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  • 41 Gresley, Sir Herbert Nigel

    [br]
    b. 19 June 1876 Edinburgh, Scotland
    d. 5 April 1941 Hertford, England
    [br]
    English mechanical engineer, designer of the A4-class 4–6–2 locomotive holding the world speed record for steam traction.
    [br]
    Gresley was the son of the Rector of Netherseale, Derbyshire; he was educated at Marlborough and by the age of 13 was skilled at making sketches of locomotives. In 1893 he became a pupil of F.W. Webb at Crewe works, London \& North Western Railway, and in 1898 he moved to Horwich works, Lancashire \& Yorkshire Railway, to gain drawing-office experience under J.A.F.Aspinall, subsequently becoming Foreman of the locomotive running sheds at Blackpool. In 1900 he transferred to the carriage and wagon department, and in 1904 he had risen to become its Assistant Superintendent. In 1905 he moved to the Great Northern Railway, becoming Superintendent of its carriage and wagon department at Doncaster under H.A. Ivatt. In 1906 he designed and produced a bogie luggage van with steel underframe, teak body, elliptical roof, bowed ends and buckeye couplings: this became the prototype for East Coast main-line coaches built over the next thirty-five years. In 1911 Gresley succeeded Ivatt as Locomotive, Carriage \& Wagon Superintendent. His first locomotive was a mixed-traffic 2–6–0, his next a 2–8–0 for freight. From 1915 he worked on the design of a 4–6–2 locomotive for express passenger traffic: as with Ivatt's 4 4 2s, the trailing axle would allow the wide firebox needed for Yorkshire coal. He also devised a means by which two sets of valve gear could operate the valves on a three-cylinder locomotive and applied it for the first time on a 2–8–0 built in 1918. The system was complex, but a later simplified form was used on all subsequent Gresley three-cylinder locomotives, including his first 4–6–2 which appeared in 1922. In 1921, Gresley introduced the first British restaurant car with electric cooking facilities.
    With the grouping of 1923, the Great Northern Railway was absorbed into the London \& North Eastern Railway and Gresley was appointed Chief Mechanical Engineer. More 4–6– 2s were built, the first British class of such wheel arrangement. Modifications to their valve gear, along lines developed by G.J. Churchward, reduced their coal consumption sufficiently to enable them to run non-stop between London and Edinburgh. So that enginemen might change over en route, some of the locomotives were equipped with corridor tenders from 1928. The design was steadily improved in detail, and by comparison an experimental 4–6–4 with a watertube boiler that Gresley produced in 1929 showed no overall benefit. A successful high-powered 2–8–2 was built in 1934, following the introduction of third-class sleeping cars, to haul 500-ton passenger trains between Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
    In 1932 the need to meet increasing road competition had resulted in the end of a long-standing agreement between East Coast and West Coast railways, that train journeys between London and Edinburgh by either route should be scheduled to take 8 1/4 hours. Seeking to accelerate train services, Gresley studied high-speed, diesel-electric railcars in Germany and petrol-electric railcars in France. He considered them for the London \& North Eastern Railway, but a test run by a train hauled by one of his 4–6–2s in 1934, which reached 108 mph (174 km/h), suggested that a steam train could better the railcar proposals while its accommodation would be more comfortable. To celebrate the Silver Jubilee of King George V, a high-speed, streamlined train between London and Newcastle upon Tyne was proposed, the first such train in Britain. An improved 4–6–2, the A4 class, was designed with modifications to ensure free running and an ample reserve of power up hill. Its streamlined outline included a wedge-shaped front which reduced wind resistance and helped to lift the exhaust dear of the cab windows at speed. The first locomotive of the class, named Silver Link, ran at an average speed of 100 mph (161 km/h) for 43 miles (69 km), with a maximum speed of 112 1/2 mph (181 km/h), on a seven-coach test train on 27 September 1935: the locomotive went into service hauling the Silver Jubilee express single-handed (since others of the class had still to be completed) for the first three weeks, a round trip of 536 miles (863 km) daily, much of it at 90 mph (145 km/h), without any mechanical troubles at all. Coaches for the Silver Jubilee had teak-framed, steel-panelled bodies on all-steel, welded underframes; windows were double glazed; and there was a pressure ventilation/heating system. Comparable trains were introduced between London Kings Cross and Edinburgh in 1937 and to Leeds in 1938.
    Gresley did not hesitate to incorporate outstanding features from elsewhere into his locomotive designs and was well aware of the work of André Chapelon in France. Four A4s built in 1938 were equipped with Kylchap twin blast-pipes and double chimneys to improve performance still further. The first of these to be completed, no. 4468, Mallard, on 3 July 1938 ran a test train at over 120 mph (193 km/h) for 2 miles (3.2 km) and momentarily achieved 126 mph (203 km/h), the world speed record for steam traction. J.Duddington was the driver and T.Bray the fireman. The use of high-speed trains came to an end with the Second World War. The A4s were then demonstrated to be powerful as well as fast: one was noted hauling a 730-ton, 22-coach train at an average speed exceeding 75 mph (120 km/h) over 30 miles (48 km). The war also halted electrification of the Manchester-Sheffield line, on the 1,500 volt DC overhead system; however, anticipating eventual resumption, Gresley had a prototype main-line Bo-Bo electric locomotive built in 1941. Sadly, Gresley died from a heart attack while still in office.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1936. President, Institution of Locomotive Engineers 1927 and 1934. President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1936.
    Further Reading
    F.A.S.Brown, 1961, Nigel Gresley, Locomotive Engineer, Ian Allan (full-length biography).
    John Bellwood and David Jenkinson, Gresley and Stanier. A Centenary Tribute (a good comparative account).
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Gresley, Sir Herbert Nigel

  • 42 Poniatoff, Alexander Mathew

    [br]
    b. 25 March 1892 Kazan District, Russia
    d. 24 October 1980
    [br]
    Russian (naturalized American in 1932) electrical engineer responsible for the development of the professional tape recorder and the first commercially-successful video tape recorder (VTR).
    [br]
    Poniatoff was educated at the University of Kazan, the Imperial College in Moscow, and the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe, gaining degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering. He was in Germany when the First World War broke out, but he managed to escape back to Russia, where he served as an Air Force pilot with the Imperial Russian Navy. During the Russian Revolution he was a pilot with the White Russian Forces, and escaped into China in 1920; there he found work as an assistant engineer in the Shanghai Power Company. In 1927 he immigrated to the USA, becoming a US citizen in 1932. He obtained a post in the research and development department of the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, and later at Dalmo Victor, San Carlos, California. During the Second World War he was involved in the development of airborne radar for the US Navy.
    In 1944, taking his initials to form the title, Poniatoff founded the AMPEX Corporation to manufacture components for the airborne radar developed at General Electric, but in 1946 he turned to the production of audio tape recorders developed from the German wartime Telefunken Magnetophon machine (the first tape recorder in the truest sense). In this he was supported by the entertainer Bing Crosby, who needed high-quality replay facilities for broadcasting purposes, and in 1947 he was able to offer a professional-quality product and the business prospered.
    With the rapid post-war boom in television broadcasting in the USA, a need soon arose for a video recorder to provide "time-shifting" of live TV programmes between the different US time zones. Many companies therefore endeavoured to produce a video tape recorder (VTR) using the same single-track, fixed-head, longitudinal-scan system used for audio, but the very much higher bandwidth required involved an unacceptably high tape-speed. AMPEX attempted to solve the problem by using twelve parallel tracks and a machine was demonstrated in 1952, but it proved unsatisfactory.
    The development team, which included Charles Ginsburg and Ray Dolby, then devised a four-head transverse-scan system in which a quadruplex head rotating at 14,400 rpm was made to scan across the width of a 2 in. (5 cm) tape with a tape-to-head speed of the order of 160 ft/sec (about 110 mph; 49 m/sec or 176 km/h) but with a longitudinal tape speed of only 15 in./sec (0.38 m/sec). In this way, acceptable picture quality was obtained with an acceptable tape consumption. Following a public demonstration on 14 April 1956, commercial produc-tion of studio-quality machines began to revolutionize the production and distribution of TV programmes, and the perfecting of time-base correctors which could stabilize the signal timing to a few nanoseconds made colour VTRs a practical proposition. However, AMPEX did not rest on its laurels and in the face of emerging competition from helical scan machines, where the tracks are laid diagonally on the tape, the company was able to demonstrate its own helical machine in 1957. Another development was the Videofile system, in which 250,000 pages of facsimile could be recorded on a single tape, offering a new means of archiving information. By 1986, quadruplex VTRs were obsolete, but Poniatoff's role in making television recording possible deserves a place in history.
    Poniatoff was President of AMPEX Corporation until 1955 and then became Chairman of the Board, a position he held until 1970.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    A.Abrahamson, 1953, "A short history of television recording", Part I, JSMPTE 64:73; 1973, Part II, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, 82:188 (provides a fuller background).
    Audio Biographies, 1961, ed. G.A.Briggs, Wharfedale Wireless Works, pp. 255–61 (contains a few personal details about Poniatoff's escape from Germany to join the Russian Navy).
    E.Larsen, 1971, A History of Invention.
    Charles Ginsburg, 1981, "The horse or the cowboy. Getting television on tape", Journal of the Royal Television Society 18:11 (a brief account of the AMPEX VTR story).
    KF / GB-N

    Biographical history of technology > Poniatoff, Alexander Mathew

  • 43 Staite, William Edwards

    [br]
    b. 19 April 1809 Bristol, England
    d. 26 September 1854 Caen, France
    [br]
    English inventor who did much to popularize electric lighting in early Victorian England and demonstrated the first self-regulating arc lamp.
    [br]
    Before devoting the whole of his attention to the electric light, Staite was a partner in a business of iron merchants and patented a method of obtaining extracts and essences. From 1834 he attempted to produce a continuous light by electricity. The first public exhibition of Staite's arc lamp incorporating a fixed-rate clockwork mechanism was given in 1847 to the Sunderland Literary and Philosophical Society. He also demonstrated an incandescent lamp with an iridioplatinum filament. Sir Joseph Wilson Swan recorded that it was attending lectures by Staite in Sunderland, Newcastle and Carlisle that started him on the quest which many years later was to lead to his incandescent lamp.
    In association with William Petrie (1821–1904), Staite made an important advance in the development of arc lamps by introducing automatic regulation of the carbon rods by way of an electromagnet. This was the first of many self-regulating arc lamps that were invented during the nineteenth century employing this principle. A contributory factor in the success of Staite's lamp was the semi enclosure of the arc in a transparent vessel that reduced the consumption of carbons, a feature not used again until the 1890s. His patents included processes for preparing carbons and the construction of primary cells for arc lighting. An improved lamp used by Staite in a theatrical production at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, in April 1849 may be considered the first commercial success of the electric light in England. In spite of the limitations imposed by the use of primary cells as the only available source of power, serious interest in this system of electric lighting was shown by railway companies and dock authorities. However, after he had developed a satisfactory arc lamp, an end to these early experiments was brought about by Staite's death.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    July 1847, British patent no. 1,1783 (electromagnetic regulation of an arc lamp).
    His manuscript "History of electric light" is in the Institution of Electrical Engineers archives.
    Further Reading
    J.J.Fahie, 1902, "Staite and Petrie's electric light 1846–1853", Electrical Engineer 30:297–301, 337–40, 374–6 (a detailed reliable account).
    G.Woodward, 1989, "Staite and Petrie: pioneers of electric lighting", Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 136 (Part A): 290–6 GW

    Biographical history of technology > Staite, William Edwards

  • 44 Fairlie, Robert Francis

    [br]
    b. March 1831 Scotland
    d. 31 July 1885 Clapham, London, England
    [br]
    British engineer, designer of the double-bogie locomotive, advocate of narrow-gauge railways.
    [br]
    Fairlie worked on railways in Ireland and India, and established himself as a consulting engineer in London by the early 1860s. In 1864 he patented his design of locomotive: it was to be carried on two bogies and had a double boiler, the barrels extending in each direction from a central firebox. From smokeboxes at the outer ends, return tubes led to a single central chimney. At that time in British practice, locomotives of ever-increasing size were being carried on longer and longer rigid wheelbases, but often only one or two of their three or four pairs of wheels were powered. Bogies were little used and then only for carrying-wheels rather than driving-wheels: since their pivots were given no sideplay, they were of little value. Fairlie's design offered a powerful locomotive with a wheelbase which though long would be flexible; it would ride well and have all wheels driven and available for adhesion.
    The first five double Fairlie locomotives were built by James Cross \& Co. of St Helens during 1865–7. None was particularly successful: the single central chimney of the original design had been replaced by two chimneys, one at each end of the locomotive, but the single central firebox was retained, so that exhaust up one chimney tended to draw cold air down the other. In 1870 the next double Fairlie, Little Wonder, was built for the Festiniog Railway, on which C.E. Spooner was pioneering steam trains of very narrow gauge. The order had gone to George England, but the locomotive was completed by his successor in business, the Fairlie Engine \& Steam Carriage Company, in which Fairlie and George England's son were the principal partners. Little Wonder was given two inner fireboxes separated by a water space and proved outstandingly successful. The spectacle of this locomotive hauling immensely long trains up grade, through the Festiniog Railway's sinuous curves, was demonstrated before engineers from many parts of the world and had lasting effect. Fairlie himself became a great protagonist of narrow-gauge railways and influenced their construction in many countries.
    Towards the end of the 1860s, Fairlie was designing steam carriages or, as they would now be called, railcars, but only one was built before the death of George England Jr precipitated closure of the works in 1870. Fairlie's business became a design agency and his patent locomotives were built in large numbers under licence by many noted locomotive builders, for narrow, standard and broad gauges. Few operated in Britain, but many did in other lands; they were particularly successful in Mexico and Russia.
    Many Fairlie locomotives were fitted with the radial valve gear invented by Egide Walschaert; Fairlie's role in the universal adoption of this valve gear was instrumental, for he introduced it to Britain in 1877 and fitted it to locomotives for New Zealand, whence it eventually spread worldwide. Earlier, in 1869, the Great Southern \& Western Railway of Ireland had built in its works the first "single Fairlie", a 0–4–4 tank engine carried on two bogies but with only one of them powered. This type, too, became popular during the last part of the nineteenth century. In the USA it was built in quantity by William Mason of Mason Machine Works, Taunton, Massachusetts, in preference to the double-ended type.
    Double Fairlies may still be seen in operation on the Festiniog Railway; some of Fairlie's ideas were far ahead of their time, and modern diesel and electric locomotives are of the powered-bogie, double-ended type.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1864, British patent no. 1,210 (Fairlie's master patent).
    1864, Locomotive Engines, What They Are and What They Ought to Be, London; reprinted 1969, Portmadoc: Festiniog Railway Co. (promoting his ideas for locomotives).
    1865, British patent no. 3,185 (single Fairlie).
    1867. British patent no. 3,221 (combined locomotive/carriage).
    1868. "Railways and their Management", Journal of the Society of Arts: 328. 1871. "On the Gauge for Railways of the Future", abstract in Report of the Fortieth
    Meeting of the British Association in 1870: 215. 1872. British patent no. 2,387 (taper boiler).
    1872, Railways or No Railways. "Narrow Gauge, Economy with Efficiency; or Broad Gauge, Costliness with Extravagance", London: Effingham Wilson; repr. 1990s Canton, Ohio: Railhead Publications (promoting the cause for narrow-gauge railways).
    Further Reading
    Fairlie and his patent locomotives are well described in: P.C.Dewhurst, 1962, "The Fairlie locomotive", Part 1, Transactions of the Newcomen Society 34; 1966, Part 2, Transactions 39.
    R.A.S.Abbott, 1970, The Fairlie Locomotive, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Fairlie, Robert Francis

  • 45 Hamilton, Harold Lee (Hal)

    [br]
    b. 14 June 1890 Little Shasta, California, USA
    d. 3 May 1969 California, USA
    [br]
    American pioneer of diesel rail traction.
    [br]
    Orphaned as a child, Hamilton went to work for Southern Pacific Railroad in his teens, and then worked for several other companies. In his spare time he learned mathematics and physics from a retired professor. In 1911 he joined the White Motor Company, makers of road motor vehicles in Denver, Colorado, where he had gone to recuperate from malaria. He remained there until 1922, apart from an eighteenth-month break for war service.
    Upon his return from war service, Hamilton found White selling petrol-engined railbuses with mechanical transmission, based on road vehicles, to railways. He noted that they were not robust enough and that the success of petrol railcars with electric transmission, built by General Electric since 1906, was limited as they were complex to drive and maintain. In 1922 Hamilton formed, and became President of, the Electro- Motive Engineering Corporation (later Electro-Motive Corporation) to design and produce petrol-electric rail cars. Needing an engine larger than those used in road vehicles, yet lighter and faster than marine engines, he approached the Win ton Engine Company to develop a suitable engine; in addition, General Electric provided electric transmission with a simplified control system. Using these components, Hamilton arranged for his petrol-electric railcars to be built by the St Louis Car Company, with the first being completed in 1924. It was the beginning of a highly successful series. Fuel costs were lower than for steam trains and initial costs were kept down by using standardized vehicles instead of designing for individual railways. Maintenance costs were minimized because Electro-Motive kept stocks of spare parts and supplied replacement units when necessary. As more powerful, 800 hp (600 kW) railcars were produced, railways tended to use them to haul trailer vehicles, although that practice reduced the fuel saving. By the end of the decade Electro-Motive needed engines more powerful still and therefore had to use cheap fuel. Diesel engines of the period, such as those that Winton had made for some years, were too heavy in relation to their power, and too slow and sluggish for rail use. Their fuel-injection system was erratic and insufficiently robust and Hamilton concluded that a separate injector was needed for each cylinder.
    In 1930 Electro-Motive Corporation and Winton were acquired by General Motors in pursuance of their aim to develop a diesel engine suitable for rail traction, with the use of unit fuel injectors; Hamilton retained his position as President. At this time, industrial depression had combined with road and air competition to undermine railway-passenger business, and Ralph Budd, President of the Chicago, Burlington \& Quincy Railroad, thought that traffic could be recovered by way of high-speed, luxury motor trains; hence the Pioneer Zephyr was built for the Burlington. This comprised a 600 hp (450 kW), lightweight, two-stroke, diesel engine developed by General Motors (model 201 A), with electric transmission, that powered a streamlined train of three articulated coaches. This train demonstrated its powers on 26 May 1934 by running non-stop from Denver to Chicago, a distance of 1,015 miles (1,635 km), in 13 hours and 6 minutes, when the fastest steam schedule was 26 hours. Hamilton and Budd were among those on board the train, and it ushered in an era of high-speed diesel trains in the USA. By then Hamilton, with General Motors backing, was planning to use the lightweight engine to power diesel-electric locomotives. Their layout was derived not from steam locomotives, but from the standard American boxcar. The power plant was mounted within the body and powered the bogies, and driver's cabs were at each end. Two 900 hp (670 kW) engines were mounted in a single car to become an 1,800 hp (l,340 kW) locomotive, which could be operated in multiple by a single driver to form a 3,600 hp (2,680 kW) locomotive. To keep costs down, standard locomotives could be mass-produced rather than needing individual designs for each railway, as with steam locomotives. Two units of this type were completed in 1935 and sent on trial throughout much of the USA. They were able to match steam locomotive performance, with considerable economies: fuel costs alone were halved and there was much less wear on the track. In the same year, Electro-Motive began manufacturing diesel-electrie locomotives at La Grange, Illinois, with design modifications: the driver was placed high up above a projecting nose, which improved visibility and provided protection in the event of collision on unguarded level crossings; six-wheeled bogies were introduced, to reduce axle loading and improve stability. The first production passenger locomotives emerged from La Grange in 1937, and by early 1939 seventy units were in service. Meanwhile, improved engines had been developed and were being made at La Grange, and late in 1939 a prototype, four-unit, 5,400 hp (4,000 kW) diesel-electric locomotive for freight trains was produced and sent out on test from coast to coast; production versions appeared late in 1940. After an interval from 1941 to 1943, when Electro-Motive produced diesel engines for military and naval use, locomotive production resumed in quantity in 1944, and within a few years diesel power replaced steam on most railways in the USA.
    Hal Hamilton remained President of Electro-Motive Corporation until 1942, when it became a division of General Motors, of which he became Vice-President.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    P.M.Reck, 1948, On Time: The History of the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors Corporation, La Grange, Ill.: General Motors (describes Hamilton's career).
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Hamilton, Harold Lee (Hal)

  • 46 Lartigue, Charles François Marie-Thérèse

    [br]
    b. 1834 Toulouse, France d. 1907
    [br]
    French engineer and businessman, inventor of the Lartigue monorail.
    [br]
    Lartigue worked as a civil engineer in Algeria and while there invented a simple monorail for industrial or agricultural use. It comprised a single rail carried on trestles; vehicles comprised a single wheel with two tubs suspended either side, like panniers. These were pushed or pulled by hand or, occasionally, hauled by mule. Such lines were used in Algerian esparto-grass plantations.
    In 1882 he patented a monorail system based on this arrangement, with important improvements: traction was to be mechanical; vehicles were to have two or four wheels and to be able to be coupled together; and the trestles were to have, on each side, a light guide rail upon which horizontal rollers beneath the vehicles would bear. Early in 1883 the Lartigue Railway Construction Company was formed in London and two experimental prototype monorails were subsequently demonstrated in public. One, at the Paris Agricultural Exhibition, had an electric locomotive that was built in two parts, one either side of the rail to maintain balance, hauling small wagons. The other prototype, in London, had a small, steam locomotive with two vertical boilers and was designed by Anatole Mallet. By now Lartigue had become associated with F.B. Behr. Behr was Managing Director of the construction company and of the Listowel \& Ballybunion Railway Company, which obtained an Act of Parliament in 1886 to built a Lartigue monorail railway in the South West of Ireland between those two places. Its further development and successful operation are described in the article on Behr in this volume.
    A much less successful attempt to establish a Lartigue monorail railway took place in France, in the départment of Loire. In 1888 the council of the département agreed to a proposal put forward by Lartigue for a 10 1/2 mile (17 km) long monorail between the towns of Feurs and Panissières: the agreement was reached on the casting vote of the Chairman, a contact of Lartigue. A concession was granted to successive companies with which Lartigue was closely involved, but construction of the line was attended by muddle, delay and perhaps fraud, although it was completed sufficiently for trial trains to operate. The locomotive had two horizontal boilers, one either side of the track. But the inspectors of the department found deficiencies in the completeness and probable safety of the railway; when they did eventually agree to opening on a limited scale, the company claimed to have insufficient funds to do so unless monies owed by the department were paid. In the end the concession was forfeited and the line dismantled. More successful was an electrically operated Lartigue mineral line built at mines in the eastern Pyrenees.
    It appears to have reused equipment from the electric demonstration line, with modifications, and included gradients as steep as 1 in 12. There was no generating station: descending trains generated the electricity to power ascending ones. This line is said to have operated for at least two years.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1882, French patent no. 149,301 (monorail system). 1882, British patent no. 2,764 (monorail system).
    Further Reading
    D.G.Tucker, 1984, "F.B.Behr's development of the Lartigue monorail", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 55 (describes Lartigue and his work).
    P.H.Chauffort and J.-L.Largier, 1981, "Le monorail de Feurs à Panissières", Chemin defer régionaux et urbains (magazine of the Fédération des Amis des Chemins de Fer
    Secondaires) 164 (in French; describes Lartigue and his work).
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Lartigue, Charles François Marie-Thérèse

  • 47 Lumière, Auguste

    [br]
    b. 19 October 1862 Besançon, France
    d. 10 April 1954 Lyon, France
    [br]
    French scientist and inventor.
    [br]
    Auguste and his brother Louis Lumière (b. 5 October 1864 Besançon, France; d. 6 June 1948 Bandol, France) developed the photographic plate-making business founded by their father, Charles Antoine Lumière, at Lyons, extending production to roll-film manufacture in 1887. In the summer of 1894 their father brought to the factory a piece of Edison kinetoscope film, and said that they should produce films for the French owners of the new moving-picture machine. To do this, of course, a camera was needed; Louis was chiefly responsible for the design, which used an intermittent claw for driving the film, inspired by a sewing-machine mechanism. The machine was patented on 13 February 1895, and it was shown on 22 March 1895 at the Société d'Encouragement pour l'In-dustrie Nationale in Paris, with a projected film showing workers leaving the Lyons factory. Further demonstrations followed at the Sorbonne, and in Lyons during the Congrès des Sociétés de Photographie in June 1895. The Lumières filmed the delegates returning from an excursion, and showed the film to the Congrès the next day. To bring the Cinématographe, as it was called, to the public, the basement of the Grand Café in the Boulevard des Capuchines in Paris was rented, and on Saturday 28 December 1895 the first regular presentations of projected pictures to a paying public took place. The half-hour shows were an immediate success, and in a few months Lumière Cinématographes were seen throughout the world.
    The other principal area of achievement by the Lumière brothers was colour photography. They took up Lippman's method of interference colour photography, developing special grainless emulsions, and early in 1893 demonstrated their results by lighting them with an arc lamp and projecting them on to a screen. In 1895 they patented a method of subtractive colour photography involving printing the colour separations on bichromated gelatine glue sheets, which were then dyed and assembled in register, on paper for prints or bound between glass for transparencies. Their most successful colour process was based upon the colour-mosaic principle. In 1904 they described a process in which microscopic grains of potato starch, dyed red, green and blue, were scattered on a freshly varnished glass plate. When dried the mosaic was coated with varnish and then with a panchromatic emulsion. The plate was exposed with the mosaic towards the lens, and after reversal processing a colour transparency was produced. The process was launched commercially in 1907 under the name Autochrome; it was the first fully practical single-plate colour process to reach the public, remaining on the market until the 1930s, when it was followed by a film version using the same principle.
    Auguste and Louis received the Progress Medal of the Royal Photographic Society in 1909 for their work in colour photography. Auguste was also much involved in biological science and, having founded the Clinique Auguste Lumière, spent many of his later years working in the physiological laboratory.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    Guy Borgé, 1980, Prestige de la photographie, Nos. 8, 9 and 10, Paris. Brian Coe, 1978, Colour Photography: The First Hundred Years, London ——1981, The History of Movie Photography, London.
    Jacques Deslandes, 1966, Histoire comparée du cinéma, Vol. I, Paris. Gert Koshofer, 1981, Farbfotografie, Vol. I, Munich.
    BC

    Biographical history of technology > Lumière, Auguste

  • 48 Murdock (Murdoch), William

    [br]
    b. 21 August 1754 Cumnock, Ayrshire, Scotland
    d. 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 Distinctions
    Royal Society Rumford Gold Medal 1808.
    Further Reading
    S.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.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Murdock (Murdoch), William

  • 49 Brennan, Louis

    [br]
    b. 28 January 1852 Castlebar, Ireland
    d. 17 January 1932 Montreux, Switzerland
    [br]
    Irish inventor of the Brennan dirigible torpedo, and of a gyroscopically balanced monorail system.
    [br]
    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.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Companion of the Bath 1892.
    Bibliography
    1878, British patent no. 3359 (torpedo) 1903, British patent no. 27212 (stability mechanisms).
    Further Reading
    R.E.Wilkes, 1973, Louis Brennan CB, 2 parts, Gillingham (Kent) Public Library. J.R.Day and B.C.Wilson, 1957, Unusual Railways, London: F.Muller.
    PJGR

    Biographical history of technology > Brennan, Louis

  • 50 Brindley, James

    SUBJECT AREA: Canals
    [br]
    b. 1716 Tunstead, Derbyshire, England
    d. 27 September 1772 Turnhurst, Staffordshire, England
    [br]
    English canal engineer.
    [br]
    Born in a remote area and with no material advantages, Brindley followed casual rural labouring occupations until 1733, when he became apprenticed to Abraham Bennett of Macclesfield, a wheelwright and millwright. Though lacking basic education in reading and writing, he demonstrated his ability, partly through his photographic memory, to solve practical problems. This established his reputation, and after Bennett's death in 1742 he set up his own business at Leek as a millwright. His skill led to an invitation to solve the problem of mine drainage at Wet Earth Colliery, Clifton, near Manchester. He tunnelled 600 ft (183 m) through rock to provide a leat for driving a water-powered pump.
    Following work done on a pump on Earl Gower's estate at Trentham, Brindley's name was suggested as the engineer for the proposed canal for which the Duke of Bridge water (Francis Egerton) had obtained an Act in 1759. The Earl and the Duke were brothers-in-law, and the agents for the two estates were, in turn, the Gilbert brothers. The canal, later known as the Bridgewater Canal, was to be constructed to carry coal from the Duke's mines at Worsley into Manchester. Brindley advised on the details of its construction and recommended that it be carried across the river Irwell at Barton by means of an aqueduct. His proposals were accepted, and under his supervision the canal was constructed on a single level and opened in 1761. Brindley had also surveyed for Earl Gower a canal from the Potteries to Liverpool to carry pottery for export, and the signal success of the Bridgewater Canal ensured that the Trent and Mersey Canal would also be built. These undertakings were the start of Brindley's career as a canal engineer, and it was largely from his concepts that the canal system of the Midlands developed, following the natural contours rather than making cuttings and constructing large embankments. His canals are thus winding navigations unlike the later straight waterways, which were much easier to traverse. He also adopted the 7 ft (2.13 m) wide lock as a ruling dimension for all engineering features. For cheapness, he formed his canal tunnels without a towpath, which led to the notorious practice of legging the boats through the tunnels.
    Brindley surveyed a large number of projects and such was his reputation that virtually every proposal was submitted to him for his opinion. Included among these projects were the Staffordshire and Worcestershire, the Rochdale, the Birmingham network, the Droitwich, the Coventry and the Oxford canals. Although he was nominally in charge of each contract, much of the work was carried out by his assistants while he rushed from one undertaking to another to ensure that his orders were being carried out. He was nearly 50 when he married Anne Henshall, whose brother was also a canal engineer. His fees and salaries had made him very wealthy. He died in 1772 from a chill sustained when carrying out a survey of the Caldon Canal.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    A.G.Banks and R.B.Schofield, 1968, Brindley at Wet Earth Colliery: An Engineering Study, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.
    S.E.Buckley, 1948, James Brindley, London: Harrap.
    JHB

    Biographical history of technology > Brindley, James

  • 51 Davidson, Robert

    [br]
    b. 18 April 1804 Aberdeen, Scotland
    d. 16 November 1894 Aberdeen, Scotland
    [br]
    Scottish chemist, pioneer of electric power and builder of the first electric railway locomotives.
    [br]
    Davidson, son of an Aberdeen merchant, attended Marischal College, Aberdeen, between 1819 and 1822: his studies included mathematics, mechanics and chemistry. He subsequently joined his father's grocery business, which from time to time received enquiries for yeast: to meet these, Davidson began to manufacture yeast for sale and from that start built up a successful chemical manufacturing business with the emphasis on yeast and dyes. About 1837 he started to experiment first with electric batteries and then with motors. He invented a form of electromagnetic engine in which soft iron bars arranged on the periphery of a wooden cylinder, parallel to its axis, around which the cylinder could rotate, were attracted by fixed electromagnets. These were energized in turn by current controlled by a simple commutaring device. Electric current was produced by his batteries. His activities were brought to the attention of Michael Faraday and to the scientific world in general by a letter from Professor Forbes of King's College, Aberdeen. Davidson declined to patent his inventions, believing that all should be able freely to draw advantage from them, and in order to afford an opportunity for all interested parties to inspect them an exhibition was held at 36 Union Street, Aberdeen, in October 1840 to demonstrate his "apparatus actuated by electro-magnetic power". It included: a model locomotive carriage, large enough to carry two people, that ran on a railway; a turning lathe with tools for visitors to use; and a small printing machine. In the spring of 1842 he put on a similar exhibition in Edinburgh, this time including a sawmill. Davidson sought support from railway companies for further experiments and the construction of an electromagnetic locomotive; the Edinburgh exhibition successfully attracted the attention of the proprietors of the Edinburgh 585\& Glasgow Railway (E \& GR), whose line had been opened in February 1842. Davidson built a full-size locomotive incorporating his principle, apparently at the expense of the railway company. The locomotive weighed 7 tons: each of its two axles carried a cylinder upon which were fastened three iron bars, and four electromagnets were arranged in pairs on each side of the cylinders. The motors he used were reluctance motors, the power source being zinc-iron batteries. It was named Galvani and was demonstrated on the E \& GR that autumn, when it achieved a speed of 4 mph (6.4 km/h) while hauling a load of 6 tons over a distance of 1 1/2 miles (2.4 km); it was the first electric locomotive. Nevertheless, further support from the railway company was not forthcoming, although to some railway workers the locomotive seems to have appeared promising enough: they destroyed it in Luddite reaction. Davidson staged a further exhibition in London in 1843 without result and then, the cost of battery chemicals being high, ceased further experiments of this type. He survived long enough to see the electric railway become truly practicable in the 1880s.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1840, letter, Mechanics Magazine, 33:53–5 (comparing his machine with that of William Hannis Taylor (2 November 1839, British patent no. 8,255)).
    Further Reading
    1891, Electrical World, 17:454.
    J.H.R.Body, 1935, "A note on electro-magnetic engines", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 14:104 (describes Davidson's locomotive).
    F.J.G.Haut, 1956, "The early history of the electric locomotive", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 27 (describes Davidson's locomotive).
    A.F.Anderson, 1974, "Unusual electric machines", Electronics \& Power 14 (November) (biographical information).
    —1975, "Robert Davidson. Father of the electric locomotive", Proceedings of the Meeting on the History of Electrical Engineering Institution of Electrical Engineers, 8/1–8/17 (the most comprehensive account of Davidson's work).
    A.C.Davidson, 1976, "Ingenious Aberdonian", Scots Magazine (January) (details of his life).
    PJGR / GW

    Biographical history of technology > Davidson, Robert

  • 52 Ilgner, Karl

    SUBJECT AREA: Electricity
    [br]
    b. 27 July 1862 Neisse, Upper Silesia (now Nysa, Poland)
    d. 18 January 1921 Berthelsdorf, Silesia
    [br]
    German electrical engineer, inventor of a transformer for electromotors.
    [br]
    Ilgner graduated from the Gewerbeakademie (the forerunner of the Technical University) in Berlin. As the representative of an electric manufacturing company in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) from 1897, he was confronted with the fact that there were no appropriate drives for hoisting-engines or rolling-plants in steelworks. Two problems prevented the use of high-capacity electric motors in the mining as well as in the iron and steel industry: the reactions of the motors on the circuit at the peak point of stress concentration; and the complicated handling of the control system which raised the risks regarding safety. Having previously been head of the department of electrical power transmission in Hannover, he was concerned with the development of low-speed direct-current motors powered by gas engines.
    It was Harry Ward Leonard's switchgear for direct-current motors (USA, 1891) that permitted sudden and exact changes in the speed and direction of rotation without causing power loss, as demonstrated in the driving of a rolling sidewalk at the Paris World Fair of 1900. Ilgner connected this switchgear to a large and heavy flywheel which accumulated the kinetic energy from the circuit in order to compensate shock loads. With this combination, electric motors did not need special circuits, which were still weak, because they were working continuously and were regulated individually, so that they could be used for driving hoisting-engines in mines, rolling-plants in steelworks or machinery for producing tools and paper. Ilgner thus made a notable advance in the general progress of electrification.
    His transformer for hoisting-engines was patented in 1901 and was commercially used inter alia by Siemens \& Halske of Berlin. Their first electrical hoisting-engine for the Zollern II/IV mine in Dortmund gained international reputation at the Düsseldorf exhibition of 1902, and is still preserved in situ in the original machine hall of the mine, which is now a national monument in Germany. Ilgner thereafter worked with several companies to pursue his conception, became a consulting engineer in Vienna and Breslau and had a government post after the First World War in Brussels and Berlin until he retired for health reasons in 1919.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1901, DRP no. 138, 387 1903, "Der elektrische Antrieb von Reversier-Walzenstraßen", Stahl und Eisen 23:769– 71.
    Further Reading
    W.Kroker, "Karl Ilgner", Neue Deutsche Biographie, Vol. X, pp. 134–5. W.Philippi, 1924, Elektrizität im Bergbau, Leipzig (a general account).
    K.Warmbold, 1925, "Der Ilgner-Umformer in Förderanlagen", Kohle und Erz 22:1031–36 (a detailed description).
    WK

    Biographical history of technology > Ilgner, Karl

  • 53 Artificial Intelligence

       In my opinion, none of [these programs] does even remote justice to the complexity of human mental processes. Unlike men, "artificially intelligent" programs tend to be single minded, undistractable, and unemotional. (Neisser, 1967, p. 9)
       Future progress in [artificial intelligence] will depend on the development of both practical and theoretical knowledge.... As regards theoretical knowledge, some have sought a unified theory of artificial intelligence. My view is that artificial intelligence is (or soon will be) an engineering discipline since its primary goal is to build things. (Nilsson, 1971, pp. vii-viii)
       Most workers in AI [artificial intelligence] research and in related fields confess to a pronounced feeling of disappointment in what has been achieved in the last 25 years. Workers entered the field around 1950, and even around 1960, with high hopes that are very far from being realized in 1972. In no part of the field have the discoveries made so far produced the major impact that was then promised.... In the meantime, claims and predictions regarding the potential results of AI research had been publicized which went even farther than the expectations of the majority of workers in the field, whose embarrassments have been added to by the lamentable failure of such inflated predictions....
       When able and respected scientists write in letters to the present author that AI, the major goal of computing science, represents "another step in the general process of evolution"; that possibilities in the 1980s include an all-purpose intelligence on a human-scale knowledge base; that awe-inspiring possibilities suggest themselves based on machine intelligence exceeding human intelligence by the year 2000 [one has the right to be skeptical]. (Lighthill, 1972, p. 17)
       4) Just as Astronomy Succeeded Astrology, the Discovery of Intellectual Processes in Machines Should Lead to a Science, Eventually
       Just as astronomy succeeded astrology, following Kepler's discovery of planetary regularities, the discoveries of these many principles in empirical explorations on intellectual processes in machines should lead to a science, eventually. (Minsky & Papert, 1973, p. 11)
       Many problems arise in experiments on machine intelligence because things obvious to any person are not represented in any program. One can pull with a string, but one cannot push with one.... Simple facts like these caused serious problems when Charniak attempted to extend Bobrow's "Student" program to more realistic applications, and they have not been faced up to until now. (Minsky & Papert, 1973, p. 77)
       What do we mean by [a symbolic] "description"? We do not mean to suggest that our descriptions must be made of strings of ordinary language words (although they might be). The simplest kind of description is a structure in which some features of a situation are represented by single ("primitive") symbols, and relations between those features are represented by other symbols-or by other features of the way the description is put together. (Minsky & Papert, 1973, p. 11)
       [AI is] the use of computer programs and programming techniques to cast light on the principles of intelligence in general and human thought in particular. (Boden, 1977, p. 5)
       The word you look for and hardly ever see in the early AI literature is the word knowledge. They didn't believe you have to know anything, you could always rework it all.... In fact 1967 is the turning point in my mind when there was enough feeling that the old ideas of general principles had to go.... I came up with an argument for what I called the primacy of expertise, and at the time I called the other guys the generalists. (Moses, quoted in McCorduck, 1979, pp. 228-229)
       9) Artificial Intelligence Is Psychology in a Particularly Pure and Abstract Form
       The basic idea of cognitive science is that intelligent beings are semantic engines-in other words, automatic formal systems with interpretations under which they consistently make sense. We can now see why this includes psychology and artificial intelligence on a more or less equal footing: people and intelligent computers (if and when there are any) turn out to be merely different manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon. Moreover, with universal hardware, any semantic engine can in principle be formally imitated by a computer if only the right program can be found. And that will guarantee semantic imitation as well, since (given the appropriate formal behavior) the semantics is "taking care of itself" anyway. Thus we also see why, from this perspective, artificial intelligence can be regarded as psychology in a particularly pure and abstract form. The same fundamental structures are under investigation, but in AI, all the relevant parameters are under direct experimental control (in the programming), without any messy physiology or ethics to get in the way. (Haugeland, 1981b, p. 31)
       There are many different kinds of reasoning one might imagine:
        Formal reasoning involves the syntactic manipulation of data structures to deduce new ones following prespecified rules of inference. Mathematical logic is the archetypical formal representation. Procedural reasoning uses simulation to answer questions and solve problems. When we use a program to answer What is the sum of 3 and 4? it uses, or "runs," a procedural model of arithmetic. Reasoning by analogy seems to be a very natural mode of thought for humans but, so far, difficult to accomplish in AI programs. The idea is that when you ask the question Can robins fly? the system might reason that "robins are like sparrows, and I know that sparrows can fly, so robins probably can fly."
        Generalization and abstraction are also natural reasoning process for humans that are difficult to pin down well enough to implement in a program. If one knows that Robins have wings, that Sparrows have wings, and that Blue jays have wings, eventually one will believe that All birds have wings. This capability may be at the core of most human learning, but it has not yet become a useful technique in AI.... Meta- level reasoning is demonstrated by the way one answers the question What is Paul Newman's telephone number? You might reason that "if I knew Paul Newman's number, I would know that I knew it, because it is a notable fact." This involves using "knowledge about what you know," in particular, about the extent of your knowledge and about the importance of certain facts. Recent research in psychology and AI indicates that meta-level reasoning may play a central role in human cognitive processing. (Barr & Feigenbaum, 1981, pp. 146-147)
       Suffice it to say that programs already exist that can do things-or, at the very least, appear to be beginning to do things-which ill-informed critics have asserted a priori to be impossible. Examples include: perceiving in a holistic as opposed to an atomistic way; using language creatively; translating sensibly from one language to another by way of a language-neutral semantic representation; planning acts in a broad and sketchy fashion, the details being decided only in execution; distinguishing between different species of emotional reaction according to the psychological context of the subject. (Boden, 1981, p. 33)
       Can the synthesis of Man and Machine ever be stable, or will the purely organic component become such a hindrance that it has to be discarded? If this eventually happens-and I have... good reasons for thinking that it must-we have nothing to regret and certainly nothing to fear. (Clarke, 1984, p. 243)
       The thesis of GOFAI... is not that the processes underlying intelligence can be described symbolically... but that they are symbolic. (Haugeland, 1985, p. 113)
        14) Artificial Intelligence Provides a Useful Approach to Psychological and Psychiatric Theory Formation
       It is all very well formulating psychological and psychiatric theories verbally but, when using natural language (even technical jargon), it is difficult to recognise when a theory is complete; oversights are all too easily made, gaps too readily left. This is a point which is generally recognised to be true and it is for precisely this reason that the behavioural sciences attempt to follow the natural sciences in using "classical" mathematics as a more rigorous descriptive language. However, it is an unfortunate fact that, with a few notable exceptions, there has been a marked lack of success in this application. It is my belief that a different approach-a different mathematics-is needed, and that AI provides just this approach. (Hand, quoted in Hand, 1985, pp. 6-7)
       We might distinguish among four kinds of AI.
       Research of this kind involves building and programming computers to perform tasks which, to paraphrase Marvin Minsky, would require intelligence if they were done by us. Researchers in nonpsychological AI make no claims whatsoever about the psychological realism of their programs or the devices they build, that is, about whether or not computers perform tasks as humans do.
       Research here is guided by the view that the computer is a useful tool in the study of mind. In particular, we can write computer programs or build devices that simulate alleged psychological processes in humans and then test our predictions about how the alleged processes work. We can weave these programs and devices together with other programs and devices that simulate different alleged mental processes and thereby test the degree to which the AI system as a whole simulates human mentality. According to weak psychological AI, working with computer models is a way of refining and testing hypotheses about processes that are allegedly realized in human minds.
    ... According to this view, our minds are computers and therefore can be duplicated by other computers. Sherry Turkle writes that the "real ambition is of mythic proportions, making a general purpose intelligence, a mind." (Turkle, 1984, p. 240) The authors of a major text announce that "the ultimate goal of AI research is to build a person or, more humbly, an animal." (Charniak & McDermott, 1985, p. 7)
       Research in this field, like strong psychological AI, takes seriously the functionalist view that mentality can be realized in many different types of physical devices. Suprapsychological AI, however, accuses strong psychological AI of being chauvinisticof being only interested in human intelligence! Suprapsychological AI claims to be interested in all the conceivable ways intelligence can be realized. (Flanagan, 1991, pp. 241-242)
        16) Determination of Relevance of Rules in Particular Contexts
       Even if the [rules] were stored in a context-free form the computer still couldn't use them. To do that the computer requires rules enabling it to draw on just those [ rules] which are relevant in each particular context. Determination of relevance will have to be based on further facts and rules, but the question will again arise as to which facts and rules are relevant for making each particular determination. One could always invoke further facts and rules to answer this question, but of course these must be only the relevant ones. And so it goes. It seems that AI workers will never be able to get started here unless they can settle the problem of relevance beforehand by cataloguing types of context and listing just those facts which are relevant in each. (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986, p. 80)
       Perhaps the single most important idea to artificial intelligence is that there is no fundamental difference between form and content, that meaning can be captured in a set of symbols such as a semantic net. (G. Johnson, 1986, p. 250)
        18) The Assumption That the Mind Is a Formal System
       Artificial intelligence is based on the assumption that the mind can be described as some kind of formal system manipulating symbols that stand for things in the world. Thus it doesn't matter what the brain is made of, or what it uses for tokens in the great game of thinking. Using an equivalent set of tokens and rules, we can do thinking with a digital computer, just as we can play chess using cups, salt and pepper shakers, knives, forks, and spoons. Using the right software, one system (the mind) can be mapped into the other (the computer). (G. Johnson, 1986, p. 250)
        19) A Statement of the Primary and Secondary Purposes of Artificial Intelligence
       The primary goal of Artificial Intelligence is to make machines smarter.
       The secondary goals of Artificial Intelligence are to understand what intelligence is (the Nobel laureate purpose) and to make machines more useful (the entrepreneurial purpose). (Winston, 1987, p. 1)
       The theoretical ideas of older branches of engineering are captured in the language of mathematics. We contend that mathematical logic provides the basis for theory in AI. Although many computer scientists already count logic as fundamental to computer science in general, we put forward an even stronger form of the logic-is-important argument....
       AI deals mainly with the problem of representing and using declarative (as opposed to procedural) knowledge. Declarative knowledge is the kind that is expressed as sentences, and AI needs a language in which to state these sentences. Because the languages in which this knowledge usually is originally captured (natural languages such as English) are not suitable for computer representations, some other language with the appropriate properties must be used. It turns out, we think, that the appropriate properties include at least those that have been uppermost in the minds of logicians in their development of logical languages such as the predicate calculus. Thus, we think that any language for expressing knowledge in AI systems must be at least as expressive as the first-order predicate calculus. (Genesereth & Nilsson, 1987, p. viii)
        21) Perceptual Structures Can Be Represented as Lists of Elementary Propositions
       In artificial intelligence studies, perceptual structures are represented as assemblages of description lists, the elementary components of which are propositions asserting that certain relations hold among elements. (Chase & Simon, 1988, p. 490)
       Artificial intelligence (AI) is sometimes defined as the study of how to build and/or program computers to enable them to do the sorts of things that minds can do. Some of these things are commonly regarded as requiring intelligence: offering a medical diagnosis and/or prescription, giving legal or scientific advice, proving theorems in logic or mathematics. Others are not, because they can be done by all normal adults irrespective of educational background (and sometimes by non-human animals too), and typically involve no conscious control: seeing things in sunlight and shadows, finding a path through cluttered terrain, fitting pegs into holes, speaking one's own native tongue, and using one's common sense. Because it covers AI research dealing with both these classes of mental capacity, this definition is preferable to one describing AI as making computers do "things that would require intelligence if done by people." However, it presupposes that computers could do what minds can do, that they might really diagnose, advise, infer, and understand. One could avoid this problematic assumption (and also side-step questions about whether computers do things in the same way as we do) by defining AI instead as "the development of computers whose observable performance has features which in humans we would attribute to mental processes." This bland characterization would be acceptable to some AI workers, especially amongst those focusing on the production of technological tools for commercial purposes. But many others would favour a more controversial definition, seeing AI as the science of intelligence in general-or, more accurately, as the intellectual core of cognitive science. As such, its goal is to provide a systematic theory that can explain (and perhaps enable us to replicate) both the general categories of intentionality and the diverse psychological capacities grounded in them. (Boden, 1990b, pp. 1-2)
       Because the ability to store data somewhat corresponds to what we call memory in human beings, and because the ability to follow logical procedures somewhat corresponds to what we call reasoning in human beings, many members of the cult have concluded that what computers do somewhat corresponds to what we call thinking. It is no great difficulty to persuade the general public of that conclusion since computers process data very fast in small spaces well below the level of visibility; they do not look like other machines when they are at work. They seem to be running along as smoothly and silently as the brain does when it remembers and reasons and thinks. On the other hand, those who design and build computers know exactly how the machines are working down in the hidden depths of their semiconductors. Computers can be taken apart, scrutinized, and put back together. Their activities can be tracked, analyzed, measured, and thus clearly understood-which is far from possible with the brain. This gives rise to the tempting assumption on the part of the builders and designers that computers can tell us something about brains, indeed, that the computer can serve as a model of the mind, which then comes to be seen as some manner of information processing machine, and possibly not as good at the job as the machine. (Roszak, 1994, pp. xiv-xv)
       The inner workings of the human mind are far more intricate than the most complicated systems of modern technology. Researchers in the field of artificial intelligence have been attempting to develop programs that will enable computers to display intelligent behavior. Although this field has been an active one for more than thirty-five years and has had many notable successes, AI researchers still do not know how to create a program that matches human intelligence. No existing program can recall facts, solve problems, reason, learn, and process language with human facility. This lack of success has occurred not because computers are inferior to human brains but rather because we do not yet know in sufficient detail how intelligence is organized in the brain. (Anderson, 1995, p. 2)

    Historical dictionary of quotations in cognitive science > Artificial Intelligence

  • 54 sede

    f.
    1 headquarters.
    sede social head office
    2 see (religion).
    la Santa sede the Holy See
    3 seat, home, see.
    pres.subj.
    3rd person singular (él/ella/ello) Present Subjunctive of Spanish verb: sedar.
    * * *
    1 (oficina central) headquarters, central office
    \
    la Santa Sede the Holy See
    sede social head office
    * * *
    noun f.
    1) seat
    2) see
    * * *
    SF
    1) (=lugar) [de gobierno] seat; [de organización] headquarters pl, central office; (Dep) venue

    sede social — head office, central office

    2) (Rel) see
    * * *
    a) ( del gobierno) seat
    b) (Relig) see
    c) ( de organización internacional) headquarters (sing or pl); ( de compañía) headquarters (sing or pl), head office
    d) (de congreso, feria) venue
    * * *
    = headquarters (HQ -abrev.-), quarters, seat, site, main site.
    Ex. These libraries located in villages and hamlets were, and still are, organized from a county headquarters (HQ), normally sited in their nearest county town.
    Ex. Soon, however, the collection outgrew its meagre quarters and a full-fledged library occupying a 40x60 foot area came into being.
    Ex. The Parry Report has demonstrated beyond all doubt how critical to the functioning of a university, both as a seat of learning and a centre of research, an effective library is.
    Ex. These sites have been operating CARTO-NET in close collaboration with one another.
    Ex. Many higher education students now study off-campus and may rarely if ever visit their university's main site.
    ----
    * con sede en = headquartered (at/in), based in.
    * con sede en América = American-based.
    * con sede en el Reino Unido = UK-based.
    * con sede en Europa = European-based.
    * con sede en Melbourne = Melbourne-based.
    * con varias sedes = multi-site [multisite].
    * en varias sedes = multi-site [multisite].
    * Santa Sede = Holy See.
    * sede central = main site.
    * sede del congreso = conference venue.
    * ser sede de = play + host to.
    * tener como sede = headquarter (at/in).
    * tener sede en = headquarter (at/in).
    * * *
    a) ( del gobierno) seat
    b) (Relig) see
    c) ( de organización internacional) headquarters (sing or pl); ( de compañía) headquarters (sing or pl), head office
    d) (de congreso, feria) venue
    * * *
    = headquarters (HQ -abrev.-), quarters, seat, site, main site.

    Ex: These libraries located in villages and hamlets were, and still are, organized from a county headquarters (HQ), normally sited in their nearest county town.

    Ex: Soon, however, the collection outgrew its meagre quarters and a full-fledged library occupying a 40x60 foot area came into being.
    Ex: The Parry Report has demonstrated beyond all doubt how critical to the functioning of a university, both as a seat of learning and a centre of research, an effective library is.
    Ex: These sites have been operating CARTO-NET in close collaboration with one another.
    Ex: Many higher education students now study off-campus and may rarely if ever visit their university's main site.
    * con sede en = headquartered (at/in), based in.
    * con sede en América = American-based.
    * con sede en el Reino Unido = UK-based.
    * con sede en Europa = European-based.
    * con sede en Melbourne = Melbourne-based.
    * con varias sedes = multi-site [multisite].
    * en varias sedes = multi-site [multisite].
    * Santa Sede = Holy See.
    * sede central = main site.
    * sede del congreso = conference venue.
    * ser sede de = play + host to.
    * tener como sede = headquarter (at/in).
    * tener sede en = headquarter (at/in).

    * * *
    A
    2 ( Relig) see santo1 (↑ santo (1))
    3 (de una organización internacional) headquarters ( sing o pl); (de una compañía) headquarters ( sing o pl), head office
    4 (de un congreso, una feria) venue
    México fue la sede de los Juegos Olímpicos en 1968 Mexico was the venue for o Mexico hosted the Olympic Games in 1968
    Compuesto:
    (de una empresa) headquarters ( sing o pl), head office; (de un club) headquarters ( sing o pl)
    B ( como adj inv) ‹país/ciudad› host ( before n)
    ciudades sede del campeonato host cities for the championship, cities hosting ( o which have hosted etc) the championship
    * * *

     

    Del verbo sedar: ( conjugate sedar)

    sedé es:

    1ª persona singular (yo) pretérito indicativo

    sede es:

    1ª persona singular (yo) presente subjuntivo

    3ª persona singular (él/ella/usted) presente subjuntivo

    3ª persona singular (él/ella/usted) imperativo

    Multiple Entries:
    sedar    
    sede
    sede sustantivo femenino

    b) (Relig) see


    ( de compañía) headquarters ( sing or pl), head office
    d) (de congreso, feria) venue;


    sede sustantivo femenino
    1 (de una organización, negocio) headquarters, head office
    2 (de un acontecimiento) venue: Lisboa es la sede de la exposición universal, Lisbon is the venue for the World Fair
    3 (de gobierno) seat
    4 Rel sede episcopal, see
    la Santa Sede, the Holy See
    ' sede' also found in these entries:
    Spanish:
    jefatura
    - reclamar
    - Santa Sede
    - secretaría
    - arzobispal
    - embajada
    - sala
    English:
    base
    - clubhouse
    - headquarters
    - HQ
    - office
    - seat
    - see
    - host
    - venue
    * * *
    sede nf
    1. [de organización, empresa] headquarters;
    [de Gobierno] seat; [de congreso, Juegos Olímpicos] venue (de for);
    el país sede del próximo mundial de fútbol the country hosting the next World Cup
    sede social [oficina principal] headquarters, head office; [de club] headquarters
    2. Rel see
    * * *
    f
    1 de organización headquarters sg o pl ;
    la Santa Sede the Holy See
    2 de acontecimiento site
    * * *
    sede nf
    1) : seat, headquarters
    2) : venue, site
    3)
    la Santa Sede : the Holy See
    * * *
    sede n
    1. (de empresa) head office
    2. (de organización) headquarters

    Spanish-English dictionary > sede

  • 55 Holden, Sir Isaac

    SUBJECT AREA: Textiles
    [br]
    b. 7 May 1807 Hurlet, between Paisley and Glasgow, Scotland
    d. 13 August 1897
    [br]
    British developer of the wool-combing machine.
    [br]
    Isaac Holden's father, who had the same name, had been a farmer and lead miner at Alston in Cumbria before moving to work in a coal-mine near Glasgow. After a short period at Kilbarchan grammar school, the younger Isaac was engaged first as a drawboy to two weavers and then, after the family had moved to Johnstone, Scotland, worked in a cotton-spinning mill while attending night school to improve his education. He was able to learn Latin and bookkeeping, but when he was about 15 he was apprenticed to an uncle as a shawl-weaver. This proved to be too much for his strength so he returned to scholastic studies and became Assistant to an able teacher, John Kennedy, who lectured on physics, chemistry and history, which he also taught to his colleague. The elder Isaac died in 1826 and the younger had to provide for his mother and younger brother, but in 1828, at the age of 21, he moved to a teaching post in Leeds. He filled similar positions in Huddersfield and Reading, where in October 1829 he invented and demonstrated the lucifer match but did not seek to exploit it. In 1830 he returned because of ill health to his mother in Scotland, where he began to teach again. However, he was recommended as a bookkeeper to William Townend, member of the firm of Townend Brothers, Cullingworth, near Bingley, Yorkshire. Holden moved there in November 1830 and was soon involved in running the mill, eventually becoming a partner.
    In 1833 Holden urged Messrs Townend to introduce seven wool-combing machines of Collier's designs, but they were found to be very imperfect and brought only trouble and loss. In 1836 Holden began experimenting on the machines until they showed reasonable success. He decided to concentrate entirely on developing the combing machine and in 1846 moved to Bradford to form an alliance with Samuel Lister. A joint patent in 1847 covered improvements to the Collier combing machine. The "square motion" imitated the action of the hand-comber more closely and was patented in 1856. Five more patents followed in 1857 and others from 1858 to 1862. Holden recommended that the machines should be introduced into France, where they would be more valuable for the merino trade. This venture was begun in 1848 in the joint partnership of Lister \& Holden, with equal shares of profits. Holden established a mill at Saint-Denis, first with Donisthorpe machines and then with his own "square motion" type. Other mills were founded at Rheims and at Croix, near Roubaix. In 1858 Lister decided to retire from the French concerns and sold his share to Holden. Soon after this, Holden decided to remodel all their machinery for washing and carding the gill machines as well as perfecting the square comb. Four years of excessive application followed, during which time £20,000 was spent in experiments in a small mill at Bradford. The result fully justified the expenditure and the Alston Works was built in Bradford.
    Holden was a Liberal and from 1865 to 1868 he represented Knaresborough in Parliament. Later he became the Member of Parliament for the Northern Division of the Riding, Yorkshire, and then for the town of Keighley after the constituencies had been altered. He was liberal in his support of religious, charitable and political objectives. His house at Oakworth, near Keighley, must have been one of the earliest to have been lit by electricity.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Baronet 1893.
    Bibliography
    1847, with Samuel Lister, British patent no. 11,896 (improved Collier combing machine). 1856. British patent no. 1,058 ("square motion" combing machine).
    1857. British patent no. 278 1857, British patent no. 279 1857, British patent no. 280 1857, British patent no. 281 1857, British patent no. 3,177 1858, British patent no. 597 1859, British patent no. 52 1860, British patent no. 810 1862, British patent no. 1,890 1862, British patent no. 3,394
    Further Reading
    J.Hogg (ed.), c.1888, Fortunes Made in Business, London (provides an account of Holden's life).
    Obituary, 1897, Engineer 84.
    Obituary, 1897, Engineering 64.
    E.M.Sigsworth, 1973, "Sir Isaac Holden, Bt: the first comber in Europe", in N.B.Harte and K.G.Ponting (eds), Textile History and Economic History, Essays in Honour of
    Miss Julia de Lacy Mann, Manchester.
    W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (provides a good explanation of the square motion combing machine).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Holden, Sir Isaac

  • 56 Blumlein, Alan Dower

    [br]
    b. 29 June 1903 Hampstead, London, England
    d. 7 June 1942
    [br]
    English electronics engineer, developer of telephone equipment, highly linear electromechanical recording and reproduction equipment, stereo techniques, video and radar technology.
    [br]
    He was a very bright scholar and received a BSc in electrical technology from City and Guilds College in 1923. He joined International Western Electric (later to become Standard Telephone and Cables) in 1924 after a period as an instructor/demonstrator at City and Guilds. He was instrumental in the design of telephone measuring equipment and in international committee work for standards for long-distance telephony.
    From 1929 Blumlein was employed by the Columbia Graphophone Company to develop an electric recording cutterhead that would be independent of Western Electric's patents for the system developed by Maxfield and Harrison. He attacked the problems in a most systematic fashion, and within a year he had developed a moving-coil cutterhead that was much more linear than the iron-cored systems known at the time. Eventually Blumlein designed a complete line of recording equipment, from microphone and through-power amplifiers. The design was used by Columbia; after the merger with the Gramophone Company in 1931 to form Electrical and Musical Industries Ltd (later known as EMI) it became the company standard, certainly for coarse-groove records, until c.1950.
    Blumlein became interested in stereophony (binaural sound), and developed and demonstrated a complete line of equipment, from correctly placed microphones via two-channel records and stereo pick-ups to correctly placed loudspeakers. The advent of silent surfaces of vinyl records made this approach commercial from the late 1950s. His approach was independent and quite different from that of A.C. Keller.
    His extreme facility for creating innovative solutions to electronic problems was used in EMI's development from 1934 to 1938 of the electronic television system, which became the BBC standard of 405 lines after the Second World War, when television broadcasting again became possible. Independent of official requirements, EMI developed a 60 MHz radar system and Blumlein was involved in the development of a centimetric radar and display system. It was during testing of this aircraft mounted equipment that he was killed in a crash.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    Blumlein was inventor or co-inventor of well over 120 patents, a complete list of which is to be found in Burns (1992; see below). The major sound-recording achievements are documented by British patent nos. 350,954, 350,998, 363,627 (highly linear cutterhead, 1930) and 394,325 (reads like a textbook on stereo technology, 1931).
    Further Reading
    The definitive biography of Blumlein has not yet been written; the material seems to have been collected, but is not yet available. However, R.W.Burns, 1992, "A.D.Blumlein, engineer extraordinary", Engineering Science and Education Journal (February): 19– 33 is a thorough account. Also B.J.Benzimra, 1967, "A.D. Blumlein: an electronics genius", Electronics \& Power (June): 218–24 provides an interesting summary.
    GB-N

    Biographical history of technology > Blumlein, Alan Dower

  • 57 Guericke, Otto von

    [br]
    b. 20 November 1602 Magdeburg, Saxony, Germany
    d. 11 May 1686 Hamburg, Germany
    [br]
    German engineer and physicist, inventor of the air pump and investigator of the properties of a vacuum.
    [br]
    Guericke was born into a patrician family in Magdeburg. He was educated at the University of Leipzig in 1617–20 and at the University of Helmstedt in 1620. He then spent two years studying law at Jena, and in 1622 went to Leiden to study law, mathematics, engineering and especially fortification. He spent most of his life in politics, for he was elected an alderman of Magdeburg in 1626. After the destruction of Magdeburg in 1631, he worked in Brunswick and Erfurt as an engineer for the Swedish government, and then in 1635 for the Electorate of Saxony. He was Mayor of Magdeburg for thirty years, between 1646 and 1676. He was ennobled in 1666 and retired from public office in 168land went to Hamburg. It was through his attendances at international congresses and at princely courts that he took part in the exchange of scientific ideas.
    From his student days he was concerned with the definition of space and posed three questions: can empty space exist or is space always filled? How can heavenly bodies affect each other across space and how are they moved? Is space, and so also the heavenly bodies, bounded or unbounded? In c. 1647 Guericke made a suction pump for air and tried to exhaust a beer barrel, but he could not stop the leaks. He then tried a copper sphere, which imploded. He developed a series of spectacular demonstrations with his air pump. In 1654 at Rattisbon he used a vertical cylinder with a well-fitting piston connected over pulleys by a rope to fifty men, who could not stop the piston descending when the cylinder was exhausted. More famous were his copper hemispheres which, when exhausted, could not be drawn apart by two teams of eight horses. They were first demonstrated at Magdeburg in 1657 and at the court in Berlin in 1663. Through these experiments he discovered the elasticity of air and began to investigate its density at different heights. He heard of the work of Torricelli in 1653 and by 1660 had succeeded in making barometric forecasts. He published his famous work New Experiments Concerning Empty Space in 1672. Between 1660 and 1663 Guericke constructed a large ball of sulphur that could be rotated on a spindle. He found that, when he pressed his hand on it and it was rotated, it became strongly electrified; he thus unintentionally became the inventor of the first machine to generate static electricity. He attempted to reach a complete physical explanation of the world and the heavens with magnetism as a primary force and evolved an explanation for the rotation of the heavenly bodies.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1672, Experimenta nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de vacuo spatio (New Experiments Concerning Empty Space).
    Further Reading
    F.W.Hoffmann, 1874, Otto von Guericke (a full biography).
    T.I.Williams (ed.), 1969, A Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, London: A. \& C.Black (contains a short account of his life).
    Chambers Concise Dictionary of Scientists, 1989, Cambridge.
    Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. V, New York.
    C.Singer (ed.), 1957, A History of Technology, Vols. III and IV, Oxford University Press (includes references to Guericke's inventions).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Guericke, Otto von

  • 58 Mudge, Thomas

    SUBJECT AREA: Horology
    [br]
    b. 1715 Exeter, England
    d. 14 November 1794 Walworth, England
    [br]
    English clock-and watchmaker who invented the lever escapement that was ultimately used in all mechanical watches.
    [br]
    Thomas Mudge was the son of a clergyman and schoolmaster who, recognizing his son's mechanical aptitude, apprenticed him to the eminent London clock-and watchmaker George Graham. Mudge became free of the Clockmakers' Company in 1738 and set up on his own account after Graham's death in 1751. Around 1755 he formed a partnership with William Dutton, another apprentice of Graham. The firm produced conventional clocks and watches of excellent quality, but Mudge had also established a reputation for making highly innovative individual pieces. The most significant of these was the watch with a detached-lever escapement that he completed in 1770, although the idea had occurred to him as early as 1754. This watch was purchased by George III for Queen Charlotte and is still in the Royal Collection. Shortly afterwards Mudge moved to Plymouth, to devote his time to the perfection of the marine chronometer, leaving the London business in the hands of Dutton. The chronometers he produced were comparable in performance to those of John Harrison, but like them they were too complicated and expensive to be produced in quantity.
    Mudge's patron, Count Bruhl, recognized the potential of the detached-lever escapement, but Mudge was too involved with his marine chronometers to make a watch for him. He did, however, provide Bruhl with a large-scale model of his escapement, from which the Swiss expatriate Josiah Emery was able to make a watch in 1782. Over the next decade Emery made a limited number of similar watches for wealthy clients, and it was the performance of these watches that demonstrated the worth of the escapement. The detached-lever escapement took some time to be adopted universally, but this was facilitated in the nineteenth century by the development of a cheaper form, the pin lever.
    By the end of the century the detached-lever escapement was used in one form or another in practically all mechanical watches and portable clocks. If a watch is to be a good timekeeper the balance must be free to swing with as little interference as possible from the escapement. In this respect the cylinder escapement is an improvement on the verge, although it still exerts a frictional force on the balance. The lever escapement is a further improvement because it detaches itself from the balance after delivering the impulse which keeps it oscillating.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Clockmaker to George III 1776.
    Further Reading
    T.Mudge, Jr, 1799, A Description with Plates of the Time-Keeper Invented by the Late Mr. Thomas Mudge, London (contains a tract written by his father and the text of his letters to Count Bruhl).
    C.Clutton and G.Daniels, 1986, Watches, 4th edn, London (provides further biographical information and a good account of the history of the lever watch).
    R.Good, 1978, Britten's Watch \& Clock Maker's Handbook Dictionary and Guide, 16th edn, London, pp. 190–200 (provides a good technical description of Mudge's lever escapement and its later development).
    DV

    Biographical history of technology > Mudge, Thomas

  • 59 Ohm, Georg Simon

    SUBJECT AREA: Electricity
    [br]
    b. 16 March 1789 Erlangen, near Nuremberg, Germany
    d. 6 July 1854 Munich, Germany
    [br]
    German physicist who laid the foundations of electrical science with his discovery of Ohm's Law.
    [br]
    Given the same first name as his father, Johann, at his baptism, Ohm was generally known by the name of Georg to avoid confusion. While still a child he became interested in science and learned many of his basic skills from his father, a mechanical engineer. After basic education he attended the Gymnasium at Erlangen for a year, then in 1805 he entered the University of Erlangen. Probably for financial reasons, he left after three terms in 1806 and obtained a post as a mathematics tutor at a school in Gottstadt, Switzerland, where he may well have begun to experiment with electrical circuits. In 1811 he returned to Erlangen. He appears to have obtained his doctorate in the same year. After studying physics for a year, he became a tutor at the Studienanstalt (girls' secondary school) at Bamberg in Bavaria. There, in 1817, he wrote a book on the teaching of geometry in schools, as a result of which King Freidrich Wilhelm III of Prussia had him appointed Oberlehrer (Senior Master) in Mathematics and Physics at the Royal Consistory in Cologne. He continued his electrical experiments and in 1826 was given a year's leave of absence to concentrate on this work, which culminated the following year in publication of his "Die galvanische Kette", in which he demonstrated his now-famous Law, that the current in a resistor is proportional to the applied voltage and inversely proportional to the resistance. Because he published only a theoretical treatment of his Law, without including the supporting experimental evidence, his conclusions were widely ignored and ridiculed by the eminent German scientists of his day; bitterly disappointed, he was forced to resign his post at the Consistory. Reduced to comparative poverty he took a position as a mathematics teacher at the Berlin Military School. Fortunately, news of his discovery became more widely known, and in 1833 he was appointed Professor at the Nuremberg Polytechnic School. Two years later he was given the Chair of Higher Mathematics at the University of Erlangen and the position of State Inspector of Scientific Education. Honoured by the Royal Society of London in 1841 and 1842, in 1849 he became Professor of Physics at Munich University, apost he held until his death.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Royal Society Copley Medal 1841. FRS 1842.
    Bibliography
    1817, "Grundlinien zu einer zweckmàssigen Behandlung der Geometric als hohern Bildungsmittels an vorbereitenden Lehranstalt".
    1827, "Die galvanische Kette, mathematische bearbeit".
    Further Reading
    F.E.Terman, 1943, Radio Engineers' Handbook, New York: McGraw-Hill, Section 3 (for circuit theory based on Ohm's Law).
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Ohm, Georg Simon

  • 60 recinto

    m.
    1 enclosure (zona cercada).
    2 enclosure marked off by definite limits, compound, room, enclosed area.
    * * *
    1 grounds plural, precincts plural, area
    \
    recinto comercial shopping centre (US center)
    recinto ferial fairground
    * * *
    noun m.
    * * *
    SM (=cercado) enclosure; (=área) area, place; (=zona delimitada) precincts pl
    * * *

    el público abandonó el recinto — the public left the premises/building

    recinto ferial — ( de muestras) showground, exhibition site; ( de atracciones) fairground

    * * *
    = precinct, enclosure, compound, venue.
    Ex. No echo of so frightening a concept, 'class', ever lingers within the hushed precincts of our libraries.
    Ex. The popular department could be divided into 'interest areas' by book stacks, display units and interior landscaping, so as to assure a sense of identity and enclosure without inhibiting circulation between the areas.
    Ex. It is the best-preserved example of the architectural style of the Joseon Dynasty, as demonstrated by the designation of its compound as a world heritage site by UNESCO = Es el ejemplo mejor conservado del estilo arquitectónico de la Dinastía Joseon, como lo demuestra el hecho de que el edificio y su recinto hayan sido designados por la UNESCO como patrimonio de la humanidad.
    Ex. This article describes the 3 largest international book fairs: in Frankfurt, the children's book fair in Bologna, and the American Booksellers Association annual convention which has a different venue every year.
    ----
    * recinto cerrado = walled garden.
    * recinto ferial = fairground(s).
    * recinto protegido = walled garden.
    * * *

    el público abandonó el recinto — the public left the premises/building

    recinto ferial — ( de muestras) showground, exhibition site; ( de atracciones) fairground

    * * *
    = precinct, enclosure, compound, venue.

    Ex: No echo of so frightening a concept, 'class', ever lingers within the hushed precincts of our libraries.

    Ex: The popular department could be divided into 'interest areas' by book stacks, display units and interior landscaping, so as to assure a sense of identity and enclosure without inhibiting circulation between the areas.
    Ex: It is the best-preserved example of the architectural style of the Joseon Dynasty, as demonstrated by the designation of its compound as a world heritage site by UNESCO = Es el ejemplo mejor conservado del estilo arquitectónico de la Dinastía Joseon, como lo demuestra el hecho de que el edificio y su recinto hayan sido designados por la UNESCO como patrimonio de la humanidad.
    Ex: This article describes the 3 largest international book fairs: in Frankfurt, the children's book fair in Bologna, and the American Booksellers Association annual convention which has a different venue every year.
    * recinto cerrado = walled garden.
    * recinto ferial = fairground(s).
    * recinto protegido = walled garden.

    * * *
    el público abandonó el recinto ordenadamente the public left the premises/building in an orderly fashion
    recinto ferial (de muestras) showground, exhibition site; (de atracciones) fairground
    el recinto diplomático the grounds of the embassy
    un recinto pequeño donde los enterraban a small enclosure where they were buried
    la valla que rodea el recinto de la central the fence that surrounds the power station o that surrounds the grounds of the power station
    * * *

     

    recinto sustantivo masculino
    enclosure;
    el público abandonó el recinto the public left the premises/building;

    recinto ferial ( de muestras) showground, exhibition site;

    ( de atracciones) fairground
    recinto sustantivo masculino precincts
    recinto ferial, fairground
    ' recinto' also found in these entries:
    Spanish:
    cerrada
    - cerrado
    - ferial
    - penetrar
    - portal
    - cámara
    - desalojar
    - espacio
    - estacionamiento
    English:
    compound
    - enclosure
    - fairground
    - precinct
    * * *
    1. [zona cercada] enclosure;
    el recinto amurallado de la ciudad the walled part of the city
    2. [área] place, area;
    [alrededor de edificios] grounds;
    me dan miedo los recintos cerrados I'm frightened of enclosed spaces;
    le prohibieron el acceso a recintos deportivos he was banned from sports grounds;
    el recinto diplomático the embassy grounds
    recinto ferial fairground [of trade fair]
    * * *
    m
    1 premises pl
    2 área grounds pl
    * * *
    1) : enclosure
    2) : site, premises pl
    * * *
    1. (zona) area
    2. (cercado) enclosure

    Spanish-English dictionary > recinto

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