young,+william

(-s, pl. -ir, gen. -ja), m.

1) a bold, valiant, chivalrous man; drengr góðr, a goodhearted, nobleminded man (auðigr at fé ok drengr góðr); ekki þykki mér þú sterkr, en drengr ertu g., but thou art a good fellow; drengir, en eigi dáðleysingjar, gallant men, and no fainthearts; at þú mættir drengrinn af verða sem beztr, that you might get the greatest credit from it; hafa dreng í serk, to have a stout heart in one’s breast;

2) a young unmarried man (drengir heita ungir menn búlausir, meðan þeir afla sér fjár eða orðstírs);

3) attendant (þeir heita konungs drengir, er höfðingjum þjóna);

4) fellow (lætr síðan sverðit ríða á hálsinn á þeim leiða dreng);

5) pole cf. ásdrengr.

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m., pl. ir, gen. drengs, pl. drengir, on Runic stones drengjar; this is a most curious word, and exclusively Scandinavian; it occurs in the A. S. poem Byrnoth, but is there undoubtedly borrowed from the Danes, as this poem is not very old.

1. the earliest form was probably drangr, q. v., a rock or pillar, which sense still remains in Edda (Gl.) and in the compds ás-drengr, stýris-drengr, cp. Ivar Aasen; it also remains in the verb drengja.

2. it then metaphorically came to denote a young unmarried man, a bachelor, A. S. hagestald, N. H. G. hagestolz; drengir heita ungir menn ok búlausir, Edda 107; ungr d., a youth, 623. 22, Post. 656 C. 32, Edda 35; drengr, a youth, Stj. 409; hverrar ættar ertú d., 465; (hence the mod. Dan. sense of a boy); far-d., a sailor.

3. hence came the usual sense, a bold, valiant, worthy man, and in this sense it is most freq. in all periods of the language. Drengr is a standing word in the Swed. and Dan. Runic monuments, góðr drengr, drengr harða góðr, denoting a good, brave, gallant man, a bold and gentle heart; lagði þá hverr fram sitt skip sem d. var ok skap hafði til, Fms. vi. 315; drengir heita vaskir menn ok batnandi, Edda 107; hraustr d., a gallant d., Ld. 50; d. fullr, a bluff, out-spoken man, Ísl. ii. 363; göfuligr d., Bær. 12; d. góðr, noble-minded; auðigr at fé ok d. góðr, Fms. vi. 356; hann var enn bezti d. ok hófsmaðr um allt, Ld. loo; drengr góðr ok öriggr í öllu, Nj. 30; ekki þyki mér þú sterkr, en drengr ertú góðr, thou art not strong, but thou art a good fellow, Lv. 109; drengs dáð, a ‘derring do,’ the deed of a drengr, Fbr. 90 (in a verse): also used of a lady, kvennskörungr mikill ok d. góðr ok nokkut skaphörð, Nj. 30 (of Bergthora); allra kvenna grimmust ok skaphörðust ok ( but) d. góðr þar sem vel skyldi vera, 147 (of Hildigunna): the phrases, lítill d., a small dreng, or d. at verri, denoting a disgraced man, Nj. 68; at kalla þik ekki at verra dreng, to call thee a dreng none the less for that, Ld. 42; drengir en eigi dáðleysingjar, ‘drengs’ and no lubbers, Sturl. iii. 135; drengr and níðingr are opposed, N. G. L. ii. 420: at Hallgerðr yrði þeim mestr drengr, greatest helper, prop, Nj. 76; at þú mættir drengrinn af verða sem beztr, that thou couldst get the greatest credit from it, Gísl. 48: the phrase, hafa dreng í serk, to have a man (i. e. a stout, bold heart) in one’s sark, in one’s breast, Fms. ix. 381: in addressing, góðr d., my dear fellow, Eg. 407: cp. ‘et quod ipsi in posterurn vocarentur Drenges,’ Du Cange (in a letter of William the Conqueror).

COMPDS: drengjamóðir, drengjaval, drengsaðal, drengsbót, drengsbragð.

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Educated at Dumbarton Grammar School, Robert Napier had been destined for the Church but persuaded his father to let him serve an apprenticeship as a blacksmith under him. For a while he worked in Edinburgh, but then in 1815 he commenced business in Glasgow, the city that he served for the rest of his life. Initially his workshop was in Camlachie, but it was moved in 1836 to a riverside factory site at Lancefield in the heart of the City and again in 1841 to the Old Shipyard in the Burgh of Govan (then independent of the City of Glasgow). The business expanded through his preparedness to build steam machinery, beginning in 1823 with the engines for the paddle steamer Leven, still to be seen a few hundred metres from Napier's grave in Dumbarton. His name assured owners of quality, and business expanded after two key orders: one in 1836 for the Honourable East India Company; and the second two years later for the Royal Navy, hitherto the preserve of the Royal Dockyards and of the shipbuilders of south-east England. Napier's shipyard and engine shops, then known as Robert Napier and Sons, were to be awarded sixty Admiralty contracts in his lifetime, with a profound influence on ship and engine procurement for the Navy and on foreign governments, which for the first time placed substantial work in the United Kingdom.

Having had problems with hull subcontractors and also with the installation of machinery in wooden hulls, in 1843 Napier ventured into shipbuilding with the paddle steamer Vanguard, which was built of iron. The following year the Royal Navy took delivery of the iron-hulled Jackall, enabling Napier to secure the contract for the Black Prince, Britain's second ironclad and sister ship to HMS Warrior now preserved at Portsmouth. With so much work in iron Napier instigated studies into metallurgy, and the published work of David Kirkaldy bears witness to his open-handedness in assisting the industry. This service to industry was even more apparent in 1866 when the company laid out the Skelmorlie Measured Mile on the Firth of Clyde for ship testing, a mile still in use by ships of all nations.

The greatest legacy of Robert Napier was his training of young engineers, shipbuilders and naval architects. Almost every major Scottish shipyard, and some English too, was influenced by him and many of his early foremen left to set up rival establishments along the banks of the River Clyde. His close association with Samuel Cunard led to the setting up of the company now known as the Cunard Line. Napier designed and engined the first four ships, subcontracting the hulls of this historic quartet to other shipbuilders on the river. While he contributed only 2 per cent to the equity of the shipping line, they came back to him for many more vessels, including the magnificent paddle ship Persia, of 1855.

It is an old tradition on the Clyde that the smokestacks of ships are made by the enginebuilders. The Cunard Line still uses red funnels with black bands, Napier's trademark, in honour of the engineer who set them going.

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See also: Fairbairn, William; Thomson, Sir William

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Robert Stephenson's father was George Stephenson, who ensured that his son was educated to obtain the theoretical knowledge he lacked himself. In 1821 Robert Stephenson assisted his father in his survey of the Stockton \& Darlington Railway and in 1822 he assisted William James in the first survey of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway. He then went to Edinburgh University for six months, and the following year Robert Stephenson \& Co. was named after him as Managing Partner when it was formed by himself, his father and others. The firm was to build stationary engines, locomotives and railway rolling stock; in its early years it also built paper-making machinery and did general engineering.

In 1824, however, Robert Stephenson accepted, perhaps in reaction to an excess of parental control, an invitation by a group of London speculators called the Colombian Mining Association to lead an expedition to South America to use steam power to reopen gold and silver mines. He subsequently visited North America before returning to England in 1827 to rejoin his father as an equal and again take charge of Robert Stephenson \& Co. There he set about altering the design of steam locomotives to improve both their riding and their steam-generating capacity. Lancashire Witch, completed in July 1828, was the first locomotive mounted on steel springs and had twin furnace tubes through the boiler to produce a large heating surface. Later that year Robert Stephenson \& Co. supplied the Stockton \& Darlington Railway with a wagon, mounted for the first time on springs and with outside bearings. It was to be the prototype of the standard British railway wagon. Between April and September 1829 Robert Stephenson built, not without difficulty, a multi-tubular boiler, as suggested by Henry Booth to George Stephenson, and incorporated it into the locomotive Rocket which the three men entered in the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway's Rainhill Trials in October. Rocket, was outstandingly successful and demonstrated that the long-distance steam railway was practicable.

Robert Stephenson continued to develop the locomotive. Northumbrian, built in 1830, had for the first time, a smokebox at the front of the boiler and also the firebox built integrally with the rear of the boiler. Then in Planet, built later the same year, he adopted a layout for the working parts used earlier by steam road-coach pioneer Goldsworthy Gurney, placing the cylinders, for the first time, in a nearly horizontal position beneath the smokebox, with the connecting rods driving a cranked axle. He had evolved the definitive form for the steam locomotive.

Also in 1830, Robert Stephenson surveyed the London \& Birmingham Railway, which was authorized by Act of Parliament in 1833. Stephenson became Engineer for construction of the 112-mile (180 km) railway, probably at that date the greatest task ever undertaken in of civil engineering. In this he was greatly assisted by G.P.Bidder, who as a child prodigy had been known as "The Calculating Boy", and the two men were to be associated in many subsequent projects. On the London \& Birmingham Railway there were long and deep cuttings to be excavated and difficult tunnels to be bored, notoriously at Kilsby. The line was opened in 1838.

In 1837 Stephenson provided facilities for W.F. Cooke to make an experimental electrictelegraph installation at London Euston. The directors of the London \& Birmingham Railway company, however, did not accept his recommendation that they should adopt the electric telegraph and it was left to I.K. Brunel to instigate the first permanent installation, alongside the Great Western Railway. After Cooke formed the Electric Telegraph Company, Stephenson became a shareholder and was Chairman during 1857–8.

Earlier, in the 1830s, Robert Stephenson assisted his father in advising on railways in Belgium and came to be increasingly in demand as a consultant. In 1840, however, he was almost ruined financially as a result of the collapse of the Stanhope \& Tyne Rail Road; in return for acting as Engineer-in-Chief he had unwisely accepted shares, with unlimited liability, instead of a fee.

During the late 1840s Stephenson's greatest achievements were the design and construction of four great bridges, as part of railways for which he was responsible. The High Level Bridge over the Tyne at Newcastle and the Royal Border Bridge over the Tweed at Berwick were the links needed to complete the East Coast Route from London to Scotland. For the Chester \& Holyhead Railway to cross the Menai Strait, a bridge with spans as long-as 460 ft (140 m) was needed: Stephenson designed them as wrought-iron tubes of rectangular cross-section, through which the trains would pass, and eventually joined the spans together into a tube 1,511 ft (460 m) long from shore to shore. Extensive testing was done beforehand by shipbuilder William Fairbairn to prove the method, and as a preliminary it was first used for a 400 ft (122 m) span bridge at Conway.

In 1847 Robert Stephenson was elected MP for Whitby, a position he held until his death, and he was one of the exhibition commissioners for the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the early 1850s he was Engineer-in-Chief for the Norwegian Trunk Railway, the first railway in Norway, and he also built the Alexandria \& Cairo Railway, the first railway in Africa. This included two tubular bridges with the railway running on top of the tubes. The railway was extended to Suez in 1858 and for several years provided a link in the route from Britain to India, until superseded by the Suez Canal, which Stephenson had opposed in Parliament. The greatest of all his tubular bridges was the Victoria Bridge across the River St Lawrence at Montreal: after inspecting the site in 1852 he was appointed Engineer-in-Chief for the bridge, which was 1 1/2 miles (2 km) long and was designed in his London offices. Sadly he, like Brunel, died young from self-imposed overwork, before the bridge was completed in 1859.

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See also: Pihl, Carl Abraham; Seguin, Marc

SUBJECT AREA: Canals, Civil engineering

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Telford was the son of a shepherd, who died when the boy was in his first year. Brought up by his mother, Janet Jackson, he attended the parish school at Westerkirk. He was apprenticed to a stonemason in Lochmaben and to another in Langholm. In 1780 he walked from Eskdale to Edinburgh and in 1872 rode to London on a horse that he was to deliver there. He worked for Sir William Chambers as a mason on Somerset House, then on the Eskdale house of Sir James Johnstone. In 1783–4 he worked on the new Commissioner's House and other buildings at Portsmouth dockyard.

In late 1786 Telford was appointed County Surveyor for Shropshire and moved to Shrewsbury Castle, with work initially on the new infirmary and County Gaol. He designed the church of St Mary Magdalene, Bridgnorth, and also the church at Madley. Telford built his first bridge in 1790–2 at Montford; between 1790 and 1796 he built forty-five road bridges in Shropshire, including Buildwas Bridge. In September 1793 he was appointed general agent, engineer and architect to the Ellesmere Canal, which was to connect the Mersey and Dee rivers with the Severn at Shrewsbury; William Jessop was Principal Engineer. This work included the Pont Cysyllte aqueduct, a 1,000 ft (305 m) long cast-iron trough 127 ft (39 m) above ground level, which entailed an on-site ironworks and took ten years to complete; the aqueduct is still in use today. In 1800 Telford put forward a plan for a new London Bridge with a single cast-iron arch with a span of 600 ft (183 m) but this was not built.

In 1801 Telford was appointed engineer to the British Fisheries Society "to report on Highland Communications" in Scotland where, over the following eighteen years, 920 miles (1,480 km) of new roads were built, 280 miles (450 km) of the old military roads were realigned and rebuilt, over 1,000 bridges were constructed and much harbour work done, all under Telford's direction. A further 180 miles (290 km) of new roads were also constructed in the Lowlands of Scotland. From 1804 to 1822 he was also engaged on the construction of the Caledonian Canal: 119 miles (191 km) in all, 58 miles (93 km) being sea loch, 38 miles (61 km) being Lochs Lochy, Oich and Ness, 23 miles (37 km) having to be cut.

In 1808 he was invited by King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden to assist Count Baltzar von Platen in the survey and construction of a canal between the North Sea and the Baltic. Telford surveyed the 114 mile (183 km) route in six weeks; 53 miles (85 km) of new canal were to be cut. Soon after the plans for the canal were completed, the King of Sweden created him a Knight of the Order of Vasa, an honour that he would have liked to have declined. At one time some 60,000 soldiers and seamen were engaged on the work, Telford supplying supervisors, machinery—including an 8 hp steam dredger from the Donkin works and machinery for two small paddle boats—and ironwork for some of the locks. Under his direction an ironworks was set up at Motala, the foundation of an important Swedish industrial concern which is still flourishing today. The Gotha Canal was opened in September 1832.

In 1811 Telford was asked to make recommendations for the improvement of the Shrewsbury to Holyhead section of the London-Holyhead road, and in 1815 he was asked to survey the whole route from London for a Parliamentary Committee. Construction of his new road took fifteen years, apart from the bridges at Conway and over the Menai Straits, both suspension bridges by Telford and opened in 1826. The Menai bridge had a span of 579 ft (176 m), the roadway being 153 ft (47 m) above the water level.

In 1817 Telford was appointed Engineer to the Exchequer Loan Commission, a body set up to make capital loans for deserving projects in the hard times that followed after the peace of Waterloo. In 1820 he became the first President of the Engineers Institute, which gained its Royal Charter in 1828 to become the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was appointed Engineer to the St Katharine's Dock Company during its construction from 1825 to 1828, and was consulted on several early railway projects including the Liverpool and Manchester as well as a number of canal works in the Midlands including the new Harecastle tunnel, 3,000 ft (914 m) long.

Telford led a largely itinerant life, living in hotels and lodgings, acquiring his own house for the first time in 1821, 24 Abingdon Street, Westminster, which was partly used as a school for young civil engineers. He died there in 1834, after suffering in his later years from the isolation of deafness. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Since he had a long family connection with the naval base at Portsmouth, it is not surprising that Watts started to serve his apprenticeship there in 1860. He was singled out for advanced training and then in 1866 was one of three young men selected to attend the Royal School of Naval Architecture at South Kensington in London. On completing his training he joined the technical staff, then had a period as a ship overseer before going to assist William Froude for two years, an arrangement which led to a close friendship between Watts and the two Froudes. Some interesting tasks followed: the calculations for HM Armoured Ram Polyphemus; the setting up of a "calculating" section within the Admiralty; and then work as a constructor at Chatham Dockyard. In 1885 the first major change of direction took place: Watts resigned from naval service to take the post of General Manager of the Elswick shipyard of Sir W.G.Armstrong. This was a wonderful opportunity for an enthusiastic and highly qualified man, and Watts rose to the challenge. Elswick produced some of the finest warships at the end of the nineteenth century and its cruisers, such as the Esmeralda of the Chilean Navy, had a legendary name.

In 1902 he was recalled to the Navy to succeed Sir William White as Director of Naval Construction (DNC). This was one of the most exciting times ever in warship design and it was during Watts's tenure of the post that the Dreadnought class of battleship was produced, the submarine service was developed and the destroyer fleet reached high levels of performance. It has been said that Watts's distinct achievements as DNC were greater armament per ton displacement, higher speeds and better manoeuvring, greater protection and, almost as important, elegance of appearance. Watt retired in 1912 but remained a consultant to the Admiralty until 1916, and then joined the board of Armstrong Whitworth, on which he served until his death.

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SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications

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Wheatstone's family moved to London when he was 4 years old. He was educated at various schools in London and excelled in physics and mathematics. He qualified for a French prize but forfeited it because he was too shy to recite a speech in French at the prize-giving.

An uncle, also called Charles Wheatstone, has a musical instrument manufacturing business where young Charles went to work. He was fascinated by the science of music, but did not enjoy business life. After the uncle's death, Charles and his brother William took over the business. Charles developed and patented the concertina, which the firm assembled from parts made by "outworkers". He devoted much of his time to studying the physics of sound and mechanism of sound transmission through solids. He sent speech and music over considerable distances through solid rods and stretched wires, and envisaged communication at a distance. He concluded, however, that electrical methods were more promising.

In 1834 Wheatstone was appointed Professor of Experimental Philosophy—a part-time posi-tion—in the new King's College, London, which gave him some research facilities. He conducted experiments with a telegraph system using several miles of wire in the college corridors. Jointly with William Fothergill Cooke, in 1837 he obtained the first patent for a practical electric telegraph, and much of the remainder of his life was devoted to its improvement. In 1843 he gave a paper to the Royal Society surveying the state of electrical measurements and drew attention to a bridge circuit known ever since as the "Wheatstone bridge", although he clearly attributed it to S.H.Christie. Wheatstone devised the "ABC" telegraph, for use on private lines by anyone who could read, and a high-speed automatic telegraph which was adopted by the Post Office and used for many years. He also worked on the French and Belgian telegraph systems; he died when taken ill on a business visit to Paris.

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(n.) = criminal scene, the, criminal world, the

Ex. This is but a myth used instrumentally by delinquents to establish a position on the criminal scene -- as doorkeepers, bodyguards, money collectors or other so-called 'specialists in violence'.

Ex. From its inception, 'Sanctuary', William Faulkner's novel of a young co-ed initiated through rape and murder into the criminal world was controversial.

(n.) = criminal underworld

Ex. Dickens's own outrage over the conditions of the poor in Britian conflicted with his revulsion at the criminal underworld & his fear of popular insurgence.

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el mundo del hampa

(n.) = criminal scene, the, criminal world, the

Ex. This is but a myth used instrumentally by delinquents to establish a position on the criminal scene -- as doorkeepers, bodyguards, money collectors or other so-called 'specialists in violence'.

Ex. From its inception, 'Sanctuary', William Faulkner's novel of a young co-ed initiated through rape and murder into the criminal world was controversial.

el mundo de la mafia

SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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As a young man John Appleby worked as a labourer for a farmer near Whitewater in Wisconsin. He was 18 when the farmer bought a new reaping machine. Appleby believed that the concept had not been progressed far enough and that the machine should be able to bind sheaths as well as to cut the corn. It is claimed that while watching a dog playing with a skipping rope he noticed a particular knot created as the dog removed its head from the loop that had passed over it, and recognized the potential of the way in which this knot had been formed. From a piece of apple wood he carved a device that would produce the knot he had seen. A local school teacher backed Appleby's idea with a $50 loan, but the American Civil War and service in the Union Army prevented any further development until 1869 when he took out a patent on a wire-tying binder. A number of the devices were made for him by a company in Beloit. Trials of wire binders held in 1873 highlighted the danger of small pieces of wire caught up in the hay leading to livestock losses. Appleby looked again at the possibility of twine. In 1875 he successfully operated a machine and the following season four were in operation. A number of other developments, not least Behel's "bill hook" knotting device, were also to have an influence in the final development of Appleby's twine-tying binder. As so often happens, it was the vision of the entrepreneur which ultimately led to the success of Appleby's device. In 1877 Appleby persuaded William Deering to produce and market his binder, and 3,000 twine binders, together with the twine produced for them, were put on the market in 1880, with immediate success. Over the next dozen years all harvesting-machine manufacturers adopted the idea, under licence to Appleby.

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SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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Robert Bakewell was the son of the tenant farming the 500-acre (200 hectare) Dishley Grange Farm, near Loughborough, where he was born. The family was sufficiently wealthy to allow Robert to travel, which he began to do at an early age, exploring the farming methods of the West Country, Norfolk, Ireland and Holland. On taking over the farm he continued the development of the irrigation scheme begun by his father. Arthur Young visited the farm during his tour of east England in 1771. At that time it consisted of 440 acres (178 hectares), 110 acres (45 hectares) of which were arable, and carried a stock of 60 horses, 400 sheep and 150 other assorted beasts. Of the arable land, 30 acres (12 hectares) were under root crops, mainly turnips.

Bakewell was not the first to pioneer selective breeding, but he was the first successfully to apply selection to both the efficiency with which an animal utilized its food, and its physical appearance. He always had a clear idea of the animal he wanted, travelled extensively to collect a range of animals possessing the characteristics he sought, and then bred from these towards his goal. He was aware of the dangers of inbreeding, but would often use it to gain the qualities he wanted. His early experiments were with Longhorn cattle, which he developed as a meat rather than a draught animal, but his most famous achievement was the development of the Improved Leicester breed of sheep. He set out to produce an animal that would put on the most meat in the least time and with the least feeding. As his base he chose the Old Leicester, but there is still doubt as to which other breeds he may have introduced to produce the desired results. The Improved Leicester was smaller than its ancestor, with poorer wool quality but with greatly improved meat-production capacity.

Bakewell let out his sires to other farms and was therefore able to study their development under differing conditions. However, he made stringent rules for those who hired these animals, requiring the exclusive use of his rams on the farms concerned and requiring particular dietary conditions to be met. To achieve this control he established the Dishley Society in 1783. Although his policies led to accusations of closed access to his stock, they enabled him to keep a close control of all offspring. He thereby pioneered the process now recognized as "progeny testing".

Bakewell's fame and that of his farm spread throughout the country and overseas. He engaged in an extensive correspondence and acted as host to all of influence in British and overseas agriculture, but it would appear that he was an over-generous host, since he is known to have been in financial difficulties in about 1789. He was saved from bankruptcy by a public subscription raised to allow him to continue with his breeding experiments; this experience may well have been the reason why he was such a staunch advocate of State funding of agricultural research.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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The son of Patrick Bell, a millwright, Henry had two sisters and an elder brother and was educated at the village school. When he was 9 years old Henry was sent to lodge in Falkirk with an uncle and aunt of his mother's so that he could attend the school there. At the age of 12 he left school and agreed to become a mason with a relative. In 1783, after only three years, he was bound apprentice to his Uncle Henry, a millwright at Jay Mill. He stayed there for a further three years and then, in 1786, joined the firm of Shaw \& Hart, shipbuilders of Borrowstoneness. These were to be the builders of William Symington's hull for the Charlotte Dundas. He also spent twelve months with Mr James Inglis, an engineer of Bellshill, Lanarkshire, and then went to London to gain experience, working for the famous John Rennie for some eighteen months. By 1790 he was back in Glasgow, and a year later he took a partner, James Paterson, into his new business of builder and contractor, based in the Trongate. He later referred to himself as "architect", and his partnership with Paterson lasted seven years. He is said to have invented a discharging machine for calico printing, as well as a steam dredger for clearing the River Clyde.

The Baths Hotel was opened in Helensburgh in 1808, with the hotel-keeper, who was also the first provost of the town, being none other than Henry Bell. It has been suggested that Bell was also the builder of the hotel and this seems very likely. Bell installed a steam engine for pumping sea water out of the Clyde and into the baths, and at first ran a coach service to bring customers from Glasgow three days a week. The driver was his brother Tom. The coach was replaced by the Comet steamboat in 1812.

While Henry was busy with his provost's duties and making arrangements for the building of his steamboat, his wife Margaret, née Young, whom he married in March 1794, occupied herself with the management of the Baths Hotel. Bell did not himself manufacture, but supervised the work of experts: John and Charles Wood of Port Glasgow, builders of the 43ft 6 in. (13.25 m)-long hull of the Comet; David Napier of Howard Street Foundry for the boiler and other castings; and John Robertson of Dempster Street, who had previously supplied a small engine for pumping water to the baths at the hotel in Helensburgh, for the 3 hp engine. The first trials of the finished ship were held on 24 July 1812, when she was launched from Wood's yard. A regular service was advertised in the Glasgow Chronicle on 5 August and was the first in Europe, preceded only by that of Robert Fulton in the USA. The Comet continued to run until 1820, when it was wrecked.

Bell received little reward for his promotion of steam navigation, merely small pensions from the Clyde trustees and others. He was buried at the parish church of Rhu.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology

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Educated by a number of governesses in a number of houses from Yorkshire to Ealing, she was the daughter of a hypochondriac mother and her absent, separated, husband, the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron. As a child a mysterious and undiagnosed illness deprived her "of the use of her limbs" and she was "obliged to use crutches". The complaint was probably psychosomatic as it cleared up when she was 17 and was about to attend her first court ball. On 8 July 1835 she was married to William King, 1st Earl of Lovelace. She later bore two sons and a daughter. She was an avid student of science and in particular mathematics, in the course of which Charles Babbage encouraged her. In 1840 Babbage was invited to Turin to present a paper on his analytical engine. In the audience was a young Italian military engineer, L.F.Menabrea, who was later to become a general in Garibaldi's army. The paper was written in French and published in 1842 in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève. This text was translated into English and published with extensive annotations by the Countess of Lovelace, appearing in Taylor's Scientific Memoirs. The Countess thoroughly understood and appreciated Babbage's machine and the clarity of her description was so great that it is undoubtedly the best contemporary account of the engine: even Babbage recognized the Countess's description as superior to his own. Ada often visited Babbage in his workshop and listened to his explanations of the structure and use of his engines. She shared with her husband a love of horse-racing and, with Babbage, tried to develop a system for backing horses. Babbage and the Earl apparently stopped their efforts in time, but the Countess lost so heavily that she had to pawn all her family jewels. Her losses at the 1851 Derby alone amounted to £3,200, while borrow-ing a further £1,800 from her husband. This situation involved her in being blackmailed. She became an opium addict due to persistent pain from gastritis, intermittent anorexia and paroxys-mal tachycardia. Charles Babbage was always a great comfort to her, not only for their shared mathematical interests but also as a friend helping in all manner of small services such as taking her dead parrot to the taxidermist. She died after a protracted illness, thought to be cancer, at East Horsley Towers.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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The young Eastman was a clerk-bookkeeper in the Rochester Savings Bank when in 1877 he took up photography. Taking lessons in the wet-plate process, he became an enthusiastic amateur photographer. However, the cumbersome equipment and noxious chemicals used in the process proved an obstacle, as he said, "It seemed to be that one ought to be able to carry less than a pack-horse load." Then he came across an account of the new gelatine dry-plate process in the British Journal of Photography of March 1878. He experimented in coating glass plates with the new emulsions, and was soon so successful that he decided to go into commercial manufacture. He devised a machine to simplify the coating of the plates, and travelled to England in July 1879 to patent it. In April 1880 he prepared to begin manufacture in a rented building in Rochester, and contacted the leading American photographic supply house, E. \& H.T.Anthony, offering them an option as agents. A local whip manufacturer, Henry A.Strong, invested $1,000 in the enterprise and the Eastman Dry Plate Company was formed on 1 January 1881. Still working at the Savings Bank, he ran the business in his spare time, and demand grew for the quality product he was producing. The fledgling company survived a near disaster in 1882 when the quality of the emulsions dropped alarmingly. Eastman later discovered this was due to impurities in the gelatine used, and this led him to test all raw materials rigorously for quality. In 1884 the company became a corporation, the Eastman Dry Plate \& Film Company, and a new product was announced. Mindful of his desire to simplify photography, Eastman, with a camera maker, William H.Walker, designed a roll-holder in which the heavy glass plates were replaced by a roll of emulsion-coated paper. The holders were made in sizes suitable for most plate cameras. Eastman designed and patented a coating machine for the large-scale production of the paper film, bringing costs down dramatically, the roll-holders were acclaimed by photographers worldwide, and prizes and medals were awarded, but Eastman was still not satisfied. The next step was to incorporate the roll-holder in a smaller, hand-held camera. His first successful design was launched in June 1888: the Kodak camera. A small box camera, it held enough paper film for 100 circular exposures, and was bought ready-loaded. After the film had been exposed, the camera was returned to Eastman's factory, where the film was removed, processed and printed, and the camera reloaded. This developing and printing service was the most revolutionary part of his invention, since at that time photographers were expected to process their own photographs, which required access to a darkroom and appropriate chemicals. The Kodak camera put photography into the hands of the countless thousands who wanted photographs without complications. Eastman's marketing slogan neatly summed up the advantage: "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest." The Kodak camera was the last product in the design of which Eastman was personally involved. His company was growing rapidly, and he recruited the most talented scientists and technicians available. New products emerged regularly—notably the first commercially produced celluloid roll film for the Kodak cameras in July 1889; this material made possible the introduction of cinematography a few years later. Eastman's philosophy of simplifying photography and reducing its costs continued to influence products: for example, the introduction of the one dollar, or five shilling, Brownie camera in 1900, which put photography in the hands of almost everyone. Over the years the Eastman Kodak Company, as it now was, grew into a giant multinational corporation with manufacturing and marketing organizations throughout the world. Eastman continued to guide the company; he pursued an enlightened policy of employee welfare and profit sharing decades before this was common in industry. He made massive donations to many concerns, notably the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and supported schemes for the education of black people, dental welfare, calendar reform, music and many other causes, he withdrew from the day-to-day control of the company in 1925, and at last had time for recreation. On 14 March 1932, suffering from a painful terminal cancer and after tidying up his affairs, he shot himself through the heart, leaving a note: "To my friends: My work is done. Why wait?" Although Eastman's technical innovations were made mostly at the beginning of his career, the organization which he founded and guided in its formative years was responsible for many of the major advances in photography over the years.

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SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Hackworth trained under his father, who was Foreman Blacksmith at Wylam colliery, and succeeded him upon his death in 1807. Between 1812 and 1816 he helped to build and maintain the Wylam locomotives under William Hedley. He then moved to Walbottle colliery, but during 1824 he took temporary charge of Robert Stephenson \& Co.'s works while George Stephenson was surveying the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway and Robert Stephenson was away in South America. In May 1825 Hackworth was appointed to the Stockton \& Darlington Railway (S \& DR) "to have superintendence of the permanent (i.e. stationary) and locomotive engines". He established the workshops at Shildon, and when the railway opened in September he became in effect the first locomotive superintendent of a railway company. From experience of operating Robert Stephenson \& Co.'s locomotives he was able to make many detail improvements, notably spring safety valves. In 1827 he designed and built the locomotive Royal George, with six wheels coupled and inverted vertical cylinders driving the rear pair. From the pistons, drive was direct by way of piston rods and connecting rods to crankpins on the wheels, the first instance of the use of this layout on a locomotive. Royal George was the most powerful and satisfactory locomotive on the S \& DR to date and was the forerunner of Hackworth's type of heavy-goods locomotive, which was built until the mid-1840s.

For the Rainhill Trials in 1829 Hackworth built and entered the locomotive Sans Pareil, which was subsequently used on the Bol ton \& Leigh Railway and is now in the Science Museum, London. A working replica was built for the 150th anniversary of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway in 1980. In 1833 a further agreement with the S \& DR enabled Hackworth, while remaining in charge of their locomotives, to set up a locomotive and engineering works on his own account. Its products eventually included locomotives for the London, Brighton \& South Coast and York, Newcastle \& Berwick Railways, as well as some of the earliest locomotives exported to Russia and Canada. Hackworth's son, John Wesley Hackworth, was also an engineer and invented the radial valve gear for steam engines that bears his name.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building, Civil engineering

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As a young man Johnson studied both chemistry and physics and gained some experience in the manufacture of cement before joining the firm of John Bazely White as Works Manager at Swanscombe in Kent in 1838. He spent some years investigating the production processes and left the firm to set up on his own in 1851 on the Limehouse Reach of the River Medway, moving later to Gateshead on the River Tyne. Johnson produced a cement that was a great improvement on that of Parker and of Frost: like William Aspdin (see Aspdin, Joseph), he made a true Portland cement by mixing chalk, clay and water, and then clinkering the mixture. He used local clay at Gateshead and had the chalk shipped from the Thames area. In 1872 Johnson patented an improved bottle kiln, called the Johnson Chamber Kiln; it was of horizontal design, which speeded up manufacturing processes.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Thomas Johnson was an assistant to William Radcliffe c.1802 in his developments of the sizing machine and hand looms. Johnson is described by Edward Baines (1835) as "an ingenious but dissipated young man to whom he [Radcliffe] explained what he wanted, and whose fertile invention suggested a great variety of expedients, so that he obtained the name of the “conjuror” among his fellow-workmen". Johnson's genius, and Radcliffe's judgement and perseverance, at length produced the dressing-machine that was soon applied to power looms and made their use economic. Cotton warps had to be dressed with a starch paste to prevent them from fraying as they were being woven. Up to this time, the paste had had to be applied as the warp was unwound from the back of the loom, which meant that only short lengths could be treated and then left to dry, holding up the weaver. Radcliffe carried out the dressing and beaming in a separate machine so that weaving could proceed without interruption. Work on the dressing-machine was carried out in 1802 and patents were taken out in 1803 and 1804. These were made out in Johnson's name because Radcliffe was afraid that if his own name were used other people, particularly foreigners, would discover his secrets. Two more patents were taken out for improvements to hand looms. The first of these was a take-up motion for the woven cloth that automatically wound the cloth onto a roller as the weaver operated the loom. This was later incorporated by H.Horrocks into his own power loom design.

Radcliffe and Johnson also developed the "dandy-loom", which was a more compact form of hand loom and later became adapted for weaving by power. Johnson was the inventor of the first circular or revolving temples, which kept the woven cloth at the right width. In the patent specifications there is a patent in 1805 by Thomas Johnson and James Kay for an improved power loom and another in 1807 for a vertical type of power loom. Johnson could have been involved with further patents in the 1830s and 1840s for vertical power looms and dressing-machines, which would put his death after 1846.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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

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

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Samuel's father, William, was a respected independent farmer who died when his son was aged 14; the young Slater was apprenticed to his father's friend, Jedediah Strutt for six and a half years at the beginning of 1783. He showed mathematical ability and quickly acquainted himself thoroughly with cotton-spinning machinery made by Arkwright, Hargreaves and Crompton. After completing his apprenticeship, he remained for a time with the Strutts to act as Supervisor for a new mill.

At that time it was forbidden to export any textile machinery or even drawings or data from England. The emigration of textile workers was forbidden too, but in September 1789 Slater left for the United States in disguise, having committed the details of the construction of the cotton-spinning machinery to memory. He reached New York and was employed by the New York Manufacturing Company.

In January 1790 he met Moses Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, and on 5 April 1790 he signed a contract to construct Arkwright's spinning machinery for Almy \& Brown. It took Slater more than a year to get the machinery operational because of the lack of skilled mechanics and tools, but by 1793 the mill was running under the name of Almy, Brown \& Slater. In October 1791 Slater had married Hannah Wilkinson, and in 1798 he set up his own mill in partnership with his father-in-law, Orziel Wilkinson. This mill was built in Pawtucket, near the first mill, but other mills soon followed in Smithville, Rhode Island, and elsewhere. Slater was the Incorporator, and for the first fifteen years was also President of the Manufacturer's Bank in Pawtucket. It was in his business role and as New England's first industrial capitalist that Slater made his most important contributions to the emergence of the American textile industry.

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