (7 February).1856, On the Invention and Progress of the Screw Propeller, London (provides biographical details).Smith and his invention are referred to in papers in Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 14 (1934): 9; 19 (1939): 145–8, 155–7, 161–4, 237–9.LRDBiographical history of technology > Smith, Sir Francis Pettit
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126 Zuse, Konrad
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 22 June 1910 Berlin, Germany[br]German civil engineer who developed a series of computers before, during and after the Second World War.[br]Zuse grew up in Braunsberg, then in East Prussia, and attended the Technische Hochschule at Berlin-Charlottenburg to study civil engineering. In 1934 he became interested in calculatingmachines and the pursuit of a career in aeronautical engineering. Two years later, having taken a post as a statistician, in his spare time he built a mechanical computer, which he called Z1; for this he used two-state mechanical switches and punched-tape for the program input. This was followed by the design for Z2, which used electromechanical relays.Called to military service in 1939, he was soon sent to the Henschel aircraft factory, where he completed Z2. Between 1939 and 1941 the German Aeronautical Research Institute supported his development of Z3, which used 2,600 relays and a keyboard input. Taken into immediate use by the aircraft industry, both it and its predecessors were destroyed in air raids. Z4, completed towards the end of the war and using mechanical memory, survived, and with improvements was used in Switzerland until 1960. Other achievements by Zuse included a machine to perform logical calculations (LI) and his Plankalkul, one of the first computer languages. In 1950, with two friends, he formed the Zuse KG company near Bad Hersfeld, Essen, and his first Z5 relay computer was sold to Leitz in 1952. A series of machines followed, a milestone in 1958 being the first transistorized machine, Z22, of which over 200 were made. Finally, in 1969, the company was absorbed by Siemens AG and Zuse returned to scientific research.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsHonorary Doctorate Berlin Technical University 1960. Honorary Professor Göttingen University 1960.Bibliography11 April 1936, German patent no. Z23 1391X/42M. 16 June 1941, German patent no. Z391.1 August 1949, German patent no. 50,746.1993, The Computer: My Life, Berlin: SpringerVerlag (autobiography).Further ReadingP.E.Ceruzzi, 1981, "The early computers of Konrad Zuse 1935–45", Annals of the History of Computing 3:241.M.R.Williams, 1985, A History of Computing Technology, London: Prentice-Hall.See also: Stibitz, George R.KF -
127 الحاصل
الحاصِل \ outcome: the effect or result (of effort, etc.): We talked for a long time, but I still don’t know what the outcome will be. total: a complete amount, when all is added together: a total of $53. upshot: the end result (of some matter): I said I was sorry, and so did she, and the upshot was that we became better friends than before. \ See Also النتيجة -
128 نتيجة
نَتِيجَة \ conclusion: an opinion which is the result of thought. consequence: the result of an act or event: the consequence of his rudeness to his employer was that he lost his job. effect: result: His troubles had a bad effect on his health. Scientists study the causes and effects of a disease. end: a purpose; an aim: If we try hard, we shall gain our ends. outcome: the effect or result (of effort, etc.): We talked for a long time, but I still don’t know what the outcome will be. result: sth. that is caused; the effect of an action: Most accidents are the result of careless driving. My efforts produced no results, a number of points, etc., at the end of a game or match The result of the match was 6-3 in our favour. upshot: the end result (of some matter): I said I was sorry, and so did she, and the upshot was that we became better friends than before. \ See Also عاقبة (عَاقِبَة)، مفعول (مَفْعُول)، أَثَر \ نَتِيجَةً لِـ \ in consequence: as a result. thanks to: because of: Thanks to you, his life was saved (as a result of your help). through: by means of; as a result of: I heard the news through a friend. He lost his way through having no map. what with: as a result of (several things together): What with football and swimming and fishing, he has little time for reading.
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