Vintage Machines Decorations, 1800techgallery.com | Articulos

About us

We are dedicated to the preservation, distribution and commercialization of technical information from the 19th century (Industrial Revolution) and beginning of the 20th century from all over the world that have shaped our way of life.

We enjoy offering our customers with hundreds of prints and historic descriptions of inventions, devices, apparatuses and ideas of previous generations, some of them became obsolete and some others still dictated the principles of mechanics. These reproductions are for decorative purposes only and can not be considered as a technical reliable source.

Special Orders

We can take specials orders; please let us know your needs; different sizes, more than one reproduction, your company logo, shipments to various destinations or prints on paper with a protective film.

During the printing process we can include a dedicatory at the bottom of the image at no extra charge. If you need it please provide the text when placing the order.

Text, descriptions and dedicatory are available only in English and Spanish at this moment.

Material:

All reproductions are printed in canvas.

Delivery time:
Normal delivery time is 10 working days from the date of purchase. Some images are in stock unless contrary is specified.

Antique Machines: An era of progress

Discover the latest Technology… of 150 years ago!

See how things were made…

Going through these drawings/images you will find no internal combustion engines, plastics, electric/electronic circuit, electric motors, wires or aluminum. Why? Because wasn’t been invented yet or its use was still inadequate. Just plain and simple mechanics.

We already know about the "Latest Tech", but the first?

When these drawings were made and the antique machines running, America was 84 years old! Slavery was still permitted in some states, and Lincoln, a lawyer from Illinois was running for President. The West was very wild and far, cars and planes were still not on the horizon, but who needed them anyway?

Year 1860, still 3 more years to go for Ford’s birth and 7 for Wilbur Wright.

But somehow things were moving, the Industrial Revolution was at its peak. Steam, iron, steel and coal, almost made it all in technology.

Amazing stuff were already happening: take a glimpse at a chocolate process machine, steam generators, steel mills, rail locomotives, steam vessels, a huge 1,000 h.p. steam marine engine among many others marvels at the time.

Understand the reach and possibilities of our great, great, grandparents!

The first real “messenger” system was created 140 years ago, a pneumatic mail network in Paris on 1874 and Vienna on 1875 with a length of tubes reaching 467 kilometers. When mail was sent at short distances arrived at destinations in a few minutes. This French system was so effective that was just disassembled in 1984.

Find the original drawings and maps here!

Population grew and also needs. In what way was it possible?

Discover it all right here!

You might own a piece of history, buy now a new reproduction of 19^th century highly detailed originals machinery drawings that change the way of life and established the foundation of mass production and progress which hasn’t slow down.

You’ll enjoy these reproductions for many years to come!

Constantly we are adding new pictures; choose yours from the Gallery images. Illustrated with more than 7,000 machinery figures highly detailed.

How come originals were so accurate? First detailed drawings were made, then the stone plates were carved and finally a carefully printing process!

There is nothing similar on the web!

It will look great in your office, shop, store and restaurant or just hang it on your home personal place. Friends and relatives will wonder about it. We all know someone attached to Tech, History or Art; these images will make an impression on them!

A truly original gift for that special person!

Technicians, engineers, teachers, students, historians, inventors, industrial & internal designers, constructors, ship manufacturers, etc. (the list is endless).

Ideal for museums, schools, factories, shops, hotels, restaurants, offices and home studios.

BLAST FURNACE GAS

History

Blast furnaces existed in China from about the 5th century BC, and in the West from the High Middle Ages. They spread from the region around Namur in Wallonia (Belgium) in the late 15th century, being introduced to England in 1491. The fuel used in these was invariably charcoal. The successful substitution of coke for charcoal is widely attributed to Abraham Darby in 1709. The efficiency of the process was further enhanced by the practice of preheating the blast, patented by James Beaumont Neilson in 1828.

The direct ancestor of these used in France and England was in the Namur region in what is now Wallonia (Belgium). From there, they spread first to the Pays de Bray on the eastern boundary of Normandy and from there to the Weald of Sussex, where the first furnace (called Queenstock) in Buxted was built in about 1491, followed by one at Newbridge in Ashdown Forest in 1496. They remained few in number until about 1530 but many were built in the following decades in the Weald, where the iron industry perhaps reached its peak about 1590. Most of the pig iron from these furnaces was taken to finery forges for the production of bar iron.

Metallurgy

The major change in the metal industries during the era of the Industrial Revolution was the replacement of organic fuels based on wood with fossil fuel based on coal. Much of this happened somewhat before the Industrial Revolution, based on innovations by Sir Clement Clerke and others from 1678, using coal reverberatory furnaces known as cupolas. These were operated by the flames, which contained carbon monoxide, playing on the ore and reducing the oxide to metal. This has the advantage that impurities (such as sulphur) in the coal do not migrate into the metal. This technology was applied to lead from 1678 and to copper from 1687. It was also applied to iron foundry work in the 1690s, but in this case the reverberatory furnace was known as an air furnace. The foundry cupola is a different (and later) innovation.

This was followed by Abraham Darby, who made great strides using coke to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale in 1709. However, the coke pig iron he made was used mostly for the production of cast iron goods such as pots and kettles. He had the advantage over his rivals in that his pots, cast by his patented process, were thinner and cheaper than theirs. Coke pig iron was hardly used to produce bar iron in forges until the mid 1750s, when his son Abraham Darby II built Horsehay and Ketley furnaces (not far from Coalbrookdale). By then, coke pig iron was cheaper than charcoal pig iron.

Bar iron for smiths to forge into consumer goods was still made in finery forges, as it long had been. However, new processes were adopted in the ensuing years. The first is referred to today as potting and stamping, but this was superseded by Henry Cort's puddling process. From 1785, perhaps because the improved version of potting and stamping was about to come out of patent, a great expansion in the output of the British iron industry began. The new processes did not depend on the use of charcoal at all and were therefore not limited by charcoal sources.

Up to that time, British iron manufacturers had used considerable amounts of imported iron to supplement native supplies. This came principally from Sweden from the mid 17th century and later also from Russia from the end of the 1720s. However, from 1785, imports decreased because of the new iron making technology, and Britain became an exporter of bar iron as well as manufactured wrought iron consumer goods.

Since iron was becoming cheaper and more plentiful, it also became a major structural material following the building of the innovative The Iron Bridge in 1778 by Abraham Darby III.

An improvement was made in the production of steel, which was an expensive commodity and used only where iron would not do, such as for the cutting edge of tools and for springs. Benjamin Huntsman developed his crucible steel technique in the 1740s. The raw material for this was blister steel, made by the cementation process.

The supply of cheaper iron and steel aided the development of boilers and steam engines, and eventually railways. Improvements in machine tools allowed better working of iron and steel and further boosted the industrial growth of Britain.

The first British furnaces outside the Weald appeared during the 1550s, and many were built in the remainder of that century and the following ones. The output of the industry probably peaked about 1620, and was followed by a slow decline until the early 18th century. This was apparently because it was more economic to import iron from Sweden and elsewhere than to make it in some more remote British locations. Charcoal that was economically available to the industry was probably being consumed as fast as the wood to make it grew.

Coke Blast Furnaces

In 1709, at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, England, Abraham Darby began to fuel a blast furnace with coke instead of charcoal. Coke iron was initially only used for foundry work, making pots and other cast iron goods. Foundry work was a minor branch of the industry, but Darby's son built a new furnace at nearby Horsehay, and began to supply the owners of finery forges with coke pig iron for the production of bar iron. Coke pig iron was by this time cheaper to produce than charcoal pig iron. The use of a coal-derived fuel in the iron industry was a key factor in the British Industrial Revolution, Darby's old blast furnace has been archaeologically excavated and can be seen in situ at Coalbrookdale, part of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums.

A further important development was the change to hot blast, patented by James Beaumont Neilson at Wilsontown Ironworks in Scotland in 1828. This further reduced production costs. Within a few decades, the practice was to have a "stove" as large as the furnace next to it into which the waste gas (containing CO) from the furnace was directed and burnt. The resultant heat was used to preheat the air blown into the furnace.

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TEXTILE MACHINES Industrial Revolution

In the early 18th century, British textile manufacture was based on wool which was processed by individual artisans, doing the spinning and weaving on their own premises. This system is called a cottage industry. Flax and cotton were also used for fine materials, but the processing was difficult because of the pre-processing needed, and thus goods in these materials made only a small proportion of the output.

Use of the spinning wheel and hand loom restricted the production capacity of the industry, but incremental advances increased productivity to the extent that manufactured cotton goods became the dominant British export by the early decades of the 19th century. India was displaced as the premier supplier of cotton goods.

Lewis Paul patented the Roller Spinning machine and the flyer-and-bobbin system for drawing wool to a more even thickness, developed with the help of John Wyatt in Birmingham. Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their new rolling machine powered by a donkey. In 1743, a factory was opened in Northampton with fifty spindles on each of five of Paul and Wyatt's machines. This operated until about 1764. A similar mill was built by Daniel Bourn in Leominster, but this burnt down. Both Lewis Paul and Daniel Bourn patented carding machines in 1748. Using two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds, it was later used in the first cotton spinning mill. Lewis's invention was later developed and improved by Richard Arkwright in his water frame and Samuel Crompton in his spinning mule.

Other inventors increased the efficiency of the individual steps of spinning (carding, twisting and spinning, and rolling) so that the supply of yarn increased greatly, which fed a weaving industry that was advancing with improvements to shuttles and the loom or 'frame'. The output of an individual labourer increased dramatically, with the effect that the new machines were seen as a threat to employment, and early innovators were attacked and their inventions destroyed.

To capitalise upon these advances, it took a class of entrepreneurs, of which the most famous is Richard Arkwright. He is credited with a list of inventions, but these were actually developed by people such as Thomas Highs and John Kay; Arkwright nurtured the inventors, patented the ideas, financed the initiatives, and protected the machines. He created the cotton mill which brought the production processes together in a factory, and he developed the use of power—first horse power and then water power—which made cotton manufacture a mechanised industry. Before long steam power was applied to drive textile machinery.

Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution

With the establishment of overseas colonies, the British Empire at the end of the 17th century/beginning of the 18th century had a vast source of raw materials and a vast market for manufactured goods. The manufacture of goods was performed on a limited scale by individual workers – usually on their own premises (such as weavers' cottages) – and was transported around the country by horse and cart, or by river boat. Power was supplied by draught animals for agriculture and haulage.

There was a marketplace to service, but the scale of industry; the sources of energy; and the lack of an inland communications infrastructure were the unseen hurdles to overcome.

In this context, the scene was set for the Kingdom of Great Britain to develop the industry of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution.

Industry and Invention

The Industrial Revolution, in this logic, has been a worldwide occurrence, at least insofar as it has occurred in all those parts of the world, of which there are few exceptions, where the control of Western civilization has been felt. Industrialization occurred first in Britain, and its effects spread only gradually to continental Europe and North America. Equally clearly, the Industrial Revolution that eventually transformed these parts of the Western world surpassed in magnitude the achievements of Britain, and the process was carried further to change radically the socioeconomic life of the Far East, Africa, Latin America, and Australasia. The reasons for this succession of events are complex, but they were implicit in the earlier account of the buildup toward rapid industrialization. Partly through good fortune and partly through conscious effort, Britain by the early 18th century came to possess the combination of social needs and social resources that provided the necessary preconditions of commercially successful innovation and a social system capable of sustaining and institutionalizing the processes of rapid technological change once they had started. Therefore be concerned, in the first place, with events in Britain, although in discussing later phases of the period it will be necessary to trace the way in which British technical achievements were diffused and superseded in other parts of the Western world.

In 1733 in Bury, Lancashire, John Kay invented the flying shuttle — one of the first of a series of inventions associated with the cotton industry. The flying shuttle increased the width of cotton cloth and speed of production of a single weaver at a loom. Resistance by workers to the perceived threat to jobs delayed the widespread introduction of this technology, even though the higher rate of production generated an increased demand for spun cotton.

In 1738, Lewis Paul (one of the community of Huguenot weavers that had been driven out of France in a wave of religious persecution) settled in Birmingham and with John Wyatt, of that town, they patented the Roller Spinning machine and the flyer-and-bobbin system, for drawing wool to a more even thickness. Using two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds yarn could be twisted and spun quickly and efficiently. This was later used in the first cotton spinning mill during the Industrial Revolution.

1742: Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their new rolling machine powered by donkey; this was not profitable and soon closed.

1743: A factory opened in Northampton, fifty spindles turned on five of Paul and Wyatt's machines proving more successful than their first mill. This operated until 1764.

1748: Lewis Paul invented the hand driven carding machine. A coat of wire slips were placed around a card which was then wrapped around a cylinder. Lewis's invention was later developed and improved by Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton, although this came about under great suspicion after a fire at Daniel Bourn's factory in Leominster which specifically used Paul and Wyatt's spindles. Bourn produced a similar patent in the same year.

1758: Paul and Wyatt based in Birmingham improved their roller spinning machine and took out a second patent. Richard Arkwright later used this as the model for his water frame.

1762 Matthew Boulton opened the Soho Foundry engineering works in Handsworth, Birmingham. His partnership with Scottish engineer James Watt made the steam engine into the power plant of the Industrial Revolution and was to provide many mills with a new form of power.

In 1764, James Hargreaves is credited as inventor of the spinning jenny which multiplied the spun thread production capacity of a single worker — initially eightfold and subsequently much further. Sources credit the original invention to Thomas Highs, who had a daughter named Jenny for whom the invention might have been named. Industrial unrest and a failure to patent the invention until 1770 forced Hargreaves from Blackburn, but his lack of protection of the idea allowed the concept to be exploited by others. As a result, there were over 20,000 Spinning Jennies in use by the time of his death.

Again in 1764, the first cotton mill in the world was constructed at Royton, Lancashire, England.

In 1771, Richard Arkwright used waterwheels to power looms for the production of cotton cloth, his invention becoming known as the water frame. (Frame is another name for the machinery for spinning or weaving.) The water frame was developed from the spinning frame that Arkwright had developed with (a different) John Kay, from Warrington. (The original design was probably by Thomas Highs, again.) This he had patented in 1769 (see: Press the 'Ingenious' button and use search key '10302171' for the patent). Initial attempts at driving the frame had used horse power, but the innovation of using a waterwheel demanded a location with a ready supply of water. One of the first cotton mills (at Cromford, Derbyshire; preserved as part of the Derwent Valley Mills) was a factory in the vein of the Soho Manufactory. Arkwright protected his investment (from industrial rivals and potentially disruptive workers), and generated jobs for which workers' accommodations were constructed, leading to a sizeable industrial community. Arkwright expanded his operations to other areas of the country.

In 1779, Samuel Crompton of Bolton combined elements of the spinning jenny and water frame to create the spinning mule. This produced a stronger thread, and was suitable for mechanisation on a grand scale. As with Kay and Hargreaves, Crompton was not able to exploit his invention for his own profit, and died a pauper.

In 1784, Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom, and produced a prototype in the following year. His initial venture to exploit this technology failed, although his advances were recognised by others in the industry. Others – such as Robert Grimshaw (whose factory was destroyed in 1790 as part of the growing reaction against the mechanization of the industry) and Austin – developed the ideas further.

In 1803, William Radcliffe invented the dressing frame (patented under the name of Thomas Johnson) which enabled power looms to operate continuously, and this fueled the take-off of steam-powered weaving such that by 1823 there were estimated to be 10,000 power looms in operation in Great Britain.

The use of water power to drive mills was quickly adopted by many entrepreneurs, and one example is Samuel Greg. He joined his uncle's firm of textile merchants, and, on taking over the company in 1782, he sought out a site to establish a mill. Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire still exists as a well preserved museum, having been in use from its construction in 1784 until 1959. It illustrates how the mill owners exploited child labour, taking orphans from nearby Manchester, but also shows that these children were housed, clothed, fed and provided with some education. This mill also shows the transition from water power to steam power, with steam engines to drive the looms being installed in 1810.

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PNEUMATIC MAIL

Pneumatic post or pneumatic mail is a system to deliver letters through pressurized air tubes. It was invented by the Scottish engineer William Murdoch in the 1800s and was later developed by the London Pneumatic Dispatch Company. Pneumatic post systems were used in several large cities starting in the second half of the 19th century (including an 1866 London system powerful enough to transport humans), but were largely abandoned during the 20th century.

It was also speculated that a system of tubes might deliver mail to every home in the US. A major network of tubes in Paris was in use until 1984, when it was finally abandoned in favor of computers and fax machines. In Prague, in the Czech Republic, a network of tubes extending approximately 60 kilometers in length still exists for delivering mail and parcels. Following the 2002 European floods, the Prague system sustained damage, an operation was mothballed indefinitely.

Pneumatic post stations usually connected post offices, stock exchanges, banks and ministries. Italy was the only country to issue postage stamps (between 1913 and 1966) specifically for pneumatic post. Austria, France, and Germany issued postal stationery for pneumatic use.

Typical current applications are in banks and hospitals. Many large retailers use pneumatic tubes to transport checks or other documents from cashiers to the accounting office. One system lists a speed of 10 meters per second.

Historical use

1853: linking the London Stock Exchange to the city's main telegraph station (a distance of 220 yards).

1865: in Berlin (until 1976), the Rohrpost, a system 400 kilometers in total length at its peak in 1940.

1866: in Paris (until 1984, 467 kilometers in total length from 1934).

1875: in Vienna (until 1956).

1887: in Prague (until 2002 due to flooding), the Prague pneumatic post.

1897: in New York City (until 1953).

Other cities: Munich, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Hamburg, Rome, Naples, Milan, Marseilles, Melbourne, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis.

In Fiction

When pneumatic tubes first came into use in the 19th century, they symbolized technological progress and it was imagined that they would be common in the future. Jules Verne's Paris in the 20th Century (1863) includes suspended pneumatic tube trains that stretch across the oceans. Albert Robida's The Twentieth Century (1882) describes a 1950s Paris where tube trains have replaced railways, pneumatic mail is ubiquitous, and catering companies compete to deliver meals on tap to people's homes through pneumatic tubes. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) envisions the world of 2000 as interlinked with tubes for delivering goods. Michel Verne's An Express of the Future (1888) questions the sensibility of a transatlantic pneumatic subway. In Michel & Jules Verne's The Day of an American Journalist in 2889 (1889) submarine tubes carry people faster than aero-trains and the Society for Supplying Food to the Home allows subscribers to receive meals pneumatically.

Later, because of their use by governments and large businesses, tubes began to symbolize bureaucracy. In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, pneumatic tubes in the Ministry of Truth deliver newspapers to Winston's desk containing articles to be "rectified".

In 1985, the movie Brazil, which has similar themes to Nineteen Eighty-Four, also used tubes (as well as other anachronistic-seeming technologies) to evoke the stagnation of bureaucracy. At the start of each episode of the 1998 television series Fantasy Island, a darker version of the original, bookings for would-be visitors to the Island were sent to the devilish Mr. Roarke via a pneumatic tube from a dusty old travel agency, making the tube seem not so much bureaucratic as sinister.

The failure of pneumatic tubes to live up to their potential as envisioned in previous centuries has placed them in the company of flying cars and dirigibles as ripe for ironic retro-futurism. The 1960s cartoon series The Jetsons featured pneumatic tubes that people could step into and be sucked up and swiftly spit out at their destination. In the animated television series Futurama, set in the 31st century, large pneumatic tubes are used in cities for transporting people, whilst smaller ones are used to transport mail. The tubes in Futurama are also used to depict the endless confusion of bureaucracy: an immense network of pneumatic tubes connects all offices in New York City to the "Central Bureaucracy", with all the capsules being deposited directly into a huge pile in the main filing room, with no sorting or organization.

In the American television show Lost, The DHARMA initiative research Pearl station has a pneumatic tube system. The character Locke put his drawing of the blast door map in the tube without a capsule. It was sucked up into the tube, indicating the system still functioned. The tube from the Pearl leads to a capsule dump.

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CEMENT MILLS

Early hydraulic cements, such as those of James Parker, James Frost and Joseph Aspdin were relatively soft and readily ground by the primitive technology of the day, using flat millstones. The emergence of Portland cement in the 1840s made grinding considerably more difficult, because the clinker produced by the kiln is often as hard as the millstone material. Because of this, cement continued to be ground very coarsely (typically 20% over 100 μm particle diameter) until better grinding technology became available. Besides producing un-reactive cement with slow strength growth, this exacerbated the problem of unsoundness. This late, disruptive expansion is caused by hydration of large particles of calcium oxide. Fine grinding lessens this effect, and early cements had to be stored for several months to give the calcium oxide time to hydrate before it was fit for sale.

From 1885 onward, the development of specialized steel led to the development of new forms of grinding equipment, and from this point onward, the typical fineness of cement began a steady rise. The progressive reduction in the proportion of larger, un-reactive cement particles has been partially responsible for the fourfold increase in the strength of Portland cement during the twentieth century. The recent history of the technology has been mainly concerned with reducing the energy consumption of the grinding process.

Ball Mill

A ball mill is a horizontal cylinder partly filled with steel balls (or occasionally other shapes) that rotates on its axis, imparting a tumbling and cascading action to the balls. Material fed through the mill is crushed by impact and ground by attrition between the balls. The grinding media are usually made of high-chromium steel. The smaller grades are occasionally cylindrical ("pebs") rather than spherical. There exists a speed of rotation (the "critical speed") at which the contents of the mill would simply ride over the roof of the mill due to centrifugal action. The critical speed (rpm) is given by: nC = 42.29/√d, where d is the internal diameter in meters. Ball mills are normally operated at around 75% of critical speed, so a mill with diameter 5 meters will turn at around 14 rpm.

The mill is usually divided into at least two chambers, allowing the use of different sizes of grinding media. Large balls are used at the inlet, to crush clinker nodules (which can be over 25 mm in diameter). Ball diameter here is in the range 60-80 mm. In a two-chamber mill, the media in the second chamber are typically in the range 15-40 mm, although media down to 5 mm are sometimes encountered. As a general rule, the size of media has to match the size of material being ground: large media can't produce the ultra-fine particles required in the finished cement, but small media can't break large clinker particles. Mills with as many as four chambers, allowing a tight segregation of media sizes, were once used, but this is now becoming rare.

Alternatives to multi-chamber mills are:

•pairs of mills, run in tandem, charged with different-sized media.

•use of alternative technology to crush the clinker prior to fine-grinding in a ball mill.

A current of air is passed through the mill. This helps keep the mill cool, and sweeps out evaporated moisture which would otherwise cause hydration and disrupt material flow. The dusty exhaust air is cleaned, usually with bag filters.

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PRINTING PRESS

Koenig's steam-powered printing press.

The Gutenberg press was much more efficient than manual copying and still was largely unchanged in the eras of John Baskerville and Giambattista Bodoni—over 300 years later. By 1800, Lord Stanhope had constructed a press completely from cast iron, reducing the force required by 90% while doubling the size of the printed area. While Stanhope's "mechanical theory" had improved the efficiency of the press, it still was only capable of 250 sheets per hour. German printer Friedrich Koenig would be the first to design a non-manpowered machine—using steam. Having moved to London in 1804, Koenig soon met Thomas Bensley and secured financial support for his project in 1807. Patented in 1810, Koenig had designed a steam press "much like a hand press connected to a steam engine." The first production trial of this model occurred in April 1811. He produced his machine with assistance from German engineer Andreas Friedrich Bauer.

Koenig and Bauer sold two of their first models to The Times in London in 1814, capable of 1,100 impressions per hour. The first edition so printed was on November 28, 1814. They went on to perfect the early model so that it could print on both sides of a sheet at once. This began the long process of making newspapers available to a mass audience (which in turn helped spread literacy), and from the 1820s changed the nature of book production, forcing a greater standardization in titles and other metadata. Their company Koenig & Bauer AG is still one of the world's largest manufacturers of printing presses today.

The steam powered rotary printing press, invented in 1843 in the United States by Richard M. Hoe, allowed millions of copies of a page in a single day. Mass production of printed works flourished after the transition to rolled paper, as continuous feed allowed the presses to run at a much faster pace.

Also, in the middle of the 19th century, there was a separate development of jobbing presses, small presses capable of printing small-format pieces such as billheads, letterheads, business cards, and envelopes. Jobbing presses were capable of quick set-up (average setup time for a small job was under 15 minutes) and quick production (even on treadle-powered jobbing presses it was considered normal to get 1,000 impressions per hour [iph] with one pressman, with speeds of 1,500 iph often attained on simple envelope work). Job printing emerged as a reasonably cost-effective duplicating solution for commerce at this time.

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ELEVATOR

The first reference to an elevator is in the works of the Roman architect Vitruvius, who reported that Archimedes built his first elevator, probably in 236 B.C. In some literary sources of later historical periods, elevators were mentioned as cabs on a hemp rope and powered by hand or by animals. It is supposed that elevators of this type were installed in the Sinai monastery of Egypt. In the 17th century the prototypes of elevators were located in the palace buildings of England and France.

In year 1000, the Book of Secrets by Arab inventor Ibn Khalaf al-Muradi in Islamic Spain described the use of an elevator-like lifting device, in order to raise a large battering ram to destroy a fortress.

In 1793 Ivan Kulibin created an elevator with the screw lifting mechanism for the Winter Palace of Saint Petersburg. In 1816 an elevator was established in the main building of sub Moscow village called Arkhangelskoye. In 1823, an "ascending room" made its debut in London.

In the middle 1800's, there were many types of crude elevators that carried freight. Most of them ran hydraulically. The first hydraulic elevators used a plunger below the car to raise or lower the elevator. A pump applied water pressure to a plunger, or steel column, inside a vertical cylinder. Increasing the pressure allowed the elevator to descend. The elevator also used a system of counter-balancing so that the plunger did not have to lift the entire weight of the elevator and its load. The plunger, however, was not practical for tall buildings, because it required a pit as deep below the building as the building was tall. Later a rope-geared elevator with multiple pulleys was developed.

Henry Waterman of New York is credited with inventing the "standing rope control" for an elevator in 1850.

In 1852, Elisha Otis introduced the safety elevator, which prevented the fall of the cab if the cable broke. The design of the Otis safety elevator is somewhat similar to one type still used today. A governor device engages knurled roller(s), locking the elevator to its guides should the elevator descend at excessive speed. He demonstrated it at the New York exposition in the Crystal Palace in 1854.

On March 23, 1857 the first Otis passenger elevator was installed at 488 Broadway in New York City. The first elevator shaft preceded the first elevator by four years. Construction for Peter Cooper's Cooper Union building in New York began in 1853. An elevator shaft was included in the design for Cooper Union, because Cooper was confident that a safe passenger elevator would soon be invented. The shaft was cylindrical because Cooper felt it was the most efficient design. Later Otis designed a special elevator for the school. Today the Otis Elevator Company, now a subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation, is the world's largest manufacturer of vertical transport systems.

The first electric elevator was built by Werner von Siemens in 1880. The safety and speed of electric elevators were significantly enhanced by Frank Sprague.

The development of elevators was led by the need for movement of raw materials including coal and lumber from hillsides. The technology developed by these industries and the introduction of steel beam construction worked together to provide the passenger and freight elevators in use today.

In 1874, J.W. Meaker patented a method which permitted elevator doors to open and close safely. U.S. Patent 147,853

In 1882, when hydraulic power was a well established technology, a company later named the London Hydraulic Power Company was formed. It constructed a network of high pressure mains on both sides of the Thames which, ultimately, extended to 184 miles and powered some 8,000 machines, predominantly lifts (elevators) and cranes.

In 1929, Clarence Conrad Crispen, with Inclinator Company of America, created the first residential elevator. Crispen also invented the first inclined stair lift.

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STEAM ENGINE

Steam power

The development of the stationary steam engine was an essential early element of the Industrial Revolution; however, for most of the period of the Industrial Revolution, the majority of industries still relied on wind and water power as well as horse and man-power for driving small machines.

The first real attempt at industrial use of steam power was due to Thomas Savery in 1698. He constructed and patented in London a low-lift combined vacuum and pressure water pump, that generated about one horsepower (hp) and was used as in numerous water works and tried in a few mines (hence its "brand name", The miner's Friend), but it was not a success since it was limited in pumping height and prone to boiler explosions.

The first safe and successful steam power plant was introduced by Thomas Newcomen before 1712. Newcomen apparently conceived the Newcomen steam engine quite independently of Savery, but as the latter had taken out a very wide-ranging patent, Newcomen and his associates were obliged to come to an arrangement with him, marketing the engine until 1733 under a joint patent. Newcomen's engine appears to have been based on Papin's experiments carried out 30 years earlier, and employed a piston and cylinder, one end of which was open to the atmosphere above the piston. Steam just above atmospheric pressure (all that the boiler could stand) was introduced into the lower half of the cylinder beneath the piston during the gravity-induced upstroke; the steam was then condensed by a jet of cold water injected into the steam space to produce a partial vacuum; the pressure differential between the atmosphere and the vacuum on either side of the piston displaced it downwards into the cylinder, raising the opposite end of a rocking beam to which was attached a gang of gravity-actuated reciprocating force pumps housed in the mineshaft. The engine's downward power stroke raised the pump, priming it and preparing the pumping stroke. At first the phases were controlled by hand, but within ten years an escapement mechanism had been devised worked by a vertical plug tree suspended from the rocking beam which rendered the engine self-acting.

A number of Newcomen engines were successfully put to use in Britain for draining hitherto unworkable deep mines, with the engine on the surface; these were large machines, requiring a lot of capital to build, and produced about 5 hp (3.7 kW). They were extremely inefficient by modern standards, but when located where coal was cheap at pit heads, opened up a great expansion in coal mining by allowing mines to go deeper. Despite their disadvantages, Newcomen engines were reliable and easy to maintain and continued to be used in the coalfields until the early decades of the nineteenth century. By 1729, when Newcomen died, his engines had spread (first) to Hungary in 1722, Germany, Austria, and Sweden. A total of 110 are known to have been built by 1733 when the joint patent expired, of which 14 were abroad. In the 1770s, the engineer John Smeaton built some very large examples and introduced a number of improvements. A total of 1,454 engines had been built by 1800.

A fundamental change in working principles was brought about by James Watt. In close collaboration with Matthew Boulton, he had succeeded by 1778 in perfecting his steam engine, which incorporated a series of radical improvements, notably the closing off of the upper part of the cylinder thereby making the low pressure steam drive the top of the piston instead of the atmosphere, use of a steam jacket and the celebrated separate steam condenser chamber. All this meant that a more constant temperature could be maintained in the cylinder and that engine efficiency no longer varied according to atmospheric conditions. These improvements increased engine efficiency by a factor of about five, saving 75% on coal costs.

Nor could the atmospheric engine be easily adapted to drive a rotating wheel, although Wasborough and Pickard did succeed in doing so towards 1780. However by 1783 the more economical Watt steam engine had been fully developed into a double-acting rotative type, which meant that it could be used to directly drive the rotary machinery of a factory or mill. Both of Watt's basic engine types were commercially very successful, and by 1800, the firm Boulton & Watt had constructed 496 engines, with 164 driving reciprocating pumps, 24 serving blast furnaces, and 308 powering mill machinery; most of the engines generated from 5 to 10 hp (7.5 kW).

The development of machine tools, such as the lathe, planing and shaping machines powered by these engines, enabled all the metal parts of the engines to be easily and accurately cut and in turn made it possible to build larger and more powerful engines.

Until about 1800, the most common pattern of steam engine was the beam engine, built as an integral part of a stone or brick engine-house, but soon various patterns of self-contained portative engines (readily removable, but not on wheels) were developed, such as the table engine. Towards the turn of the 19th century, the Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick, and the American, Oliver Evans began to construct higher pressure non-condensing steam engines, exhausting against the atmosphere. This allowed an engine and boiler to be combined into a single unit compact enough to be used on mobile road and rail locomotives and steam boats.

In the early 19th century after the expiration of Watt's patent, the steam engine underwent many improvements by a host of inventors and engineers.

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.

The idea of using boiling water to produce mechanical motion has a long history, going back about 2000 years. Early devices were not practical power producers, but more advanced designs producing usable power have become a major source of mechanical power over the last 300 years, enabling the industrial revolution, beginning with applications for mine water removal using vacuum engines. Subsequent developments using pressurized steam and conversion to rotary motion enabled the powering of a wide range of manufacturing machinery anywhere water and coal or wood fuel could be obtained, previously restricted only to locations where water wheels or windmills could be used. Significantly, this power source would later be applied to prime movers, mobile devices such as steam tractors and railway locomotives. Modern steam turbines generate about 80 percent of the electric power in the world using a variety of heat sources.

Steam engines are typically external combustion engines, although other external sources of heat such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be used. The heat cycle is known as the Rankine cycle.

In general usage, the term 'steam engine' can refer to integrated steam plants such as railway steam locomotives and portable engines, or may refer to the machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine. Specialized devices such as steam hammers and steam pile drivers are dependent on steam supplied from a separate boiler.

Applications

Since the early 18th century steam power has been set to a variety of practical uses. At first it was applied to reciprocating pumps, but from the 1780s rotative engines (i.e. those converting reciprocating motion into rotary motion) began to appear, driving factory machinery. At the turn of the 19th century, steam-powered transport on both sea and land began to make its appearance becoming ever more dominant as the century progressed.

Steam engines can be said to have been the moving force behind the Industrial Revolution and saw widespread commercial use driving machinery in factories and mills, powering pumping stations and transport appliances such as railway locomotives, ships and road vehicles. Their use in agriculture led to an increase in the land available for cultivation.

Very low power engines are used to power models and special applications such as the steam clock.

The presence of several phases between heat source and power delivery has meant that it has always been difficult to obtain a power-to-weight ratio anywhere near that obtainable from internal combustion engines; notably this has made steam aircraft extremely rare. Similar considerations have meant that for small and medium-scale applications steam has been largely superseded by internal combustion engines or electric motors, which has given the steam engine an out-dated image. However it is important to remember that the power supplied to the electric grid is predominantly generated using steam turbine plant, so that indirectly the world's industry is still dependent on steam power. Recent concerns about fuel sources and pollution have incited a renewed interest in steam both as a component of cogeneration processes and as a prime mover. This is becoming known as the Advanced Steam movement.

Steam engines can be classified by their application:

Stationary applications:

Stationary steam engines can be classified into two main types:

1. Winding engines, rolling mill engines, steam donkeys, marine engines, and similar applications which need to frequently stop and reverse.

2. Engines providing power, which rarely stops and do not need to reverse. These include engines used in thermal power stations and those that were used in pumping stations, mills, factories and to power cable railways and cable tramways before the widespread use of electric power.

The steam donkey is technically a stationary engine but is mounted on skids to be semi-portable. It is designed for logging use and can drag itself to a new location. Having secured the winch cable to a sturdy tree at the desired destination, the machine will move towards the anchor point as the cable is winched in.

Transport applications:

A portable engine is a stationary engine mounted on wheels so that it may be towed to a work-site by horses or a traction engine, rather than being fixed in a single location.

Steam engines have been used to power a wide array of transport appliances:

Marine: Steamboat, Steamship
Rail: Steam locomotive, Fireless locomotive
Agriculture: Traction engine, Steam tractor
Road: Steam wagon, Steam bus, Steam tricycle, Steam car
Construction: Steam roller, Steam shovel
Military: Steam tank (tracked), Steam tank (wheeled)
Space: Steam rocket

In these applications internal combustion engines are now used due to their higher power-to-weight ratio, lower maintenance and space requirements.

History

The first practical steam-powered 'engine' was a water pump, developed in 1698 by Thomas Savery. It proved only to have a limited lift height and was prone to boiler explosions, but it still received some use for mines and pumping stations.

The first commercially successful engine did not appear until 1712. Incorporating technologies discovered by Savery and Denis Papin, the atmospheric engine, invented by Thomas Newcomen, paved the way for the Industrial Revolution. Newcomen's engine was relatively inefficient, and in most cases was only used for pumping water. It was mainly employed for draining mine workings at depths hitherto impossible, but also for providing a reusable water supply for driving waterwheels at factories sited away from a suitable 'head'.

The next major step occurred when James Watt developed an improved version of Newcomen's engine. Watt's engine used 75% less coal than Newcomen's, and was hence much cheaper to run. Watt proceeded to develop his engine further, modifying it to provide a rotary motion suitable for driving factory machinery. This enabled factories to be sited away from rivers, and further accelerated the pace of the Industrial Revolution.

Newcomen's and Watt's early engines were "atmospheric", meaning that they were powered by the vacuum generated by condensing steam instead of the pressure of expanding steam. Cylinders had to be large, as the only usable force acting on them was atmospheric pressure. Steam was only used to compensate for the atmosphere allowing the piston to move back to its starting position. Even if pressured steam had been available, it could not do any work (push) against the chain connecting the piston to the beam.

Around 1800, Richard Trevithick introduced engines using high-pressure steam. These were much more powerful than previous engines and could be made small enough for transport applications. Thereafter, technological developments and improvements in manufacturing techniques (partly brought about by the adoption of the steam engine as a power source) resulted in the design of more efficient engines that could be smaller, faster, or more powerful, depending on the intended application.

Steam engines remained the dominant source of power well into the 20th century, when advances in the design of electric motors and internal combustion engines gradually resulted in the vast majority of reciprocating steam engines being replaced in commercial usage, and the ascendancy of steam turbines in power generation.

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STEAM ROAD ROLLER

A steamroller (or steam roller) is a form of road roller – a type of heavy construction machinery used for leveling surfaces, such as roads or airfields – that is powered by a steam engine. The leveling/flattening action is achieved through a combination of the size and weight of the vehicle and the rolls: the smooth wheels and the large cylinder or drum fitted in place of treaded road wheels.

The majority of steam rollers are outwardly similar to traction engines as many traction engine manufacturers later produced rollers based on their existing designs, and the patents owned by certain roller manufacturers tended to influence the general arrangements used by others. The key difference between the two vehicles is that on a roller the main roll replaces the front wheels and axle that would be fitted to a traction engine.

In many parts of the world, the term steam roller is still used to refer to a road roller, regardless of the method of propulsion. This typically only applies to the largest examples (used for road-making).

Britain was a large exporter of steam rollers to the world over the years, with the firm of Aveling and Porter probably being the most famous and the most prolific.

Many other traction engine manufacturers built steam rollers, but after Aveling and Porter, the most popular were Marshall, Sons & Co., John Fowler & Co., and Wallis & Steevens.

In America, the Buffalo-Springfield Roller Company was a large builder. J. I. Case made a roller variant of their famed farm engines, but had a small market share. Other nations had makers including the Czechs, Swiss, Swedes, Germans and Dutch which produced steam rollers.

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FIRE PUMP CAR

Ctesibius of Alexandria is credited with inventing the first fire pump around the second century B.C., and an example of a force-pump possibly used for a fire-engine is mentioned by Heron of Alexandria. The fire pump was reinvented in Europe during the 1500s, reportedly used in Augsburg in 1518 and Nuremberg in 1657. A book of 1655 inventions mentions a steam engine (called fire engine) pump used to "raise a column of water 40 feet [12 m]", but there was no mention of whether it was portable.

Colonial laws in America required each house to have a bucket of water on the front stoop during fires at night. These buckets were intended for use by the initial "bucket brigade" that would throw the water at fires. Philadelphia obtained a hand-pumped fire engine in 1719, years after Boston's 1654 model appeared there, made by Joseph Jencks, but before New York's two engines arrived from London.

By 1730, Newsham, in London, had made successful fire engines; the first used in New York City (in 1731) were of his make (six years before formation of the NYC volunteer fire department). The amount of manpower and skill necessary for firefighting prompted the institution of an organized fire company by Benjamin Franklin in 1737. Thomas Lote built the first fire engine made in America in 1743. Ericsson made a similar one in New York in 1840. John Ericsson is credited with building the first American steam-powered fire engine. George Braithwaite built the first steam fire-engine in Britain.

Until the mid-19th century most fire engines were maneuvered by men, but the introduction of horse-drawn fire engines considerably improved the response time to incidents. The first self-propelled steam engine was built in New York in 1841. It was the target of sabotage by firefighters and its use was discontinued, and motorized fire engines did not become commonplace until the early 20th century.

For many years firefighters sat on the sides of the fire engines, or even stood on the rear of the vehicles, exposed to the elements. This arrangement was uncomfortable and dangerous (some firefighters were thrown to their deaths when their fire engines made sharp turns on the road), and today nearly all fire engines have fully enclosed seating areas for their crews.

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JACQUARD LOOM - World's first programmable machine

The Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801, that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with complex patterns such as brocade, damask, and matelasse. The loom is controlled by punchcards with punched holes, each row of which corresponds to one row of the design. Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card and the many cards that compose the design of the textile are strung together in order. It is based on earlier inventions by the Frenchmen Basile Bouchon (1725), Jean Falcon (1728) and Jacques Vaucanson (1740).

Principles of Operation

Each hole in the card corresponds to a "Bolus" hook, which can either be up or down. The hook raises or lowers the harness, which carries and guides the warp thread so that the weft will either lie above or below it. The sequence of raised and lowered threads is what creates the pattern. Each hook can be connected via the harness to a number of threads, allowing more than one repeat of a pattern. A loom with a 400 hook head might have four threads connected to each hook, resulting in a fabric that is 1600 warp ends wide with four repeats of the weave going across.

The term "Jacquard loom" is a misnomer. It is the "Jacquard head" that adapts to a great many dobby looms such as the "Dornier" brand that allow the weaving machine to then create the intricate patterns often seen in Jacquard weaving.
Jacquard looms, whilst relatively common in the textile industry, are not as ubiquitous as dobby looms which are usually faster and much cheaper to operate. However unlike jacquard looms they are not capable of producing so many different weaves from one warp. Modern jacquard looms are controlled by computers in place of the original punched cards, and can have thousands of hooks.

The threading of a Jacquard loom is so labor intensive that many looms are threaded only once. Subsequent warps are then tied in to the existing warp with the help of a knotting robot which ties each new thread on individually. Even for a small loom with only a few thousand warp ends the process of re-threading can take days.

Importance to Computing

The Jacquard loom was the first machine to use punch cards to control a sequence of operations. Although it did no computation based on them, it is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware. The ability to change the pattern of the loom's weave by simply changing cards was an important conceptual precursor to the development of computer programming. Specifically, Charles Babbage planned to use cards to store programs in his Analytical engine.

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THRESHING MACHINE

The thrashing machine, or, in modern spelling, threshing machine (or simply thresher), was a machine first invented by Scottish mechanical engineer Andrew Meikle for use in agriculture. It was invented (c.1784) for the separation of grain from stalks and husks. For thousands of years, grain was separated by hand with flails, and was very laborious and time consuming. Mechanization of this process took much of the drudgery out of farm labor.

Early social impacts

The Swing Riots in the UK were partly a result of the threshing machine. Following years of war, high taxes and low wages, farm laborers finally snapped in 1830. These farm labourers had faced unemployment for a number of years due to the widespread introduction of the threshing machine and the policy of enclosing fields. No longer were thousands of men needed to tend the crops, a few would suffice. With fewer jobs, lower wages and no prospects of things improving for these workers the threshing machine was the final straw, the machine was to place them on the brink of starvation. The Swing Rioters smashed threshing machines and threatened farmers who had them.

The riots were dealt with very harshly. Nine of the rioters were hanged and a further 450 were transported to Australia.

Early threshing machines were hand-fed and horse-powered. They were small by today's standards and were about the size of an upright piano. Later machines were steam-powered, driven by a portable engine or traction engine.

Farming process

Threshing is just one process in getting cereals to the grinding mill and customer. The wheat needs to be grown, cut, stooked (bundled), hauled, threshed, and then the grain hauled to an elevator and the chaff baled. For many years each of these steps were an individual process, requiring teams of workers and many machines. In the steep hill wheat country of Palouse in the Northwest of the United States, steep ground meant moving machinery around was problematic and prone to rolling. To reduce the amount of work on the side hills, the idea arose of combining the wheat binder and thresher into one machine—a combined harvester. About 1910, horse pulled combines appeared and became a success. Later, gas and diesel engines appeared with other refinements and specifications.

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COMBINE HARVESTER

The combine harvester, or simply combine, is a machine that harvests grain crops. The objective is to complete three processes, which used to be distinct, in one pass of the machine over a particular part of the field. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), soybeans, and flax (linseed). The waste straw left behind on the field is the remaining dried stems and leaves of the crop with limited nutrients which is either chopped and spread on the field or baled for feed and bedding for livestock.

History

The first combine was invented in 1838 by Hiran Moore. In 1882, Hugh Victor McKay had a similar idea and developed the first commercial combine harvester in 1885, the Sunshine Harvester.

Combines, some of them quite large, were drawn by mule or horse teams and used a bull wheel to provide power. Later, steam power was used, and George Stockton Berry integrated the combine with a steam engine using straw to heat the boiler. Tractor-drawn, PTO-powered combines were then used for a time. These combines used a shaker to separate the grain from the chaff and straw-walkers (grates with small teeth on an eccentric shaft) to eject the straw while retaining the grain. Tractor drawn combines evolved to have separate gas or diesel engines to power the grain separation.

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RAIL TURNTABLE

In rail terminology, a turntable is a device used to turn railroad rolling stock. When steam locomotives were still in wide use, many railroads needed a way to turn the locomotives around for return trips as their controls were often not configured for extended periods of running in reverse and in many locomotives the top speed was lower in reverse motion. Turntables were also used to turn observation cars so that their windowed lounge ends faced toward the rear of the train.

The turntable bridge (the part of the turntable that included the tracks and that swiveled to turn the equipment) could span anywhere from 6 to 120 feet, depending on the railroad's needs. Larger turntables were installed in the locomotive maintenance facilities for longer locomotives, while short line and narrow gauge railroads typically used smaller turntables as their equipment was smaller. Turntables as small as 6 feet in diameter have been installed in some industrial facilities where the equipment is small enough to be pushed one at a time by human or horse power.

Turntables still in use are more common in North America than in Europe, where locomotive design favors configurations with a controller cabin on both ends or in the middle.

In Britain, where steam hauled trains generally have vacuum operated brakes, it was quite common for turntables to be operated by vacuum motors worked from the locomotive's vacuum ejector or pump via a flexible hose or pipe although a few manually and electrically operated examples exist.

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PADDLE STEAMER

A paddle steamer is a ship or boat driven by a steam engine that uses one or more paddle wheels to develop thrust for propulsion. It is also a type of steamboat. Boats with paddle wheels on the sides are termed sidewheelers, while those with a single wheel on the stern are known as sternwheelers. Paddle steamers usually carry the prefix "PS". Although generally associated with steam power, paddleboats or paddlewheelers have also been driven by diesel engines, animal power, or human power.

The paddle wheel was the first form of mechanical propulsion for a boat, but has now been almost entirely superseded by the screw propeller and other, more modern, forms of marine propulsion.

Types of paddle steamer

There are two basic ways to mount paddle wheels on a ship; a single wheel on the rear, known as a stern-wheeler, and a paddle wheel on each side, known as a side-wheeler.

Stern-wheelers have generally been used as riverboat in the United States where they still operate for tourist use on the Mississippi River.

Side-wheelers are used as riverboats and as coastal craft. While wider than a stern-wheeler, due to the extra width of the paddle wheels and their enclosing pontoons, a side-wheeler has extra maneuverability. Due to this extra maneuverability side-wheelers were more popular on the narrower, windy rivers of the Murray-Darling system in Australia where a number are still in operation today.

Seagoing paddle steamers

The first seagoing trip of a paddle steamer was that in 1808 of the Albany', which steamed from the Hudson River along the coast to the Delaware River. This was purely for the purpose of moving a river-boat to a new market, but the use of paddle-steamers for short coastal trips began soon after that.

The first paddle-steamer to make a long ocean voyage was the SS Savannah, built in 1819 expressly for this service. Savannah set out for Liverpool on May 22, 1819, sighting Ireland after 23 days at sea. This was the first powered crossing of the Atlantic, although Savannah also carried a full rig of sail to assist the engines when winds were favorable. In 1822, Charles Napier's Aaron Manby, the world's first iron ship, made the first direct steam crossing from London to Paris and the first seagoing voyage by an iron ship anywhere.

In 1838, Sirius, a fairly small steam packet built for the Cork to London route, became the first vessel to cross the Atlantic under sustained steam power, beating Isambard Kingdom Brunel's much larger Great Western by a day. Great Western, however, was actually built for the transatlantic trade, and so had sufficient coal for the passage; Sirius had to burn furniture and other items after running out of coal. The Great Western’s more successful crossing began the regular sailing of powered vessels across the Atlantic. Beaver was the first coastal steamship to operate in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Paddle steamers helped open Japan to the Western World in the mid-19th century.

The largest paddle-steamer ever built was Brunel's Great Eastern, but it also had screw propulsion and sail rigging. It was 692 ft (211 m) long and weighed 32,000 tons, its paddle-wheels being 56 ft (17 m) in diameter.

In oceangoing service, paddle steamers became obsolete rather quickly with the invention of the screw propeller, but they remained in use in coastal service and as river tugboats, thanks to their shallow draught and good maneuverability.

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STEAM BOAT

A steamboat or steamship, sometimes called a steamer, is a ship in which the primary method of propulsion is steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels.

The term steamboat is usually used to refer to smaller steam-powered boats working on lakes and rivers, particularly riverboats; steamship generally refers to larger steam-powered ships, usually ocean-going, capable of carrying a (ship's) boat. The term steamwheeler is archaic and rarely used.

Steamships gradually replaced sailing ships for commercial shipping through the 19th century and in turn were overtaken by diesel-driven ships in the second half of the twentieth century. Most warships used steam propulsion until the advent of the gas turbine. Today, nuclear-powered warships and submarines use steam to drive turbines, but are not referred to as steamships or steamboats.

Screw-driven steamships generally carry the ship prefix "SS" before their names, meaning 'Steam Ship' (or Screw Steamer, or 'screw-driven steamship'), paddle steamers usually carry the prefix "PS" and steamships powered by steam turbine may be prefixed "TS" (turbine ship). The term steamer is occasionally used, out of nostalgia, for diesel motor-driven vessels, prefixed "MV".

The French inventor Denis Papin, after inventing the steam digester (a type of pressure cooker) and experimenting with closed cylinders and pistons pushed in by atmospheric pressure, designed and built a steam pump analogous to the pump advertised by Thomas Savery in England during the same period. In his writings, including his correspondence with Gottfried Leibniz, Papin proposed applying this steam pump to the operation of a paddlewheel boat. During a stay in Kassel, Germany, in 1704, he completed a paddlewheel boat, probably pedal-powered. When he left for England in 1707, hoping to sell the British on his idea of steam-powered navigation, he used his paddlewheeler to navigate down the Fulda River as far as Münden. However, though he was probably the first to have a clear conception of a steamboat, he found no backers in London.

In 1736, Jonathan Hulls took out a patent in England for a Newcomen engine-powered steamboat, but it was the improvement in steam engines by James Watt that made the concept feasible. William Henry of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, having learned of Watt's engine on a visit to England, made his own engine. In 1763 he put it in a boat. The boat sank, and while Henry made an improved model, he did not appear to have much success, though he may have inspired others.

In France, by 1774 Marquis Claude de Jouffroy and his colleagues had made a 13 meter (42 ft 8 in) working steamboat with rotating paddles, the Palmipède. The ship sailed on the Doubs in June and July 1776, apparently the first steamship to sail successfully. In 1783 a new paddle steamer, Pyroscaphe, successfully steamed up the river Saône for fifteen minutes before the engine failed, but bureaucracy thwarted further progress.

From 1784 James Rumsey built a pump-driven (water jet) boat and successfully steamed upstream on the Potomac River in 1786; the following year he obtained a patent from the State of Virginia. In Pennsylvania, John Fitch, an acquaintance of Henry, made a model paddle steamer in 1785, and subsequently developed propulsion by floats on a chain, obtained a patent in 1786, then built a steamboat which underwent a successful trial in 1787. In 1788, a steamboat built by John Fitch operated in regular commercial service along the Delaware river between Philadelphia PA and Burlington NJ, carrying as many as 30 passengers. This boat could typically make 7 to 8 miles per hour, and traveled more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) during its short length of service. The Fitch steamboat was not a commercial success, as this travel route was adequately covered by relatively good wagon roads. The following year a second boat made 50 km (30 mile) excursions, and in 1790 a third boat ran a series of trials on the Delaware River before patent disputes dissuaded Fitch from continuing.

Meanwhile, Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, near Dumfries, Scotland, had developed double-hulled boats propelled by cranked paddlewheels placed between the hulls. He engaged engineer William Symington to build his patent steam engine into a boat which was successfully tried out on Dalswinton Loch in 1788, and followed by a larger steamboat the next year. Miller then abandoned the project. Ten years later Symington was engaged by Lord Dundas to build a steamboat. In March 1802, his Charlotte Dundas towed two 70-ton barges 30 km (19 miles) along the Forth and Clyde Canal to Glasgow. This vessel, the first tow boat, has been called the "first practical steamboat", and the first to be followed by continuous development of steamboats. Although plans to introduce boats on the Forth and Clyde canal were thwarted by fears of erosion of the banks, development was taken up both in Britain and abroad.

North America

Robert Fulton, who may have become interested in steamboats when he visited William Henry in 1777 at the age of 12, visited Britain and France. He built and tested an experimental steamboat on the River Seine in 1803, and was aware of the success of Charlotte Dundas. Before returning to the United States, Fulton ordered a Boulton and Watt steam engine, and on return built what he called the North River Steamboat (often mistakenly described as Clermont). In 1807, she began a regular passenger service between New York City and Albany, New York, 240 km (150 miles) distant, which was a commercial success. She could make the trip in 32 hours. In 1808, John and James Winans built Vermont in Burlington, Vermont, the second steamboat to operate commercially.

In 1809, Accommodation, built by the Hon. John Molson at Montreal, and fitted with engines made at the Forges du Saint-Maurice, Trois-Rivières, was running successfully between Montreal and Quebec, being the first steamer on the St. Lawrence and in Canada; unlike Fulton, Molson did not show a profit. The experience of both vessels showed the new system of propulsion was commercially viable, and as a result its application to the more open waters of the Great Lakes was next considered. That idea went on hiatus due to the War of 1812.

In 1815, Pierre Andriel crossed the English Channel aboard Élise, marking the first sea-going use of a steam ship.

The use of steamboats on major American rivers soon followed Fulton's success. In 1811 the first in a continuous (still in commercial passenger operation as of 2007) line of river steamboats left the dock at Pittsburgh to steam down the Ohio River to the Mississippi and on to New Orleans. The river pilot and author Mark Twain, in his Life on the Mississippi, described much of the operation of these vessels.

For most of the 19th century and part of the early 20th century, trade on the Mississippi River was dominated by paddle-wheel steamboats. Their use generated rapid development of economies of port cities; the exploitation of agricultural and commodity products, which could be more easily transported to markets; and prosperity along the major rivers. Their success led to penetration deep into the continent, where Anson Northrup in 1859 became first steamer to cross the U.S.-Canadian border on the Red River. They would also be involved in major political events, as when Louis Riel seized International at Fort Garry, or Gabriel Dumont was engaged by Northcote at Batoche. Very few such craft survive to the present day.

At the same time, the expanding steamboat traffic had severe adverse environmental effects, in the Middle Mississippi Valley especially, between St. Louis and the river's confluence with the Ohio. The steamboats consumed much wood for fuel, and the river floodplain and banks became deforested. This led to instability in the banks, addition of silt to the water, making the river shallower and causing unpredictable, lateral movement of the river channel across the wide, ten-mile floodplain. The river became both wider and shallower, endangering navigation. Boats designated as snag pullers to keep the channels free had crews that sometimes cut remaining large trees 100-200 feet or more back from the banks, exacerbating the problems. In the 19th century, the flooding of the Mississippi became a more severe problem than when the floodplain was filled with trees and brush. Among other effects, changes in its channel meant the destruction of much of the archeology and historical remnants of early French colonial villages of the Illinois Country, such as Kaskaskia, St. Philippe, and Cahokia on the east side, and the original Ste. Genevieve, Missouri on the west side of the river.

Most steamboats were destroyed by boiler explosions or fires, and many sank in the river, some to be covered over by silt as the river changed course. From 1811-1899, 156 steamboats were lost to snags or rocks between St. Louis and the Ohio River. Another 411 were damaged by fire, explosions or ice during that period. One of the few surviving Mississippi sternwheelers from this period, Julius C. Wilkie, was operated as a museum ship at Winona, Minnesota until its destruction in a fire in 1981. The replacement, built in situ was not a steamboat. The replica was scrapped in 2008. For modern craft operated on rivers, see the Riverboat article.

The Belle of Louisville, out of Louisville, Kentucky is the oldest continually operating steamboat on the inland waterways of the United States. She was laid down as Idlewild in 1914.

Six major commercial steamboats currently operate on the inland waterways of the United States. They are the steamers Belle of Louisville, Delta Queen, Julia Belle Swain, Mississippi Queen, Natchez, and American Queen. Three of these boats are overnight passenger vessels operated by Majestic America Line, formerly the Delta Queen Steamboat Company of New Orleans, Louisiana.

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STEAM HAMMER FORGE

A steam hammer is a power-driven hammer used to shape forgings. It consists of a hammer-like piston located within a cylinder. The hammer is raised by the pressure of steam injected into the lower part of a cylinder and falls down with a force by removing the steam. Usually, the hammer is made to fall faster by injecting steam into the upper part of the cylinder. Steam hammers that fall by their own weight are called steam drop hammers. Steam hammers vary greatly in weight from 45 kilograms to 90 metric tons.

The steam hammer was invented around 1837 by the Scot James Nasmyth, in Manchester, England and produced in his Patricroft foundry which he built adjacent to the (then new) Liverpool and Manchester Railway and the Bridgewater Canal; an original Nasmyth hammer stands facing his foundry buildings (now a 'business park'). A larger Nasmyth & Wilson steam hammer stands in the campus of the University of Bolton.

The intended first use of the steam hammer lay in forging the paddle shaft of the SS Great Britain. However, the paddle technology was replaced with the screw propeller, and implementation of the hammer was left to the Schneider Electric, Creusot foundry in Le Creusot, France.

The steam hammer was one of many machine tools invented around this time which allowed for large scale industrialization and the use of machines to build machines. Using the same principles of operation, Nasmyth also developed a steam powered pile-driving machine.

In 1836, Joseph-Eugene Schneider and his brother Adolphe purchased a derelict ironworks in Burgundy, near the town of Le Creusot, and founded Schneider Brothers & Co. (later renamed Schneider & Co.). Two years later the company produced the first steam locomotive to be built in France. Eugene Schneider along with the company's chief engineer, Francois Bourdon, developed the world's first true steam hammer at the Schneider works in 1841. Schneider and Co. went on to build 110 steam hammers of all sizes between 1843 and 1867, 26 of which were employed by the firm itself. As the jobs grew more demanding, the hammers grew correspondingly larger, and the Schneiders eventually saw a need for a hammer of colossal proportions.

The Creusot steam hammer was completed in 1877, and with its ability to deliver a blow of up to 100 tons, eclipsed the previous record set by the German firm Krupp, whose steam hammer "Fritz" with its 50 ton blow had held the title as the world's most powerful steam hammer since 1861.

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SEWING MACHINE

History and development of the sewing machine.

In 1791 British inventor Thomas Saint was the first to patent a design for a sewing machine. His machine was meant to be used on leather and canvas. A working model was never built.

In 1814 an Austrian Tailor, Josef Madersperger, presented his first sewing machine, the development started in 1807.

In 1830 a French tailor, Barthélemy Thimonnier, patented a sewing machine that sewed straight seams using chain stitch. By 1841, Thimonnier had a factory of 80 machines sewing uniforms for the French Army. The factory was destroyed by rioting French tailors afraid of losing their livelihood. Thimonnier had no further success with his machine.

The lock stitch sewing machine was invented by Walter Hunt in 1833. His machine used an eye-pointed needle (with the eye and the point on the same end) carrying the upper thread and a shuttle carrying the lower thread. The curved needle moved through the fabric horizontally, leaving the loop as it withdrew. The shuttle passed through the loop, interlocking the thread. The feed let the machine down – requiring the machine to be stopped frequently and reset up. Hunt eventually lost interest in his machine and sold it without bothering to patent it. In 1842, John Greenough patented the first sewing machine in the United States.

Elias Howe patented his machine in 1845; using a similar method to Hunt's, except the fabric was held vertically. The major improvement he made was to put a groove in the needle running away from the point, starting from the eye. After a lengthy stint in England trying to attract interest in his machine he returned to America to find various people infringing his patent. He eventually won his case in 1854 and was awarded the right to claim royalties from the manufacturers using ideas covered by his patent.

Isaac Merritt Singer has become synonymous with the sewing machine. Trained as an engineer, he saw a rotary sewing machine being repaired in a Boston shop. He thought it to be clumsy and promptly set out to design a better one. His machine used a flying shuttle instead of a rotary one; the needle was mounted vertically and included a presser foot to hold the cloth in place. It had a fixed arm to hold the needle and included a basic tensioning system.

This machine combined elements of Thimonnier's, Hunt's, and Howe's machines. He was granted an American patent in 1851 and it was suggested he patent the foot pedal (or treadle) used to power some of his machines; however, it had been in use for too long for a patent to be issued. When Howe learned of Singer’s machine he took him to court. Howe won and Singer was forced to pay a lump sum for all machines already produced. Singer then took out a license under Howe’s patent and paid him $1.15 per machine. Singer then entered a joint partnership with a lawyer named Edward Clark, and they formed the first hire-purchase (time payment) scheme to allow people to afford to buy their machines.

Meanwhile Allen Wilson had developed a reciprocating shuttle, which was an improvement over Singer’s and Howe’s. However, John Bradshaw had patented a similar device and was threatening to sue. Wilson decided to change track and try a new method. He went into partnership with Nathaniel Wheeler to produce a machine with a rotary hook instead of a shuttle. This was far quieter and smoother than the other methods, and the Wheeler and Wilson Company produced more machines in 1850s and 1860s than any other manufacturer. Wilson also invented the four-motion feed mechanism; this is still seen on every machine today. This had a forward, down, back, and up motion, which drew the cloth through in an even and smooth motion. Charles Miller patented the first machine to stitch buttonholes (US10609).

Through the 1850s more and more companies were being formed and were trying to sue each other. This triggered a patent thicket known as the Sewing Machine War. In 1856 the Sewing Machine Combination was formed, consisting of Singer, Howe, Wheeler and Wilson, and Grover and Baker. These four companies pooled their patents, meaning that all the other manufacturers had to obtain a license and pay $15 per machine. This lasted until 1877 when the last patent expired.

In the 1840s a machine shop was established at the Merrow mill to develop specialized machinery for the knitting operations. In 1877 the world’s first crochet machine was invented and patented by Joseph M. Merrow, then-president of the company. This crochet machine was the first production overlock sewing machine. The Merrow Machine Company went on to become one of the largest American Manufacturers of overlock sewing machines, and continues to be a global presence in the 21st century as the last American overlock sewing machine manufacturer.

James Edward Allen Gibbs (1829-1902), a farmer from Raphine in Rockbridge County, Virginia patented the first chain-stitch single-thread sewing machine on June 2, 1857. In partnership with James Wilcox, Gibbs became a principal in Wilcox & Gibbs Sewing Machine Company. Wilcox & Gibbs commercial sewing machines are still used in the 21st century.

In 1905 Merrow won a lawsuit against Wilcox & Gibbs for the rights to the original crochet stitch.

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MINING INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Mining

Coal mining in Britain, particularly in South Wales started early. Before the steam engine, pits were often shallow bell pits following a seam of coal along the surface, which were abandoned as the coal was extracted. In other cases, if the geology was favourable, the coal was mined by means of an adit or drift mine driven into the side of a hill. Shaft mining was done in some areas, but the limiting factor was the problem of removing water. It could be done by hauling buckets of water up the shaft or to a sough (a tunnel driven into a hill to drain a mine). In either case, the water had to be discharged into a stream or ditch at a level where it could flow away by gravity. The introduction of the steam engine greatly facilitated the removal of water and enabled shafts to be made deeper, enabling more coal to be extracted. These were developments that had begun before the Industrial Revolution, but the adoption of James Watt's more efficient steam engine from the 1770s reduced the fuel costs of engines, making mines more profitable. Coal mining was very dangerous owing to the presence of firedamp in many coal seams. Some degree of safety was provided by the safety lamp which was invented in 1816 by Sir Humphry Davy and independently by George Stephenson. However, the lamps proved a false dawn because they became unsafe very quickly and provided a weak light. Firedamp explosions continued, often setting off coal dust explosions, so casualties grew during the entire nineteenth century. Conditions of work were very poor, with a high casualty rate from rock falls.

The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the 1700s, and later spread to Europe, North America, and Japan, was based on the availability of coal to power steam engines. International trade expanded exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and steamships in the 1810-1840 Victorian era. Coal was cheaper and much more efficient than wood fuel in most steam engines. As central and Northern England contains an abundance of coal, many mines were situated in these areas as well as the South Wales coalfield and Scotland. The small-scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand, with extraction moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial Revolution progressed.

Britain

Pre 1900

Although some deep mining took place as early as the late Tudor period (in the North East, and along the Firth of Forth coast) deep shaft mining in the UK began to develop extensively in the late 18th century, with rapid expansion throughout the 19th century and early 20th century when the industry peaked. The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of Lancashire, of Yorkshire, and of South Wales; the Yorkshire pits which supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep. Northumberland and Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first deep pits. In much of Britain coal was worked from drift mines, or scraped off when it outcropped on the surface. Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and primitive equipment.

Scottish miners had been bonded to their "maisters" by a 1606 Act "Anent Coalyers and Salters". A Colliers and Salters (Scotland) Act 1775, recognized this to be "a state of slavery and bondage" and formally abolished it; this was made effective by a further Colliers (Scotland) Act 1799.

Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as extraction was still primitive. As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1,000 ft. deep) only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted. The use of wooden pit props to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800. The critical factor was circulation of air and control of dangerous explosive gases. At first fires were burned to create air currents and circulate air, but replaced by fans driven by steam engines. Protection for miners came with the invention of the Davy lamp and Geordie lamp, where any firedamp (or methane) burnt harmlessly within the lamp. It was achieved by restricting the ingress of air with either metal gauze or fine tubes, but the illumination from such lamps was very poor. Great efforts were made to develop better safe lamps, such as the Mueseler lamp produced in the Belgian pits near Liège.

Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to meet the rapidly rising demand. About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal was some 6¼ million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the 20th century). After 1790 output soared, reaching 16 million tons by 1815 at the height of the Napoleonic War. The miners, less menaced by imported labor or machines than were the cotton mill workers, had begun to form trade unions and fight their grim battle for wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees.

Belgium

By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal industry had long been established, and used steam engines for pumping. The Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse, so coal was shipped downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta. The opening of the Saint-Quentin Canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris. The Belgian coalfield outcrops over most of its area, and the highly folded nature of the coal seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant. Deep mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small operations. There was a complex legal system for concessions; often multiple layers had different owners. Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper (thanks to the good pumping system). In 1790, the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters. By 1856, the average depth in the area west of Mons was 361, and in 1866, 437 meters and some pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters; one was 1,065 meters deep, probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time. Gas explosions were a serious problem, and Belgium had high coal miner fatality rates. By the late 19th century the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing some coal from the Ruhr.

United States

Anthracite (or "hard" coal), clean and smokeless, became the preferred fuel in cities, replacing wood by about 1850. Bituminous (or "soft coal") mining came later. In the mid-century Pittsburgh was the principal market. After 1850 soft coal, which is cheaper but dirtier, came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam engines, and was used to make coke for steel after 1870.

Total coal output soared until 1918; before 1890, it doubled every ten years, going from 8.4 million short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870, 270 million in 1900, and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918. New soft coal fields opened in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, as well as West Virginia, Kentucky and Alabama. The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the demand to 360 million short tons in 1932.

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TRAMCAR, STREETCAR OR TROLLEY

A tram, tramcar, trolley, trolleycar, or streetcar is a railborne vehicle, of lighter weight and construction than a conventional train, designed for the transport of passengers (and, very occasionally, freight) within, close to, or between villages, towns and/or cities, on tracks running primarily on streets.

Tramways with tramcars (or street railways with streetcars: US) were common throughout the industrialised world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but they had disappeared from most British, Canadian, French and U.S. cities by the mid-20th century.

The terms tram and tramway were originally Scots and Northern English words for the type of truck used in coal mines and the tracks on which they ran, probably derived from the North Sea Germanic word trame of unknown origin meaning the beam or shaft of a barrow or sledge, also the barrow itself.

The very first tram was on the Swansea and Mumbles Railway in south Wales, UK; it was horse-drawn at first, and later moved by steam and electric power. The Mumbles Railway Act was passed by the British Parliament in 1804, and the first passenger railway (similar to streetcars in the US some 30 years later) started operating in 1807. The first streetcars, also known as horsecars in North America, were built in the United States and developed from city stagecoach lines and omnibus lines that picked up and dropped off passengers on a regular route without the need to be pre-hired. These trams were an animal railway, usually using horses and sometimes mules to haul the cars, usually two as a team. Occasionally other animals were put to use, or humans in emergencies. The first streetcar line, developed by Irish-American John Stephenson, was the New York and Harlem Railroad's Fourth Avenue Line which ran along the Bowery and Fourth Avenue in New York City. Service began in 1832. It was followed in 1835 by New Orleans, Louisiana, which has the oldest continuously operating street railway system in the world, according to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

In 1883, Magnus Volk constructed his 2-foot gauge Volk's Electric Railway along the eastern seafront at Brighton, England. This 2-km line, re-gauged to 2ft 9ins in 1884, remains in service to this day, and is the oldest operating electric tramway in the world.

Steam

The first mechanical trams were powered by steam. Generally, there were two types of steam tram. The first and most common had a small steam locomotive (called a tram engine in the UK) at the head of a line of one or more carriages, similar to a small train. Systems with such steam trams included Christchurch, New Zealand; Sydney, Australia; and other city systems in New South Wales.

The other style of steam tram had the steam engine in the body of the tram, referred to as a tram engine or steam dummy. The most notable system to adopt such trams was in Paris. French-designed steam trams also operated in Rockhampton, in the Australian state of Queensland between 1909 and 1939. Stockholm, Sweden, had a steam tram line at the island of Södermalm between 1887 and 1901. A major drawback of this style of tram was the limited space for the engine, so that these trams were usually underpowered.

The use of steam tramways in Britain was effectively prohibited by the draconian rules contained in the so-called Red Flag Act or more correctly the Locomotive Acts of 1861 and 1865. The introduction of new regulations, The Highways & Locomotives (Amendments) Act 1879 set out a more workable arrangement as follows:

Engine to be governed to prevent speeds in excess of 10 miles per hour
No steam or smoke to be emitted
Be free from noise produced by blast or clatter
The machinery to be concealed from view at all points above 4 inch from rail level

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STEAM LOCOMOTIVE

A steam locomotive is a locomotive powered by steam. The term usually refers to its use on railways, but can also refer to a "road locomotive" such as a traction engine or steamroller.

Beginning in Britain, steam locomotives dominated railway usage from the start of the 19th century, until the middle of the 20th Century. They were gradually improved and developed in their over 150 years of development and use. Starting in about 1930 other types of engines were developed and steam locomotives were gradually superseded by diesel and electric locomotives.

Origins

The earliest railways employed horses to draw carts along railed tracks.

As the development of steam engines progressed through the 1700s, various attempts were made to apply them to road and railway use. In 1784 William Murdoch a Scottish inventor built a prototype steam road locomotive. The first-known working model of a steam rail locomotive was designed and constructed by Steamboat Pioneer John Fitch in the United States in between 1780 and 1794. This is the first known steam locomotive to use interior bladed wheels guided by rails or tracks. The model still exists at the Ohio Historical Society Museum in Columbus.

The first full scale working railway steam locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick in the United Kingdom, and on 21 February 1804 the world's first railway journey took place as Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales Accompanied with Andrew Vivian, it ran with mixed success. Then followed the successful twin cylinder locomotive Salamanca by Matthew Murray for the edge railed rack and pinion Middleton Railway in 1812. In 1825 George Stephenson built the Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, north east England, which was the first public steam railway in the world. In 1829 he built The Rocket which was entered in and won the Rainhill Trials. This success led to Stephenson establishing his company as the pre-eminent builder of steam locomotives used on railways in the United Kingdom, United States and much of Europe. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened a year later making exclusive use of steam power for both passenger and freight trains.

The United States started developing steam locomotives in 1829 with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Tom Thumb. This was the first locomotive to run in America, although it was intended as a demonstration of the potential of steam traction, rather than as a revenue-earning locomotive. The first successful steam railway in the US was the South Carolina Railroad whose inaugural train ran on December 25, 1830 hauled by the Best Friend of Charleston. Many of the earliest locomotives for American railroads were imported from England, including the Stourbridge Lion and the John Bull, but a domestic locomotive manufacturing industry was quickly established, with locomotives like the DeWitt Clinton being built in the 1830s.

The first railway service in Continental Europe (or for that matter, outside the United Kingdom and the United States) was opened on May 5, 1835 in Belgium, between Mechelen and Brussels. The name of the locomotive used was The Elephant.

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ELECTRIC CLOCK

An electric clock is a clock that is powered by electricity instead of powered manually or by other sources of energy, specifically in order to wind the mainspring or to drive the pendulum or oscillator.

History

In 1814, Sir Francis Ronalds (1788) of London invented the forerunner of an electric clock, the electrostatic clock. His prototype was powered with a dry pile battery. It proved unreliable in timekeeping, however, because of a strong dependence on a stable room temperature and 'weather conditions'.

In 1815, Giuseppe Zamboni (1776-1846) of Verona invented and showed another electrostatic clock run with dry pile battery and an oscillating orb. Over the test of time Zamboni's clock was praised "the most elegant and at the same time the most simple movement yet produced by the electric column". Zambodi's clock had a vertical needle supported by a pivot and was so energy efficient that it could operate on one battery for over 50 years.

Numerous people were intent on inventing the electric clock with electromechanical and electromagnetic designs around the year 1840, such as Wheatstone, Steinheil, Hipp, Breguet, and Garnier, both in Europe and America.

In 1840, Alexander Bain (1811-1877), a Scottish clock and instrument maker is the first to invent and patent the electric clock. His original electric clock patent is dated October 10, 1840. On January 11, 1841, Alexander Bain along with John Barwise, a chronometer maker, took out another important patent describing a clock in which an electromagnetic pendulum and an electric current is employed to keep the clock going instead of springs or weights. Later patents expanded on his original ideas.

Matthias Hipp (1815-1893), clockmaker born in Germany, is credited with establishing the production series, mass marketable electric clock. Hipp opened a workshop in Reutlingen, Switzerland, where he developed an electric clock to have the Hipp-Toggle, presented in Berlin at an exhibition in 1843. The Hipp-Toggle is a device attached to a pendulum or balance wheel that electromechanically allows occasional impulse or drive to the pendulum or wheel as its amplitude of swing drops below a certain level, and is so efficient that it was subsequently used in electric clocks for over a hundred years. Hipp also invented a small motor and built the chronoscope and the registering chronograph for time measurement.

The first electric clocks had prominent pendulums because this was a familiar shape and design. Smaller clocks and watches with a spiral-balance are made on the same principles as pendulum clocks.

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MINT COIN PRESS

A mint is an industrial facility which manufactures coins for currency.

The history of mints correlates closely with the history of coins. One difference is that the history of the mint is normally related in a fashion that more closely ties to the political situation of an era. For example, when discussing the history of the New Orleans Mint, the usage of that mint by the Confederate States of America beginning in 1861 is a notable occurrence. The origins of the Philadelphia Mint, which began operations in 1792 and first produced circulating coinage in 1793, are often related within the political context of the time.

In the beginning, hammered coinage or cast coinage were the chief means of coin minting, with resulting production runs numbering as little as the hundreds or thousands. In modern mints, coin dies are manufactured in large numbers and planchets are made into milled coins by the billions.

With the mass production of currency the production cost is weighed when minting coins. For example, it costs the US Mint much less than 25 cents to make a quarter, and the difference in production cost and face value (called seigniorage) helps fund the minting body.

Coin production by screw press (since about 1550)

Around 1550, the German silversmith Marx Schwab invented coining with the screw press. Henri II (1547-1559) imported the new machines : rolling mill, punch and screw press. 8 to 12 men took over from each other every quarter of an hour to maneuver the arms driving the screw which struck the medals. Henri II came up against hostility on the part of the coin makers, so the process was only to be used for coins of small value, medals and tokens. In 1645 it came into general use for minting coins.

Coining by lever press

Between 1817 and 1830 the German engineer Dietrich "Diedrich" Uhlhorn invented the Presse Monétaire (level coin press known as Uhlhorn Press) which bears his name. Uhlhorn invented a new type of minting press (steam driven knuckle-lever press) that gave him international notoriety, selling over 500 worldwide by 1940. The advanced construction of the Uhlhorn press proved to be highly satisfactory, and in later years the use of the screw press for general coinage was gradually eliminated.

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PAPERMAKING

Papermaking is the process of making paper, a substance which is used ubiquitously today for writing and packaging.

In papermaking a dilute suspension of fibers in water is drained through a screen, so that a mat of randomly interwoven fibers is laid down. Water is removed from this mat of fibers by pressing and drying to make paper. Most paper is made from wood pulp, but other fiber sources such as cotton and textiles may be used.

History

Papermaking is known to have been traced back to China about 105 CE, when Tsai Lun, an official attached to the Imperial court during the Han Dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE), created a sheet of paper using mulberry and other bats fibers along with fishnets, old rags, and hemp waste. However a recent archaeological discovery has been reported from near Dunhuang of paper with writing on it dating from 8 BCE, while paper had been used in China for wrapping and padding since the 2nd century BCE. Paper used as a writing medium became widespread by the 3rd century, and by the 6th century toilet paper was starting to be used in China as well. During the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) paper was folded and sewn into square bags to preserve the flavor of tea, while the later Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE) was the first government on Earth to issue paper-printed money.

Modern papermaking began in the early 1800s in Europe with the development of the Fourdrinier machine, which produces a continuous roll of paper rather than individual sheets. These machines have become very large, up to 500 feet (~150 m) in length, producing a sheet 400 inches (~10 m) wide, and operating at speeds of over 60 mph (100 km/h). In 1844, both Canadian inventor Charles Fenerty and German inventor F.G. Keller had invented the machine and process for pulping wood for the use in papermaking. This would end the nearly 2000-year use of pulped rags and start a new era for the production of newsprint and eventually all paper out of pulped wood.

Papermaking, regardless of the scale on which it is done, involves making a dilute suspension of fibers in water and allowing this suspension to drain through a screen so that a mat of randomly interwoven fibers is laid down. Water is removed from this mat of fibers by pressing and drying to make paper.

First the fibers are suspended in water to form slurry in a large vat. The mold is a wire screen in a wooden frame (somewhat similar to an old window screen), which is used to scoop some of the slurry out of the vat. The slurry in the screen mold is sloshed around the mold until it forms a uniform thin coating. The fibers are allowed to settle and the water to drain. When the fibers have stabilized in place but are still damp, they are turned out onto a felt sheet which was generally made of an animal product such as wool or rabbit fur, and the screen mold immediately reused. Layers of paper and felt build up in a pile (called a 'post') then a weight is placed on top to press out excess water and keep the paper fibers flat and tight. The sheets are then removed from the post and hung or laid out to dry.

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FURNACES

A furnace is a device used for heating. The name derives from Latin fornax, oven. The earliest furnace was excavated at Balakot, a site of the Indus Valley Civilization, dating back to its mature phase (c. 2500-1900 BC). The furnace was most likely used for the manufacturing of ceramic objects.

In American English and Canadian English, the term furnace on its own is generally used to describe household heating systems based on a central furnace (known either as a boiler or a heater in British English), and sometimes as a synonym for kiln, a device used in the production of ceramics. In British English the term furnace is used exclusively to mean industrial furnaces which are used for many things, such as the extraction of metal from ore (smelting) or in oil refineries and other chemical plants, for example as the heat source for fractional distillation columns.

The term furnace can also refer to a direct fired heater, used in boiler applications in chemical industries or for providing heat to chemical reactions for processes like cracking, and is part of the standard English names for many metallurgical furnaces worldwide.

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GAS FOR STREET LIGHTING

Gas lighting

Another major industry of the later Industrial Revolution was gas lighting. Though others made a similar innovation elsewhere, the large scale introduction of this was the work of William Murdoch, an employee of Boulton and Watt, the Birmingham steam engine pioneers. The process consisted of the large scale gasification of coal in furnaces, the purification of the gas (removal of sulphur, ammonia, and heavy hydrocarbons), and its storage and distribution. The first gas lighting utilities were established in London between 1812-20. They soon became one of the major consumers of coal in the UK. Gas lighting had an impact on social and industrial organisation because it allowed factories and stores to remain open longer than with tallow candles or oil. Its introduction allowed night life to flourish in cities and towns as interiors and streets could be lighted on a larger scale than before.

Gas lighting refers to a technology used to produce light from a gaseous fuel including hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, propane, butane, or ethylene.

Before electricity became sufficiently widespread and economical to allow for general public use, gas was the most popular means of lighting in cities and suburbs. Early gas lights had to be lit manually, but soon gas lights could light themselves.

Early lighting fuels consisted of olive oil, beeswax, fish oil, whale oil, sesame oil, nut oil, and similar substances. These were the most commonly used fuels until the late 18th century. Chinese records dating back 2300 years note the use of natural gas in the home for light and heat via bamboo pipes to the dwellings.

Public illumination preceded the discovery and adoption of gaslight by centuries. In 1417, Sir Henry Barton, Mayor of London, ordained "lanterns with lights to be hanged out on the winter evenings between Hallowtide and Candlemasse." Paris was first lit by an order issued in 1524, and, in the beginning of the 16th century, the inhabitants were ordered to keep lights burning in the windows of all houses that faced the streets. In 1668, when some regulations were made for improving the streets of London, the residents were reminded to hang out their lanterns at the usual time, and, in 1690, an order was issued to hang out a light, or lamp, every night as soon as it was dark, from Michaelmas to Christmas. By an act of the common council in 1716, all housekeepers, whose houses faced any street, lane, or passage, were required to hang out, every dark night, one or more lights, to burn from six to eleven o'clock, under the penalty of one shilling as a fine for failing to do so.

Coal and natural gases were known originally for their adverse effects rather than their useful qualities. In Coal Mining miners described two types, called the choke damp and the fire damp. In 1667 a paper detailing the effects of these was entitled, "A Description of a Well and Earth in Lancashire taking Fire, by a Candle approaching to it. Imparted by Thomas Shirley, Esq an eye-witness."

Dr. Stephen Hales was the first person who procured a flammable fluid from the actual distillation of coal. His experiments with this object are related in the first volume of his Vegetable Statics, published in 1726. From the distillation of "one hundred and fifty-eight grains [10.2 g] of Newcastle coal, he states that he obtained one hundred and eighty cubic inches [2.9 L] of air, which weighed fifty-one grains [3.3 g], being nearly one third of the whole." These results seemed to have passed without notice for several years.

In the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1733, some properties of coal-gas are detailed in a paper called, "An Account of the Damp Air in a Coal-pit of Sir James Lowther, sunk within Twenty Yards of the Sea." This paper, contained some striking facts relating to the flammability and other properties of coal gas.

The principal properties of coal-gas were demonstrated to different members of the Royal Society, and showed that after keeping the gas some time, it still retained its flammability. The scientists of the time still saw no useful purpose for it.

Dr. John Clayton, in an extract from a letter in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1735, calls gas the "spirit" of coal; and discovered its flammability by an accident. This "spirit" happened to catch fire, by coming in contact with a candle, as it escaped from a fracture in one of his distillatory vessels. By preserving the gas in bladders, he entertained his friends, by exhibiting its flammability.

The first gas lighting

William Murdoch (sometimes spelled 'Murdock') was the first to utilize the flammability of gas for the practical application of lighting. He worked for Matthew Boulton and James Watt at their Soho Foundry steam engine works in Birmingham England. In the early 1790s, while overseeing the use of his company's steam engines in coal mining in Cornwall, Murdoch began experimenting with various types of gas, finally settling on coal gas as the most effective. He first lit his own house in Redruth, Cornwall in 1792. In 1798 he used gas to light the main building of the Soho Foundry and in 1802 lit the outside in a public display of gas lighting, the lights astonishing the local population. One of the employees at the Soho Foundry, Samuel Clegg, saw the potential of this new form of lighting. Clegg left his job to set up his own gas lighting business, the Gas Lighting and Coke Company.

A "thermolampe" using gas distilled from wood was patented in 1799, whilst German inventor Friedrich Winzer (Frederick Albert Winsor) was the first person to patent coal gas lighting in 1804.

In 1801, Phillipe Lebon of Paris had also used gas lights to illuminate his house and gardens, and was considering how to light all of Paris. In 1820, Paris adopted gas street lighting.

In 1804, Dr. Henry delivered a course of lectures on chemistry, at Manchester, in which he showed the mode of producing gas from coal, and the facility and advantage of its use. Dr. Henry analyzed the composition and investigated the properties of carburetted hydrogen gas. His experiments were numerous and accurate and made upon a variety of substances; having obtained the gas from wood, peat, different kinds of coal, oil, wax, &c. he quantified the intensity of the light from each source.

Josiah Pemberton, an inventor, had for some time been experimenting on the nature of gas. A resident of Birmingham, his attention may have been roused by the exhibition at Soho. About 1806, he exhibited gas-lights in a variety of forms and with great brilliance at the front of his manufactory in Birmingham. In 1808 he constructed an apparatus, applicable to several uses, for Benjamin Cooke, a manufacturer of brass tubes, gilt toys, and other articles.

In 1806, Murdoch presented to the Royal Society a paper entitled "Account of the Application of Gas from Coal to Economical Purposes" wherein he described his successful application of coal gas to lighting the extensive establishment of Messrs. Phillips and Lea. For this paper he was awarded Count Rumford's gold medal. Murdoch's statements threw great light on the comparative advantage of gas and candles and contained much useful information on the expenses of production and management.

The first public street lighting with gas took place in Pall Mall, London on January 28, 1807. In 1812, Parliament granted a charter to the London and Westminster Gas Light and Coke Company, and the first gas company in the world came into being. Less than two years later, on December 31, 1813, the Westminster Bridge was lit by gas.

As artificial lighting became more common, desire grew for it to become readily available to the public. This was in part because towns became much safer places to travel around after gas lamps were installed in the streets, reducing crime rates. In 1809, accordingly, the first application was made to parliament to incorporate a company in order to accelerate the process, but failed to pass. In 1810, however, the application was renewed by the same parties, and though some opposition was encountered and considerable expense incurred, the bill passed, but not without great alterations; and the London and Westminster Chartered Gas-Light and Coke Company was established. By 1816, Samuel Clegg obtained the patent for his horizontal rotative retort, his apparatus for purifying coal gas with cream of lime, and for his rotative gas meter and self-acting governor.

The spread of gas lighting

Following this success, gas lighting spread to other countries. The use of gas lights in Rembrandt Peale's Museum in Baltimore in 1816 was a great success. Baltimore was the first American city with gas streetlights, provided by Peale's Gas Light Company of Baltimore.

The first private residence in the US illuminated by gas was that of William Henry, a coppersmith, at 200 Lombard Street, Philadelphia, Pa.

Among the economic impacts of gas lighting was much longer work hours in factories. This was particularly important in Great Britain during the winter months when nights are significantly longer. Factories could even work continuously over 24 hours, resulting in increased production.

In 1817, at the three stations of the Chartered Gas Company, 25 chaldrons (24 m³) of coal were carbonized daily, producing 300,000 cubic feet (8,500 m³) of gas. This supplied gas lamps equal to 75,000 Argand lamps each yielding the light of six candles. At the City Gas Works, in Dorset Street, Blackfriars, three chaldrons of coal were carbonized each day, providing the gas equivalent of 9,000 Argand lamps. So 28 chaldrons of coal were carbonized daily, and 84,000 lights supplied by those two companies only.

At this period the principal difficulty in gas manufacture was purification. Mr. D. Wilson, of Dublin, patented a method for purifying coal gas by means of the chemical action of ammoniac gas. Another plan was devised by Mr. Reuben Phillips, of Exeter, who patented the purification of coal gas by the use of dry lime. Mr. G. Holworthy, in 1818, patented a method of purifying it by causing the gas, in a highly-condensed state, to pass through iron retorts heated to a dark red.

By 1823 numerous towns and cities throughout Britain were lit by gas. Gaslight cost up to 75% less than oil lamps or candles, which helped to accelerate its development and deployment. By 1859, gas lighting was to be found all over Britain and about a thousand gas works had sprung up to meet the demand for the new fuel. The brighter lighting which gas provided allowed people to read more easily and for longer. This helped to stimulate literacy and learning, speeding up the second Industrial Revolution.

Oil gas appeared in the field as a rival of coal gas. In 1815, John Taylor patented an apparatus for the decomposition of "oil" and other animal substances. Public attention was attracted to "oil gas" by the display of the patent apparatus at Apothecary's Hall, by Messrs. Taylor and Martineau.

In 1891, the invention of the gas mantle by the Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach eliminated the need for special illuminating gas, a synthetic mixture of hydrogen and hydrocarbon gases produced by destructive distillation of bituminous coal or peat, to get bright shining flames.

Illuminating gas was used for gas lighting, as it produces a much brighter light than natural gas or water gas. Illuminating gas was much less toxic than other forms of coal gas, but less could be produced from a given quantity of coal. The experiments with distilling coal were described by John Clayton in 1684. George Dixon's pilot plant exploded in 1760, setting back the production of illuminating gas a few years. The first commercial application was in a Manchester cotton mill in 1806. In 1901, studies of the defoliant effect of leaking gas pipes led to the discovery that ethylene is a plant hormone.

Throughout the nineteenth century and into the first decades of the twentieth, the gas was manufactured by the gasification of coal. In the latter years of the nineteenth century, natural gas began to replace coal gas, first in the US, and then in other parts of the world. In the United Kingdom, coal gas was used until after the Second World War.

Gas Street lighting today

In the early 20th century, most cities in the United States and Europe had gaslit streets. However, gas lighting for streets soon gave way to electric lighting. Small incandescent electric lamps began to replace gas lights in homes in the late 19th century, although the transition took decades to complete. See, for example, Rural electrification.

Gas lighting has not disappeared completely from cities.

Gas lighting in the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, London

Cities that retain gas lighting now often find that it provides a pleasing nostalgic effect. Similarly, gas lighting is also seeing resurgence in the luxury home market for those in search of historical accuracy.

The largest gas lighting network in Europe is probably that of Berlin with about 44,000 lamps. Quite a few streets in central London, the Royal Parks and the exterior of Buckingham Palace remain gaslit as well as almost the entire Covent Garden area. The Park Estate in Nottingham retains much of its original character, including the original gas lighting network.

In the United States, Cincinnati, Ohio still uses gaslight in many of its residential neighborhoods, as do parts of the famed French Quarter in New Orleans and of Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood.

South Orange, New Jersey has adopted the gaslight as the symbol of the town, and uses them on nearly all streets. Several other towns in New Jersey also retain gas lighting: Glen Ridge, Palmyra, Riverton, and some parts of Orange. The Village of Riverside, Illinois, still uses its original gas street lights that are an original feature of the Frederick Law Olmsted planned community.

Many gas utility companies will still quote a fixed periodic rate for a customer-maintained gas lamp and homeowners still utilize such devices. However, the high cost of natural gas lighting at least partly explains why a large number of older gas lamps have been converted to electricity. Solar-rechargeable battery-powered gas light controllers can be easily retrofitted into existing gas lamps to keep the lights off during daylight hours and cut energy consumption and green-house gas carbon emissions by 50%.

The most popular gas lighting fixtures today are made from copper, a sustainable and durable metal that ages and patinas to protect it from the elements. Gas Lights today are also used with electronic ignition systems that allow the lights to be controlled from an ordinary light switch. With energy conservation a pressing issue today, these systems can also allow gas lights to be placed on a timer or photocell so that they are not running continuously, only when needed. Today gas lights are widely used for creating ambiance and to accentuate a property's design.

The use of natural gas (methane) for indoor lighting is nearly extinct. Besides making for a lot of heat, the combustion of methane tends to release significant amounts of carbon monoxide, a colorless and odorless gas which is more readily absorbed by the blood than oxygen, and can be deadly. Historically, the use of lamps of all types was of shorter duration than we are accustomed to with electric lights, and in the far more draughty buildings, it was of less concern and danger. There are no suppliers of new mantle gas lamps set up for use with natural gas; however, some old homes still have fixtures installed, and some period restorations have salvaged fixtures installed, more for decoration than use. New fixtures are still made and available for propane (sometimes called bottle(d) gas), a product of oil refining, which under most circumstances burns more completely to carbon dioxide and water vapor.

In some locations where public utility electricity or kerosene are not readily accessible or desirable, propane gas mantle lamps are still used, although the increased availability of alternative energy sources, such as solar panels and small scale wind generators, combined with increasing efficiency of lighting products, such as compact fluorescent lamps and LED's are diminishing their use. For occasional use in remote cabins and cottages, propane mantle lamps are still far more economical and less labor intensive than the investment in and ongoing maintenance of an alternative energy system.

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SPINNING MULE JENNY

The spinning mule was invented in 1779 by Samuel Crompton. It spins textile fibers into yarn by an intermittent process: in the draw stroke, the roving is pulled through and twisted; on the return it is wrapped onto the spindle. Its rival, the throstle frame or ring frame uses a continuous process, where the roving is drawn, twisted and wrapped in one action.

The self-acting (automatic) spinning mule was developed in the 1830s. The mule was the most common spinning machine from 1790 until about 1900 and was still used for fine yarns until the early 1980s. In 1890, a typical cotton mill would have over 60 mules, each with 1320 spindles.

History:

Before the 1770s, textile production was a cottage industry using flax and wool. In a typical house, the girls and women could make enough yarn for the man's loom. But demand overtook supply due to:

• Pressure to compete with cotton calicos from India.

• The invention by John Kay of the flying shuttle (which made the loom twice as productive).

Two systems were developed from the spinning wheel: the Simple Wheel, which uses an intermittent process and the more refined Saxony wheel which drives a differential spindle and flyer with heck, in a continuous process. Development was sponsored by businessmen such as Arkwright who employed inventors, then took out the relevant patents.

The increased supply of yarn inspired developments in loom design such as Rev. Cartwright's power loom. Some spinners and handloom weavers opposed the perceived threat to their livelihood: there were frame-breaking riots and, in 1811-3, the Luddism riots. The preparatory and associated tasks allowed many children to be employed until this was regulated.

The hand operated mule was a breakthrough in yarn production and the machines were copied by Samuel Slater who founded the cotton industry in Rhode Island.

Development over the next century and a half led to an automatic mule and to finer and stronger yarn. The ring frame, originating in New England in the 1820s was little used in Lancashire until the 1890s. It used more energy and could not produce the finest counts.

The first mule:

In 1779 Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule or mule jenny, so called because it is a hybrid of Arkwright's water frame and Hargreaves' spinning jenny. The mule has a fixed frame with a creel of bobbins to hold the roving, connected through the headstock to a parallel carriage with the spindles. On the outward motion, the rovings are paid out and twisted. On the return, the roving is clamped and the spindles reversed to take up the newly spun thread.

Crompton built his mule from wood. Although he used Hargreaves' ideas of spinning multiple threads and of attenuating the roving with rollers, it was he who put the spindles on the carriage and fixed a creel of roving bobbins on the frame. Both the rollers and the outward motion of the carriage remove irregularities from the rove before it is wound on the spindle. When Arkwright's patents expired, the mule was developed by several manufacturers.

The mule produced strong, thin yarn, suitable for any kind of textile. It was first used to spin cotton, then other fibers.

Samuel Crompton could not afford to patent his invention. He sold the rights to David Dale and returned to weaving. Dale patented the mule and profited from it.

Social and economic:

The spinning inventions were significant in enabling a great expansion to occur in the production of textiles, particularly cotton ones. Cotton and iron were leading sectors in the Industrial Revolution. Both industries underwent a great expansion at about the same time, which can be used to identify the start of the Industrial Revolution.

The 1790 mule was operated by brute force: the spinner drawing and pushing the frame while attending to each spindle. Home spinning was the occupation of women and girls, but the strength needed to operate a mule, caused it to be the activity of men. Hand loom weaving however, had been a mans occupation but in the mill it could and was done by girls and women. Spinners were the bare-foot aristocrats of the factory system.

Mule spinners were the leaders in unionism within the cotton industry, the pressure to develop the self-actor or self acting mule was partly to open the trade to women. It was in 1870. that the first national union was formed.

The Wool industry was divided into woolen and worsted. It lagged behind cotton in adopting new technology. Worsted tended to adopt Arkwright water frames which could be operated by young girls, and woolen adopted the mule.

Roberts' self-acting mule:

Richard Roberts took out his first patent in 1825, and a second in 1830. The task he had set himself was to design a selfactor, a self-acting or automatic spinning mule. Roberts is also known for the Roberts Loom, which was widely adopted because of its reliability. The mule in 1820 still needed manual assistance to spin a consistent thread, a self acting mule needed:

• A reversing mechanism that would unwind a spiral of yarn on the top of each spindle, before commencing the winding of a new stretch

• A faller wire that would ensure the yarn was wound into a predefined form such as a cop

• An appliance to vary the speed of revolution of the spindle, in accordance with the diameter of thread on that spindle.

A counter faller under the thread was made to rise to take in the slack caused by backing off. This could be used with the top faller wire to guide the yarn to the correct place on the cop. These were controlled by levers and cams and an inclined plane called the shaper. The spindle speed was controlled by a drum and weighted ropes, as the headstock moved the ropes twisted the drum, which using a tooth wheel turned the spindles. None of this would have been possible using the technology of Crompton's time, fifty years earlier.

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HYDRAULIC TURBINE

A water turbine is a rotary engine that takes energy from moving water.

Water turbines were developed in the nineteenth century and were widely used for industrial power prior to electrical grids. Now they are mostly used for electric power generation. They harness a clean and renewable energy source.

History

Water wheels have been used for thousands of years for industrial power. Their main shortcoming is size, which limits the flow rate and head that can be harnessed. The migration from water wheels to modern turbines took about one hundred years.

Development occurred during the Industrial revolution, using scientific principles and methods. They also made extensive use of new materials and manufacturing methods developed at the time.

Swirl

The word turbine was introduced by the French engineer Claude Bourdin in the early 19th century and is derived from the Latin word for "whirling" or a "vortex". The main difference between early water turbines and water wheels is a swirl component of the water which passes energy to a spinning rotor. This additional component of motion allowed the turbine to be smaller than a water wheel of the same power. They could process more water by spinning faster and could harness much greater heads. (Later, impulse turbines were developed which didn't use swirl).

Time line

The earliest known water turbines date to the Roman Empire. Two helix-turbine mill sites of almost identical design were found at Chemtou and Testour, modern-day Tunisia, dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century AD. The horizontal water wheel with angled blades was installed at the bottom of a water-filled, circular shaft. The water from the mill-race entered tangentially the pit, creating a swirling water column which made the fully submerged wheel act like a true turbine.

A water turbine which had water wheels with curved blades onto which water flow was directed axially, for use in a watermill, was described in an Arabic text written in the 9th century, during the Arab Agricultural Revolution.

Ján Andrej Segner developed a reactive water turbine in the mid 1700s. It had a horizontal axis and was a precursor to modern water turbines. It is a very simple machine that is still produced today for use in small hydro sites. Segner worked with Euler on some of the early mathematical theories of turbine design.

In 1820, Jean-Victor Poncelet developed an inward-flow turbine.

In 1826 Benoit Fourneyron developed an outward-flow turbine. This was an efficient machine (~80%) that sent water through a runner with blades curved in one dimension. The stationary outlet also had curved guides.

In 1844 Uriah A. Boyden developed an outward flow turbine that improved on the performance of the Fourneyron turbine. Its runner shape was similar to that of a Francis turbine.

In 1849, James B. Francis improved the inward flow reaction turbine to over 90% efficiency. He also conducted sophisticated tests and developed engineering methods for water turbine design. The Francis turbine, named for him, is the first modern water turbine. It is still the most widely used water turbine in the world today. The Francis turbine is also called a radial flow turbine, since water flows from the outer circumference towards the centre of runner.

Inward flow water turbines have a better mechanical arrangement and all modern reaction water turbines are of this design. As the water swirls inward, it accelerates, and transfers energy to the runner. Water pressure decreases to atmospheric, or in some cases subatmospheric, as the water passes through the turbine blades and loses energy.

Around 1890, the modern fluid bearing was invented, now universally used to support heavy water turbine spindles. As of 2002, fluid bearings appear to have a mean time between failures of more than 1300 years.

Around 1913, Viktor Kaplan created the Kaplan turbine, a propeller-type machine. It was an evolution of the Francis turbine but revolutionized the ability to develop low-head hydro sites.

A new concept.

All common water machines until the late 19th century (including water wheels) were basically impulse machines; water pressure head acted on the machine and produced work. A reaction turbine needs to fully contain the water during energy transfer.

In 1866, California millwright Samuel Knight invented a machine that took the impulse system to a new level. Inspired by the high pressure jet systems used in hydraulic mining in the gold fields, Knight developed a bucketed wheel which captured the energy of a free jet, which had converted a high head (hundreds of vertical feet in a pipe or penstock) of water to kinetic energy. This is called an impulse or tangential turbine.

The water's velocity, roughly twice the velocity of the bucket periphery, does a u-turn in the bucket and drops out of the runner at low velocity.

In 1879, Lester Pelton(1829-1908), experimenting with a Knight Wheel, developed a double bucket design, which exhausted the water to the side, eliminating some energy loss of the Knight wheel which exhausted some water back against the center of the wheel. In about 1895, William Doble improved on Pelton's half-cylindrical bucket form with an elliptical bucket that included a cut in it to allow the jet a cleaner bucket entry. This is the modern form of the Pelton turbine which today achieves up to 92% efficiency. Pelton had been quite an effective promoter of his design and although Doble took over the Pelton company he did not change the name to Doble because it had brand name recognition.

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FLOUR MILL

A gristmill or grist mill is a building in which grain is ground into flour, or the grinding mechanism itself. In many countries these are referred to as corn mills or flour mills.

Classical British and American mills.

Classical mill designs are usually water powered, though some are windmills, or powered by livestock. A sluice gate is used to open a channel and so start the water flowing and a water wheel turning. In most such mills the water wheel was mounted vertically, i.e., edge-on, in the water, but in some cases horizontally (the tub wheel and so-called Norse wheel). Later designs incorporated horizontal steel or cast iron turbines and these were also sometimes refitted into the old wheel mills.

In most wheel-driven mills, a large gear-wheel called the pit wheel is mounted on the same axle as the water wheel and this drives a smaller gear-wheel, the wallower, on a main driveshaft running vertically from the bottom to the top of the building. This system of gearing ensures that the main shaft turns faster than the water wheel, which typically rotates at 10 rpm, or so.

The millstones themselves turn at around 120 rpm. They are laid one on top of the other. The bottom stone, called the bed, is fixed to the floor, while the top stone, the runner, is mounted on a separate spindle, driven by the main shaft. A wheel called the stone nut connects the runner's spindle to the main shaft, and this can be moved out of the way to disconnect the stone and stop it turning, leaving the main shaft going to drive other machinery. This might include driving a mechanical sieve to refine the flour, or turning a wooden drum to wind up a chain used to hoist sacks of grain to the top of the mill house.

The grain is lifted in sacks onto the sack floor at the top of the mill. The sacks are emptied into bins, where the grain falls down through a hopper to the stones on the stone floor below. The flow of grain is regulated by shaking it along a gently sloping trough (the slipper) from which it falls into a hole in the center of the runner stone. The milled grain (flour) is collected as it emerges through the grooves in the runner stone from the outer rim of the stones and it gets fed down a chute to be collected in sacks on the ground or meal floor. A very similar process is used for grains such as wheat, kamut, etc to make flour as well as for maize to make corn meal.

In order to prevent the vibrations of the mill machinery from shaking the building apart, a gristmill will often have at least two separate foundations.

Historically, gristmills contained rotating stones powered by water or by wind; later mills used steam engines for power, and modern mills typically use electricity or fossil fuels to spin heavy steel rollers. These techniques produce visibly different results, but can be made to produce nutritionally and functionally equivalent output.

Gristmills only grind clean grains, that is, grain from which stalks and chaff have previously been removed, but some mills also housed equipment for threshing, sorting, and cleaning prior to grinding. Gristmills also grind corn into meal.

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COMPOUND HORIZONTAL ENGINE

Clayton and Shuttleworth exhibited a very beautifully made compound Engine with a wrought iron frame being extremely simple to operate. The cylinders are 6 ¼ in. and 10 ½ in. by 12 in. The engine is fitted with Tyrrell and Deed’s governor with a peculiarity that the steadying dashpot is put into the dead weight. This is a very elegant device and work very well. Messrs. Clayton and Shuttleworth make the same type of engine in various sizes.

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More related information:

Compound engine, a development from the single cylinder reciprocating marine engine in which the steam, after leaving the first cylinder, was passed through a second low-pressure cylinder of larger diameter before being drawn off to a condenser to be changed back to boiler feed water. This second use of the steam added to the thrust produced by the engine results in a higher engine efficiency for the same amount of steam. Although the principle of compounding an engine was patented as early as 1781 by Jonathan Hornblower, a contemporary of James Watt, it was not until the 1850s, when higher boiler pressures were introduced in marine boilers, that the compound engine, designed by John Elder and Charles Randolph, became practicable at sea. As steam expands in a cylinder the temperature falls, and the greater the expansion the lower the temperature of the cylinder wall. When steam is admitted to the other side of the piston for the next stroke this steam encounters the cool cylinder wall and some of the steam condenses. This results in less steam being available to do useful work. To avoid this, steam was expanded in two states so that the temperature drop in each stage (cylinder) was less, resulting in reduced condensation and higher efficiency.

As steam expands in a high pressure engine its temperature drops; because no heat is released from the system, this is known as adiabatic expansion and results in steam entering the cylinder at high temperature and leaving at low temperature. This causes a cycle of heating and cooling of the cylinder with every stroke which is a source of inefficiency.

A method to lessen the magnitude of this heating and cooling was invented in 1804 by British engineer Arthur Woolf, who patented his Woolf high pressure compound engine in 1805. In the compound engine, high pressure steam from the boiler expands in a high pressure (HP) cylinder and then enters one or more subsequent lower pressure (LP) cylinders. The complete expansion of the steam now occurs across multiple cylinders and as less expansion now occurs in each cylinder so less heat is lost by the steam in each. This reduces the magnitude of cylinder heating and cooling, increasing the efficiency of the engine. To derive equal work from lower pressure steam requires a larger cylinder volume as this steam occupies a greater volume. Therefore the bore, and often the stroke, are increased in low pressure cylinders resulting in larger cylinders.

Double expansion (usually known as compound) engines expanded the steam in two stages. The pairs may be duplicated or the work of the large LP cylinder can be split with one HP cylinder exhausting into one or the other, giving a 3-cylinder layout where cylinder and piston diameter are about the same making the reciprocating masses easier to balance.

Two-cylinder compounds can be arranged as:

• Cross compounds - The cylinders are side by side.

• Tandem compounds - The cylinders are end to end, driving a common connecting rod

• Angle compounds - The cylinders are arranged in a vee (usually at a 90° angle) and drive a common crank.

With two-cylinder compounds used in railway work, the pistons are connected to the cranks as with a two-cylinder simple at 90° out of phase with each other (quartered). When the double expansion group is duplicated, producing a 4-cylinder compound, the individual pistons within the group are usually balanced at 180°, the groups being set at 90° to each other. In one case (the first type of Vauclain compound), the pistons worked in the same phase driving a common crosshead and crank, again set at 90° as for a two-cylinder engine. With the 3-cylinder compound arrangement, the LP cranks were either set at 90° with the HP one at 135° to the other two, or in some cases all three cranks were set at 120°.

The adoption of compounding was common for industrial units, for road engines and almost universal for marine engines after 1880; it was not universally popular in railway locomotives where it was often perceived as complicated. This is partly due to the harsh railway operating environment and limited space afforded by the loading gauge (particularly in Britain, where compounding was never common and not employed after 1930). However although never in the majority it was popular in many other countries.

SIX WHEEL COUPLED ENGINE -MEDITERRANEAN RAILWAY

The locomotive is one of the twenty five made by Messrs. G. Ansaldo & Co., Sampierdarena, for the Mediterranean Railway Company. They have cylinders 18 in. diameter and 26 in. stroke. The driving wheels are 5 ft. in diameter. The boilers are 4 ft. 6 in. diameter, and work at 150 lb. The grate is 1.816 m. in length (5 ft. 11 in.) and 0.996 m. in width (3 ft. 3 in.). The crown of the fire box is 3 ft. 6 in. above the grate, and the heating surface is 89 square feet. The grate area being 18.6 square feet. The tubes are 185 in number, 2 in. outside diameter, 13.6 ft. between tube plates, the tube heating surface being 1250 square, the total heating surface being 1339 square feet. The weight of the engine in working order is 38.5 tons, and 32.6 tons empty. The tractive power is given as 3.63 tons at 18.6 miles per hour. The tender weighs 25.8 tons full, 12.55 tons empty, and carries 316 cubic feet of water, or 1975 gallons, or. 8.8 tons of water.

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PASSENGER LOCOMOTIVE, GREAT EASTERN

This fine engine was built at Stratford from the designs of Mr. James Holden, the locomotive superintendent, and was turned out of the shops in November 1890, since which time she has been working express trains between Cambridge and Doncaster so successfully that Mr. Holden has constructed ten more of the same class. The cylinders are 18 in. by 24 in., the maximum boiler pressure 140 lb. per square inch, the driving wheels 7 ft. diameter, leading and trailing 4 ft. diameter, and the tractive force is 92.5 lb. for every pound of effective steam pressure. The journals of the leading and trailing axles are of the same dimensions, thus allowing interchangeable axle boxes. All the working parts of this engine are interchangeable with the company’s four wheels coupled express and mixed traffic engines. The boiler is 4 ft. 3 in. inside diameter, constructed of mild steel, butt jointed, and fed by two No. 8 Gresham and Craven’s injectors. The principal part of the weight at the leading end is carried on the outside journals, and to allow for easy passage round curves the axle box has in clearance on either side of the horn blocks. The axle box cover is of wrought iron, case hardened, fitting between the horns and the without clearance. The axle box, therefore, moves laterally with the wheels and axle. The inside leading journals have no collars, thus allowing perfect freedom for the axle. It will be seen that this engine is fitted with Gresham and Craven’s steam sanding apparatus, and the engines in hand will be similarly fitted. All passenger engines now built at Stratford are fitted with india rubber blocks to relieve the springs. Five of the engines were fitted with Davies and Metcalfe’s exhaust steam injectors.

The latter is of excellent design, and the workmanship is throughout of the highest quality. The work done is very heavy, such as not long since would have been held to be quite unsuitable for a single engine. The use of a really first rate permanent way has permitted heavy loads to be placed on drivers, without risking the disorganization of the road, and the sand blast has done the rest.

Principal Dimensions.

Cylinders

Diameter 1 ft. 6 in.

Stroke 2 ft.

Length of ports 1 ft. 3 in.

Width of steam ports 1 ½ in.

Width of exhaust 3 ¼ in.

Centre to centre of cylinders 2 ft.

Centre to centre of valve spindles 1 ft. 1 in.

Diameter of piston rod 3 in.

Wheels

Leading diameter on tread 4 ft.

Driving diameter on tread 7 ft.

Trailing diameter on tread 4 ft.

Thickness of tires on tread 3 in.

Width of tires 5 3/8 in.

Weight of engine in working order

Leading wheels 13 Tons

Driving wheels 16 Tons

Trailing wheels 10 Tons

Total 39

Weight of engine empty

Leading wheels 12 Tons

Driving wheels 14 Tons

Trailing wheels 9 Tons

Total 35 Tons

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More historic information:

Stratford Works

Stratford Works was the locomotive-building works of the Great Eastern Railway situated at Stratford, London, England. It was opened in 1847-1848 by the GER's predecessor, the Eastern Counties Railway. In 1891 the works set a new time record for building locomotives- a Class Y14 tender engine was built in 9 hours 47 minutes from the time the frames were stamped out to the completed and fully functional locomotive leaving the works. This record still stands.

People

The Chief Mechanical Engineers of the Great Eastern Railway were:

• 1862-1866 Robert Sinclair

• 1866-1873 Samuel W. Johnson

• 1873-1878 William Adams

• 1878-1881 Massey Bromley

• 1818-1885 Thomas William Worsdell

• 1885-1907 James Holden

• 1908-1912 S. D. Holden

• 1912-1922 Alfred John Hill

Established in 1847-8, the railway workshops at Stratford were opened when the Eastern Counties Railway's facilities were unable to expand on their first site at Romford. The Eastern Counties Railway was the first to operate in East Anglia, the first section of line from Mile End to Romford opening in 1839. With the intention of reaching Norwich, the next extension from the City terminus to Brentwood followed shortly afterwards. In 1840 the Northern & Eastern Railway opened with the aim of linking London and Cambridge. Their trains ran over the ECR tracks to Stratford where they followed the Lea Valley northward.

At that early date Stratford had become an important railway junction. Having either built, leased or purchased all other railways in East Anglia by the early 1860s, the ECR was reformed into the Great Eastern Railway.

The original shops, which formed the hub of Stratford Works, were built by the railway 'King', George Hudson in the time of the Eastern Counties Railway. In addition to the engineering facilities, Hudson provided accommodation for the workmen in Stratford New Town, an area known for many years as 'Hudson's Town'. The growth of traffic and periodic modernization of the plant demanded many extensions of the premises and the geography of the works became somewhat complex. The first locomotive was constructed on the site in 1851, and in December 1891 an 0-6-0 tender locomotive was built and steamed in 9hr 47 min, a world record yet to be beaten.

By the early 1920s the works at Stratford were one of the most comprehensive railway complexes in Britain. At the hub of the suburban railway system and principal depot for the GER, it was the largest operation of its type in the country. The Engine Repairing Shop was built during World War 1 and adjoined the Running Sheds where plenty of ground was available for extensions. During this war the shops were lent to the Ministry of Munitions and used for the sorting and breaking of steel billets for the manufacture of shell forgings. At that time the Great Eastern's locomotive fleet consisted of 2-4-0, 4-4-0 and 4-6-0 classes of Passenger tender engines with four types of 0-6-0 goods tender engines and seven types of passenger tank engines. In addition to these there were four classes of goods tank engines for shunting, dock work and local goods traffic.

Having invested heavily on improvements at Stratford Works, it was unfortunate that the Great Eastern Railway had only about four years worth of engine repairs before they became part of the London & North Eastern Railway.

The last steam locomotive to be built at Stratford was Class N7 0-6-2T No 999, a locomotive which survives today in preservation.

Under LNER ownership, Stratford became the main works for the whole of East Anglia, the lack of new locomotive construction being compensated for by the increase in repair and maintenance work. During the inter war years there were only minor additions and alterations to the workshops although the LNER was progressive in its provision of theoretical training for the apprentices. There were evening classes which were backed up by two afternoon classes during the week designed to prepare apprentices for the National Certificate. The lecturers were draughtsman and engineers from the works, who were continuing a tradition that was established by the Great Eastern Railway.

In 1939, the railway workshops of Britain were once again involved in a war and the Works at Stratford were no exception. In addition to committing production resources to the war effort, it also had to contend with 'The Blitz'. Being situated in close proximity to the docks in the East End of London, the shops took a severe hammering, the old works suffering the brunt of the damage. While the more recent Engine Repair Shop sustained only minor damage, the outside offices at the London end of the shop were destroyed by an incendiary bomb. The ERS suffered damage later in the war when a V2 rocket fell near the High Meads paint shop.

By 1947 there were 2,032 members of staff employed at the works and in 1948 came Nationalisation when Stratford became part of the Eastern Region of British Railways. With the onset of BR's 1955 Modernization programme, East Anglia was selected to be the first area to eliminate steam traction completely and rely entirely upon diesel locomotives and multiple unit trains for local and long distance services. For the steam locomotives that remained operational, repairs were transferred to other workshops and Stratford's Engine Repair shop was converted for diesel locomotive repairs.

By 1962 the control of railway workshops had been transferred from the CM&EE to the newly introduced Workshops Division of British Railways who promptly conducted a complete survey of locomotive workshops. With the run down of the steam locomotive fleet and the lower requirements for diesel locomotive maintenance, they discovered there was an excess of workshop capacity. Accordingly the decision was taken to run down Stratford Works with final closure occurring in September 1963. However, the CM&EE department of the Eastern Region was unhappy that locomotives requiring unclassified repairs had to take their turn with all other locomotives requiring attention at the main workshops. From this came the idea of reopening the ERS as Regional Repair Shops changing their name to the Diesel Repair Shop or DRS.

This was the beginning of an interesting period for the works, a great variety of jobs being undertaken by the workforce. In 1978 work was done on the power cars for High Speed Trains used on the East Coast route. Modification in conjunction with engineers from the power unit manufacturers included the fitting of an exhaust deflector to the roof. Also at this time the DRS undertook a series of modifications on the Rumanian built Class 56 locomotives. These involved replacing the bogies with a pair that had been refurbished by a contractor in Wolverhampton in addition to re-routing traction motor conduits and fitting new traction motorjunction boxes.

By the early 1980s many of the first generation diesel locomotives were approaching the end of their working lives and a policy of cannibalizing the various classes was introduced. Involved in this exercise were the types '40', '45', '46', '25' and 'Deltic' Class 55s. The main components to be exchanged were the power units and bogies and in the case of the Class 55 the nameplates had to be removed from the scrap locomotives.

In addition to this work in the early 1980s was a contract to construct six snowploughs from redundant Class 40 bogies, the snowplough blades being built by Beilhack in Germany.

The first warning that all was not well at DRS came in January 1990 when they lost the work of Class 86/2 bogie overhauls to BREL Crewe and in April 1990 they lost the Class 87 programme to Springburn Level 5 Depot in Glasgow.

In October 1990 final closure of Stratford works was announced, as there was over-capacity in the Level 5 Group, the works closing on 31 March 1991.

TEN WHEEL TANK ENGINE

The engraving shows a design of a tank locomotive built for the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. It was known as the “Decapot Tank Freight” type, and has a guaranteed hauling capacity of 760 tons (2,240 lb.) up a 2 per cent grade. Four of these engines were built to operate the St. Clair Tunnel. At either end (in the cuttings and in the tunnel) there is about 5,000 ft. of the 2 per cent grade. The general dimensions and description of this engine are as follows:

Cylinders 11 in. diam. By 28 in. stroke

Driving wheels 50 in. diam.

Driving wheels centres (cast iron) 44 in.

Tires (standard Otis steel) 3 in. thick.

Boiler of 5/8 in steel 74 in. diam.

Rivets 1 in, diam., 2 ¼ in. and 3 ½ in. centres.

Laps, all longitudinal seams have double riveted butts joints, with double covering strips.

Steam pressure 150 lb. per square inch.

Fuel Anthracite coal.

Cylinder lubricators Seibert sight feed.

Injectors Two Friedman No. 10 W/F.

Brakes Westinghouse American, operated by air, on fronts of all wheels, with Ross-Meehan shoes.

Tank capacity, 1800 gallons (277 cubic inches) of water and 3 tons of coal.

Wheel base total 18 ft. 5 in.

Weight on drivers in working order 87 tons.

Cooke steam bell ringer.

The weight on drivers is greater than that of any other locomotive which has come to our knowledge. It is believed to be the largest locomotive in the world, and with a coefficient of friction on the rail of 600 lb. per ton would give a hauling force on the draw bas of 58,500 lb. The resistance of 760 tons on a 2 per cent grade is about 38,400 lb. and the total resistance to overcome is about 44,400 lb. This is with the liberal allowance of 7 lb. per ton of load friction. Hence it is seen that this engine has a considerable margin in which to work with a clean rail. The rails used will weight 100 lb. per yard.

This is a particularly handsome engine, and represents very forcible the lines which American Builders are following to reach the most economical type of heavy freight engine.

The boiler fronts are pressed steel, and of an excellent design, easily repaired and kept tight. The guiders are short and heavy, with large wearing surfaces at the crosshead, an excellent example of the Laird type. The boiler is one of the largest, if not the largest, that has ever been constructed for a locomotive; it is 74 in. diameter and is made of 5/8 in. steel plates.

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More historic information:

The St. Clair Tunnel Company was not part of the Canadian National Electric Railways system. It was operated as an independent subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway, however, it is included here due to its association with Canadian National Railways.

The first St. Clair Tunnel remains an engineering wonder even after more than one hundred years in operation. Running under the St. Clair River, which joins Lake Huron to Lake St. Clair, the single bore tunnel provided a link between Sarnia, Ontario, Canada and Port Huron, Michigan, USA. On October 24, 1891, the first revenue freight train passed through the tunnel from Port Huron to Sarnia, however, it was not until December 7th that the first passenger train travelled through the tunnel. The ferry boats were then removed from service. In 1898, one was transferred to Grand Trunk's Windsor ferry operation while the other was sold. The St. Clair Tunnel Company operated as an independent subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway until 1923 when the GTR was absorbed into the Canadian National Railways.

Some Tunnel Facts

Tunnel length portal to portal - 6,025 feet

Tunnel length under the river bed - 2,290 feet

Diameter of tunnel - 19 feet 10 inches

Construction cost - $2,700,000.

For motive power, four 0-10-0T steam locomotives were used. Built by Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia in February 1891, they were numbered 598-601 having serial numbers 11586, 11589, 11590 & 11595. Originally built as camelback engines with side mounted water tanks, they later had tenders added to extend the time between fuel and water stops. The side tanks were removed in 1898 subsequent with renumbering to 1301-1304. Engines 1301 and 1304 had the cabs moved to the usual position at the rear of the boiler. The engines were again renumbered in 1910 to 2650-2653. #2652 was scrapped in 1916. The other three steam locomotives were scrapped in 1920.

The four steam locomotives were relieved of their tunnel duties in May 1908 when they were replaced by six electric locomotives due to concerns about crew suffocation if a train stalled in the tunnel.

TRIPLE EXPANSION ENGINE

Triple expansion engine, a further development of the marine reciprocating engine. It was introduced in ships between 1870 and 1880 by adding a third cylinder to the two-cylinder compound engine. The third cylinder was introduced between the compound engine's high- and low-pressure cylinders, and its effect was to use the available steam three times instead of twice as in the compound engine. The steam was first led to a high-pressure cylinder, the exhaust steam from that cylinder being led into an intermediate pressure cylinder, and then into a low-pressure cylinder before being converted by a condenser back into the boiler feed water. It drove three pistons connected to the same crankshaft to add to the power transmitted to the propeller shaft, and was made possible by improved boiler design which produced higher steam pressures. In the 1890s quadruple expansion engines were introduced by adding a fourth stage in the expansion of the steam, and were fitted in some ships, notably the four big German ocean liners built between 1897 and 1902. And even after the introduction of the steam turbine some ships had engines on the quadruple expansion principle, using three cylinders for the first three stages and a low-pressure steam turbine for the fourth.

Multiple expansion engines

High-pressure steam enters from the boiler and passes through the engine, exhausting as low-pressure steam to the condenser.

It is a logical extension of the compound engine to split the expansion into yet more stages to increase efficiency. The result is the multiple expansion engine. Such engines use either three or four expansion stages and are known as triple and quadruple expansion engines respectively. These engines use a series of double-acting cylinders of progressively increasing diameter and/or stroke and hence volume. These cylinders are designed to divide the work into three or four, as appropriate, equal portions for each expansion stage. As with the double expansion engine, where space is at a premium, two smaller cylinders of a large sum volume may be used for the low pressure stage. Multiple expansion engines typically had the cylinders arranged inline, but various other formations were used. In the late 19th century, the Yarrow-Schlick-Tweedy balancing 'system' was used on some marine triple expansion engines. Y-S-T engines divided the low pressure expansion stages between two cylinders, one at each end of the engine. This allowed the crankshaft to be better balanced, resulting in a smoother, faster-responding engine which ran with less vibration. This made the 4-cylinder triple-expansion engine popular with large passenger liners (such as the Olympic class), but was ultimately replaced by the virtually vibration-free turbine.

The development of this type of engine was important for its use in steamships as by exhausting to a condenser the water can be reclaimed to feed the boiler, which is unable to use seawater. Land-based steam engines could exhaust much of their steam, as feed water was usually readily available. Prior to and during World War I, the expansion engine dominated marine applications where high vessel speed was not essential. It was however superseded by the British invention steam turbine where speed was required, for instance in warships, such as the dreadnought battleships, and ocean liners. HMS Dreadnought of 1905 was the first major warship to replace the proven technology of the reciprocating engine with the then-novel steam turbine.

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PASSENGER RAIL CARS

19th century: First passenger cars and early development

Up until about the end of the 19th century, most passenger cars were constructed of wood. The first passenger trains did not travel very far, but they were able to haul many more passengers for a longer distance than any wagons pulled by horses.

As railways were first constructed in England, so too were the first passenger cars. One of the early coach designs was the "Stanhope". It featured a roof and small holes in the floor for drainage when it rained, and had separate compartments for different classes of travel. The only problem with this design is that the passengers were expected to stand for their entire trip. The first passenger cars in the United States highly resembled stagecoaches. They were short, often less than 10 ft (3 m) long and rode on a single pair of axles.

British railways had a little bit of a head start on American railroads, with the first "bed-carriage" (an early sleeping car) being built there as early as 1838 for use on the London and Birmingham Railway and the Grand Junction Railway. Britain's early sleepers, when made up for sleeping, extended the foot of the bed into a boot section at the end of the carriage. The cars were still too short to allow more than two or three beds to be positioned end to end.

Britain's Royal Mail commissioned and built the first Travelling Post Office cars in the late 1840s as well. These cars resembled coaches in their short wheelbase and exterior design, but were equipped with nets on the sides of the cars to catch mail bags while the train was in motion. American RPOs, first appearing in the 1860s, also featured equipment to catch mail bags at speed, but the American design more closely resembled a large hook that would catch the mailbag in its crook. When not in use, the hook would swivel down on the side of the car to prevent it from catching on any close clearances.

As locomotive technology progressed in the mid-19th century, trains grew in length and weight. Passenger cars, particularly in America, grew along with them, first getting longer with the addition of a second truck (one at each end), and wider as their suspensions improved. Cars built for European use featured side door compartments, while American car design favored what was called a "coach", a single long cabin with rows of seats, with doors located at the ends of the car. Early American sleeping cars were not compartmented, but by the end of the 19th century they were. The compartments in the later sleepers were accessed from a side hall running the length of the cars, similar to the design of European cars well into the 20th century.

Many American passenger trains, particularly the long distance ones, included a car at the end of the train called an observation car. Until about the 1930s, these had an open-air platform at the rear, the "observation platform". These gave way to a closed end car, usually with a rounded end which was nonetheless still referred to as an "observation car". The interiors of observation cars varied. Many had special chairs and tables.

The end platforms of all passenger cars changed around the turn of the 19th century. Older cars had open platforms between cars. Passengers would enter and leave a car through a door at the end of the car which led to a narrow platform. Steps on either side of the platform were used for getting on or off the train, and one might hop from one car platform to another. Later cars had enclosed platforms called vestibules which allowed passengers not only to enter and exit the train protected from the elements, but also to move more easily between cars with the same protection.

Dining cars first appeared in the late 1870s and into the 1880s. Until this time, the common practice was to stop for meals at restaurants along the way (which led to the rise of Fred Harvey's chain of Harvey House restaurants in America). At first, the dining car was simply a place to serve meals that were picked up en route, but they soon evolved to include galleys in which the meals were prepared. The introduction of vestibuled cars, which for the first time allowed easy movement from car to car, aided the adoption of dining cars, lounge cars, and other specialized cars.

Southern Mahratta Railway.

The Southern Mahratta Railway (SMR) was also variously called the Southern Maratha Railway and the Southern Maharastra Railway.

History

The SMR was founded in 1882 to construct a metre gauge railway between Hotgi and Gadag (opened to traffic in 1884), one of the "famine lines" set up with a guarantee. In the same year (1882), it was contracted by the Indian State of Mysore to work the several metre gauge lines that the Mysore State had built or was in the course of construction.

In 1888, a line was extended from Londa towards the Portuguese colony of Goa where it connected with the Marmagao line at Castle Rock. (From 1902 this line was leased as the West of India Portuguese Railway.) By 1890, this line extended from Londa eastwards via Guntakal to Bezwada, and northwards to Poona, turning the SMR from an assortment of branches to a real railway network.

In 1908, the SMR merged with the Madras Railway to form the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway.

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THE MENIER CHOCOLATE COMPANY

The Menier Chocolate company (French: Chocolat Menier) was a chocolate manufacturing business founded in 1816 as a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Paris, France at a time when chocolate was used as a medicinal product and was only one part of the overall business.

Controlled and run by the Menier family for more than 150 years, the heads of Menier Chocolate Company were:

• Antoine Brutus Menier (1795-1853) - founder

• Emile-Justin Menier (1826-1881) - sole CEO

• Gaston Menier (1855-1934) - COO

• Henri Menier (1853-1913) - CEO

• Hubert Menier (1910-1959) - co chief executive with Antoine

• Antoine Gilles Menier (1904-1967) - last CEO

In 1816, Antoine Brutus Menier founded the Menier Hardware Company in Paris. Although not trained as a pharmacist, he began preparing and selling a variety of powders for medicinal purposes. The business grew rapidly but for the first few years the company's production of chocolate was very limited as its primary usage was as a medicinal powder and for coating of bitter-tasting pills.

Factory at Noisiel

In 1825 the company began an expansion through the acquisition of a second production facility on land on the banks of the Marne River at Noisiel, at the time a small village of less than 200 inhabitants at the outskirts of Paris. Initially used as a grinding works for the production of medicinal powders, a modernization of the Noisiel facility in 1830 made it the first mechanized mass production factory for cocoa powder in France. Following the development of solid chocolate, Menier introduced to the market a block of chocolate wrapped in decorative yellow paper. By 1842, the success of the chocolate business led to another expansion of the Noisiel plant and by 1853 annual chocolate production reached 4,000 tons.

Under the leadership of the founder's son, Emile-Justin Menier, the company concentrated solely on the manufacturing of chocolate products. In 1864 he sold off the pharmaceutical manufacturing part of the business and began a period of expansion that made the Menier Chocolate company the largest chocolate manufacturer in France. Under Emile-Justin Menier, the company purchased cocoa-growing estates in Nicaragua along with sugar beet fields and a sugar refinery at Roye in the Somme in France.

Beginning in 1860, Emile-Justin Menier oversaw the addition of several new buildings then, after constructing a factory in London, England and a distribution center in New York City, in 1872 he initiated a major expansion that saw the construction of the most modern production facilities in the world. Designed by architect Jules Saulnier, many historians cite the building as the first true skeleton structure with exterior walls needing only simple infill. The February 1997 issue of the Architectural Review called the 1872 iron and brick chocolate factory at Noisiel "one of the iconic buildings of the Industrial Revolution". In 1992, the factory was designated by the government of France as an official Monument historique and is on the list to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

As a result of the factory expansions, by the mid 1880s production capacity at the Noisiel plant jumped to 125,000 tons annually and the company employed 2000 people. Because of the Menier Company’s rapid growth, the shortage of workers available from the small village forced the company to try to attract labor from other towns and cities. However, a lack of housing in Noisiel made that nearly impossible and as a result, in 1874 Menier completed construction of 312 residences on 30 hectares of land near the factory. They would build a school for their employees' children and three decades later, a senior citizens' home for their retired workers. In the 1870s, the Meniers also built the Noisiel town hall where a family member would serve as mayor without interruption from May 11, 1871 to November 8, 1959. At the 1878 World's Fair in Paris, the company was awarded seven gold medals plus the Grand Prize for the excellence of their products as well as citations for their modern production methods and the importance the company placed on the well-being of its employees.

Following the death of Emile Justin Menier, in 1881 his sons Henri and Gaston assumed control of the business. As the eldest son, Henri Menier became the titular head of the company. Although involved in the business, he spent a great deal of his time pursuing various leisure interests and left much of the company's management to brother Gaston who would oversee a period of sustained prosperity. Of extreme importance to the sustaining of the Menier Chocolate Company's competitiveness were several internal and external developments in the second half of the 1870s and the early part of the 1880s. The Menier plant added modern refrigeration systems and in 1881 a railroad line was built to the Noisiel factory which reduced costs for incoming and outgoing freight and allowed for wider and faster distribution. Externally, Swiss chocolate manufacturers were making advancements in product development. They began mass production and promotion of milk chocolate and the new conching process provided a type of chocolate that consumers liked because it would melt in the mouth.

Pioneering advertising strategies

In 1893 the company began using advertising posters created by Firmin Bouisset featuring a little girl using a piece of chocolate to write the name Chocolat Menier on a wall or window. The small girl's sweet innocence essayed the sweet chocolate message through her "chocolate graffiti". It proved to be a highly successful image and became an internationally recognized symbol. Firmin Bouisset's image of the little girl would be featured on Menier's packaged products as well as on promotional items such as reusable tin ware, creamers, bowls, sugar dishes, plates, canister sets, and even children's exercise books. Original Menier posters and assorted products as well as reproductions are still much in demand today.

As part of its sales strategy, Menier introduced small dark chocolate sticks to be inserted into a piece of bread. To raise their profile and sell more product, on sidewalks in towns and cities all over France, the company set up "chocolate kiosques". Their hexagon shape and peaked roof became the standard for newspaper kiosques. Such was their popularity that for children, the company made plastic model kisoques as toy dispensers filled with tiny chocolate bars.

With their growing international presence, the Menier Chocolate Company exhibited at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago where they were billed as the leading chocolate makers in the world. As the business continued to prosper, at the turn of the 20th century, more additions to the Noisiel plant were made including a major building that was one of the first to use reinforced concrete and, because of its appearance, was soon dubbed by locals as the "Cathedral." In addition, the company built Pont Hardi, a 44,50m long concrete bridge, a record at the time, across the Marne River to link the new building to the other plants.

The decline of a business empire

World War I marked the beginning of the decline of the Menier Chocolate company. While Europe was in turmoil and businesses there suffered greatly, rapid expansion was taking place in neutral Switzerland and in the United States where companies were untouched by the ravages of the war and who benefited from the influx of refugees that increased market size and provided the manual labor necessary for expansion. While the war raged on in France for four years, a Swiss company was able to introduce the first chocolates with a filling. By the end of the war, Menier's finances had been weakened while competition and technologies had substantially increased.

Gaston Menier died in 1934 and the onset of World War II five years later exacerbated the company's problems to an even much greater extent. Run by Hubert and Antoine Menier, neither had the capacity to deal with the problems. Despite the Menier Chocolate Company’s strong brand recognition and an effective marketing of children's books utilizing the fables of Jean de La Fontaine, by the 1950s the industry leader in France was being swamped by its competitors, rapidly losing both market share along with considerable amounts of money. Hubert Menier died in 1959 and Antoine would be the last Menier to run the business. Entering the 1960s, the Menier workforce had dropped to just over 250 from its peak of more than 2,000.

In 1960, the Menier Company had no choice but to find a buyer and was merged with the Cacao Barry Company and by 1965 the Menier family no longer held an interest in the company. The Menier factory was sold to Group Ufico-Perrier which became part of British confectioners Rowntree Mackintosh in 1971 who in turn was acquired in 1988 by the Swiss food and beverage giant, Nestlé S.A.

In the early 1990s, all production ceased at the Noisiel facility but in 1996, Nestlé France opened its headquarters in the main building while other buildings in the complex are now part of a chocolate museum with tours open to the public. Today, the Menier Chocolate Factory building on Southwark Street in London is a popular arts complex that incorporates an art gallery, restaurant, and theatre.

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SUGAR CANE PROCESSING

Traditionally, sugarcane processing requires two stages. Mills extract raw sugar from freshly harvested cane, and sometimes bleach it to make "mill white" sugar for local consumption. Refineries, often located nearer to consumers in North America, Europe, and Japan, then produce refined white sugar, which is 99 percent sucrose. These two stages are slowly merging. Increasing affluence in the sugar-producing tropics increased demand for refined sugar products, driving a trend toward combined milling and refining.

The mill washes, chops, and uses revolving knives to shred the cane. Shredded cane is repeatedly mixed with water and crushed between rollers; the collected juices (called garapa in Brazil) contain 10–15 percent sucrose, and the remaining fibrous solids, called bagasse, are burned for fuel. Bagasse makes a sugar mill more than energy self-sufficient; surplus bagasse goes in animal feed or in paper manufacture.

Sugar and the colonization of the Caribbean

With the European colonization of the Americas, the Caribbean became the world's largest source of sugar. These islands could supply sugarcane using slave labor and produce sugar at prices vastly lower than those of cane sugar imported from the East. Thus the economies of entire islands such as Guadaloupe and Barbados became based on sugar production. By 1750 the French colony known as Saint-Domingue (subsequently the independent country of Haiti) became the largest sugar producer in the world. Jamaica too became a major producer in the 18th century. Sugar plantations fueled a demand for manpower; between 1701 and 1810 ships brought nearly one million slaves to work in Jamaica and in Barbados.

During the eighteenth century, sugar became enormously popular. Britain, for example, consumed five times as much sugar in 1770 as in 1710. By 1750 sugar surpassed grain as "the most valuable commodity in European trade — it made up a fifth of all European imports and in the last decades of the century four-fifths of the sugar came from the British and French colonies in the West Indies." The sugar market went through a series of booms. The heightened demand and production of sugar came about to a large extent due to a great change in the eating habits of many Europeans. For example, they began consuming jams, candy, tea, coffee, cocoa, processed foods, and other sweet victuals in much greater numbers. Reacting to this increasing craze, the islands took advantage of the situation and set about producing still more sugar. In fact, they produced up to ninety percent of the sugar that the western Europeans consumed. Some islands proved more successful than others when it came to producing the product. And in Barbados and the British Leeward Islands sugar provided 93% and 97% respectively of exports.

Planters later began developing ways to boost production even more. For example, they began using more manure when growing their crops. They also developed more advanced mills and began using better types of sugarcane. In the eighteenth century "the French colonies were the most successful, especially Saint-Domingue, where better irrigation, water-power and machinery, together with concentration on newer types of sugar, increased profits." Despite these and other improvements, the price of sugar reached soaring heights, especially during events such as the revolt against the Dutch and the Napoleonic Wars. Sugar remained in high demand, and the islands' planters knew exactly how to take advantage of the situation.

As Europeans established sugar plantations on the larger Caribbean islands, prices fell, especially in Britain. By the eighteenth century all levels of society had become common consumers of the former luxury product. At first most sugar in Britain went into tea, but later confectionery and chocolates became extremely popular. Many Britons (especially children) also ate jams. Suppliers commonly sold sugar in the form of a sugarloaf and consumers required sugar nips, a pliers-like tool, to break off pieces.

Sugarcane quickly exhausts the soil in which it grows, and planters pressed larger islands with fresher soil into production in the nineteenth century as demand for sugar in Europe continued to increase: "average consumption in Britain rose from four pounds per head in 1700 to eighteen pounds in 1800, thirty-six pounds by 1850 and over one hundred pounds by the twentieth century." In the 19th century Cuba rose to become the richest land in the Caribbean (with sugar as its dominant crop) because it formed the only major island landmass free of mountainous terrain. Instead, nearly three-quarters of its land formed a rolling plain—ideal for planting crops. Cuba also prospered above other islands because Cubans used better methods when harvesting the sugar crops: they adopted modern milling methods such as watermills, enclosed furnaces, steam engines, and vacuum-pans. All these technologies increased productivity. Cuba also retained slavery longer than the most of the rest of the Caribbean islands.

Mechanization

Beginning in the late 18th century, the production of sugar became increasingly mechanized. The steam engine first powered a sugar mill in Jamaica in 1768, and soon after, steam replaced direct firing as the source of process heat.

In 1813 the British chemist Edward Charles Howard invented a method of refining sugar that involved boiling the cane juice not in an open kettle, but in a closed vessel heated by steam and held under partial vacuum. At reduced pressure, water boils at a lower temperature, and this development both saved fuel and reduced the amount of sugar lost through caramelization. Further gains in fuel-efficiency came from the multiple-effect evaporator, designed by the African-American engineer Norbert Rillieux (perhaps as early as the 1820s, although the first working model dates from 1845). This system consisted of a series of vacuum pans, each held at a lower pressure than the previous one. The vapors from each pan served to heat the next, with minimal heat wasted. Modern industries use multiple-effect evaporators for evaporating water.

The process of separating sugar from molasses also received mechanical attention: David Weston first applied the centrifuge to this task in Hawaii in 1852.

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GREAT NORTH OF SCOTLAND RAILWAY

The Great North of Scotland Railway (GNSR/GNoSR) was one of the smaller British railways before the grouping, operating in the far north-east of Scotland. It was formed in 1845 and received its Parliamentary approval on June 26, 1846, following over two years of local meetings. In 1923 it was absorbed into the London and North Eastern Railway as its Northern Scottish area.

The GNSR's eventual area encompassed the three Scottish counties of Aberdeenshire, Banffshire and Morayshire, with short lengths of line in Inverness-shire and Kincardineshire. The railway operated its main line between Aberdeen Waterloo and Keith. Although the line had several branches, its remoteness, and the fact that it served an area far removed from the rest of Britain, has resulted in only its main line remaining today.

There were connections westward with the Highland Railway at Boat of Garten, Elgin, Keith and Portessie and southward with the Caledonian Railway and North British Railway at Aberdeen, where the three shared a station.

The headquarters were at 89 Guild Street in Aberdeen and the works at Inverurie. In 1921 the railway comprised 334 miles of line and the company’s capital was £7 million.

The company also owned hotels in some of the towns and resorts served by its stations.

In the early 20th century it also developed a network of feeder bus services.

Chief Mechanical Engineers

• D. K. Clark 1853-1855

• J. F. Ruthven 1855-1857

• W. Cowan 1857-1883

• J. Manson 1883-1890

• J. Johnson 1890-1894

• William Pickersgill 1894-1914

• T. E. Heywood 1914-1922

• R. E. Williamson 1922-1925

The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) produced several classes of locomotive, mostly to the designs of Nigel Gresley, characterised by a three cylinder layout with a parallel boiler and round-topped firebox. It produced the most iconic locomotive of its day, 4468 'Mallard', the holder of the world steam locomotive speed record. It also built the world famous 4472 'Flying Scotsman'. However, its locomotive inheritance was much greater than just the 'A4 Class', it also produced highly successful mixed-traffic and freight designs.

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DRILLING AND PUMP

In the 9th century, oil fields were exploited in the area around modern Baku, Azerbaijan, to produce naphtha for the petroleum industry. These fields were described by Marco Polo in the 13th century, who described the output of those oil wells as hundreds of shiploads. When Marco Polo in 1264 visited the Azerbaijani city of Baku, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, he saw oil being collected from seeps. He wrote that "on the confines toward Geirgine there is a fountain from which oil springs in great abundance, inasmuch as a hundred shiploads might be taken from it at one time."

Shallow pits were dug at the Baku seeps in ancient times to facilitate collecting oil, and hand-dug holes up to 35 meters (115 ft) deep were in use by 1594. These holes were essentially oil wells. Apparently 116 of these wells in 1830 produced 3,840 metric tons (about 28000 barrels) of oil. In 1849, Russian engineer F.N. Semyenov used a cable tool to drill an oil well on the Apsheron Peninsula, ten years before Colonel Drake's famous well in Pennsylvania. Also, offshore drilling started up at Baku at Bibi-Eibat field near the end of the 19th century, about the same time that the first offshore oil well was drilled in 1896 at the Summerland Oil Field on the California Coast.

Until the 1970s, most oil wells were vertical, although lithological and mechanical imperfections cause most wells to deviate at least slightly from true vertical. However, modern directional drilling technologies allow for strongly deviated wells which can, given sufficient depth and with the proper tools, actually become horizontal. This is of great value as the reservoir rocks which contain hydrocarbons are usually horizontal, or sub-horizontal; a horizontal wellbore placed in a production zone has more surface area in the production zone than a vertical well, resulting in a higher production rate. The use of deviated and horizontal drilling has also made it possible to reach reservoirs several kilometers or miles away from the drilling location (extended reach drilling), allowing for the production of hydrocarbons located below locations that are either difficult to place a drilling rig on, environmentally sensitive, or populated.

Pumpjack

A pumpjack (also known as 'nodding donkey, oil derrick, pumping unit, horsehead pump, beam pump, sucker rod pump (SRP), grasshopper pump, thirsty bird and jack pump) is the overground drive for a reciprocating piston pump installed in an oil well.

It is used to mechanically lift liquid out of the well if there is not enough bottom hole pressure for the liquid to flow all the way to the surface. The arrangement is commonly used for onshore wells producing relatively little oil. Pumpjacks are common in many oil-rich areas, dotting the countryside and occasionally serving as local landmarks.

Depending on the size of the pump, it generally produces 5 to 40 litres of liquid at each stroke. Often this is an emulsion of crude oil and water. The size of the pump is also determined by the depth and weight of the oil to be removed, with deeper extraction requiring more power to move the heavier lengths of sucker rods (see diagram at right).

A pumpjack converts the rotary mechanism of the motor to a vertical reciprocating motion to drive the pump shaft, and is exhibited in the characteristic nodding motion. The engineering term for this type of mechanism is a walking beam. It was often employed in stationary and marine steam engine designs in the 1700s and 1800s.

When an oilman’s gamble pays off with a producing oil well, much remains to be done before the oil can make it to market. In 1859, “Colonel” Edwin Drake used a common water well hand pump to retrieve oil from 69.5 feet. It wasn’t long before necessity and ingenuity combined to find something more efficient.

Oil wells will run dry, but advances in technologies can put off the inevitable. Even with the best technologies, more than half of the oil can remain trapped. Steam power initially drove many of these eccentric power units, but some were converted to burn the natural gas or other inflammables often found with oil. Electrification arrived and the heyday of central power units passed.

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NORWEGIAN STATE RAILWAYS

Norwegian State Railways

Norwegian State Railways (Norwegian: Norges Statsbaner, NSB) is a Norwegian transport company owned by the Government of Norway. NSB is the largest passenger railway company in Norway; its subsidiary Nettbuss also operates bus services in Norway. Its former rail freight division was spun off into CargoNet. NSB used to own and manage the rail tracks and station buildings, but this responsibility was transferred to the Norwegian National Rail Administration, leaving NSB as a train operating company.

History

Prehistory: 1854–1883

The first Norwegian locomotive railway, Hovedbanen between Oslo and Eidsvoll, was opened on 1 September 1854. This 68 km long standard gauge railway terminated at the end of the Lake Mjøsa and steam ship services were provided up the lake to Lillehammer. This first railway was constructed by British engineers, and the financing was divided between British investors and the Government of Norway. The total construction cost of this railway was 2 million Spesidaler, though the investment was highly profitable because of the large amount of lumber transported on the rail. This railway represented an enormous boost to the vital Norwegian lumber industry. Also along this and all later railways were constructed telegraph lines. Hovedbanen was formally a private railway until 1926, but the Norwegian Government had great influence on the railway from the very beginning.

The next railway to be constructed was also the first state railways, decided in the Norwegian Parliament in 1857. On 23 June 1862 the narrow gauge Hamar-Grundsetbanen was opened. It was followed by the standard gauge Kongsvingerbanen that opened on 3 October between Lillestrøm and Kongsvinger, thus making a connection to Sweden (that Norway at that point was in union with) possible. The third of the first three lines was the narrow gauge Trondhjem-Størenbanen, opened in 1864. In the following years many other railways where constructed, including the Randsfjord Line in 1868, the Drammen Line in 1872, the Røros Line in 1877, the Jær Line in 1878, the Østfold Line in 1879 and the Eastern Østfold Line (1882), the Hedmark Line in 1880 and both the Vestfold Line and the Meråker Line in 1882. These railways were completely controlled by the state even if others had stocks and got revenue.

Foundation

Norwegian State Railways was formally founded in 1883 by establishing a central head office (Hovedstyrelsen) in Kristiania for all state railways built from 1857 and later. The state railway was grouped into six districts, each governed by a district headmaster (Distrikts Chef) and his office. These were situated in Kristiania, Drammen, Hamar, Trondhjem, Stavanger and Bergen. Offices in Kristiansand, Narvik and Arendal were established later. This administrative structure was mostly unchanged until 1989.

Great expansion

In 1890 the Norwegian Parliament decided to restart railway projects in Norway, after seven years of complete stop. A lot of lines were constructed in the years to come, and the nation got some kind of a railway network, with Oslo as a centre. The main lines were completed gradually with the Bergen Line in 1909, the Dovre Line in 1921, the Nordland Line to Mo i Rana in 1942 and the Sørland Line in 1944.

1945–1970

After World War II the expansion of the railway network practically stopped, with the sole exception of the work to get the Nordland Line to Bodø, a task first completed in 1962. In the 1952 the Norwegian authorities decided that 50% of the railway network length, compromising 80% of the traffic, was to be electrified at 15 kV AC and that the rest of the network was to be operated with diesel locomotives. The practical result was a continuous work to electrify the entire network south of Lake Mjøsa, in addition to the Dovre Line. This line would be the last electrified, a job completed in 1970.

To operate the modernized network, NSB went to the acquisition of two new main locomotive types, the Di 3 for diesel operations and the El 11 for electrical operations, the Di 3s being delivered from 1957 and the El 11s from 1951. The diesel locomotives were supplemented with the shunters Di 2 while the El 11s were supplemented with an upgraded El 13 class.

1970–1995

After decades of planning and construction, the Oslo Tunnel opened in 1980. It allowed trains from the west of Oslo to run to the new Oslo Central Station (Oslo S) and in 1989 Oslo West Line Station was closed. The tunnel especially revolutionised the commuter train service around Oslo, allowing trains to operate on both sides of Oslo city centre.

1996 to present.

On 1 December 1996 the largest structural change in Norwegian railway history in the 20th century occurred. NSB was split in three separate governmental agencies. The ownership, maintenance and construction of the track was transformed to the newly created government agency Jernbaneverket while a new Norwegian Railway Inspectorate was created to supervise all railway operations in the country. NSB was renamed NSB BA and created as a limited company, wholly owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications. Also, NSB was made a corporation, with NSB Biltrafikk (now Nettbuss) and NSB Eiendom (now ROM Eiendomsutvikling) made subsidiaries of NSB.

In 1998 the new Oslo Airport, Gardermoen opened, replacing the old Oslo Airport, Fornebu that had been too small since the 1980s. Part of the political compromise to build the new airport was a twofold consequence for NSB. First of all it was decided that the new airport was to have an as environmentally friendly ground infrastructure as possible, resulting in the decision to build a high speed railway on the 56 km stretch from Oslo Central Station to the airport, which would only take 19 minutes. But at the same time it was a political demand that the new airport not cost the tax payers any money, and it was decided that the entire construction was to be financed with loans. The result was that the airport was to be financed, built and operated by the Airport Authority subsidiary Oslo Lufthavn AS while the rail connection was to be financed, built and operated by the NSB subsidiary NSB Gardermobanen. But problems arose during the construction of Gardermobanen because of a leak in the tunnel Romeriksporten, resulting in major budget overruns and a delay in the opening of the tunnel. Still, Norway's first high speed railway line opened on time on 8 October 1998 at the same time as the new airport, though Romeriksporten wasn't opened until 22 October 1999, more than a year after its scheduled opening. The service is operated using 16 custom built Class 71 electric multiple units, with a capacity for 168 passengers and maximum speed of 210 km/h.

NSB tried to modernize itself in the late 1990s through the acquisition of new rolling stock and a new brand image. The first stock to be delivered was 22 El 18 electric locomotives. These were to take over the passenger train traffic in Southern Norway while the El 16s and El 14s were moved to the freight division and the El 17s were scrapped, relegated to shunting or sold to Flåmsbana. The new locomotives were capable of speeds up to 200 km/h. For the diesel lines NSB attempted to buy 12 Di 6 from Siemens, but had to return them after they failed to operate sufficiently in the Northern Norwegian cold. NSB also decided to rebrand itself with three district brands: NSB Signatur (express trains), NSB Agenda (regional trains) and NSB Puls (local trains). At the same time NSB ordered new electric multiple units, first of all for the new Airport Express Train service, Class 71. This was followed up with 16 new Signatur trains of Class 73 that were to be used on the express services on Bergensbanen, Dovrebanen and Sørlandsbanen and equipped with tilting technology. This was an attempt to create a high speed railway service using existing rail track, though the operating times between Oslo and the terminuses were only reduced by about an hour. These trains were painted blue and grey, and were the first non-red trains to be operated by NSB in decades. At the same time NSB announced the introduction of the Agenda concept, that was to replace the NSB Inter City Express services and the diesel services. While the Class 70s were simply repainted, the diesel services on Nordlandsbanen, Raumabanen and Rørosbanen were upgrades with 15 new Class 93 units in 2001, though criticized for lack of comfort, have increased the speed on the railways. NSB also discontinued night train services on Raumabanen and Rørosbanen. NSB also received, starting in 2002 36 new electrical local trains, Class 72. These were painted grey/green (for the use of the brand name Puls) and were put in service around Oslo and Stavanger. NSB has now discontinued the use of brand names on its rail products.

By 2002 the conservative-liberal government wanted to further deregulate the Norwegian railway sector, and made NSB a public limited company NSB AS on 1 July. NSB had been through a process of making the company more of a corporation, with the IT section made the subsidiary Arrive and the maintenance transformed to Mantena. NSB also purchased part of the Swedish Tågkompaniet while the old freight train section NSB Gods was transformed to CargoNet. 45% of the subsidiary was then sold to the Statens Järnvägar successor Green Cargo. In 2004 the government also split NSB Gardermobanen in two, deleting the companies debt, transferring the track it owned to Jernbaneverket and the train operations to a new, government-owned enterprise, Flytoget.

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MEXICO CITY ELECTRIC PLANT STEAM ENGINE

Compound Semi Portable engine with Twin Boilers

Constructed by Messrs. John Fowlers and Co., Limited, Engineers, Leeds.

A 100 horse power compound semi portable under type engine, with a high pressure cylinder 17 in. in diameter, and a low pressure 27 in. in diameter, by 30 in. stroke. Both cylinders are fitted with Hartnell’s patent automatic expansion gear controlled by one governor. The low pressure expansion valve is also fitted with the means of varying the proportion of cut-off without altering the high pressure cut-off. The frames are made of steel plates; the crankshaft is of steel, with the webs balanced, and is 10 in. diameter. The twin boilers are of the ordinary locomotive type, and each of them has 20 square feet of grate surface. The speed of the engine is 80 revolutions per minute, and at this speed with a boiler pressure of 125 lb. during a trial in the maker’s works, the engine indicated 286.3 horse power, of which 144.8 was given off from the high-pressure cylinder, and 141.5 from the low pressure cylinder. The exhaust from the high pressure cylinder to the low pressure steam chest passes through a copper pipe in the smokebox, which is common to both boilers. Each boiler is fitted with a Worthington pump of sufficient size to feed both boilers, and the feed pipes are so arranged that either pump can supply either or both boilers. When working at full power with steam cut off at seven-eights of the stroke in the high pressure cylinder, the engine gave off 452 horse-power. The makers, Messrs. Fowler and Co., of Leeds, have a similar engine in hand for the same users, who are engaged in the electric lighting of the City of Mexico.

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PRUSSIAN STATE RAILWAY

Constructed by the Stettiner Maschinenbau Actiengesellschaft “Vulcan,” Bredow, near Stettin, Germany, for the Prussian state Railways, The chief dimensions of the locomotive area as follows:

Cylinders:

Diameter of high pressure 460 mm

Diameter of low pressure 680 mm

Stroke of all pistons 600 mm

Ratio of cylinders capacities 1 to 2.18

Driving wheels, diameter 1960 mm

Running wheels, diameter 980 mm

Wheelbase, total 7400 mm

Fixed base 2600 mm

Steam pressure 12 atmospheres (180 lb)

Heating surface 119.28 sq. m.

Grate area 2.27 sq. m.

Weight, empty 42,600 kg.

Weight in service 48,100 kg.

For fast train locomotives the state Railway regulations provide that the maximum adhesion load on each axle, driving or coupled, is 15,200 kilograms (15 tons), whilst for ordinary locomotives it is 14,000 kilograms (14 tons). The pull is 4,250 kilograms (4.2 tons), the maximum speed 90 kilometers (56 miles) per hour.

The boiler is of the usual straight-topped type, the shell being 55 in. in diameter, and 12 ft. 9 ½ in. long between tubeplates. The internal firebox is of copper, the crown being supported by through stays, horizontal stays being added over the crown to prevent the spreading of the side plates of the outer box, which would otherwise arise. The internal firebox inside measures 7 ft. 2 ½ in. in length by 3 ft. 4 in. wide. The barrel of the boiler is made up of three rings of 14 millimeters plate. The tubes, which are of iron, number 231, and are 1.8 in. in diameter outside. The regulator is of the balanced slide valve type.

The bogie is of the four wheeled type, these wheels being 3.28 ft. in diameter over treads. The load is transferred from the frame to the bogie through bearing plates. The bearings of the vertical pivot are arranged to permit of a certain amount of side play, 1.2 in. on each side, this being controlled by springs.

The cylinders and valve chests, as well as the valve gear, which are of the Heusinger von Waldegg type, are arranged outside the frames. The wheels are cast steel spoke wheels, balanced at the time of casting by cast in counterweights. The coupled wheels measure 6 ft. 6 in. over treads.

For the breaking of the train there are provided en Exter ballistic brake on the tender, and a Westinghouse rapid compressed air brake, which acts upon the tender and the train and on the driving and coupling axles of both sides of the engine.

The engine is fitted with suction injectors and with a sandbox, the steam for heating the train and the gas for lighting the signal lamps and the cab are taken from the engine.

Prussian state railways

The term Prussian state railways encompasses those railway organizations that were owned or managed by the State of Prussia. Prussia did not have an independent railway administration, rather the individual railway organizations were under the control of the Ministry for Trade and Commerce or its later offshoot the Ministry for Public Works. For this reason the words 'state railways' have not been capitalized.

Overview

The first Prussian railways were private concerns, beginning with the Berlin-Potsdam Railway in 1838 and which was therefore known as the "Stammbahn" (roughly translates as 'original line'). The state of Prussia first financed railways around 1850. These were the Royal Westfalian Railway Company (Königlich-Westfälische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft) and the Prussian Eastern Railway or Prussian Ostbahn (Preußische Ostbahn). In 1875 they funded two more important new railways: the Prussian Northern Railway or Prussian Nordbahn (Preußsische Nordbahn) and the Marienfelde–Zossen–Jüterbog Military Railway.

After the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, various private, commercially-oriented lines were brought under Prussian control through annexation, outright purchase or the provision of financial support depending on their situation. It was the in Between 1880 and 1889 most of the private lines were able to be nationalized thanks to Prussia's strong financial situation making it the biggest company in Germany in 1907.

The individual railways acted as if they were independent operations and developed their own rolling stock. The extent of this independence is illustrated in an 1893 street plan of Berlin that shows the Silesian station (Berlin's departure point for the Ostbahn since 1882) and a few hundred yards apart from each other the main workshops for the Royal Berlin Division and the Royal Bromberg Division of the Ostbahn.

At the end of the First World War the network of the state-owned Prussian railways had a total length of almost 37,500 kilometers. The history of the Prussian state railways ended in 1920 with the nationalization and absorption of the various German state railways into the Imperial Railways (Reichseisenbahn), later the Deutsche Reichsbahn.

A common mistake is the assertion that there was a so-called Royal Prussian Railway Administration (Königlich Preußischen Eisenbahn-Verwaltung) or KPEV. However no organization of that name ever existed. Paradoxically various Prussian railway vehicles carried an emblem with the initials K.P.E.V. which probably gave rise to the idea. See Royal Prussian Railway Administration for an explanation.

The Prussian state railways were, like all other German state railways, subordinated to the authority of the German Empire after 1920 and then went into the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft in 1924. Quite a few of the locomotives formerly ordered by Prussia continued to be supplied until 1926 and were still defined as Prussian locomotive classes in the Reichsbahn fleet until they were eventually renumbered.

AG Vulcan Stettin

Aktien-Gesellschaft Vulcan Stettin (usually just mentioned as AG Vulcan Stettin or A.G. Vulcan Stettin) was a German shipbuilding and locomotive builder company, located in Stettin (Szczecin). AG Vulcan Stettin played a significant role in both World Wars, building U-boats and warships for the Kaiserliche Marine. They also sold blueprints to other nations, among others those for the Russian destroyer Novik and the light cruiser Pamyat Merkuriya (later renamed the Komintern). The company and shipyard were taken over and closed by the Polish government after World War II.

History

AG Vulcan Stettin was originally founded as Vulcan Werft in Stettin in 1851 and the shipyard was a pioneer of large-scale shipbuilding and a leading shipyard in Germany until its demise in 1945.

Its first ship was the iron steamer Dievenow. In 1857 the shipyard was renamed Stettiner Maschinenbau AG Vulcan, and as larger and larger ships were built, the facilities in Stettin could no longer sustain the scale of the operations.

Thus a new shipyard were built in Hamburg between 1907–1909. New Name since 1911: Vulcan-Werke Hamburg und Stettin Actiengesellschaft. In 1928 the company went bankrupt and sold its Hamburg shipyard in 1930, the AG Vulcan Stettin had been closed.

The shipyard was finally taken over by the Polish government after World War II and a new Szczecin Shipyard was started at this site. The Szczecin Shipyard named one of its wharfs "Wulkan" and two slipways "Wulkan 1" and "Wulkan Nowa".

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BALDWIN LOCOMOTIVE WORKS

The Baldwin Locomotive Works was an American builder of railroad (railway) locomotives. It was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania originally, and later in nearby Eddystone, Pennsylvania. Although the company was very successful as a producer of steam locomotives, it was unable to make the transition to diesel power. It stopped producing locomotives in 1956 and went out of business in 1972.

History

The Baldwin Locomotive Works had a humble beginning. Matthias W. Baldwin, the founder, was a jeweler and silversmith, who, in 1825, formed a partnership with a machinist, and engaged in the manufacture of bookbinders' tools and cylinders for calico printing. Mr. Baldwin then designed and constructed for his own use a small stationary engine, the workmanship of which was so excellent and its efficiency so great that he was solicited to build others like it for various parties, and thus led to turn his attention to steam engineering.

In 1831, at the request of the Philadelphia Museum, he built a miniature locomotive for exhibition which was such a success that he that year received an order from a railway company for a locomotive to run on a short line to the suburbs of Philadelphia. The Camden and Amboy Railroad Company (C&A) had shortly before imported a locomotive (John Bull) from England, which was stored in Bordentown, New Jersey. It had not yet been assembled by Isaac Dripps (under the direction of C&A president Robert L. Stevens) when Baldwin visited the spot. He inspected the detached parts and made notes of the principal dimensions. Aided by these figures, he commenced his task.

The difficulties attending the execution of this first order were such as our mechanics now cannot easily comprehend. Tools were not easily obtainable; the cylinders were bored by a chisel fixed in a block of wood and turned by hand; the workmen had to be taught how to do nearly all the work; and Mr. Baldwin himself did a great deal of it with his own hands.

It was under such circumstances that his first locomotive, christened Old Ironsides, was completed and tried on the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad on November 23, 1832. It was at once put in active service, and did duty for over 20 years. It was a four-wheeled engine, weighing a little over five tons; the driving wheels were 54 inches (1.37 m) in diameter, and the cylinders 9½ inches (24 cm) in diameter by 18 inches (45.7 cm) stroke. The wheels were of heavy cast iron hubs, with wooden spokes and rims, and wrought iron tires, and the frame was made of wood placed outside the wheels.

Zerah Colburn was one of many engineers who had a close association with the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Between 1854 and the start of his weekly paper, the Railroad Advocate and 1861, when Colburn went to work more or less permanently in London, England, the journalist was in frequent touch with M. W. Baldwin, as recorded in Zerah Colburn: The Spirit of Darkness. Colburn was full of praise for the quality of Baldwin's work.

Initially, Baldwin would build many more steam locomotives at its cramped 196 acre (0.79 km²) Broad Street Philadelphia shop but would begin to shift production to a 616 acre (2.5 km²) site located at Spring Street in nearby Eddystone, Pennsylvania, in 1906.

The American railroad industry expanded significantly between 1898 and 1907, with domestic demand for locomotives hitting its highest point in 1905. Baldwin’s business boomed during this period while it modernized its Broad Street facilities. Despite this boom, Baldwin faced many challenges including the constraints of space in the Philadelphia facility, inflation, increased labor costs, the substantial increase in the size of the locomotives being manufactured, labor tensions, and the formation of a an aggressive competitor (Alco). A year later the Interstate Commerce Commission was established and the panic of 1907 occurred. Both of these events would have a negative effect on the railway industry.

Baldwin’s output dropped from 2,666 locomotives in 1906 to 614 in 1908. Baldwin’s business was further imperiled when William P. Henszey, one of Baldwin’s partners died, leaving Baldwin with a $ 6 million liability. In response, Baldwin incorporated and released $ 10 million worth of bonds. Samuel Vauclain wanted to use these funds to expand Baldwin’s capacities so it would be prepared for another boom. While other Baldwin officers opposed this expansion, Vauclain’s vision won out; Baldwin would continue to expand its Eddystone plant until its completion in 1928. By 1928, the company moved all locomotive production there though the plant would never exceed more than 1/3 of its production capacity.

Baldwin was an important contributor to the Allied war effort in World War I. Baldwin built 5,551 locomotives for the Allies including separate designs for Russian, French, British, and United States Trench railways. Baldwin built railway gun carriages for the United States Navy and manufactured 6,565,355 artillery shells for Russia, England, and the United States. From 1915 to 1918, Remington Arms subcontracted the production of nearly 2 million Pattern 1914 Enfield and M1917 Enfield rifles to the Baldwin Locomotive Works.

After World War I, Baldwin's business would decline as the diesel engine became the standard on American railways. By the 1920s the major locomotive manufacturers had strong incentives to maintain the dominance of the steam engine. Nevertheless, ALCO, while remaining committed to steam production, pursued R&D strategies in the 1920s and 30s that would ensure its competitiveness in the event that diesel engines would predominate. In contrast, Baldwin opposed any development of diesel trains in the 1930s. In 1930, Samuel Vauclain, Chairman of the Board, stated in a speech that advances in steam technology would ensure the dominance of the steam engine until at least 1980. Baldwin’s Vice President and Director of Sales stated in December of 1937 that “Some time in the future, when all this is reviewed, it will be found that our railroads are no more dieselized than they electrified.” Baldwin had deep roots in the steam locomotive industry, and may have been influenced by heavy investment in its Eddystone plant. Baldwin began an attempt to diversify its product line in 1929, but the Great Depression thwarted these efforts and Baldwin declared bankruptcy in 1935.

When Baldwin emerged from bankruptcy in 1938 it underwent a drastic change in management. The new management was dedicated to diesel power but the company was already too far behind. Business declined drastically in the postwar years as EMD and ALCO seized the bulk of the diesel market from Baldwin, Lima-Hamilton and Fairbanks-Morse.

In 1939 Baldwin offered its first standard line of diesel locomotives, all designed for yard service. By this time, General Motors had already marketing its first diesel road freight locomotive. Two years later America's entry into World War II destroyed Baldwin's diesel development program when the War Production Board dictated that ALCO and Baldwin produce only diesel-electric yard switching engines. Electro-Motive Division (EMD) was assigned the task of producing road freight diesels (namely, the FT series), which gave the latter an advantage over its competitors in that product line in the years that followed World War II. During World War II Baldwin was one of the manufacturers of the Sherman tank.

Between 1940 and 1948, domestic steam locomotive sales declined from 30% of the market to 2%. By 1949, there was no demand for steam locomotives. In July 1948 Westinghouse Electric, which had teamed with Baldwin to build diesel and electric carbodies, purchased 500,000 shares, or 21%, of Baldwin stock, which made Westinghouse Baldwin's largest shareholder. Baldwin used the money to cover various debts. Westinghouse vice president Marvin W. Smith became Baldwin's president in May 1949. In a move to diversify its operations Baldwin merged with Lima-Hamilton on December 4, 1950, to become Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton. However market share continued to dwindle. In 1953 Westinghouse discontinued building electrical traction equipment, and so Baldwin was forced to purchase electrical equipment from General Electric.

Baldwin did not produce another locomotive after 1956, and exited the locomotive business in 1965 to concentrate on heavy construction equipment. Over 70,500 locomotives had been produced when production ceased in 1956.

In 1965 Baldwin became a wholly owned subsidiary of Armour and Company. Greyhound Corporation purchased Armour and Company in 1970, and in 1972 Greyhound closed Baldwin-Lima for good.

Steam Locomotives

Baldwin built a huge number of 4-4-0 "American" type locomotives, an example of which is the Countess of Dufferin, but was perhaps best known for the 2-8-2 "Mikado" and 2-8-0 "Consolidation" types. It was also well known for the unique cab-forward 4-8-8-2 articulateds built for the Southern Pacific Company and massive 2-10-2 for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Baldwin also produced one of the most powerful steam engines in history, the 2-8-8-4 "Yellowstone". Yellowstone could put down over 140,000 lbf (622.8 kN) of tractive force. One of Baldwin's last new and improved locomotive designs were the 4-8-4 "Northern" locomotives. Baldwin's last domestic steam locomotives were 2-6-6-2s built for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in 1949. Baldwin 60000, the company's 1926 demonstration steam locomotive, is on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

On a separate note, the restored and running 2-6-2 steam locomotive at Fort Edmonton Park was built by Baldwin in 1919.

Baldwin Locomotive Works built steam engines for narrow-gauge railways as well.

A 6-ton, 60-cm gauge 4-4-0 built for the Tacubaya Railroad in 1897 was the smallest ever built by Baldwin for commercial use.[30] The Baldwin works built a 2-4-2T tank engine - Lyn - for the 1 ft 11.5 in (597 mm) gauge Lynton and Barnstaple Railway in England in 1898. The loco was shipped in crates and assembled at the line's Pilton Yard.

In the same year two 2-6-2T 'Prairie' tank engines were built for Victorian Railways (VR). They were used as a trial on the new 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) narrow gauge railways. Fifteen more NA class locomotives were built by VR. Unfortunately only six have survived and both of the original Baldwin engines were among those scrapped.

The Welsh Highland Railway in Wales borrowed a 4-6-0 WD pannier tank engine from Baldwin during World War 1. Unfortunately this locomotive was scrapped in the 1940's due to being prone to rough riding and derailments. But the Welsh Highland Railway is planning to build a full-scale replica of this locomotive numbered 794.

Baldwin also built three engines for the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway, which were delivered in 1890. A fourth was delivered in 1892. These engines featured steeply inclined boilers and used the Abt rack system to propel them up the average 16% grade. Over the years the engines were scrapped or rebuilt. The last Baldwin engine was taken out of regular service in 1955. During the following years the engines were used as back-up engines and for snow removal. Three of the engines are currently on static display around Colorado. One (No. 1) is located at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado. The other two on display are located in Manitou Springs, Colorado: one (No. 2) near city hall and the other (No. 5) at the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway depot. The fourth engine (No. 4) is still in limited operation for photo opportunities and special events. However it no longer completes the journey to the top of Pike's Peak due to the fact that many of the water tanks along the line have been removed.

Electric Locomotives

From the early years of the 20th century Baldwin had a relationship with the Westinghouse Electric Company to build electric locomotives for American and foreign markets. The electric locomotive was increasingly popular; electrification was expensive, but for high traffic levels or mountainous terrain it could pay for itself, and in addition some cities like New York were banning the steam locomotive because of its pollution and the propensity for accidents in smoke-choked terminals. Baldwin built or subcontracted out the bodywork and running gear, and Westinghouse built the electrical gear.

Baldwin built the famed EP-1 (1906), EF-1 (1912) and EP-2 (1923) box cab electric locomotives for the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Baldwin also delivered the EP-3 box cab electric locomotives to the Milwaukee Road for use on their line between Harlowton, Montana and Avery, Idaho.

Baldwin built several electric locomotive types for the Pennsylvania Railroad as well including the P5A, R1 and the famed GG1. Baldwin built the first GG1 prototype electric locomotive for use on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s electrified line, which was completed in 1935 between New York and Washington, D.C.

Steam-turbine Locomotives

In the waning years of steam Baldwin also undertook several attempts at alternative technologies to diesel power. In 1944 Baldwin outshopped an S2 class 6-8-6 steam turbine locomotive for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Between 1947 and 1948 Baldwin built three unique coal-fired steam turbine-electric locomotives, designed for passenger service on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O). The 6,000 horsepower (4,500 kW) units, which were equipped with Westinghouse electrical systems and had a 2-C1+2-C1-B wheel arrangement, were 106 feet (32 m) long, making them the longest locomotives ever built for passenger service. The cab was mounted in the center, with a coal bunker ahead of it and a backwards-mounted boiler behind it (the tender only carried water). These locomotives were intended for a route from Washington, D.C. to Cincinnati, Ohio but could never travel the whole route without some sort of failure. Coal dust and water frequently got into the traction motors. These problems could have been fixed given time, but it was obvious that these locomotives would always be expensive to maintain, and all three were scrapped in 1950.

In May 1954 Baldwin built a 4,500 horsepower (3,400 kW)steam turbine-electric locomotive for freight service on the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W), nicknamed the "Jawn Henry" after the legend of John Henry, a steel-driver on a track crew who famously raced against a steam drill and won, only to die immediately afterwards. The unit was similar in appearance to the C&O turbines but very different mechanically; it had a C+C-C+C wheel arrangement, and an improved watertube boiler which was fitted with automatic controls. Unfortunately the boiler controls were sometimes problematic, and (as with the C&O turbines) coal dust and water got into the motors. "Jawn Henry" was retired from the N&W roster on January 4, 1958.

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LEAD PRODUCTION

Known since the Middle Ages by the name plumb dulcis, the production of lead nitrate from either metallic lead or lead oxide in nitric acid was small-scale, for direct use in making other lead compounds. In the 19th century lead nitrate began to be produced commercially in Europe and the United States. Historically, the main use was as a raw material in the production of pigments for lead paints, but such paints have been superseded by less toxic paints based on titanium dioxide. Other industrial uses included heat stabilization in nylon and polyesters, and in coatings of photothermographic paper. Since around the year 2000, lead nitrate has begun to be used in gold cyanidation.

Since the Middle Ages, lead nitrate has been produced as a raw material for the production of colored pigments in lead paints, such as chrome yellow (lead chromate), chrome orange (lead hydroxide chromate) and similar lead compounds. These pigments were used for dyeing and printing calico and other textiles.

In 1597, the German alchemist Andreas Libavius first described the compound, coining the medieval names of plumb dulcis and calx plumb dulcis, meaning "sweet lead", because of its taste. Although originally not understood during the following centuries, the decrepitation property of lead nitrate led to its use in matches and special explosives such as lead azide.

The production process was and still is chemically straightforward, effectively dissolving lead in aqua fortis (nitric acid), and subsequently harvesting the precipitate. However, the production remained small-scale for many centuries, and the commercial production of lead nitrate as raw material for the manufacture of other lead compounds was not reported until 1835. In 1974, the U.S. consumption of lead compounds, excluding pigments and gasoline additives, was 642 tons.

The W. Britain brand name of toy and collectible soldiers is derived from a company founded by William Britain Jr., a British toy manufacturer, who in 1893 invented the process of hollow casting in lead, and revolutionized the production of toy soldiers. The company quickly became the industry leader, and was imitated by many other companies, such as Hanks Bros. and John Hill and Co. The style and scale of Britain's figures became the industry standard for toy soldiers for many years.

In 1907 the family proprietorship, William Britain & Sons, incorporated as Britains, Ltd. The Britain family controlled the firm until 1984 when it was sold to a British conglomerate, Dobson Park Industries. They combined the operations with an existing line of toys and renamed the company Britains Petite, Ltd. During the first half of the 20th century, Britains expanded its range and market. By 1931 the firm employed 450 at its London factory. The catalog had expanded to 435 sets and twenty million models a year were being produced.

In the 1950s Britains acquired Herald Miniatures, plastic figures designed by Roy Selwyn-Smith. By 1966 safety regulations in the United Kingdom combined with rising costs halted the production of lead toy soldiers. Britains shifted most production of Herald plastic to Hong Kong from 1966. In 1976 Britains started Deetail plastic figures with metal bases that were initially manufactured in England but later were manufactured in China.

When production stopped, the range of cataloged lead sets exceeded 2200. In 1973 Britains introduced New Metal models, which are die cast in a durable alloy. Initially these sets were aimed at the British souvenir market. In 1983 Britains responded to a growing collectors market by introducing additional models and limited edition sets. This range was greatly expanded over the next 20 years and included die-cast versions of their old toy soldiers; some made from original molds. These, as well as their lines of Deetail plastic figures and accessories, and their older sets have become highly collectible. They are also known for their Revolutionary War soldiers.

In 1997 Britains Petite, Ltd was bought by Ertl Company of Iowa, a maker of die-cast toys. Ertl was subsequently bought by Racing Champions, another American die cast model maker. At this time production of toy soldiers was moved to China. In 2005, the W. Britains brand was acquired by First Gear, an American maker of die cast collectibles. This firm produces and sells mostly contemporary matte-style figures to the collectors market under the W. Britain brand.

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BESSEMER STEEL PRODUCTION

Bessemer process

The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron. The process is named after its inventor, Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in 1855. The process was independently discovered in 1851 by William Kelly. The process had also been used outside of Europe for hundreds of years, but not on an industrial scale. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises the temperature of the iron mass and keeps it molten.

Bessemer converter

The process is carried on in a large ovoid steel container lined with clay or dolomite called the Bessemer converter. The capacity of a converter was from 8 to 30 tons of molten iron with a usual charge being around 15 tons. At the top of the converter is an opening, usually tilted to the side relative to the body of the vessel, through which the iron is introduced and the finished product removed. The bottom is perforated with a number of channels called tuyères through which air is forced into the converter. The converter is pivoted on trunnions so that it can be rotated to receive the charge, turned upright during conversion, and then rotated again for pouring out the molten steel at the end.

Oxidation

The oxidation process removes impurities such as silicon, manganese, and carbon as oxides. These oxides either escape as gas or form a solid slag. The refractory lining of the converter also plays a role in the conversion—the clay lining is used in the acid Bessemer, in which there is low phosphorus in the raw material. Dolomite is used when the phosphorus content is high in the basic Bessemer (limestone or magnesite linings are also sometimes used instead of dolomite)—this is also known as a Gilchrist-Thomas converter, named after its inventor, Sidney Gilchrist Thomas. In order to give the steel the desired properties, other substances could be added to the molten steel when conversion was complete, such as spiegeleisen (an iron-carbon-manganese alloy).

Managing the process

When the required steel had been formed, it was poured out into ladles and then transferred into moulds and the lighter slag is left behind. The conversion process called the "blow" was completed in around twenty minutes. During this period the progress of the oxidation of the impurities was judged by the appearance of the flame issuing from the mouth of the converter: the modern use of photoelectric methods of recording the characteristics of the flame has greatly aided the blower in controlling the final quality of the product. After the blow, the liquid metal was recarburized to the desired point and other alloying materials are added, depending on the desired product.

Predecessor processes

Before the Bessemer process Britain had no practical method of reducing the carbon content of pig iron. Steel was manufactured by the reverse process of adding carbon to carbon-free wrought iron, usually imported from Sweden. The manufacturing process, called cementation process consisted of heating bars of wrought iron together with charcoal for periods of up to a week in a long stone box. This produced blister steel. Up to 3 tons of expensive coke was burnt for each ton of steel produced. Such steel when rolled into bars was sold at £50 to £60 a long ton. The most difficult and work-intensive part of the process, however, was the production of wrought iron done in finery forges in Sweden.

This process was refined in the 1700s with the introduction of Benjamin Huntsman's crucible steel-making technique, which added an additional three hours firing time and required additional large quantities of coke. In making crucible steel the blister steel bars were broken into pieces and melted in small crucibles each containing 20 kg or so. This produced higher quality crucible steel but increased the cost. The Bessemer process reduced to about half an hour the time needed to make steel of this quality while requiring only the coke needed to melt the pig iron initially. The earliest Bessemer converters produced steel for £7 a long ton, although it initially sold for around £40 a ton.

History

Historian Robert Hartwell points out that the 11th century Chinese of the Song Dynasty innovated a "partial decarbonization" method of repeated forging of cast iron under a cold blast. The historians Joseph Needham and Wertime acknowledged that this was the predecessor to the Bessemer process of making steel. This process was first described by the prolific scholar and polymath government official Shen Kuo (1031–1095) in 1075 when he visited Cizhou. Hartwell states that perhaps the earliest center where this was practiced was the great iron-production district along the Henan-Hebei border during the 11th century.

In 1740 Benjamin Huntsman developed the crucible technique for steel manufacture, at his workshop in the district of Handsworth in Sheffield. This process had an enormous impact on the quantity and quality of steel production.

Henry Bessemer described the origin of his invention in Chapters 10 and 11 of his autobiography. According to this book at the time of the outbreak of the Crimean War many English industrialists and inventors became interested in military technology and Bessemer himself developed a method for grooving artillery projectiles so that they could spin without the use of rifling in the bore of the gun. He patented this method in 1854 and began developing it in conjunction with the government of France. After a successful day of testing of his method at the Polygon in France he had a conversation with Claude-Etienne Minié who stated that a key barrier to the use of the larger, heavier spinning projectiles would be the strength of the gun and in particular "...he [Minié] did not consider it safe in practice to fire a 30-lb. shot from a 12-pounder cast-iron gun. The real question, he said, was; Could any guns be made to stand such heavy projectiles?"

This is what started Bessemer thinking about steel. At the time steel was difficult and expensive to make and was consequently used in only small items like cutlery and tools. Starting in January 1855 he began working on a way to produce steel in the massive quantities required for artillery and by October he filed his first patent related to the Bessemer process.

According to his autobiography Bessemer first started working with an ordinary reverbatory furnace but during a test a couple of pig ingots got off to the side of ladle and were sitting above it in the hot air of the furnace. When Bessemer went to push them into the ladle he found that they were steel shells: the hot air alone had converted the outer parts of the ingots to steel. This crucial discovery led him to completely redesign his furnace so that it would force high-pressure air through the molten iron using special air pumps. Intuitively this would seem to be folly because it would cool the iron, but due to exothermic oxidation both the silicon and carbon react with the excess oxygen leaving the surrounding molten iron even hotter, facilitating the conversion to steel.

Bessemer licenced the patent for his process to five ironmasters, for a total of £27,000, but the licences failed to produce the quality of steel he had promised and he later bought them back for £32,500. He realized the problem was due to impurities in the iron and concluded that the solution lay in knowing when to turn off the flow of air in his process; so that the impurities had been burnt off, but just the right amount of carbon remained. However, despite spending tens of thousands of pounds on experiments, he could not find the answer.

The simple, but elegant, solution was first discovered by Robert Forester Mushet, who had carried out thousands of scientifically valid experiments in the Forest of Dean. His method was to first burn off, as far as possible, all the impurities and carbon, then reintroduce carbon and manganese by adding an exact amount of spiegeleisen. This had the effect of improving the quality of the finished product, increasing its malleability - its ability to withstand rolling and forging at high temperatures and making it more suitable for a vast array of uses.

The first Bessemer steel mill in the United States was established in 1855 in Wyandotte, Michigan, on the Detroit River, about 14 miles south of Detroit. Detroit became an early steel producing city in North America due to easy access to Great Lakes shipping and iron ore from northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. These were major factors in development of Detroit as a renowned center of automobile manufacture.

Importance

The Bessemer process revolutionized steel manufacture by decreasing its cost, from £40 per long ton to £6-7 per long ton during its introduction, along with greatly increasing the scale and speed of production of this vital raw material. The process also decreased the labor requirements for steel-making. Prior to its introduction, steel was far too expensive to make bridges or the framework for buildings and thus wrought iron had been used throughout the Industrial Revolution. After the introduction of the Bessemer process, steel and wrought iron became similarly priced, and most manufacturers turned to steel. The availability of cheap steel allowed large bridges to be built and enabled the construction of railroads, skyscrapers, and large ships. Other important steel products—also made using the open hearth process—were steel cable, steel rod and sheet steel which enabled large, high-pressure boilers and high-tensile strength steel for machinery which enabled much more powerful engines, gears and axles than were possible previously. With large amounts of steel it became possible to build much more powerful guns and carriages, tanks, armored fighting vehicles and aircraft carriers. Industrial steel also made possible the building of giant turbines and generators thus making the harnessing of water and steam power possible. The introduction of the large scale steel production process perfected by the Englishman Henry Bessemer paved the way to mass industrialization as observed in the 19th-20th Centuries.

Obsolescence

In the U.S., commercial steel production using this method stopped in 1968. It was replaced by processes such as the basic oxygen (Linz-Donawitz) process, which offered better control of final chemistry. The Bessemer process was so fast (10–20 minutes for a heat) that it allowed little time for chemical analysis or adjustment of the alloying elements in the steel. Bessemer converters did not remove phosphorus efficiently from the molten steel; as low-phosphorus ores became more expensive, conversion costs increased. The process permitted only limited amount of scrap steel to be charged, further increasing costs, especially when scrap was inexpensive. Use of electric arc furnace technology competed favourably with the Bessemer process resulting in its obsolescence. Certain grades of steel are sensitive to the 78% nitrogen which was part of the air blast passing through the steel.

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EIGHT HORSE AGRICULTURAL LOCOMOTIVE

Traction engine exhibited by Messrs. Ruston, Proctor & Co., of Lincoln, showing the peculiar arrangement of steam admission valve, which forms one of its special features. The engine is rated as an eight-horse, and its principal dimensions area s follows:

Diameter of cylinder 0 ft. 9 ¾ in.

Stroke 1 0

Diameter of driving whells 6 9

Diameter of leading wheels 3 9

Diameter of flywheel 4 0

Length of engine over all 15 9

Total width of engine 7 4

Ttotal heating surface 174 sq. ft.

Grate area 5.06 sq. ft.

Slow speed 1 ¾ miles per hour

Quick speed 3 ½ miles per hour

Weight in working order 9 tons 15 cwt.

The bearings for the crankshaft, countershaft, and driving axle are carried by a couple of plates, one on each side of the engine, these plates being stayed together transversely, and being connected to the cylinder by Messrs. Ruston’s well-know tubular expanding stays, to which steam is admitted from the cylinder jacket. One of these stays is also made to serve as a steam pipe for supplying steam to an injector fixed at the side of the firebox, as shown, the other stay similar supplying steam to a water elevator by which the tank can be filled. In the arrangement of the gearing the are some special points. Thus tge countershaft carries the intermediate gear running loose on one end, which is eccentric to the bearing in which the shaft itself is mounted. The shaft is fixed in these bearings by a cotter, but by slacking back the latter the shaft is left free to be revolved, so as to readjust the gear when this is rendered necessary by the wear of the crankshaft brasses. The differential gear, or “jack-in-the box” motion is also fitted with a neat locking gear actuated from the footplate, so that when desired the gear can be thrown out of action. This arrangement is sometimes handy in the event of an engine getting stuck in an awkward place when the amount of “hold” obtained by the two driving wheels varies greatly. The governor of the Porter type, but with the weight arranged below the top bearing of the governor spindle, so that the upper part of the governor being light there is less tendency to vibration. The reversing lever, also, in place of being provided with the usual catch lever, is held in the desired position by a catch, which is operated by a foot treadle.

The arrangement of the patent regulating valve inside the boiler is shown by the detail view of the drawing. This valve regulate the supply of steam to the cylinder in such a manner that is always taken from the highest and consequently driest end of the boiler, thus greatly obviating the inconvenience of priming. In the present instance it is arranged to work automatically, but if preferred it may be operated by a lever or screw passing through a stuffing-box in any convenient part of the boiler. The action is as follows: Two weights are supported in unstable equilibrium by levers centered at their lower ends, and these weights are connected by means of a pin passing through slots in the casing to a valve which has two seats facing respectively the opposite ends of the boiler. As soon as the boiler is inclined, these weights by their own gravity fall over, pulling the spin to the lower end of the slots, thus closing the valve facing the lower end of the boiler, and opening the other valve. These valves being directly connected to two collecting pipes passing to either end, the steam is therefore always taken from the most advantageous point.

The feed water is carried in a tank under the footplate, and one of the hand-rail pillars at the back is made hollow, and is traversed by the rod of a float in the tank. The rod carries an index which works through a slot formed on one side of the pillar, and the driver has thus a ready means of a any time ascertaining how much water his tank contains. At the sides of the tank tool boxes are provided. The footplate is protected by a light roof of corrugated iron, and the whole of the details of the engine are very neatly worked out.

Ruston, Proctor and Company

Ruston, Proctor and Company was established in Lincoln, England in 1857, and were manufactures of steam tractors and engines. They later became Rustons & then Ruston & Hornsby.

The firm started as millwrights and implement manufacturers 'Burton & Proctor' in Lincoln in 1840. Joseph Ruston became a partner in the company in 1857, and the company changed name to Ruston, Proctor & Co. and grew to become a major agricultural engineering firm.

In 1918 the firm merged with the established Richard Hornsby & Sons company, from Grantham, Lincolnshire.

Rustons were primarily steam engineers, manufacturing portable, stationary and traction engines, boilers, and associated engineering products such as winding gear, shafts and pulleys. Threshing machines, clover hullers, corn mills, maize shellers and pumps for steam power were also made. As well as engines for agriculture machines Rustons made railway locomotives, industrial equipment and mining machinery. The company also expanded into electrical and diesel engineering.

The firm were one of the first to manufacture steam-powered excavating machinery – in the 1880s producing the "Dunbar & Ruston's" steam navvy (excavator). These 2 cu yd machines were used in the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal. In 1906 they built the "Ruston Light Steam Shovel", and exhibited it at the Royal Agricultural Show of 1907 held in Lincoln, the machine being of 3/4 cu yd capacity.

The firm later became Ruston-Bucyrus.

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THE FLYER

Wright Flyer

The Wright Flyer (often retrospectively referred to as Flyer I, 1903 Flyer and occasionally Kitty Hawk) was the first powered aircraft designed and built by the Wright brothers. They flew it four times on December 17, 1903 near the Kill Devil Hills, about four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, U.S.

The U.S. Smithsonian Institution describes the aircraft as "the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard." The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, described the 1903 flight during the 100th anniversary in 2003 as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight."

Design and construction

The Flyer was based on the Wrights' experience testing gliders at Kitty Hawk between 1900 and 1902. Their last glider, the 1902 Glider, led directly to the design of the Flyer.

The Wrights built the aircraft in 1903 using 'giant spruce' wood as their construction material. The wings were designed with a 1-in-20 camber. Since they could not find a suitable automobile engine for the task, they commissioned their employee Charlie Taylor to build a new design from scratch. A sprocket chain drive, borrowing from bicycle technology, powered the twin propellers, which were also made by hand.

The Flyer was a canard biplane configuration. As with the gliders, the pilot flew lying on his stomach on the lower wing with his head toward the front of the craft in an effort to reduce drag. He steered by moving a cradle attached to his hips. The cradle pulled wires which warped the wings and turned the rudder simultaneously.

The Flyer's "runway" was a track of 2x4s stood on their narrow edge, which the brothers nicknamed the "Junction Railroad."

Flight tests at Kitty Hawk

Upon returning to Kitty Hawk in 1903, the Wrights completed assembly of the Flyer while practicing on the 1902 Glider from the previous season. On December 14, 1903, they felt ready for their first attempt at powered flight. With the help of men from the nearby government life-saving station, the Wrights moved the Flyer and its launching rail to the incline of a nearby sand dune, Big Kill Devil Hill, intending to make a gravity-assisted takeoff. The brothers tossed a coin to decide who would get the first chance at piloting and Wilbur won. The airplane left the rail, but Wilbur pulled up too sharply, stalled, and came down in about three seconds with minor damage.

Repairs after the abortive first flight took three days. When they were ready again on December 17, the wind was averaging more than 20 mph, so the brothers laid the launching rail on level ground, pointed into the wind, near their camp. This time the wind, instead of an inclined launch, helped provide the necessary airspeed for takeoff. Because Wilbur already had the first chance, Orville took his turn at the controls. His first flight lasted 12 seconds for a total distance of 120 feet (36.5 m) – shorter than the wingspan of a Boeing 707.

Taking turns, the Wrights made four brief, low-altitude flights that day. The flight paths were all essentially straight; turns were not attempted. Each flight ended in a bumpy and unintended "landing". The last flight, by Wilbur, was 852 feet (260 m) in 59 seconds, much longer than each of the three previous flights of 120, 175 and 200 feet. The landing broke the front elevator supports, which the Wrights hoped to repair for a possible four-mile (6 km) flight to Kitty Hawk village. Soon after, a heavy gust picked up the Flyer and tumbled it end over end, damaging it beyond any hope of quick repair. It was never flown again.

In 1904, the Wrights continued refining their designs and piloting techniques in order to obtain fully controlled flight. Major progress toward this goal was achieved with a new Flyer in 1904 and even more decisively in 1905 with a third Flyer, in which Wilbur made a 39-minute, 24-mile (39 km) nonstop circling flight on October 5. While the 1903 Flyer was clearly a historically important test vehicle, its hallowed status in the American imagination has obscured the role of its two successors in the continuing development that led to the Wrights' mastery of controlled powered flight in 1905.

The influence of the Flyer

The Flyer series of aircraft were the first to achieve controlled heavier-than-air flight, but some of the mechanical techniques the Wrights used to accomplish this were not influential for the development of aviation as a whole, although their theoretical achievements were. The Flyer design depended on wing-warping and a forward horizontal stabilizer, features which would not scale and produced a hard-to-control aircraft. However, the Wrights' pioneering use of "roll control" by twisting the wings to change wingtip angle in relation to the airstream led directly to the more practical use of ailerons by their imitators, such as Curtiss and Farman. The Wrights' original concept of simultaneous coordinated roll and yaw control (rear rudder deflection), which they discovered in 1902, perfected in 1903–1905, and patented in 1906, represents the solution to controlled flight and is used today on virtually every fixed-wing aircraft. The Wright patent included the use of hinged rather than warped surfaces for the forward elevator and rear rudder. Other features that made the Flyer a success were highly efficient wings and propellers, which resulted from the Wrights' exacting wind tunnel tests and made the most of the marginal power delivered by their early "homebuilt" engines; slow flying speeds (and hence survivable accidents); and an incremental test/development approach. The future of aircraft design, however, lay with rigid wings, ailerons and rear control surfaces.

After a single statement to the press in January 1904 and a failed public demonstration in May, the Wright Brothers did not publicize their efforts, and other aviators who were working on the problem of flight (notably Santos Dumont) were thought by the press to have preceded them by many years. Indeed, several short heavier-than-air powered flights had been made by other aviators before 1903, leading to controversy about precedence (see first flying machine). The Wrights, however, claimed to be the first of these which was 'properly controlled'.

The issue of control was correctly seen as critical by the Wrights, and they acquired a wide American patent intended to give them ownership of basic aerodynamic control. This was fought in both American and European courts. European designers, however, were little affected by the litigation and continued their own development. The legal fight in the U.S., however, had a crushing effect on the nascent American aircraft industry, and by the time of World War I, the U.S. had no suitable military aircraft and had to purchase French and British models.

The Flyer after Kitty Hawk

The Wright Brothers returned home to Dayton for Christmas after the flights of the Flyer. While they had abandoned their other gliders, they realized the historical significance of the Flyer. They crated it and shipped it back to Dayton, where it stayed in storage for 9 years. It was inundated in the Great Dayton Flood in March 1913.

In 1910 the Wrights first made attempts to exhibit the Flyer in the Smithsonian Institution but talks fell through with the ensuing lawsuits against Glenn Curtiss and the Flyer may have been needed as repeated evidence in court cases. In 1916 as the patent fights were ending, Orville brought the Flyer out of storage and prepared it for display at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Wilbur had died in 1912.) He replaced parts of the wing covering, the props, and the engine's crankcase, crankshaft, and flywheel. The crankcase, crankshaft and flywheel of the original engine had been sent to the Aero Club of America in New York for an exhibit in 1906 and were never returned to the Wrights. The replacement crankcase, crankshaft and flywheel came from the guinea pig engine Charlie Taylor had built in 1904 and used for testing in the bicycle shop.

Debate with the Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Institution, and primarily its then-secretary Charles Walcott, refused to give credit to the Wright Brothers for the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft. Instead, they honored the former Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Pierpont Langley, whose 1903 tests of his own Aerodrome on the Potomac were not successful. Walcott was a friend of Langley and wanted to see Langley's place in aviation history restored. In 1914, Glenn Curtiss flew a heavily modified Aerodrome from Keuka Lake, N.Y., providing the Smithsonian a basis for its claim that the aircraft was the first powered, heavier than air flying machine "capable" of manned flight. Due to the legal patent battles then taking place, recognition of the 'first' aircraft became a political as well as an academic issue.

In 1925, Orville attempted to shame the Smithsonian into recognizing his & Wilbur's accomplishment by threatening to send the Flyer to the Science Museum in London. The threat did not have its intended effect, and the Flyer went on display in the London museum in 1928. During the Second World War, it was moved to an underground vault 100 miles (160 km) from London where Britain's other treasures were kept safe from the conflict.

In 1942 the Smithsonian Institution, under a new secretary Charles Abbot (Walcott had died in 1927), published a list of the Curtiss modifications to the Aerodrome and a retraction of its long-held claims for the craft. The next year, Orville, after several correspondences with Abbott, agreed to return the Flyer to the United States. The Flyer stayed at the Science Museum until a replica could be built, based on the original. This change of heart by the Smithsonian is also mired in controversy – the Flyer was sold to the Smithsonian under several contractual conditions, one of which reads:

"Neither the Smithsonian Institution or its successors, nor any museum or other agency, bureau or facilities administered for the United States of America by the Smithsonian Institution or its successors shall publish or permit to be displayed a statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the Wright Aeroplane of 1903, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight."

Some aviation buffs, particularly those who promote the accomplishments of pioneer aviator Gustave Whitehead, have commented that this agreement renders the Smithsonian unable to make properly unbiased academic decisions concerning any prior claims of 'first flight'.

In the Smithsonian

The Flyer was put on display in the Arts and Industries Building of the Smithsonian on December 17, 1948, 45 years to the day after the aircraft's only flights. (Orville did not live to see this, as he died in January of that year.) In 1976, it was moved to the Milestones of Flight Gallery of the new National Air and Space Museum. Since 2003 it has resided in a special exhibit in the museum titled "The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age", honoring the Wright Brothers in recognition of the 100th anniversary of their first flight.

1985 restoration

In 1981, discussion began on the need to restore the Flyer from the aging it sustained during years on display. During the ceremonies celebrating the 78th anniversary of the first flights, Mrs. Harold S. Miller (Ivonette Wright, Lorin's daughter), one of the Wright brothers' nieces, presented the Museum with the original covering of one wing of the Flyer, which she had received in her inheritance from Orville. She expressed her wish to see the aircraft restored.

The fabric covering on the aircraft at the time, which came from the 1927 restoration, was discolored and marked with water spots. Metal fasteners holding the wing uprights together had begun to corrode, marking the nearby fabric.

Work began in 1985. The restoration was supervised by Senior Curator Robert Mikesh and assisted by Wright Brothers expert Tom Crouch. Museum director Walter J. Boyne decided to perform the restoration in full view of the public.

The wooden framework was cleaned, and corrosion on metal parts removed. The covering was the only part of the aircraft replaced. The new covering was more accurate to the original than that of the 1927 restoration. To preserve the original paint on the engine, the restorers coated it in inert wax before putting on a new coat of paint.

The effects of the 1985 restoration were intended to last 75 years (to 2060) before another restoration would be required.

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ZEPPELIN

Zeppelin

A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century. It was based on designs he had outlined in 1874 and detailed in 1893. His plans were reviewed by committee in 1894 and patented in the United States on 14 March 1899. Given the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the term zeppelin in casual use came to refer to all rigid airships.

Zeppelins were operated by the Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG). DELAG, the first commercial airline, served scheduled flights before World War I. After the outbreak of war, the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and scouts.

The World War I defeat of Germany in 1918 halted the airship business temporarily. But under the guidance of Hugo Eckener, the deceased Count's successor, civilian zeppelins became popular in the 1920s. Their heyday was during the 1930s when the airships LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin and LZ 129 Hindenburg operated regular transatlantic flights from Germany to North America and Brazil. The Art Deco spire of the Empire State Building was originally designed to serve as a dirigible terminal for Zeppelins and other airships to dock. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937, along with political and economic issues, hastened the demise of the Zeppelin.

Principal characteristics

The most important feature of Zeppelin's design was a rigid metal alloy skeleton, made of rings and longitudinal girders. The advantage of this design was that the aircraft could be much larger than non-rigid airships (which relied on a slight overpressure within the single gasbag to maintain their shape). This enabled Zeppelins to lift heavier loads and be fitted with more and more powerful engines.

The basic form of the first Zeppelins was a long cylinder with tapered ends and complex multi-plane fins. During World War I, as a result of improvements by the rival firm Schütte-Lanz Luftschiffbau, the design was changed to the more familiar streamlined shape and cruciform fins used by almost all airships ever since. Within this outer envelope, several separate balloons, also known as "cells" or "gasbags", contained the lighter-than-air gas hydrogen or helium. For most rigid airships the gasbags were made of many sheets of goldbeater's skin from the intestines of cows. About 200,000 were needed for a typical World War I Zeppelin. The sheets were joined together and folded into impermeable layers. Non-rigid airships do not have multiple gas cells.

Forward thrust was provided by several internal combustion engines, mounted in nacelles (cowlings) connected to the skeleton. The R101 airship used diesel engines, which were then an untried technology for powering aircraft; they were unsuccessful. The Graf Zeppelin used spark-ignition engines, but fuelled with a natural gas called Blaugas, which was stored uncompressed. It was similar to propane and was named after its inventor rather than its colour (Blau is German for "blue"). The beauty of Blaugas for airships was that it weighed more or less the same as air and so as the fuel was used up, it did not affect the trim of the airship.

A current running Zeppelin flies in the skies of Monroeville, Pa. The rigid airship's codename is "Jenna". This Zeppelin is most known for its commercial use. Many local companies pay the commanders of "Jenna" for advertisement purposes.

A Zeppelin was steered by adjusting and selectively reversing engine thrust and by using rudder and elevator fins. The word for these combined control surfaces is empennage.

A comparatively small compartment for passengers and crew was built into the bottom of the frame, but in large Zeppelins this was not the entire habitable space; they often carried crew or cargo internally for aerodynamic reasons.

History

The first generations

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin became interested in constructing a "Zeppelin balloon" after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, where he witnessed the French use balloons to transport mail during the early part of the war. He had also encountered Union Army balloons in 1863, during the American Civil War, where he was a military observer. He first wrote of his dirigible interest in 1874 and began to seriously pursue his project after his early retirement from the military in 1890 at the age of 52.

Convinced of the potential importance of aircraft designs, he started working on various designs shortly after leaving the military in 1891. He had already outlined an overall system in 1874, and detailed designs in 1893 that were reviewed by committee in 1894, and that he patented on 31 August 1895, with Theodor Kober producing the technical plans. After hearing about the rigid airship constructed by David Schwarz and witnessing its trial flight at the Tempelhof Airfield near Berlin on November 3rd 1897, he proceeded to buy the patent rights from the widow of the prematurely deceased Schwarz, in order to allow Berg to supply aluminum. However, Schwarz's design was "radically different from Zeppelin's" and in December 1897 Zeppelin admitted the Schwarz design could not be developed. Sean Dooley speculates on the indirect benefits Zeppelin gained from Carl Berg and Schwarz's work. In 1899, Zeppelin started constructing his first airship from his own designs.

One unusual idea, which never saw service, was the ability to connect several independent airship elements like train wagons; indeed, the patent title called the design Lenkbarer Luftfahrzug (steerable air train).

An expert committee to whom he had presented his plans in 1894 showed little interest, so the count was on his own in realizing his idea. In 1898 he founded the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Luftschiffahrt (Society for the promotion of airship flight), contributing more than half of its 800,000 Mark share capital himself. He assigned the technical implementation to the engineer Theodor Kober and later to Ludwig Dürr.

Construction of the first Zeppelin began in 1899 in a floating assembly hall on Lake Constance in the Bay of Manzell, Friedrichshafen. This location was intended to facilitate the difficult launching procedure, as the hall could easily be aligned with the wind. The prototype airship LZ 1 (LZ for Luftschiff Zeppelin, or "Airship Zeppelin") had a length of 128 meters (420 ft), was driven by two 14.2 horsepower (10.6 kW) Daimler engines and was controlled in pitch by moving a weight between its two nacelles.

The first Zeppelin flight occurred on 2 July 1900 over Lake Constance (the Bodensee). It lasted only 18 minutes before LZ 1 was forced to land on the lake after the winding mechanism for the balancing weight failed. After it was placed back in the hangar an apparatus used to suspend it broke. Upon repair, rigid airship technology proved its potential in subsequent flights (the second and third flights were on 17 October 1900 and 24 October 1900) beating the 6 m/s velocity record of the French airship La France by 3 m/s. Despite this performance, the shareholders declined to invest more money, and so the company was liquidated, with Count von Zeppelin purchasing the ship and equipment. The Count wished to continue experimenting, but he eventually dismantled the ship in 1901.

It was largely due to support by aviation enthusiasts that von Zeppelin's idea got a second (and third) chance and would be developed into a reasonably reliable technology. Only then could the airships be profitably used for civilian aviation and sold to the military.

Donations, the profits of a special lottery, some public funding, a mortgage of Count von Zeppelin's wife's estate and a 100,000 Mark contribution by Count von Zeppelin himself allowed the construction of LZ 2, which took off for the only time on 17 January 1906.

After both engines failed, it made a forced landing in the Allgäu mountains, where the anchored ship was subsequently damaged beyond repair by a storm.

Incorporating all usable parts of LZ 2, the successor LZ 3 became the first truly successful Zeppelin, which by 1908 had travelled a total of 4,398 kilometers (2,733 mi) in the course of 45 flights. The technology then interested the German military, who bought LZ 3 and redesignated it Z 1. She served as a school ship until 1913, when she was decommissioned as obsolescent.

The army was also willing to buy LZ 4, but requested a demonstration of her ability to make a 24-hour trip. While attempting to fulfill this requirement, the crew of LZ 4 had to make an intermediate landing in Echterdingen near Stuttgart. During the stop, a storm tore the airship away from its anchorage in the afternoon of 5 August 1908. She crashed into a tree, caught fire, and quickly burnt out. No one was seriously injured, although two technicians repairing the engines escaped only by making a hazardous jump. This accident would have certainly knocked out the Zeppelin project economically had not one of the spectators in the crowd spontaneously initiated a collection of donations, yielding an impressive total of 6,096,555 Mark. This enabled the Count to found the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH (Airship Construction Zeppelin Ltd.) and a Zeppelin Foundation.

Before World War I

Before World War I, a total of 21 Zeppelin airships (LZ 5 to LZ 25) were manufactured. In 1909 LZ 6 became the first Zeppelin used for commercial passenger transport. The world's first airline, the newly founded DELAG, bought seven Zeppelins by 1914. The airships were given names in addition to their production numbers, four of which were LZ 8 Deutschland II (1911), LZ 11 Viktoria Luise (1912), LZ 17 Hansa (1912) and LZ 17 Sachsen (1913). Seven of the twenty-seven were destroyed in accidents, mostly while being moved into their halls. There were no casualties. One of them was LZ 7 Deutschland which made its maiden voyage on 19 June 1910. On 28 June it began a pleasure trip to make Zeppelins more popular. Among those aboard were 19 journalists, two of whom were reporters of well known British newspapers. LZ 7 crashed in bad weather at Mount Limberg near Bad Iburg in Lower Saxony, its hull getting stuck in trees. The crew then let down a ladder to allow all the passengers to leave the ship. One crew member was slightly injured on leaving the craft.

All together, the several airships traveled approximately 200,000 kilometers (120,000 mi) and transported about 40,000 passengers.

The German Army and Navy purchased 14 Zeppelins, who labeled their aircraft Z 1/2/... and L 1/2/..., respectively. During the war, the Army changed their scheme twice: following Z XII, they switched to using LZ numbers, later adding 30 to obscure the total production. When World War I broke out, the military also took over the three remaining DELAG ships. By this time, it had already decommissioned three other Zeppelins (LZ 3 "Z 1" included). Five more had been lost in accidents, in which two people had died; a storm forced Navy Zeppelin LZ 14 or "L 1" down into the North Sea, drowning 14; LZ 18 or "L 2" burst into flames following an engine explosion, killing the entire crew.

By 1914, state-of-the-art Zeppelins had lengths of 150 to 160 meters (490 to 520 ft) and volumes of 22,000–25,000 m3, enabling them to carry loads of around 9 tones (9,000 kg; 20,000 lb). They were typically powered by three Maybach engines of around 400 to 550 horsepower (300 to 410 kW) each, reaching speeds of up to 80 kilometers per hour (50 mph).

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CONSTRUCTING A GUNSHIP

Theory of shipbuilding

Extract of a British Navy construction manual, 1844

"If we examine more closely the principles of Seppings's system, which is now adopted in the British Navy, we arrive at the following result.

Through the point at which the supporting forces act, draw a line representing the direction and magnitude of the draught power, and taking this as the diagonal of a parallelogram, the sides of which are parallel to the supporting forces, drawn through the point from which the supporting forces act a line parallel to the former; then ail parts of the connexion on the same side of the draught-line will be in a state of pressure, while those on the opposite side are in a state of tension.

The first object of the diagonals is to prevent the timbers from bending. If we regard AF (figs. 25, 26) as the neutral line from which the curvature extends to both sides, it is evident that nothing but the construction shown in fig. 25 can prevent it, for since A in this figure is supposed to be one of the neutral points of the system, it must be considered as firm, and the inclination to curvature which tends to displace the points H,C,G, and B, as well as the action on the supports AC and AB, according to the weight applied, will operate to stretch the timbers, which coin be prevented only by the application of these bands.

But the action of the bands is entirely in the direction of their length, and hence tends to prevent any change of form, so that the force which tends to displace the point C, is removed by the resistance of the brace, AC, and of the band to the firm point F. and thus an additional strength is given also to the point E; the action of the force winch tends to displace the point H, iii common with C, is set aside, by the firmness of the long internal timber AH, and the resistance of the band HF; so that if the materials are sound, no displacement or change of form can take place. If we now consider the opposite construction (fig. 26), it appears from what has been said, that the braces, AC and AB. are exposed to a pressure; and since the point, A, according to the supposition, is neutral, and therefore firm, the pressure must bear upon the point C, and produce a curvature. But the tendency to press upon the point C is not set aside by the action of the band FE, and consequently, since the point F, according to: the supposition, is firm, the tendency to extension in the brace must press upon the point, and still more, consequently, upon tile point G. The point E, thus acted on, must communicate its own inclination to the band EH, and produce a sinking at the point H. Every part of the framework, from C to H, is thus subjected to pressure, and a change in the form of the ship must be the effect.

According to Dupin, the main principles in regard to the curvature of vessels are the following:

1. If a vertical plane divides the ship into two parts, so that the weight of each part is equal to the weight of the water which it displaces, then the elements of these parts in respect to this plane, that is to say, the tendency to curvature, will be either a maximum or a minimum.

2. This inclination will be a maximum, when: the infinitely small part which lies on the plane of the element is directly opposite to the plane of the total element.

3. The inclination will be a minimum, when the element on the plane acts parallel to the total element. Let the lines AO (fig. 27) coincide with the surface of the water, the different sections AC, CE, EG, GH, HK, KM, and MO lying in the same.

On some of these segments take the triangular surfaces which represent the difference between the weight of the transverse sections and their pressure on the water.

On the segment AC == 49, the right-angled triangle == +72 will lie under the water-line, because the weight exceeds the pressure ; on CE == 20, the equilateral triangle CDE == —108, stands above the water-line, because here the pressure exceeds the weight ; on EG == 50 stands the triangle EFG == +118; GH == 6.6 is too small to be taken into account ;on HK == 13.4 is the right-angled triangle HIK == —119, and finally on KM and MO == 17.5 and 19.5, the triangles [KM and NOM==—115 and +192.

Now add together the lines, and we have 176 feet as the length of the ship, and for the sum of the differences + 37, so that 37 tons must be removed from the forward part of the ship on account of the pressure, in order to set aside the tendency to curvature."

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BORING AND SINKING OIL WELLS

The earliest oil wells in modern times were drilled percussively, by hammering a cable tool into the earth. Soon after, cable tools were replaced with rotary drilling, which could drill boreholes to much greater depths and in less time. The record-depth Kola Borehole used non-rotary mud motor drilling to achieve a depth of over 12 000 meters (38,000 ft). Until the 1970s, most oil wells were vertical, although lithological and mechanical imperfections cause most wells to deviate at least slightly from true vertical. However, modern directional drilling technologies allow for strongly deviated wells which can, given sufficient depth and with the proper tools, actually become horizontal. This is of great value as the reservoir rocks which contain hydrocarbons are usually horizontal, or sub-horizontal; a horizontal wellbore placed in a production zone has more surface area in the production zone than a vertical well, resulting in a higher production rate. The use of deviated and horizontal drilling has also made it possible to reach reservoirs several kilometers or miles away from the drilling location (extended reach drilling), allowing for the production of hydrocarbons located below locations that are either difficult to place a drilling rig on, environmentally sensitive, or populated.

Pumpjack

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CANNONS ARTILLERY CARRIAGES

Fig. 1 side-view,fig. 4 upper-view of a Bavarian field piece. A is the cheeks; B is the trail-transom, which has here no pintle-hole, but a pintle-ring ; C, the two handspikes for direction, attached with a hinge, and when not in use turned back between the cheeks or else laid in two rings for the purpose on the transom (fig. 4). The rammer a, with the sponge, c, on a staff, b (fig. 31); the worm, c, with spindle a, and screw, b, for drawing the charge (fig. 32), 29-30. Handspikes, 33. Bore, 2. Limber of Bavarian 3-pounder, 3. same, rear view, 7. Side view of Austrian 30-pound mortar, 8. Prussian 50-pound mortar, 9. Gun wagon for Saxon 30-pounder mortar, 10. French twelve-pounder, 11. Garrison-carriage of Gribeauval, side view, 12. Rear view, 13. Placed on a platform, 13 MNO. Pintle bolt, 14-15. Garrison carriage, invented by Montalambert, 16. French iron coast-carriage, 17. French mortar on its bed, 18. French twenty-four pounder, 19. English limber, 19a. Hook used instead of pintle bolt, 21. Truck wheel, 22. Side view of stool bed, 23. Elevating screw, 24. Carriage cheeks sockets.

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MEDIEVAL ARMORS

Next to the shield the helmet is the oldest defensive arm. It was made of hammered and also of cast iron.

The cap, which is the oldest form of the helmet, received afterwards a projection which extended over the nose, but left the eyes and cheeks free.

Such helmets appear in the 10th and 11th centuries. The first visor we find in the year 1155, and at the time of the third crusade they had become common.

The first visors were immovable, and consisted of cross-bars riveted to the helmet. From the middle of the 13th century the helmet was rounded above, and in the 14th and 15th centuries forms as in figs. 1, 2, and 3, are general. To the upper helm iron plates were added to protect the throat and back of the neck ; the visor, however, was very differently shaped and contrived to raise and lower. It consisted either of several small iron bars (fig. 3), or of plates with openings opposite the eyes and mouth only (fig. 2), or of plates cut or pierced like a grate or sieve (fig. 1). Besides these knights' helmets, however, the simple, close-fitting head-piece, pot, or skull-cap remained in use for the attendants, grooms, footmen, and men-at-arms (figs. 4-7). Even the knights when not expecting immediate combat, yet wishing to be protected, wore such, but of much more elegant forms.

As to the decorations of the helmet and the material of which it was made, we find it sometimes of iron and sometimes of steel, or even, for state occasions, of gold and silver. The steel ones were either painted entirely black, or the steel was blued and variously ornamented, engraved, inlaid with gold and silver, striped and studded, or even set with precious stones.

Kings wore crowns upon their helmets ; counts and barons also often wore the coronets of pearl belonging to their rank upon their helms. In the 13th and 14th centuries horse-tails were worn on the helmet-crest, afterwards plumes of feathers took the place of them. In later years, when heraldic bearings became common, symbols proper to the bearing were often placed upon the helm, as animals, horns, wings, human figures) &c. These decorations became general in the 15th century. The oldest form of the cuirass is represented in fig. 8, where the scales are secured upon a leathern under-coat. This harness, from the Dresden armory, is' said to have belonged to King John Sobiesky of Poland. The form of the helmet is like-wise the very oldest of all, that of a round cap fitting over the head-piece of the cuirass, by which the cheeks were protected. The feather-plumes and Maltese cross are doubtless additions of alater time; the feathers, indeed, were most probably added only to give the harness a better appearance when it was setup. In the 10th and 11th centuries the ring-cuirass (hauberk, fig. 16) became common.

The horses also were provided with such ring and scale mail, and carried on the head a plate of iron with a spike projecting from it in front (charfron). The ring and scale mail was gradually displaced by that composed of plates, in which the upper arm, for instance, was covered with a single plate, and the divisions were only at the joints, where still other plates were fitted over these divisions, so as to give the power of motion. At first the upper part of the body was clad in the ring or scale mail, and only the lower part covered with the plate, as shown by the corresponding parts of a knights harness in figs. 16 and 17.

By the end of the 15th century, however, the plate or iron band armor had become general, although light ring-cuirasses were still worn under the plate harness in the 16th century (figs. 9, 10, and 12). At the same time with their riders, the horses also were provided with mail, which on the head, breast, and hind-quarters consisted of plates, but on the neck of iron bands (fig. 23) ; frequently, however, the croup and hind-quarters were protected against cuts by separate bands only . Ffigs. 9,10, and 11, show mail composed chiefly of iron bands such as was used in and after the fifteenth century, the armor represented being that of the Elector Joachim II, of Brandenburg. Figs. 12,13, 14, and 15, belong to this kind also.

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TOBACCO INDUSTRIALIZATION

Tobacco has a long history from its usages in the early Americas. It became increasingly popular with the arrival of the Europeans by whom it was heavily traded. Following the industrial revolution, cigarettes became popularized, which fostered yet another unparalleled increase in growth. This remained so until the scientific revelations in the mid-1990s.

Las Casas vividly described how the first scouts sent by Columbus into the interior of Cuba found:

"...men with half-burned wood in their hands and certain herbs to take their smokes, which are some dry herbs put in a certain leaf, also dry, like those the boys make on the day of the Passover of the Holy Ghost; and having lighted one part of it, by the other they suck, absorb, or receive that smoke inside with the breath, by which they become benumbed and almost drunk, and so it is said they do not feel fatigue. These, muskets as we will call them, they call tabacos. I knew Spaniards on this island of Española who were accustomed to take it, and being reprimanded for it, by telling them it was a vice, they replied they were unable to cease using it. I do not know what relish or benefit they found in it."

Tobacco had already long been used in the Americas by the time European settlers arrived and introduced the practice to Europe, where it became popular. At high doses, tobacco can become hallucinogenic; accordingly, Native Americans did not always use the drug recreationally. Instead, it was often consumed as an entheogen; among some tribes, this was done only by experienced shamans or medicine men. Eastern North American tribes would carry large amounts of tobacco in pouches as a readily accepted trade item and would often smoke it in pipes, either in defined ceremonies that were considered sacred, or to seal a bargain, and they would smoke it at such occasions in all stages of life, even in childhood. It was believed that tobacco was a gift from the Creator and that the exhaled tobacco smoke was capable of carrying one's thoughts and prayers to heaven

Apart from smoking, tobacco had a number of uses as medicine. As a pain killer it was used for earache and toothache and occasionally as a poultice. Smoking was said by the desert Indians to be a cure for colds, especially if the tobacco was mixed with the leaves of the small Desert Sage, Salvia Dorrii, or the root of Indian Balsam or Cough Root, Leptotaenia multifida, the addition of which was thought to be particularly good for asthma and tuberculosis. In smoked, uncured tobacco was often eaten, used in enemas, or drunk as extracted juice. Early missionaries often reported on the ecstatic state caused by tobacco. As its use spread into Western cultures, however, it was no longer used primarily for entheogenic or religious purposes, although religious use of tobacco is still common among many indigenous peoples, particularly in the Americas. Among the Cree and Ojibway of Canada and the north-central United States, it is offered to the Creator, with prayers, and is used in sweat lodges, pipe ceremonies, smudging, and is presented as a gift. A gift of tobacco is tradition when asking an Ojibway elder a question of a spiritual nature. Because of its sacred nature, tobacco abuse (thoughtlessly and addictively chain smoking) is seriously frowned upon by the Algonquian tribes of Canada, as it is believed that if one so abuses the plant, it will abuse that person in return, causing sickness. The proper and traditional native way of offering the smoke is said to involve directing it toward the four cardinal points (north, south, east, and west), rather than holding it deeply within the lungs for prolonged periods.

Rodrigo de Jerez was one of the Spanish crewmen who sailed to the Americas on the Santa Maria as part of Christopher Columbus's first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492. He is credited with being the first European smoker.

Tobacco as a commercial product first arrived in the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th century.

When tobacco first arrived in the Ottoman Empire, it attracted the attention of doctors and became a commonly prescribed medicine for many ailments. Although tobacco was initially prescribed as medicine, further study led to claims that smoking caused dizziness, fatigue, dulling of the senses, and a foul taste/odor in the mouth.

In 1682, Damascene jurist Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi declared: “Tobacco has now become extremely famous in all the countries of Islam ... People of all kinds have used it and devoted themselves to it ... I have even seen young children of about five years applying themselves to it.”

In 1750, a Damascene townsmen observed “a number of women greater than the men, sitting along the bank of the Barada River. They were eating and drinking, and drinking coffee and smoking tobacco just as the men were doing.”

The Spanish introduced tobacco to Europeans in about 1518, and by 1523, Diego Columbus mentioned a tobacco merchant of Lisbon in his will, showing how quickly the traffic had sprung up. Nicot, French ambassador in Lisbon, sent samples to Paris in 1559. The French, Spanish, and Portuguese initially referred to the plant as the "sacred herb" because of its valuable medicinal properties.

In 1571, a Spanish doctor named Nicolas Monardes wrote a book about the history of medicinal plants of the new world. In this he claimed that tobacco could cure 36 health problems. Sir Walter Raleigh is credited with taking the first "Virginia" tobacco to Europe, referring to it as tobah as early as 1578.

The importation of tobacco into Europe was not without resistance and controversy in the 17th century. Stuart King James I wrote a famous polemic titled A Counterblaste to Tobacco in 1604, in which the king denounced tobacco use as " custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse." In that same year, an English statute was enacted that placed a heavy protective tariff on every pound of tobacco brought into England.

In 1609, John Rolfe arrived at the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia, and is credited as the first settler to have successfully raised tobacco (commonly referred to at that time as "brown gold") for commercial use. The tobacco raised in Virginia at that time, Nicotiana rustica, did not suit European tastes, but Rolfe raised a more popular variety, Nicotiana tabacum, from seeds brought with him from Bermuda.[citation needed] Tobacco was used as currency by the Virginia settlers for years, and Rolfe was able to make his fortune in farming it for export at Varina Farms Plantation. When he left for England with his wife, Pocahontas a daughter of Chief Powhatan, he had become wealthy. Returning to Jamestown, following Pocahontas' death in England, Rolfe continued in his efforts to improve the quality of commercial tobacco, and, by 1620, 40,000 pounds (18,000 kg) of tobacco were shipped to England. By the time John Rolfe died in 1622, Jamestown was thriving as a producer of tobacco, and its population had topped 4,000. Tobacco led to the importation of the colony's first black slaves in 1619. In the year 1616, 2,500 pounds (1,100 kg) of tobacco were produced in Jamestown, Virginia, quickly rising up to 119,000 pounds (54,000 kg) in 1620.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, tobacco continued to be the cash crop of the Virginia Colony, as well as The Carolinas. Large tobacco warehouses filled the areas near the wharves of new, thriving towns such as Dumfries on the Potomac, Richmond and Manchester at the fall line (head of navigation) on the James, and Petersburg on the Appomattox.

Until 1883, tobacco excise tax accounted for one third of internal revenue collected by the United States government.

A historian of the American South in the late 1860s reported on typical usage in the region where it was grown:

“The chewing of tobacco was well-nigh universal. This habit had been widespread among the agricultural population of America both North and South before the war. Soldiers had found the quid a solace in the field and continued to revolve it in their mouths upon returning to their homes. Out of doors where his life was principally led the chewer spat upon his lands without offence to other men, and his homes and public buildings were supplied with spittoons. Brown and yellow parabolas were projected to right and left toward these receivers, but very often without the careful aim which made for clean living. Even the pews of fashionable churches were likely to contain these familiar conveniences. The large numbers of Southern men, and these were of the better class (officers in the Confederate army and planters, worth $20,000 or more, and barred from general amnesty) who presented themselves for the pardon of President Johnson, while they sat awaiting his pleasure in the ante-room at the White House, covered its floor with pools and rivulets of their spittle. An observant traveler in the South in 1865 said that in his belief seven-tenths of all persons above the age of twelve years, both male and female, used tobacco in some form. Women could be seen at the doors of their cabins in their bare feet, in their dirty one-piece cotton garments, their chairs tipped back, smoking pipes made of corn cobs into which were fitted reed stems or goose quills. Boys of eight or nine years of age and half-grown girls smoked. Women and girls "dipped" in their houses, on their porches, in the public parlors of hotels and in the streets.”

Tobacco smoking first reached Australian shores when it was introduced to northern-dwelling Indigenous communities by visiting Indonesian fishermen in the early 1700s. British patterns of tobacco use were transported to Australia along with the new settlers in 1788; and in the years following colonization, British smoking behavior was rapidly adopted by Indigenous people as well. By the early 1800s tobacco was an essential commodity routinely issued to servants, prisoners and ticket-of-leave men (conditionally released convicts) as an inducement to work, or conversely, withheld as a means of punishment.

Industrialization

Following the American civil war, the tobacco industry struggled as it attempted to adapt. Not only did the labor force change from slavery to sharecropping, but a change in demand also occurred. As in Europe, there was a desire for not only snuff, pipes and cigars, but cigarettes appeared as well.

With a change in demand and a change in labor force, James Bonsack, an avid craftsman, in 1881 created a machine that revolutionized cigarette production. The machine chopped the tobacco, then dropped a certain amount of the tobacco into a long tube of paper, which the machine would then roll and push out the end where it would be sliced by the machine into individual cigarettes. This machine operated at thirteen times the speed of a human cigarette roller.

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CANNONS

Cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellants to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees, depending on their intended use on the battlefield. The word cannon is derived from several languages, in which the original definition can usually be translated as tube, cane, or reed. In modern times, cannon has fallen out of common usage, usually replaced by "guns" or "artillery", if not a more specific term, such as "mortar" or "howitzer".

Etymology and terminology

Cannon is derived from the Old Italian word cannone, meaning large tube, which came from Latin canna, in turn originating from the kann?—Greek for cane, or reed, and then generalized to mean any hollow tube-like object; ultimately deriving from the Akkadian term qanu, meaning tube or reed. The word has been used to refer to a gun since 1326 in Italy, and 1418 in England. Cannon serves both as the singular and plural of the noun, although the plural cannons is also correct.

Any large, smoothbore, muzzle-loading gun—used before the advent of breech-loading, rifled guns—may be referred to as a cannon, though the term specifically refers to a gun designed to fire a 42-pound (19 kg) shot, as opposed to a demi-cannon (32 pounds (15 kg)), culverin (18 pounds (8.2 kg)). or demi-culverin (9 pounds (4.1 kg)). Gun specifically refers to a type of cannon that fires projectiles at high speeds, and usually at relatively low angles; they have been used in warships extensively, and as field artillery, as well.

18th and 19th centuries

The lower tier of 17th-century English ships of the line were usually equipped with demi-cannon, guns that fired a 32 pounds (15 kg) solid shot, and could weigh up to 3,400 pounds (1,500 kg). Demi-cannon were capable of firing these heavy metal balls with such force that they could penetrate more than a meter of solid oak, from a distance of 90 m (300 ft), and could dismast even the largest ships at close range. Full cannon fired a 42 lb (19 kg) shot, but were discontinued by the 18th century, as they were too unwieldy. By the end of the century, principles long adopted in Europe specified the characteristics of the Royal Navy's cannon, as well as the acceptable defects, and their severity. The United States Navy tested guns by measuring them, firing them two or three times—termed "proof by powder"—and using pressurized water to detect leaks.

The carronade was adopted by the Royal Navy in 1779; the lower muzzle velocity of the round shot when fired from this cannon was intended to create more wooden splinters when hitting the structure of an enemy vessel, as they were believed to be deadly. The carronade was much shorter, and weighed between a third to a quarter of the equivalent long gun; for example, a 32 pounder carronade weighed less than a ton, compared with a 32 pounder long gun, which weighed over 3 tons. The guns were, therefore, easier to handle, and also required less than half as much gunpowder, allowing fewer men to crew them. Carronades were manufactured in the usual naval gun calibers, but were not counted in a ship of the line's rated number of guns. As a result, the classification of Royal Navy vessels in this period can be misleading, as they often carried more cannon than were listed.

In the 1810s and 1820s, greater emphasis was placed on the accuracy of long-range gunfire, and less on the weight of a broadside. The carronade, although initially very successful and widely adopted, disappeared from the Royal Navy in the 1850s, after the development of steel, jacketed cannon, by William George Armstrong and Joseph Whitworth. Nevertheless, carronades were used in the American Civil War.

Western cannon during the 19th century became larger, more destructive, more accurate, and could fire at longer range. One example is the American 3 in (76 mm) wrought-iron, muzzle-loading howitzer, used during the American Civil War, which had an effective range of over 1.1 mi (1.8 km). Another is the smoothbore 12 pounder Napoleon, which was renowned for its sturdiness, reliability, firepower, flexibility, relatively light weight, and range of 1,700 m (5,600 ft).

Cannon were crucial in Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to power, and continued to play an important role in his army in later years. During the French Revolution, the unpopularity of the Directory led to riots and rebellions. When over 25,000 of these royalists—led by General Danican—assaulted Paris, Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras was appointed to defend the capital; outnumbered five to one and disorganized, the Republicans were desperate. When Napoleon arrived, he reorganized the defenses, while realizing that without cannon, the city could not be held. He ordered Joachim Murat to bring the guns from the Sablons artillery park; the Major and his cavalry fought their way to the recently captured cannon, and brought them back to Napoleon. When Danican's poorly trained men attacked, on 13 Vendémiaire, 1795—October 5, 1795, in the calendar used in France, at the time—Napoleon ordered his cannon to fire grapeshot into the mob, an act that became known as the "whiff of grapeshot." The slaughter effectively ended the threat to the new government, while, at the same time, made Bonaparte a famous—and popular—public figure. Among the first generals to recognize that artillery was not being used to its full potential, Napoleon often massed his cannon into batteries, and introduced several changes into the French artillery, improving it significantly, and making it among the finest in Europe. Such tactics were successfully used by the French, for example, at the Battle of Friedland, when sixty-six guns fired a total of 3,000 round shot and 500 rounds of grapeshot, inflicting severe casualties to the Russian forces, whose losses numbered over 20,000 killed and wounded, in total. At the Battle of Waterloo—Napoleon's final battle—the French army had many more artillery pieces than either the British or Prussians. As the battlefield was muddy, recoil caused cannon to bury themselves into the ground after firing, resulting in slow rates of fire, as more effort was required to move them back into an adequate firing position; also, round shot did not ricochet with as much force from the wet earth. Despite the drawbacks, sustained artillery fire proved deadly during the engagement, especially during the French cavalry attack. The British infantry, having formed infantry squares, took heavy losses from the French guns, while their own cannon fired at the cuirassiers and lancers, when they fell back to regroup. Eventually, the French ceased their assault, after taking heavy losses from the British cannon and musket fire.

The practice of rifling—casting spiraling lines inside the cannon's barrel—was applied to artillery more frequently by 1855, as it gave cannon gyroscopic stability, which improved their accuracy. One of the earliest rifled cannon was the breech-loading Armstrong Gun—also invented by William George Armstrong—which boasted significantly improved range, accuracy, and power than earlier weapons. The projectile fired from the Armstrong gun could reportedly pierce through a ship's side, and explode inside the enemy vessel, causing increased damage, and casualties. The British military adopted the Armstrong gun, and was impressed; the Duke of Cambridge even declared that it "could do everything but speak." Despite being significantly more advanced than its predecessors, the Armstrong gun was rejected soon after its integration, in favor of the muzzle-loading pieces that had been in use before. While both types of gun were effective against wooden ships, neither had the capability to pierce the armor of ironclads; due to reports of slight problems with the breeches of the Armstrong gun, and their higher cost, the older muzzle-loaders were selected to remain in service, instead. Realizing that iron was more difficult to pierce with breech-loaded cannon, Armstrong designed rifled muzzle-loading guns, which proved successful; The Times reported: "even the fondest believers in the invulnerability of our present ironclads were obliged to confess that against such artillery, at such ranges, their plates and sides were almost as penetrable as wooden ships."

The superior cannon of the Western world brought them tremendous advantages in warfare. For example, in the Opium War in China, during the 19th century, British battleships bombarded the coastal areas and fortifications from afar, safe from the reach of the Chinese cannon. Similarly, the shortest war in recorded history, the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896, was brought to a swift conclusion by shelling from British battleships. The cynical attitude toward recruited infantry in the face of ever more powerful field artillery is the source of the term cannon fodder, first used by François-René de Chateaubriand, in 1814; however, the concept of regarding soldiers as nothing more than "food for powder" was mentioned by William Shakespeare as early as 1598, in Henry IV, Part 1.

Operation

In the 1770s, cannon operation worked as follows: each cannon would be manned by two gunners, six soldiers, and four officers of artillery. The right gunner was to prime the piece and load it with powder, and the left gunner would fetch the powder from the magazine and be ready to fire the cannon at the officer's command. On each side of the cannon, three soldiers stood, to ram and sponge the cannon, and hold the ladle. The second soldier on the left tasked with providing 50 bullets.

Before loading, the cannon would be cleaned with a wet sponge to extinguish any smoldering material from the last shot. Fresh powder could be set off prematurely by lingering ignition sources. The powder was added, followed by wadding of paper or hay, and the ball was placed in and rammed down. After ramming the cannon would be aimed with the elevation set using a quadrant and a plummet. At 45 degrees, the ball had the utmost range: about ten times the gun's level range. Any angle above a horizontal line was called random-shot. Wet sponges were used to cool the pieces every ten or twelve rounds.

During the Napoleonic Wars, a British gun team consisted of five gunners to aim it, clean the bore with a damp sponge to quench any remaining embers before a fresh charge was introduced, and another to load the gun with a bag of powder and then the projectile. The fourth gunner pressed his thumb on the vent hole, to prevent a draught that might fan a flame. The charge loaded, the fourth would prick the bagged charge through the vent hole, and fill the vent with powder. On command, the fifth gunner would fire the piece with a slow match.

When a cannon had to be abandoned such as in a retreat or surrender, the touch hole of the cannon would be plugged flush with a iron spike, disabling the cannon (at least until metal boring tools could be used to remove the plug). This was called "spiking the cannon".

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