Vintage Machines Decorations, 1800techgallery.com | Articulos

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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.

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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 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, 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!

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.

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 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.

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.

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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 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.

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.

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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. 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.

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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. 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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BATTLE SHIPS

A navy is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare and amphibious warfare; namely, lake- or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions. The strategic offensive role of a navy is projection of force into areas beyond a country's shores (for example, to protect sea-lanes, ferry troops, or attack other navies, ports, or shore installations). The strategic defensive purpose of a navy is to frustrate seaborne projection-of-force by enemies.

Etymology

"Navy" came via Old French from Latin navigiom = "fleet of ships" from navis = "ship" and agere = "to drive" (as in driving a herd of animals) or "to get something done".

"Naval" came from Latin navalis = "pertaining to ship" (which it means in the biological name Teredo navalis), but due to resemblance became changed to "pertaining to navy".

History

The introduction of cannons onto ships encouraged the development of tumblehome, the inward slant of the above-water hull, for additional stability, as well as techniques for strengthening the internal frame. These considerations, as well as the demand for ships capable of operating safely in the open ocean, led to the documentation of design and construction practice in what had previously been a secretive trade, and ultimately the field of naval architecture. Even so, construction techniques changed only very gradually; the ships of the Napoleonic Wars were internally very similar to those of the Spanish Armada of more than two centuries earlier.

Naval warfare developed when humans first fought from water-borne vessels. Prior to the introduction of the cannon and ships with sufficient capacity to carry the large guns, navy warfare primarily involved ramming and boarding actions. In the time of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, naval warfare centered on long, narrow vessels powered by banks of oarsmen (such as triremes and quinqueremes) designed to ram and sink enemy vessels or come alongside the enemy vessel so its occupants could be attacked hand-to-hand. Naval warfare continued in this vein through the Middle Ages until the cannon became commonplace and capable of being reloaded quickly enough to be reused in the same battle. The Chola Dynasty of medieval India was known as a one of the greatest naval powers of its time in the Indian Ocean. Further down South, ancient Sri Lanka has shown its naval might from time to time. The Sinhalese Navy conducted military expeditions to South East Asia and amphibious raids into neighboring India. In ancient China, large naval battles were known since the Qin Dynasty, employing the war junk during the Han Dynasty. However, China's first official standing navy was not established until the Southern Song Dynasty in the 12th century, a time when gunpowder was a revolutionary new application to warfare.

The mass and deck space required to carry a large number of cannon made oar-based propulsion impossible and ships came to rely primarily on sails. Warships were designed to carry increasing numbers of cannon and naval tactics evolved to bring a ship's firepower to bear in a broadside, with ships-of-the-line arranged in a line of battle.

The development of large capacity, sail-powered ships carrying cannon led to a rapid expansion of European navies, especially the Spanish and Portuguese navies which dominated in the 16th and early 17th centuries and ultimately helped propel the age of exploration and colonialism. The repulsion of the Spanish Armada (1588) by the English fleet revolutionized naval warfare by the success of a guns-only strategy and caused a major overhaul of the Spanish Navy, partly along English lines, which resulted in even greater dominance by the Spanish. From the beginning of the 17th century the Dutch cannibalized the Portuguese Empire in the East and, with the immense wealth gained, challenged Spanish hegemony at sea. From the 1620s, Dutch raiders seriously troubled Spanish shipping and, after a number of battles which went both ways, the Dutch Navy finally broke the long dominance of the Spanish Navy in the Battle of the Downs (1639).

England emerged as a major naval power in the mid-17th century in the first Anglo-Dutch war with a technical victory but successive decisive Dutch victories in the second and third Anglo-Dutch Wars confirmed the Dutch mastery of the seas during the Dutch Golden Age, financed by the expansion of the Dutch Empire. The French Navy won some important victories near the end of the 17th century but a focus upon land forces led to the French Navy's relative neglect, which allowed the Royal Navy to emerge with an ever-growing advantage in size and quality, especially in tactics and experience, from 1695. Throughout the 18th century the Royal Navy gradually gained ascendancy over the French Navy, with victories in the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714), inconclusive battles in the War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748), victories in the Seven Years' War (1754-1763), a partial reversal during the American War of Independence (1775-1783), and consolidation into uncontested supremacy during the 19th century from the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. These conflicts saw the development and refinement of tactics which came to be called the line of battle.

The next stage in the evolution of naval warfare was the introduction of metal plating along the hull sides. The increased mass required steam-powered engines, resulting in an arms race between armor and weapon thickness and firepower. The first armored vessels, the French FS Gloire and British HMS Warrior, made wooden vessels obsolete. Another significant improvement came with the invention of the rotating turrets, which allowed the guns to be aimed independently of ship movement. The battle between the CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor during the American Civil War (1861-1865) is often cited as the beginning of this age of maritime conflict. The Russian Navy was considered the third strongest in the world on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, which turned to be a catastrophe for the Russian military in general and the Russian Navy in particular. Although neither party lacked courage, the Russians were defeated by the Japanese in the Battle of Port Arthur, which was the first time in warfare that mines were used for offensive purposes. The warships of the Baltic Fleet sent to the Far East were lost in the Battle of Tsushima. A further step change in naval firepower occurred when the United Kingdom launched HMS Dreadnought (1906), but naval tactics still emphasized the line of battle.

Operations

Historically a national navy operates from one or more bases that are maintained by the country or an ally. The base is a port that is specialized in naval operations, and often includes housing for off-shore crew, an arsenal depot for munitions, docks for the vessels, and various repair facilities. During times of war temporary bases may be constructed in closer proximity to strategic locations, as it is advantageous in terms of patrols and station-keeping. Nations with historically strong naval forces have found it advantageous to obtain basing rights in areas of strategic interest.

Navy ships can operate independently or with a group, which may be a small squadron of comparable ships, or a larger naval fleet of various specialized ships. The commander of a fleet travels in the flag ship, which is usually the most powerful vessel in the group. Prior to the invention of radio, commands from the flag ship were communicated by means of flags. At night signal lamps could be used for a similar purpose. Later these were replaced by the radio transmitter or the flashing light when radio silence was needed.

Traditions

A basic tradition is that all ships commissioned in a navy are referred to as ships rather than vessels, with the exception of submarines, which are known as boats. The prefix on a ship's name indicates that it is a commissioned ship. For example, USS is an acronym which expands to United States Ship; in the Royal Navy, HMS expands to Her Majesty's Ship (or when a King reigns, His Majesty's Ship), and so forth.

An important tradition on board British naval vessels (and later those of the U.S. and other nations) has been the ship's bell. This was historically used to mark the passage of time on board a vessel, including the duration of four-hour watches. They were also employed as warning devices in heavy fog, and for alarms and ceremonies. The bell was originally kept polished first by the ship's cook, then later by a person belonging to that division of the ship's personnel.

Another important tradition is that of Piping someone aboard the ship. This was originally used to give orders on warships when shouted orders could not have been heard. The piping was done by the ship's boatswain and therefore the instrument is known as the boatswain's Pipe. The two tones it gives and the number of blasts given off, signify the order given. It is also used in a ceremonial way, i.e., to "pipe" someone aboard the ship — usually captains, including the ship's captain, and more senior officers.

In the United States, in a tradition that dates back to the Revolutionary War, the First Navy Jack is a flag that has the words, "Don't Tread on Me" on the flag.

By English tradition, ships have been referred to as a "she". However, it was long considered bad luck to permit women to sail on board naval vessels. To do so would invite a terrible storm that would wreck the ship. The only women that were welcomed on board were figureheads mounted on the prow of the ship. In spite of these views, some women did serve on board naval vessels, usually as wives of crewmembers.

The custom of firing cannon salutes originated in the British Royal Navy. When cannon are fired, it partially disarms the ship, so firing cannon for no combat reason showed respect and trust. The British, as the dominant naval power, compelled the ships of weaker nations to make the first salute. As the tradition evolved, the number of cannon fired became an indication of the rank of the official being saluted.

Naval organization

Ships

Historically, navy ships were primarily intended for warfare. They were designed to withstand damage and to inflict the same, but only carried munitions and supplies for the voyage (rather than merchant cargo). Often, other ships which were not built specifically for warfare, such as the galleon or the armed merchant ships in World War II, did carry armaments. In more recent times, navy ships have become more specialized and have included supply ships, troop transports, repair ships, oil tankers and other logistics support ships as well as combat ships. So long as they are commissioned, however, they are all "ships"...

During the age of sail, the ship categories were divided into the ship of the line, frigate, and sloop-of-war.

Naval ship names are typically prefixed by an abbreviation indicating the national navy in which they serve. For a list of the prefixes used with ship names (HMS, USS, etc.) see ship prefix.

Boats

Many people make the mistake of calling a ship a "boat". The term "boat" refers to small craft limited in their use by size and usually not capable of making independent voyages of any length on the high seas. The old navy adage to differentiate between ships and boats is that boats are capable of being carried by ships. (Submarines by this rule are ships rather than boats, but are customarily referred to as boats reflecting their previous smaller size.)

Units

Naval forces are typically arranged into units based on the number of ships included, a single ship being the smallest operational unit. Ships may be combined into squadrons or flotillas, which may be formed into fleets. The largest unit size may be the whole Navy or Admiralty.

Ranks

A navy will typically have two sets of ranks, one for enlisted personnel and one for officers.

Typical ranks for commissioned officers include the following, in ascending order (Commonwealth ranks are listed first on each line; USA ranks are listed second in those instances where they differ from Commonwealth ranks):

• Acting Sub-Lieutenant / Ensign / Corvette Lieutenant

• Sub Lieutenant / Lieutenant Junior Grade / Frigate Lieutenant

• Lieutenant (Commonwealth & USA)/ Ship-of-the-Line Lieutenant / Captain

Lieutenant

• Lieutenant Commander (Commonwealth & USA)/ Corvette Captain

• Commander (Commonwealth & USA)/ Frigate Captain

• Captain (Commonwealth & USA)/ Ship-of-the-Line Captain

• Commodore / Flotilla Admiral (in USA only: Rear Admiral (lower half))

• Rear Admiral (in USA only: Rear Admiral (upper half))

• Vice Admiral (Commonwealth & USA)

• Admiral (Commonwealth & USA)

• Fleet Admiral (USA) or Admiral of the Fleet (Commonwealth) or Grand Admiral

"Flag officers" include any rank that includes the word "admiral" (or commodore in services other than the US Navy), and are generally in command of a battle group, strike group or similar flotilla of ships, rather than a single ship or aspect of a ship. However, commodores can also be temporary or honorary positions.

The most senior rank employed by a navy will tend to vary depending on the size of the navy and whether it is wartime or peacetime, for example, few people have ever held the rank of Fleet Admiral in the U.S. Navy, the chief of the Royal Australian Navy holds the rank of Vice Admiral, and the chief of the Irish Naval Service holds the rank of Commodore.

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LIGHTHOUSE

A lighthouse is a tower, building, or framework designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire and used as an aid to navigation and to pilots at sea or on inland waterways.

Lighthouses are used to mark dangerous coastlines, hazardous shoals and reefs, and safe entries to harbors

In a lighthouse, the source of light is called the "lamp" (whether electric or fueled by oil) and the concentration of the light is by the "lens" or "optic". Originally lit by open fires and later candles, the Argand hollow wick lamp and parabolic reflector was developed around 1781 in Europe. In the US, whale oil was used with solid wicks as the source of light, until the Argand parabolic reflector system was introduced around 1810 by Winslow Lewis. Colza oil replaced whale oil in the early 1850s, but US farmers' lack of interest in growing this caused the service to switch to lard oil in the mid 1850s. Kerosene started replacing lard oil in the 1870s and the service was finally totally converted by the late 1880s. Electricity and carbide (acetylene gas) started to replace kerosene around the turn of the 20th century. The use of the latter was promoted by the Dalén light, which automatically lit the lamp at nightfall and extinguished it at dawn.

This concentration of light is accomplished with a rotating lens assembly. In classical period lighthouses, the light source was a kerosene lamp, or earlier an animal or vegetable oil Argand lamp, and the lenses rotated by a weight driven clockwork assembly wound by lighthouse keepers, sometimes as often as every two hours. The lens assembly sometimes floated in mercury to reduce friction. In more modern lighthouses, electric lights and motor drives were used, generally powered by diesel electric generators. These also supplied electricity for the lighthouse keepers. Efficiently concentrating the light from a large omnidirectional light source requires a very large diameter lens. This would require a very thick, heavy lens if naïvely implemented. Development of the Fresnel lens in 1822 revolutionized lighthouses in the 1800s, focusing 85% of a lamp's light versus the 20% focused with the parabolic reflectors of the time. Its design enabled construction of lenses of large size and short focal length without the weight and volume of material in conventional lens designs. Although the Fresnel lens was invented in 1822, it was not used in the US until the 1850s due to the parsimonious administrator of the United States Lighthouse Establishment, Stephen Pleasonton. With the creation of the United States Lighthouse Board in 1852, all US lighthouses received Fresnel lenses by 1860.

Fresnel lenses were ranked by Order, with a first order lens being the largest, most powerful and expensive; and a sixth order lens being the smallest. The order is based on the focal length of the lens. A first order lens has the longest focal length, with the sixth being the shortest. Coastal lighthouses generally use first, second or third order lenses, while harbor lights and beacons use fourth, fifth or sixth order lenses.

Sometimes a lighthouse needs to be constructed in the water itself. Wave-washed lighthouses are masonry structures constructed to withstand water impact, such as Eddystone Lighthouse in Britain and the St. George Reef Light off California. In shallower bays, screw pile ironwork structures are screwed into the seabed and a low wooden structure is placed above the open framework, such as Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse. As screw piles can be disrupted by ice, in northern climates steel caisson lighthouses such as Orient Point Light are used. Orient Long Beach Bar Light (Bug Light) is a blend of a screw pile light that was later converted to a caisson light because of the threat of ice damage.

Lighthouse development accelerated in the seventeenth century with national lighthouse services established in Denmark (1650), and Britain's Trinity House constructing its first in 1609. The first Eddystone Lighthouse was lit in 1698, though its third incarnation was the most enduring, designed by John Smeaton and finished in 1759. As Britain became the dominant seapower, lighthouses constructed by the Stevenson family for the Northern Lighthouse Board began to appear in Scotland.

The first lighthouse in America was Boston Light on Little Brewster Island (1716). The first keeper was George Worthylake who drowned, along with his wife and daughter, when returning to the island in 1718. The original tower was destroyed by the British during the evacuation of Boston and eventually reconstructed in 1784. The oldest existing lighthouse in America is Sandy Hook Lighthouse, NJ (1764), which is still in operation. By the end of the 19th century, the United States, with its long coastlines had the most lighthouses of any nation.

The US Bureau of Lighthouses was created in 1789 by the 9th Act of the first Congress which placed lighthouses under federal control. Over the years, lighthouses were placed under the direction of Department of Revenue (this department was disbanded in 1820), Department of Treasury (until 1903), then the Department of Commerce. The Lighthouse Board (of the U.S. Lighthouse Establishment) held sway from 1852 to July 1, 1910, when Commerce created the Lighthouse Service. The United States Coast Guard took over on July 7, 1939.

After 1852 the US was divided into Lighthouse Districts; originally eight, they eventually numbered 19. Each District was run by a Naval Officer appointed by the Lighthouse Board as the District Inspector. He ran the district in tandem with an Army Corps of Engineers' officer who was in charge of engineering projects. In 1910, civilians started replacing the military officers.

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TORPEDOS

Although the term "torpedo" was not coined until 1800, the early submarine Turtle attacked using an explosive very similar in intent and function. Turtle dived under a British vessel to attach a bomb by means of an auger. The bomb was to be detonated by a timed fuse, probably a type of clockwork mechanism. In its only recorded attack, Turtle failed to attach its charge to the hull of HMS Eagle.

The first usage of the term torpedo to refer to a naval explosive was by American inventor Robert Fulton. In 1800, Fulton launched his submarine, Nautilus, and demonstrated its method of attack using a floating explosive charge Fulton called a torpedo. The submarine would tow the torpedo, submerging beneath an enemy vessel and dragging the torpedo into contact with it. Fulton successfully destroyed demonstration targets in both France and Britain, but neither government was interested in purchasing the vessel and Fulton's experiments ceased in 1805.

During the American Civil War, the term torpedo was used for what is today called a contact mine, floating on or below the water surface using an air-filled demijohn or similar flotation device. (As self-propelled torpedoes were developed the tethered variety became known as stationary torpedoes and later mines.) Several types of naval "torpedo" were developed and deployed, most often by the Confederates, who faced a severe disadvantage in more traditional warfare methods.

In this period, "torpedoes" floated freely on the surface or were bottom-moored just below the surface. They were detonated when struck by a ship, or after a set time, but were unreliable. These could be as much a danger to Confederate as to Union shipping, and were sometimes marked with flags that could be removed if Union attack was deemed imminent. Rivers mined with Confederate torpedoes were often cleared by Unionists placing captured Confederate soldiers with knowledge of the torpedoes' location in small boats ahead of the main fleet.

"Torpedoes" (mines) could also be detonated electrically by an operator on shore (as demonstrated also by Fulton), so friendly vessels or low-value enemy vessels could be ignored while waiting for the capital ships to sail over them. However, the Confederacy was plagued by a chronic shortage of materials including platinum and copper wire and acid for batteries, and the wires had a tendency to break. Electricity was a new technology, and the limitations of direct current for effective distance was poorly understood, so failures were also possible because of the decrease in voltage when the torpedoes were too far from the batteries. Former United States Navy Commander Matthew Maury, who served as a commander in the Confederate Navy, worked on the development of an underwater electrical mine.

David Farragut encountered tethered and floating contact mines in 1864 at the American Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay. After his leading ironclad, USS Tecumseh, was sunk by a tethered contact mine (torpedo), his vessels halted, afraid of hitting additional torpedoes. Inspiring his men to push forward, Farragut famously ordered, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

The first torpedo designed to attack a specific target was the spar torpedo, an explosive device mounted at the end of a spar up to 30 feet (9.1 m) long projecting forward underwater from the bow of the attacking vessel. When driven up against the enemy and detonated, a hole would be caused below the water line. Spar torpedoes were employed by the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley (and were successful in sinking the USS Housatonic), as well as by David-class torpedo boats, among others. However, these torpedoes were apt to cause as much harm to their users as to their targets.

From the 1870s onwards, the word torpedo was increasingly used only to describe self-propelled projectiles that traveled under or on water. By the turn of the century, the term no longer included mines and booby-traps as the navies of the world added submarines, torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers to their fleets.

The first working prototype of the modern self-propelled torpedo was created by a commission placed by Giovanni Luppis (Ivan Lupis), an Austrian naval officer from Rijeka/Fiume, a port city of the Austrian Empire, and Robert Whitehead, an English engineer who was the manager of a Fiume factory. In 1864, Luppis presented Whitehead with the plans of the salvacoste (coast saver), a floating weapon driven by ropes from the land, and made a contract with him in order to perfect the invention.

Whitehead was unable to improve the machine substantially, since the clockwork motor, attached ropes, and surface attack mode all contributed to a slow and cumbersome weapon. However, he kept considering the problem after the contract had finished, and eventually developed a tubular device, designed to run underwater on its own, and powered by compressed air. The result was a submarine weapon, the Minenschiff (mine ship), the first self-propelled torpedo, officially presented to the Austrian Imperial Naval commission on December 21, 1866.

Maintaining proper depth was a major problem in the early days but Whitehead introduced his "secret" in 1868 which overcame this. It was a mechanism consisting of a hydrostatic valve and pendulum that caused the torpedo's hydroplanes to be adjusted so as to maintain a preset depth.

After the Austrian government decided to invest in the invention, Whitehead started the first torpedo factory in Fiume. In 1870, he improved the devices to travel up to approximately 1,000 yd (910 m) at a speed of up to 6 kn (11 km/h), and by 1881 the factory was exporting torpedoes to ten other countries. The torpedo was powered by compressed air and had an explosive charge of gun-cotton. Whitehead went on to develop more efficient devices, demonstrating torpedoes capable of 18 kn (33 km/h) in 1876, 24 kn (44 km/h) in 1886, and, finally, 30 kn (56 km/h) in 1890.

Royal Navy representatives visited Fiume for a demonstration in late 1869, and in 1870 a batch of torpedoes was ordered. In 1871, the British Admiralty paid Whitehead £15,000 for certain of his developments and production started at the Royal Laboratories in Woolwich the following year. In 1893, RN torpedo production was transferred to the Royal Gun Factory. The British later established a Torpedo Experimental Establishment at HMS Vernon and a production facility at the Royal Naval Torpedo Factory, Greenock in 1910. These are now closed.

Whitehead opened a new factory near Portland harbor, England in 1890, which continued making torpedoes until the end of the Second World War. Because orders from the RN were not as large as expected, torpedoes were mostly exported. A series of devices was produced at Fiume, with diameters from 14 in (36 cm) upward. The largest Whitehead torpedo was 18 in (46 cm) in diameter and 19 ft (5.8 m) long, made of polished steel or phosphor-bronze, with a 200-pound (91 kg) gun-cotton warhead. It was propelled by a three-cylinder Brotherhood engine, using compressed air at around 1,300 psi (9.0 MPa) and driving two propellers, and was designed to self-regulate its course and depth as far as possible. By 1881, nearly 1500 torpedoes had been produced. Whitehead also opened a factory at St Tropez in 1890 which exported torpedoes to Brazil, Holland, Turkey and Greece.

Whitehead faced competition from the American Lieutenant Commander John A. Howell, whose own design, driven by flywheel, was simpler and cheaper. It was produced from 1885 to 1895, and it ran straight, leaving no wake. A Torpedo Test Station had been set up on Rhode Island in 1870, and an automobile torpedo produced in 1871 was unsuccessful. The Lay torpedoes were also largely unsuccessful as were various privately invented types. The Howell torpedo was the only USN model until Whitehead torpedoes produced by Bliss and Williams (later E W Bliss and Co) entered service in 1894. Five varieties were produced, all 18 in (46 cm) diameter. An improved version, the Bliss-Leavitt, with a turbine engine was later produced, some with a larger diameter. Various versions were used in both World War I and World War II.

Whitehead purchased rights to the gyroscope of Ludwig Obry in 1888 but it was not sufficiently accurate, so in 1890 he purchased a better design (ironically from Howell) to improve control of his designs, which came to be called the "Devil's Device". The firm of L. Schwartzkopf in Germany also produced torpedoes and exported them to Russia, Japan and Spain. In 1885, Britain ordered a batch of 50 as torpedo production at home and at Fiume could not meet demand.

On 16 January 1878, the Turkish steamer Intibah became the first vessel to be sunk by self-propelled torpedoes, launched from torpedo boats operating from the tender Velikiy Knyaz Konstantin under the command of Stepan Osipovich Makarov during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. In another early use of the torpedo, Chilean frigate Blanco Encalada (1875) was sunk on April 23, 1891 by a torpedo from the gunboat Almirante Lynch, during the Chilean Civil War.

By this time the torpedo boat, the first of which had been built at the shipyards of Sir John Thornycroft in 1877, had gained recognition for its effectiveness, and the first torpedo boat destroyers (later simply destroyers) were built to counter it. Torpedoes were also used to equip gunboats of around 1,000 tons, these becoming torpedo gunboats.

Originally, torpedoes were designed to be straight running, though this was not always the case in practice. Around 1897, Nikola Tesla patented a remote controlled boat and later demonstrated the feasibility of radio-guided torpedoes to the United States military.

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FLAG SIGNALS

Flag signals 1857 – 1900

In the 1850s, U.S. Army Major Albert J. Myer, a surgeon by training, developed a system using left or right movements of a flag (or torch or lantern at night). Myer's system used a single flag, waved back and forth in a binary code conceptually similar to the Morse code of dots and dashes. This is sometimes called the wig-wag method of signaling, or "wig-wagging". More mobile than previous means of optical telegraphy, as it only required one flag and a 6–8 feet platform on which to stand the signal corpsman, this code was used extensively by Signal Corps troops on both sides in the American Civil War. (Its first use in battle was by Confederate Lieutenant Edward Porter Alexander at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861).

In this code, alphabet letters were equated with three positions of a single flag, disk, or light. The flags measured two, four, or six feet (60, 120 or 180 cm) square and were generally either red, orange or black banners with white square centers or white banners with red or orange square centers. The disks were 12 to 18 inches (30 to 46 cm) in diameter and were made of metal or wood frames with canvas surfaces. Somewhat easier to handle than the flags, they provided a different method for daylight communications. The lights were kerosene lanterns attached to a staff. A second "foot torch" was placed on the ground before the signalman as a fixed point of reference, making it easier for the recipient to follow the lantern's movements.

Each letter consisted of a combination of three basic motions. All began with the flagman holding his device vertically and motionless above his head. The first motion was initiated by bringing the device downward on the signalman's right side and then quickly returning it to its upright position. The second motion brought the device down on the left side and then returned it to the starting position. The third motion lowered the device in front of the signalman, and then restored it to its vertical position.

What is now the International Code of Signals was drafted in 1855 by the British Board of Trade and published by the Board in 1857 as the Commercial Code. It came in two parts: the first containing universal and international signals and the second British signals only. Eighteen separate signal flags (see chart) were used to make over 70,000 possible messages. Vowels were omitted from the set to avoid spelling out any word that might be objectionable in any language, and some little-used letters were also omitted. It was revised by the British Board of Trade in 1887, and was modified at the International Conference of 1889 in Washington, D.C.

During World War I the code was severely tested, and it was found that "when coding signals, word by word, the occasions upon which signaling failed were more numerous than those when the result was successful." The International Radiotelegraph Conference at Washington in 1927 considered proposals for a new revision of the Code, including preparation in seven languages: English, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Spanish and in Norwegian. This new edition was completed in 1930 and was adopted by the International Radiotelegraph Conference held in Madrid in 1932. The Madrid Conference also set up a standing committee for continual revision of the Code. The new version introduced vocabulary for aviation and a complete medical section with the assistance and by the advice of the Office International d’Hygiene Publique. A certain number of signals were also inserted for communications between vessels and ship owners, agents, repair yards, and other maritime stakeholders.

After World War II, The Administrative Radio Conference of the International Telecommunication Union suggested in 1947 that the International Code of Signals should fall within the competence of the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO), which became the IMO. In January 1959, the First Assembly of IMCO decided that the Organization should assume all the functions then being performed by the Standing Committee of the International Code of Signals.

The Second Assembly of IMCO 1961 endorsed plans for a comprehensive review of the International Code of Signals to meet the needs of mariners. The revisions were prepared in the previous seven languages, plus Russian and Greek.

The Code was revised in 1964 taking into account recommendations from the 1960 Conference on Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and the 1959 Administrative Radio Conference. Changes included a shift in focus from general communications to safety of navigation, abandonment of the "vocabulary" method of spelling out messages word by word, adaptation to all forms of communication, and elimination of the separate radiotelegraph and geographical sections; it was adopted in 1965. The 1969 English-language version of the Code (United States edition, revised 2003) is available online through the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA, formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency) as Publication 102.

The International Code of Signals is currently maintained by the International Maritime Organization, which published a new print edition in 2005; it is believed that there are no material changes in the Code itself.

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TELEPHONE

Credit for the invention of the electric telephone is frequently disputed, and new controversies over the issue have arisen from time-to-time. As with other great inventions such as radio, television, light bulb, and computer, there were several inventors who did pioneering experimental work on voice transmission over a wire and improved on each other's ideas. Innocenzo Manzetti, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Elisha Gray, Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison, among others, have all been credited with pioneering work on the telephone. An undisputed fact is that Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be awarded a patent for the electric telephone by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in March 1876. That first patent by Bell was the master patent of the telephone, from which all other patents for electric telephone devices and features, flowed.

The early history of the telephone became and still remains a confusing morass of claims and counterclaims, which were not clarified by the huge mass of lawsuits that hoped to resolve the patent claims of many individuals and commercial competitors. The Bell and Edison patents, however, were forensically victorious and commercially decisive.

A Hungarian engineer, Tivadar Puskás quickly invented the telephone switchboard in 1876, which allowed for the formation of telephone exchanges, and eventually networks.

•1844 — Innocenzo Manzetti first mooted the idea of a “speaking telegraph” (telephone).

•26 August 1854 — Charles Bourseul publishes an article in a magazine L'Illustration (Paris): "Transmission électrique de la parole" [electric transmission of speech].

•26 October 1861 — Johann Philipp Reis (1834–1874) publicly demonstrated the Reis telephone before the Physical Society of Frankfurt

•22 August 1865, La Feuille d'Aoste reported “It is rumored that English technicians to whom Mr. Manzetti illustrated his method for transmitting spoken words on the telegraph wire intend to apply said invention in England on several private telegraph lines.”

•28 December 1871 — Antonio Meucci files a patent caveat (n.3335) in the U.S. Patent Office titled "Sound Telegraph", describing communication of voice between two people by wire.

•1874 — Meucci, after having renewed the caveat for two years, fails to find the money to renew it. The caveat lapses.

•6 April 1875 — Bell's U.S. Patent 161,739 "Transmitters and Receivers for Electric Telegraphs" is granted. This uses multiple vibrating steel reeds in make-break circuits.

•11 February 1876 — Gray invents a liquid transmitter for use with a telephone but does not build one.

•14 February 1876 — Elisha Gray files a patent caveat for transmitting the human voice through a telegraphic circuit.

•14 February 1876 — Alexander Bell applies for the patent "Improvements in Telegraphy", for electromagnetic telephones using undulating currents.

•19 February 1876 — Gray is notified by the U.S. Patent Office of interference between his caveat and Bell's patent application. Gray decides to abandon his caveat.

•7 March 1876 — Bell's U.S. patent 174,465 "Improvement in Telegraphy" is granted, covering "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically … by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound."

•10 March 1876 — The first successful telephone transmission of clear speech using a liquid transmitter when Bell spoke into his device, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” and Watson heard each word distinctly.

•30 January 1877 — Bell's U.S. patent 186,787 is granted for an electromagnetic telephone using permanent magnets, iron diaphragms, and a call bell.

•27 April 1877 — Edison files for a patent on a carbon (graphite) transmitter. The patent 474,230 was granted 3 May 1892, after a 15 year delay because of litigation. Edison was granted patent 222,390 for a carbon granules transmitter in 1879.

Early telephones were technically diverse. Some used a liquid transmitter, some had a metal diaphragm that induced current in an electromagnet wound around a permanent magnet, and some were "dynamic" - their diaphragm vibrated a coil of wire in the field of a permanent magnet or the coil vibrated the diaphragm. The dynamic kind survived in small numbers through the 20th century in military and maritime applications where its ability to create its own electrical power was crucial. Most, however, used the Edison/Berliner carbon transmitter, which was much louder than the other kinds, even though it required an induction coil, actually acting as an impedance matching transformer to make it compatible to the impedance of the line. The Edison patents kept the Bell monopoly viable into the 20th century, by which time the network was more important than the instrument.

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RIGGING SHIPS

Rigging Ships

Rigging (from Anglo-Saxon wrigan or wringing, "to clothe") is the apparatus through which the force of the wind is used to propel sailboats and sailing ships forward. This includes masts, yardarms, sails, and cordage.

A full rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing vessel with three or more masts, all of them square rigged. A full rigged ship is said to have a ship rig.

Sometimes such a vessel will merely be called a ship, particularly in 18th to early 19th century and earlier usage, to distinguish it from other vessels such as schooners, barques, barquentines, brigs, et cetera. Alternately, a full rigged ship may be referred to by its function instead, as in collier or frigate, rather than being called a ship. In many languages the word frigate or frigate rig refers to a full-rigged ship.

The masts of a full rigged ship, from bow to stern, are:

•Foremast, which is the second tallest mast

•Mainmast, the tallest

•Mizzenmast, the third tallest

•Jiggermast, which may not be present but will be fourth tallest if so

There is no standard name for a fifth mast on a ship-rigged vessel (though this may be called the spanker mast on a barque, schooner or barquentine). Only one five-masted full rigged ship (the Flying P-Liner Preussen) had ever been built until recent years, when a few modern five-masted cruise sailing ships have been launched. Even a fourth mast is relatively rare for full rigged ships. Ships with five and more masts are not normally fully rigged and their masts may be numbered rather than named in extreme cases.

If the masts are of wood, each mast is in three or more pieces. The lowest piece is called the mast or the lower. Above it, the pieces in order are:

•Topmast

•Topgallant mast

•Royal mast, if fitted

On steel-masted vessels, the corresponding sections of the mast are named after the traditional wooden sections.

The lowest and normally largest sail on a mast is the course sail of that mast, and is referred to simply by the mast name: Foresail, mainsail, mizzen sail, jigger sail or more commonly fore course etc.

Above the course sail, in order, are:

Topsail, or
Lower topsail, if fitted.
Upper topsail, if fitted.
Topgallant sail, or
Lower topgallant sail, if fitted.
Upper topgallant sail, if fitted.
Royal sail, if fitted.
Skysail, if fitted.
Moonraker, if fitted.

The division of a sail into upper and lower sails was a matter of practicality, since undivided sails were larger and, consequently, more difficult to handle. Larger sails necessitated hiring, and paying, a larger crew. Additionally, the great size of some late-19th and 20th century vessels meant that their correspondingly large sails would have been impossible to handle had they not been divided.

Jibs are carried forward of the foremast, are tacked down on the bowsprit or jib-boom and have varying naming conventions.

Staysails may be carried between any other mast and the one in front of it or from the foremast to the bowsprit. They are named after the mast from which the are hoisted, so for example a staysail hoisted to the top of the mizzen topgallant on a stay running to the top of the main topmast would be called the mizzen topgallant staysail.

In light winds studding sails (pronounced "stunsls") may be carried on either side of any or all of the square rigged sails except royals and skysails. They are named after the adjacent sail and the side of the vessel on which they are set, for example main topgallant starboard stu'nsail. One or more spritsails may also be set on booms set athwart and below the bowsprit.

One or two spankers are carried aft of the aftmost mast, if two they are called the upper spanker and lower spanker. A fore-and-aft topsail may be carried above the upper or only spanker, and is called the gaff sail.

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RMS TITANIC

RMS Titanic
Class and type: Olympic-class ocean liner
Owner: White Star Line
Port of registry: Liverpool
Route: Southampton to New York City
Ordered: 31 July 1908
Builder: Harland and Wolff yards in Belfast, Ireland
Designers: Lord Pirrie, naval architect Thomas Andrews
Yard number: 401
Laid down: 31 March 1909
Launched: 31 May 1911
Completed: 31 March 1912
Maiden voyage: 10 April 1912
In service: 1912
Identification: Radio Callsign "MGY"
UK Official Number: 131428
Cost: $10,000,000 USD

Installed power: 24 double-ended (six furnace) and 5 single-ended (three furnace) Scotch marine boilers
Two four-cylinder reciprocating triple-expansion steam engines each producing 15,000 hp for the two outboard
wing propellers at 75 revolutions per minute. One low-pressure turbine producing 16,000 hp
46,000 HP (design) – 59,000 HP (maximum).

Propulsion: Two bronze triple-blade wing propellers. One bronze quadruple-blade centre propeller.

Speed: 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph) 23 knots (43 km/h; 26 mph) (maximum)

Capacity: Passengers and crew (fully loaded): 3,547
Staterooms (840 total): First Class: 416, Second Class: 162, Third Class: 262 plus 40 open berthing areas

Sisters: Olympic and Britannic.

Draught: 34 ft 7 in (10.5 m).
Depth: 64 ft 6 in (19.7 m).
Decks: 9 (Lettered A through G)

Length: 882 ft 9 in (269.1 m). Beam: 92 ft 0 in (28.0 m). Height: 175 ft (53.3 m) (Keel to top of funnels)

Tonnage: 46,328 gross register tons
(GRT). Displacement: 52,310 tons

The First-class offers on-board swimming pool, a gymnasium, a squash court, Turkish bath, Electric bath and a Verandah Cafe, rooms are adorned with ornate wood panelling, expensive furniture and other decorations.

Café Parisien offers cuisine for the first-class passengers, with a sunlit veranda fitted with trellis decorations. Libraries and barber shops in both the first and second-class. The third class general room have pine panelling and sturdy teak furniture. Three electric elevators in first class and one in second class. There is an extensive electrical subsystem with steam-powered generators and ship-wide wiring feeding electric lights and two Marconi
radios, including a powerful 1,500-watt set manned by two operators working in shifts, allowing constant contact and the transmission of many passenger messages. First-class one way trans-Atlantic passage $4,350 USD.

Lifeboats 1 and 2: emergency wooden cutters: 25'2" long by 7'2" wide by 3'2" deep; capacity 326.6 cubic feet or 40 persons
Lifeboats 3 to 16: wooden lifeboats: 30' long by 9'1" wide by 4' deep; capacity 655.2 cubic feet or 65 persons
Lifeboats A, B, C and D: Englehardt "collapsible" lifeboats: 27'5" long by 8' wide by 3' deep; capacity 376.6 cubic feet or 47 persons

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FOKKER DR1 RED BARON

Fokker Dr I 127/17. Work # 1838 . Single seat triplane fighter, designated Fokker V5
Date ordered sep. 1917, accepted oct. 15, 1917, dispached oct. 29, 1917. Jasta 11
Manufacturer: Fokker Flugzeugwerke mbH, Schwerin in Mecklenberg.

Pilot Manfred von Richthofen (80)

Wingspan;
Top wing 23' 7"

Middle wing 20' 5"

Lower wing 18' 9"

Height 9' 8"

Length 18' 11"

Propeller:
Axial Proppellerwerk AG, Berlin
Diameter 8' 7"    (2,620 mm )
Pitch     7' 6"     (2,300 mm )
Blade width    0' 9"   (230 mm ). Hub    8 holes. Lamination 3 layers of walnut,
4 layers of birch Lamination Thickness   3/4"
20 mm each layer

Performance:
Maximun speed 115 mph
Take off run 50-100 m
Landing run 50 m
Ceiling 23,000 Ft 7,000 mt
Climb rate 3 min 45 sec to 6,500 Ft

Engine:
Oberursel UR II, 110 hp, 9 cylinders, displacement 955 in3,
air cooled, consuption 42 lt/hr. Ignition Magneto (Boch Zh6),
weight 330 lb. Lubrication Castor oil.
Engine gauges RPM indicator, Fuel Gauge , Oil pulsator.

Construction:
Fuselage: 20mm steel tubing braced with
18 gauge steel wire,
Plywood fairings both covered with fabric.
The bottom piece is lanced.
Top Wing: 7,190 mm
Plywood ribs, wood box type ,
Middle Wing: 6,225 mm
Lower Wing: 5,725 mm
Wing Chord 1,000 mm

Armament:
Two 7.92mm Spandau LMG 08/15 (Lightened Machine Gum)
Manufacturer: Spanuau Arsenal Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabrik AG
Caliber: 7.92 mm x 57 mm. Drums: 2-500 rounds belts
Rate of Fire: 450 - 500 RPM. Belt fed made from canvas/hemp 550 rounds each.
Length: 1,175 mm. Weight : 26.5 pounds (empty) (11.90 kg)
Barrel: 718 mm
Muzzle- velocity: 892 m/sec. Air Cooled
Operating- method: Short - Recoil

Fuel tank: 72 liters
fuel consuption: 46 lt/hr
Oil tank: 13 liters
oil consuption: 6 lt/hr
endurance 1.5 hrs

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ORNAMENTS 1800's ARCHITECTURE

Ornament (architecture)

In architecture and decorative art, ornament is a decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Architectural ornament can be carved from stone, wood or precious metals, formed with plaster or clay, or impressed onto a surface as applied ornament; in other applied arts the main material of the object, or a different one may be used. A wide variety of decorative styles and motifs have been developed for architecture and the applied arts, including pottery, furniture, metalwork. In textiles, wallpaper and other objects where the decoration may be the main justification for its existence, the terms pattern or design are more likely to be used.

In a 1941 essay, the architectural historian Sir John Summerson called it "surface modulation". Decoration and ornament has been evident in civilizations since the beginning of recorded history, ranging from Ancient Egyptian architecture to the apparent lack of ornament of 20th century Modernist architecture.

Styles of ornamentation can be studied in reference to the specific culture which developed unique forms of decoration, or modified ornament from other cultures. The Ancient Egyptian culture is the first recorded civilization to add decoration to their buildings. Their ornament takes the forms of the natural world in that climate, decorating the capitals of columns and walls with images of papyrus and palm trees. Assyrian culture produced ornament which shows influence from Egyptian sources and a number of original themes, including figures of plants and animals of the region.

Ancient Greek civilization created many new forms of ornament, with regional variations from Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian groups. The Romans Latinized the pure forms of the Greek ornament and adapted the forms to every purpose.

Other ornamental styles are associated with these cultures:

• Arabian

• Aztec

• Byzantine

• Celtic

• Chinese

• French Renaissance

• German Renaissance

• Indian

• Persian

• Italian Renaissance

• Japanese

• Middle Ages

• Moorish

• Pompeian

• Turkish

From the 15th to the 19th century, "Pattern books" were published in Europe which gave access to decorative elements recorded from cultures all over the world. Andrea Palladio's I quattro libri dell'architettura (Four Books on Architecture) (Venice, 1570), which included both drawings of classical Roman buildings and renderings of Palladio's own designs utilizing those motifs, became the most influential book ever written on architecture. Napoleon documented the great pyramids and temples of Egypt in the Description de l'Egypte (1809). Owen Jones published The Grammar of Ornament in 1856 with colored illustrations of decoration from Egypt, Turkey, Sicily and Spain. He took residence in the Alhambra Palace to make drawings and plaster castings of the ornate details. Interest in classical architecture was also fueled by the tradition of traveling on The Grand Tour, and translation of early literature about architecture in the work of Vitruvius and Michelangelo.

During the 19th century, the acceptable use of ornament, and its precise definition became the source of aesthetic controversy in academic Western architecture, as architects and their critics searched for a suitable style. "The great question is," Thomas Leverton Donaldson asked in 1847, "are we to have an architecture of our period, a distinct, individual, palpable style of the 19th century?". In 1849, when Matthew Digby Wyatt viewed the French Industrial Exposition set up on the Champs-Elysées in Paris, he disapproved in recognizably modern terms of the plaster ornaments in faux-bronze and faux woodgrain:

Both internally and externally there is a good deal of tasteless and unprofitable ornament... If each simple material had been allowed to tell its own tale, and the lines of the construction so arranged as to conduce to a sentiment of grandeur, the qualities of "power" and "truth," which its enormous extent must have necessarily ensured, could have scarcely fail to excite admiration, and that at a very considerable saving of expense.

Contacts with other cultures through colonialism and the new discoveries of archaeology expanded the repertory of ornament available to revivalists. After about 1880, photography made details of ornament even more widely available than prints had done.

Modern architecture, conceived of as the elimination of ornament in favor of purely functional structures, left architects the problem of how to properly adorn modern structures. There were two available routes from this perceived crisis. One was to attempt to devise an ornamental vocabulary that was new and essentially contemporary. This was the route taken by architects like Louis Sullivan and his pupil Frank Lloyd Wright, or by the unique Antoni Gaudí. Art Nouveau, for all its excesses, was a conscious effort to evolve such a "natural" vocabulary of ornament.

A more radical route abandoned the use of ornament altogether, as in some designs for objects by Christopher Dresser. At the time, such unornamented objects could have been found in many unpretending workaday items of industrial design, ceramics produced at the Arabia manufactory in Finland, for instance, or the glass insulators of electric lines.

This latter approach was described by architect Adolf Loos in his 1908 manifesto, translated into English in 1913 and polemically titled Ornament and Crime, in which he declared that lack of decoration is the sign of an advanced society. His argument was that ornament is economically inefficient and "morally degenerate", and that reducing ornament was a sign of progress. Modernists were eager to point to American architect Louis Sullivan as their godfather in the cause of aesthetic simplification, dismissing the knots of intricately patterned ornament that articulated the skin of his structures.

With the work of Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus through the 1920s and 1930s, lack of decorative detail became a hallmark of modern architecture and equated with the moral virtues of honesty, simplicity, and purity. In 1932 Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock dubbed this the "International Style". What began as a matter of taste was transformed into an aesthetic mandate. Modernists declared their way as the only acceptable way to build. As the style hit its stride in the highly-developed postwar work of Mies van der Rohe, the tenets of 1950s modernism became so strict that even accomplished architects like Edward Durrell Stone and Eero Saarinen could be ridiculed and effectively ostracized for departing from the aesthetic rules.

At the same time, the unwritten laws against ornament began to come into serious question. "Architecture has, with some difficulty, liberated itself from ornament, but it has not liberated itself from the fear of ornament," Summerson observed in 1941.

One reason was that the very difference between ornament and structure is subtle and perhaps arbitrary. The pointed arches and flying buttresses of Gothic architecture are ornamental but structurally necessary; the colorful rhythmic bands of a Pietro Belluschi International Style skyscraper are integral, not applied, but certainly have ornamental effect. Furthermore, architectural ornament can serve the practical purpose of establishing scale, signaling entries, and aiding way finding, and these useful design tactics had been outlawed. And by the mid-1950s, modernist figureheads Le Corbusier and Marcel Breuer had been breaking their own rules by producing highly expressive, sculptural concrete work.

The argument against ornament peaked in 1959 over discussions of the Seagram Building, where Mies van der Rohe installed a series of structurally unnecessary vertical I-beams on the outside of the building, and by 1984, when Philip Johnson produced his AT&T Building in Manhattan with an ornamental pink granite neo-Georgian pediment, the argument was effectively over. In retrospect, critics have seen the AT&T Building as the first Postmodernist building.

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MACHINE TOOLS

Machine tools

The Industrial Revolution could not have developed without machine tools, for they enabled manufacturing machines to be made. They have their origins in the tools developed in the 18th century by makers of clocks and watches and scientific instrument makers to enable them to batch-produce small mechanisms. The mechanical parts of early textile machines were sometimes called 'clock work' because of the metal spindles and gears they incorporated. The manufacture of textile machines drew craftsmen from these trades and is the origin of the modern engineering industry.

Machines were built by various craftsmen—carpenters made wooden framings, and smiths and turners made metal parts. A good example of how machine tools changed manufacturing took place in Birmingham, England, in 1830. The invention of a new machine by Joseph Gillott, William Mitchell and James Stephen Perry allowed mass manufacture of robust, cheap steel pen nibs; the process had been laborious and expensive. Because of the difficulty of manipulating metal and the lack of machine tools, the use of metal was kept to a minimum. Wood framing had the disadvantage of changing dimensions with temperature and humidity, and the various joints tended to rack (work loose) over time. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, machines with metal frames became more common, but they required machine tools to make them economically. Before the advent of machine tools, metal was worked manually using the basic hand tools of hammers, files, scrapers, saws and chisels. Small metal parts were readily made by this means, but for large machine parts, production was very laborious and costly.

Apart from workshop lathes used by craftsmen, the first large machine tool was the cylinder boring machine used for boring the large-diameter cylinders on early steam engines. The planing machine, the slotting machine and the shaping machine were developed in the first decades of the 19th century. Although the milling machine was invented at this time, it was not developed as a serious workshop tool until during the Second Industrial Revolution.

Military production had a hand in the development of machine tools. Henry Maudslay, who trained a school of machine tool makers early in the 19th century, was employed at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, as a young man where he would have seen the large horse-driven wooden machines for cannon boring made and worked by the Verbruggans. He later worked for Joseph Bramah on the production of metal locks, and soon after he began working on his own. He was engaged to build the machinery for making ships' pulley blocks for the Royal Navy in the Portsmouth Block Mills. These were all metal and were the first machines for mass production and making components with a degree of interchangeability. The lessons Maudslay learned about the need for stability and precision he adapted to the development of machine tools, and in his workshops he trained a generation of men to build on his work, such as Richard Roberts, Joseph Clement and Joseph Whitworth.

James Fox of Derby had a healthy export trade in machine tools for the first third of the century, as did Matthew Murray of Leeds. Roberts was a maker of high-quality machine tools and a pioneer of the use of jigs and gauges for precision workshop measurement.

A machine tool is a powered mechanical device, typically used to fabricate metal components of machines by machining, which is the selective removal of metal. The term machine tool is usually reserved for tools that used a power source other than human movement, but they can be powered by people if appropriately set up. Many historians of technology consider that the true machine tools were born when direct human involvement was removed from the shaping or stamping process of the different kinds of tools. The earliest lathe with direct mechanical control of the cutting tool was a screw-cutting lathe dating to about 1483. This lathe "produced screw threads out of wood and employed a true compound slide rest".

The first machine tools offered for sale (i.e. commercially available) were constructed by one Matthew Murray in England around 1800.

Machine tools can be powered from a variety of sources. Human and animal power are options, as is energy captured through the use of waterwheels. However, modern machine tools began to develop only after the development of the steam engine, which led to the Industrial Revolution.

Lathe

A lathe is a machine tool which spins a block of material to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or deformation with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object which has symmetry about an axis of rotation.

Lathes are used in woodturning, metalworking, metal spinning, and glassworking. Lathes can be used to shape pottery, the best-known design being the potter's wheel. Most suitably equipped metalworking lathes can also be used to produce most solids of revolution, plane surfaces and screw threads or helices. Ornamental lathes can produce three-dimensional solids of incredible complexity. The material can be held in place by either one or two centers, at least one of which can be moved horizontally to accommodate varying material lengths. Other workholding methods include clamping the work about the axis of rotation using a chuck or collet, or to a faceplate, using clamps or dogs.

Examples of objects that can be produced on a lathe include candlestick holders, cue sticks, table legs, bowls, baseball bats, musical instruments (especially woodwind instruments), crankshafts and camshafts.

History

The lathe is an ancient tool, dating at least to the Egyptians and known and used in Assyria, Greece, the Roman and Byzantine Empires.

The origin of turning dates to around 1300 BC when the Egyptians first developed a two-person lathe. One person would turn the wood work piece with a rope while the other used a sharp tool to cut shapes in the wood. The Romans improved the Egyptian design with the addition of a turning bow. Early bow lathes were also developed and used in Germany, France and Britain. In the Middle Ages a pedal replaced hand-operated turning, freeing both the craftsman's hands to hold the woodturning tools. The pedal was usually connected to a pole, often a straight-grained sapling. The system today is called the "spring pole" lathe (see Polelathe). Spring pole lathes were in common use into the early 20th century. A two-person lathe, called a "great lathe", allowed a piece to turn continuously (like today's power lathes). A master would cut the wood while an apprentice turned the crank.

During the Industrial Revolution, mechanized power generated by water wheels or steam engines was transmitted to the lathe via line shafting, allowing faster and easier work. The design of lathes diverged between woodworking and metalworking to a greater extent than in previous centuries. Metalworking lathes evolved into heavier machines with thicker, more rigid parts. The application of lead screws, slide rests, and gearing produced commercially practical screw-cutting lathes. Between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, individual electric motors at each lathe replaced line shafting as the power source. Beginning in the 1950s, servomechanisms were applied to the control of lathes and other machine tools via numerical control (NC), which often was coupled with computers to yield computerized numerical control (CNC). Today manually controlled and CNC lathes coexist in the manufacturing industries.

Drill

A drill (from Dutch: drillen) or drill motor is a tool fitted with a rotating cutting tool, usually a drill bit, used for drilling holes in various materials. The cutting tool is gripped by a chuck at one end of the drill and rotated while pressed against the target material. The tip of the cutting tool does the work of cutting into the target material. This may be slicing off thin shavings (twist drills or auger bits), grinding off small particles (oil drilling), crushing and removing pieces of the workpiece (SDS masonry drill), countersinking, counterboring, or other operations.

The earliest drills were bow drills which date back to the ancient Harappans and Egyptians. The drill press as a machine tool evolved from the bow drill and is many centuries old. It was powered by various power sources over the centuries, such as human effort, water wheels, and windmills, often with the use of belts. With the coming of the electric motor in the late 19th century, there was a great rush to power machine tools with such motors, and drills were among them. The invention of the first electric drill is credited to Arthur James Arnot and William Blanch Brain, in 1889, at Melbourne, Australia. Wilhelm Fein invented the portable electric drill in 1895, at Stuttgart, Germany. In 1917, Black & Decker patented a trigger-like switch mounted on a pistol-grip handle.

Gear shaper

A gear shaper is a machine tool for cutting the teeth of internal or external gears. The name shaper relates to the fact that the cutter engages the part on the forward stroke and pulls away from the part on the return stroke, just like the clapper box on a planer shaper.

The cutting tool is also gear shaped having the same pitch as the gear to be cut. However number of cutting teeth must be less than that of the gear to be cut for internal gears. For external gears the number of teeth on the cutter is limited only by the size of the shaping machine.

For larger gears the blank is usually gashed to the rough shape to make shaping easier.

Hobbing

Hobbing is a machining process for making gears, splines, and sprockets on a hobbing machine, which is a special type of milling machine. The teeth or splines are progressively cut into the workpiece by a series of cuts made by a cutting tool called a hob. Compared to other gear forming processes it is relatively inexpensive but still quite accurate, thus it is used for a broad range of parts and quantities.

It is the most widely used gear cutting process for creating spur and helical gears and more gears are cut by hobbing than any other process since it is relatively quick and inexpensive.

Screw machine

A screw machine is a metalworking machine tool used in the high-volume manufacture of turned components. Screw machines are fundamentally a type of lathe that is specialized for the automated production of small parts. The name screw machine is somewhat of a misnomer, because screw machines spend much of their time making things that are not screws and that in many cases are not even threaded. However, the archetypal use for which screw machines were named was screw-making.

All screw machines are fully automated, whether mechanically (via cams) or by CNC (computerized control), which means that once they are set up and started running, they continue running and producing parts with very little human intervention. This has been true since the 1870s. Mechanical automation came first, beginning in the 1870s; computerized control (via first NC and then CNC) came later, beginning in the 1950s.

Shaper

A shaper is a type of machine tool that uses linear relative motion between the workpiece and a single-point cutting tool to machine a linear toolpath. Its cut is analogous to that of a lathe, except that it is linear instead of helical. A shaper is analogous to a planer, but smaller, and with the cutter riding a ram that moves above a stationary workpiece, rather than the entire workpiece moving beneath the cutter. The ram is moved back and forth typically by a crank inside the column; hydraulically actuated shapers also exist.

Roe (1916) credits James Nasmyth with the invention of the shaper in 1836. Shapers were very common in industrial production from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th. In current industrial practice, shapers have been largely superseded by other machine tools (especially of the CNC type), including milling machines, grinding machines, and broaching machines. But the basic function of a shaper is still sound; tooling for them is minimal and very cheap to reproduce; and they are simple and robust in construction, making their repair and upkeep easily achievable. Thus they are still popular in many machine shops, from jobbing shops or repair shops to tool and die shops, where only one or a few pieces are required to be produced and the alternative methods are cost- or tooling-intensive. They also have considerable retro appeal to many hobbyist machinists, who are happy to obtain a used shaper or, in some cases, even to build a new one from scratch.

Grinding machine

A grinding machine is a machine tool used for grinding, which is a type of machining using an abrasive wheel as the cutting tool. Each grain of abrasive on the wheel's surface cuts a small chip from the workpiece via shear deformation.

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GEARS

Gear

A gear is a rotating machine part having cut teeth, or cogs, which mesh with another toothed part in order to transmit torque. Two or more gears working in tandem are called a transmission and can produce a mechanical advantage through a gear ratio and thus may be considered a simple machine. Geared devices can change the speed, magnitude, and direction of a power source. The most common situation is for a gear to mesh with another gear, however a gear can also mesh a non-rotating toothed part, called a rack, thereby producing translation instead of rotation.

The gears in a transmission are analogous to the wheels in a pulley. An advantage of gears is that the teeth of a gear prevent slipping.

When two gears of unequal number of teeth are combined a mechanical advantage is produced, with both the rotational speeds and the torques of the two gears differing in a simple relationship.

In transmissions which offer multiple gear ratios, such as bicycles and cars, the term gear, as in first gear, refers to a gear ratio rather than an actual physical gear. The term is used to describe similar devices even when gear ratio is continuous rather than discrete, or when the device does not actually contain any gears, as in a continuously variable transmission.

The earliest known reference to gears was circa 50 A.D. by Hero of Alexandria, but they can be traced back to the Greek mechanics of the Alexandrian school in the 3rd century BC and were greatly developed by the Greek polymath Archimedes (287-212 BC).

A simple machine is a mechanical device that changes the direction or magnitude of a force. In general, they can be defined as the simplest mechanisms that use mechanical advantage (also called leverage) to multiply force. A simple machine uses a single applied force to do work against a single load force. Ignoring friction losses, the work done on the load is equal to the work done by the applied force. They can be used to increase the amount of the output force, at the cost of a proportional decrease in the distance moved by the load. The ratio of the output to the input force is called the mechanical advantage.

Usually the term refers to the six classical simple machines which were defined by Renaissance scientists:

• Lever

• Wheel and axle

• Pulley

• Inclined plane

• Wedge

• Screw

They are the elementary "building blocks" of which all complicated machines are composed. For example, wheels, levers, and pulleys are all used in the mechanism of a bicycle.

Simple machines fall into two classes; those dependent on the vector resolution of forces (inclined plane, wedge, and screw) and those in which there is an equilibrium of torques (lever, pulley, wheel).

History

The idea of a "simple machine" originated with the Greek philosopher Archimedes around the 3rd century BC, who studied the "Archimedean" simple machines: lever, pulley, and screw. He discovered the principle of mechanical advantage in the lever. His understanding was limited to the static balance of forces and did not include the trade-off between force and distance moved. Heron of Alexandria (ca. 10–75 AD) in his work Mechanics lists five mechanisms with which a load can be set in motion: The winch, lever, pulley, wedge, and screw. During the Renaissance the classic five simple machines (excluding the wedge) began to be studied as a group. The complete dynamic theory of simple machines was worked out by Italian scientist Galileo Galilei in 1600 in Le Meccaniche ("On Mechanics"). He was the first to understand that simple machines do not create energy, only transform it.

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MILLING MACHINE

1810s-1830s

Milling machines evolved from the practice of rotary filing—that is, running a circular cutter with file-like teeth in the headstock of a lathe. Both rotary filing and later true milling were developed in order to reduce the time and effort spent on hand-filing. The full, true story of the milling machine's development will probably never be known, because much of the early development took place in individual shops where generally no one was taking down records for posterity. However, the broad outlines are known. Rotary filing long predated milling. A rotary file by Jacques de Vaucanson, circa 1760, is well known. It is clear that milling machines as a distinct class of machine tool (separate from lathes running rotary files) first appeared between 1814 and 1818. Joseph W. Roe, a respected founding father of machine tool historians, credited Eli Whitney with producing the first true milling machine. However, subsequent scholars, including Robert S. Woodbury and others, suggest that just as much credit belongs to various other inventors, including Robert Johnson, Simeon North, Captain John H. Hall, and Thomas Blanchard. (Several of the men mentioned above are sometimes described on the internet as "the inventor of the first milling machine" or "the inventor of interchangeable parts". Such claims are oversimplified, as these technologies evolved over time among many people.) The two federal armories of the U.S. (Springfield and Harpers Ferry) and the various private armories and inside contractors that shared turnover of skilled workmen with them were the centers of earliest development of true milling machines (as distinct from lathe headstocks tooled up for rotary filing).

The late teens of the 19th century were a pivotal time in the history of machine tools, as the period of 1814 to 1818 is also the period during which several contemporary pioneers (Fox, Murray, and Roberts) were developing the planer, and as with the milling machine, the work being done in various shops was undocumented for various reasons (partially because of proprietary secrecy, and also simply because no one was taking down records for posterity).

James Nasmyth built a milling machine very advanced for its time between 1829 and 1831. It was tooled to mill the six sides of a hex nut that was mounted in a six-way indexing fixture.

A milling machine built and used in the shop of Gay & Silver (aka Gay, Silver, & Co) in the 1830s was influential because it employed a better method of vertical positioning than earlier machines. For example, Whitney's machine (the one that Roe considered the very first) and others did not make provision for vertical travel of the knee. Evidently the workflow assumption behind this was that the machine would be set up with shims, vise, etc. for a certain part design and successive parts would not require vertical adjustment (or at most would need only shimming). This indicates that the earliest way of thinking about milling machines was as production machines, not toolroom machines.

1840s-1860

Some of the key men in milling machine development during this era included Frederick W. Howe, Francis A. Pratt, Elisha K. Root, and others. (These same men during the same era were also busy developing the state of the art in turret lathes. Howe's experience at Gay & Silver in the 1840s acquainted him with early versions of both machine tools. His machine tool designs were later built at Robbins & Lawrence, the Providence Tool Company, and Brown & Sharpe.) The most successful milling machine design to emerge during this era was the Lincoln miller, which rather than being a specific make and model of machine tool is truly a family of tools built by various companies on a common form factor over several decades. It took its name from the first company to put one on the market, George S. Lincoln & Company.

During this era there was a continued blind spot in milling machine design, as various designers failed to develop a truly simple and effective means of providing slide travel in all three of the archetypal milling axes (X, Y, and Z—or as they were known in the past, longitudinal, traverse, and vertical). Vertical positioning ideas were either absent or underdeveloped.

1860s

In 1861, Frederick W. Howe, while working for the Providence Tool Company, asked Joseph R. Brown of Brown & Sharpe for a solution to the problem of milling spirals, such as the flutes of twist drills. These were usually filed by hand at the time. (Helical planing existed but was by no means common.) Brown designed a "universal milling machine" that, starting from its first sale in March 1862, was wildly successful. It solved the problem of 3-axis (XYZ) travel much more elegantly than had been done in the past, and it allowed for the milling of spirals using an indexing head fed in coordination with the table feed. The term "universal" was applied to it because it was ready for any kind of work and was not as limited in application as previous designs. (Howe had designed a "universal miller" in 1852, but Brown's of 1861 is the one considered a groundbreaking success.)

Brown also developed and patented (1864) the design of formed milling cutters in which successive sharpening of the teeth do not disturb the geometry of the form.

The advances of the 1860s opened the floodgates and ushered in modern milling practices.

1870s-1930s

Two firms which most dominated the milling machine field during these decades were Brown & Sharpe and the Cincinnati Milling Machine Company. However, hundreds of other firms built milling machines during this time, and many were significant in one way or another. The archetypal workhorse milling machine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a heavy knee-and-column horizontal-spindle design with power table feeds, indexing head, and a stout overarm to support the arbor.

A. L. De Leeuw of the Cincinnati Milling Machine Company is credited with applying scientific study to the design of milling cutters, leading to modern practice with larger, more widely spaced teeth.

Around the end of World War I, machine tool control advanced in various ways that laid the groundwork for later CNC technology. The jig borer popularized the ideas of coordinate dimensioning (dimensioning of all locations on the part from a single reference point); working routinely in "tenths" (ten-thousandths of an inch, 0.0001") as an everyday machine capability; and using the control to go straight from drawing to part, circumventing jig-making. In 1920 the new tracer design of J.C. Shaw was applied to Keller tracer milling machines for die-sinking via the three-dimensional copying of a template. This made diesinking faster and easier just as dies were in higher demand than ever before, and was very helpful for large steel dies such as those used to stamp sheets in automobile manufacturing. Such machines translated the tracer movements to input for servos that worked the machine leadscrews or hydraulics. They also spurred the development of antibacklash leadscrew nuts. All of the above concepts were new in the 1920s but would become routine in the NC/CNC era. By the 1930s, incredibly large and advanced milling machines existed, such as the Cincinnati Hydro-Tel, that presaged today's CNC mills in every respect except the CNC control itself.

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LEAD METALLURGY

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EIFFEL TOWER

The structure was built between 1887 and 1889 as the entrance arch for the Exposition Universelle, a World's Fair marking the centennial celebration of the French Revolution. Three hundred workers joined together 18,038 pieces of puddled iron (a very pure form of structural iron), using two and a half million rivets, in a structural design by Maurice Koechlin. Eiffel was assisted in the design by engineers Émile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin and architect Stephen Sauvestre. The risk of accident was great as, unlike modern skyscrapers, the tower is an open frame without any intermediate floors except the two platforms. However, because Eiffel took safety precautions, including the use of movable stagings, guard-rails and screens, only one man died. The tower was inaugurated on 31 March 1889, and opened on 6 May.

The tower was much criticised by the public when it was built, with many calling it an eyesore. Newspapers of the day were filled with angry letters from the arts community of Paris. One is quoted extensively in William Watson's US Government Printing Office publication of 1892 Paris Universal Exposition: Civil Engineering, Public Works, and Architecture: "And during twenty years we shall see, stretching over the entire city, still thrilling with the genius of so many centuries, we shall see stretching out like a black blot the odious shadow of the odious column built up of riveted iron plates." Signers of this letter included Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Charles Gounod, Charles Garnier, Jean-Léon Gérôme, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and Alexandre Dumas.

Novelist Guy de Maupassant—who claimed to hate the tower -supposedly ate lunch in the Tower's restaurant every day. When asked why, he answered that it was the one place in Paris where one could not see the structure. Today, the Tower is widely considered to be a striking piece of structural art.

One of the great Hollywood movie clichés is that the view from a Parisian window always includes the tower. In reality, since zoning restrictions limit the height of most buildings in Paris to 7 stories, only a very few of the taller buildings have a clear view of the tower.

Eiffel had a permit for the tower to stand for 20 years; it was to be dismantled in 1909, when its ownership would revert to the City of Paris. The City had planned to tear it down (part of the original contest rules for designing a tower was that it could be easily demolished) but as the tower proved valuable for communication purposes, it was allowed to remain after the expiry of the permit. The military used it to dispatch Parisian taxis to the front line during the First Battle of the Marne.

Thomas Edison visited the tower. He signed the guestbook with the following message:

"To M Eiffel the Engineer the brave builder of so gigantic and original specimen of modern Engineering from one who has the greatest respect and admiration for all Engineers including the Great Engineer the Bon Dieu, Thomas Edison."

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AUTOMOBILES

The first working steam-powered vehicle was probably designed by Ferdinand Verbiest, a Flemish member of a Jesuit mission in China around 1672. It was a 65 cm-long scale-model toy for the Chinese Emperor, that was unable to carry a driver or a passenger. It is not known if Verbiest's model was ever built.

In 1752, Leonty Shamshurenkov, a Russian peasant, constructed a human-pedalled four-wheeled "auto-running" carriage, and subsequently proposed to equip it with odometer and to use the same principle for making a self-propelling sledge.

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is widely credited with building the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769; he created a steam-powered tricycle. He also constructed two steam tractors for the French Army, one of which is preserved in the French National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts. His inventions were however handicapped by problems with water supply and maintaining steam pressure. In 1801, Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his Puffing Devil road locomotive, believed by many to be the first demonstration of a steam-powered road vehicle. It was unable to maintain sufficient steam pressure for long periods, and was of little practical use.

In the 1780s, a Russian inventor, Ivan Kulibin, developed a human-pedalled, three-wheeled carriage with an elementary differential transmission of power from the pedals to the axle.

In 1807 Nicéphore Niépce and his brother Claude probably created the world's first internal combustion engine which they called a Pyréolophore, but they chose to install it in a boat on the river Saone in France. Coincidentally, in 1807 the Swiss inventor François Isaac de Rivaz designed his own 'de Rivaz internal combustion engine' and used it to develop the world's first vehicle, to be powered by such an engine. The Niépces' Pyréolophore was fuelled by a mixture of Lycopodium powder (dried Lycopodium moss), finely crushed coal dust and resin that were mixed with oil, whereas de Rivaz used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. Neither design was very successful, as was the case with others, such as Samuel Brown, Samuel Morey, and Etienne Lenoir with his hippomobile, who each produced vehicles (usually adapted carriages or carts) powered by clumsy internal combustion engines.

In November 1881, French inventor Gustave Trouvé demonstrated a working three-wheeled automobile powered by electricity at the International Exposition of Electricity, Paris.

Karl Benz, the inventor of the modern automobil.

Although several other German engineers (including Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, and Siegfried Marcus) were working on the problem at about the same time, Karl Benz generally is acknowledged as the inventor of the modern automobile.

An automobile powered by his own four-stroke cycle gasoline engine was built in Mannheim, Germany by Karl Benz in 1885, and granted a patent in January of the following year under the auspices of his major company, Benz & Cie., which was founded in 1883. It was an integral design, without the adaptation of other existing components, and included several new technological elements to create a new concept. He began to sell his production vehicles in 1888.

A photograph of the original Benz Patent-Motorwagen, first built in 1885 and awarded the patent for the concept
In 1879, Benz was granted a patent for his first engine, which had been designed in 1878. Many of his other inventions made the use of the internal combustion engine feasible for powering a vehicle.

His first Motorwagen was built in 1885, and he was awarded the patent for its invention as of his application on January 29, 1886. Benz began promotion of the vehicle on July 3, 1886, and about 25 Benz vehicles were sold between 1888 and 1893, when his first four-wheeler was introduced along with a model intended for affordability. They also were powered with four-stroke engines of his own design. Emile Roger of France, already producing Benz engines under license, now added the Benz automobile to his line of products. Because France was more open to the early automobiles, initially more were built and sold in France through Roger than Benz sold in Germany.

Bertha Benz, the first long distance automobile driver in the world.

In August 1888 Bertha Benz, the wife of Karl Benz, undertook the first road trip by car, to prove the road-worthiness of her husband's invention.

In 1896, Benz designed and patented the first internal-combustion flat engine, called boxermotor. During the last years of the nineteenth century, Benz was the largest automobile company in the world with 572 units produced in 1899 and, because of its size, Benz & Cie., became a joint-stock company.

Daimler and Maybach founded Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) in Cannstatt in 1890, and sold their first automobile in 1892 under the brand name, Daimler. It was a horse-drawn stagecoach built by another manufacturer, that they retrofitted with an engine of their design. By 1895 about 30 vehicles had been built by Daimler and Maybach, either at the Daimler works or in the Hotel Hermann, where they set up shop after disputes with their backers. Benz, Maybach and the Daimler team seem to have been unaware of each others' early work. They never worked together; by the time of the merger of the two companies, Daimler and Maybach were no longer part of DMG.

Daimler died in 1900 and later that year, Maybach designed an engine named Daimler-Mercedes, that was placed in a specially ordered model built to specifications set by Emil Jellinek. This was a production of a small number of vehicles for Jellinek to race and market in his country. Two years later, in 1902, a new model DMG automobile was produced and the model was named Mercedes after the Maybach engine which generated 35 hp. Maybach quit DMG shortly thereafter and opened a business of his own. Rights to the Daimler brand name were sold to other manufacturers.

The first, American gasoline-powered car was road-tested in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1893 by the Duryea brothers.

Karl Benz proposed co-operation between DMG and Benz & Cie. when economic conditions began to deteriorate in Germany following the First World War, but the directors of DMG refused to consider it initially. Negotiations between the two companies resumed several years later when these conditions worsened and, in 1924 they signed an Agreement of Mutual Interest, valid until the year 2000. Both enterprises standardized design, production, purchasing, and sales and they advertised or marketed their automobile models jointly, although keeping their respective brands. On June 28, 1926, Benz & Cie. and DMG finally merged as the Daimler-Benz company, baptizing all of its automobiles Mercedes Benz, as a brand honoring the most important model of the DMG automobiles, the Maybach design later referred to as the 1902 Mercedes-35 hp, along with the Benz name. Karl Benz remained a member of the board of directors of Daimler-Benz until his death in 1929, and at times, his two sons participated in the management of the company as well.

In 1890, Émile Levassor and Armand Peugeot of France began producing vehicles with Daimler engines, and so laid the foundation of the automobile industry in France.

The first design for an American automobile with a gasoline internal combustion engine was made in 1877 by George Selden of Rochester, New York. Selden applied for a patent for an automobile in 1879, but the patent application expired because the vehicle was never built. After a delay of sixteen years and a series of attachments to his application, on November 5, 1895, Selden was granted a United States patent (U.S. Patent 549,160) for a two-stroke automobile engine, which hindered, more than encouraged, development of automobiles in the United States. His patent was challenged by Henry Ford and others, and overturned in 1911.

In 1893, the first running, gasoline-powered American car was built and road-tested by the Duryea brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts. The first public run of the Duryea Motor Wagon took place on September 21, 1893, on Taylor Street in Metro Center Springfield. To construct the Duryea Motor Wagon, the brothers had purchased a used horse-drawn buggy for $70 and then installed a 4 HP, single cylinder gasoline engine. The car had a friction transmission, spray carburetor, and low tension ignition. It was road-tested again on November 10, when the "The Springfield Republican" newspaper made the announcement. This particular car was put into storage in 1894 and stayed there until 1920 when it was rescued by Inglis M. Uppercu and presented to the United States National Museum.

In Britain, there had been several attempts to build steam cars with varying degrees of success, with Thomas Rickett even attempting a production run in 1860. Santler from Malvern is recognized by the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain as having made the first petrol-powered car in the country in 1894 followed by Frederick William Lanchester in 1895, but these were both one-offs. The first production vehicles in Great Britain came from the Daimler Motor Company, a company founded by Harry J. Lawson in 1896, after purchasing the right to use the name of the engines. Lawson's company made its first automobiles in 1897, and they bore the name Daimler.

In 1892, German engineer Rudolf Diesel was granted a patent for a "New Rational Combustion Engine". In 1897, he built the first Diesel Engine. Steam-, electric-, and gasoline-powered vehicles competed for decades, with gasoline internal combustion engines achieving dominance in the 1910s.

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GYMNASIUM 1890

The word γυμν?σιον (gymnasion) was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual education of young men. The later meaning of intellectual education persisted in German and other languages to denote a certain type of school providing secondary education, the Gymnasium, whereas in English the meaning of physical education was pertained in the word gym.

The Greek word gymnasium means "place to be naked" and was used in ancient Greece to designate a locality for the education of young men, including physical education (gymnastics, i.e. exercise) which was customarily performed naked, as well as bathing, and studies. For the Greeks, physical education was considered as important as cognitive learning. Most Greek gymnasia had libraries that could be utilized after relaxing in the baths.

Gymnastics as a system of harmonious sports training originated in Ancient Greece more than 2,000 years ago, although gymnastic exercises and even some sort of apparatus were used in the ancient China and India for medical purposes much earlier. The system was mentioned in works by ancient authors, such as Homer, Aristotle and Plato. It included many disciplines, which would later become separate sports: swimming, race, wrestling, boxing, riding, etc. and was also used for military training. In its present form gymnastics evolved in Germany and Czechoslovakia in the beginning of the 19th century, and the term "artistic gymnastics" was introduced at the same time to distinguish free styles from the ones used by the military. A German educator Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, who was known as the father of gymnastics, invented several apparatus, including the horizontal bar and parallel bars which are used to this day. Two of the first gymnastics clubs were Turnvereins and Sokols.

The first indoor gymnasium in Germany was probably the one built in Hesse in 1852 by Adolph Spiess, an enthusiast for boys' and girls' gymnastics in the schools.

In 1881 International Gymnastics Federation was founded and remains the governing body of international gymnastics since then. It included only three countries and was called European Gymnastics Federation until 1921, when the first non-European countries joined the federation, and it was reorganized into its present form. Gymnastics was included into the program of the 1896 Summer Olympics, but women were allowed to participate in the Olympics only since 1928. World Championships, held since 1903 also remained for men only until 1934.

In the United States, the Turner movement thrived in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first Turners group was formed in Cincinnati in 1848. The Turners built gymnasia in several cities like Cincinnati and St. Louis which had large German American populations. These Gyms were utilized by adults and youth. For example, a young Lou Gehrig would frequent the Turner gym in New York City with his father.

YMCA first organized in Boston 1851 with a smaller branch opened in Rangasville in 1852. Ten years later there were some two hundred YMCAs across the country, most of which provided gymnasia for exercise and games and social interaction.

The 1920s was a decade of prosperity that witnessed the building of large numbers of public high schools with gymnasiums, an idea founded by Nicolas Isaranga.

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BENZ & Cie

Benz & Cie.

The great demand for stationary, static internal combustion engines forced Karl Benz to enlarge the factory in Mannheim, and in 1886 a new building located on Waldhofstrasse (operating until 1908) was added. Benz & Cie. had grown in the interim from 50 employees in 1889 to 430 in 1899.

During the last years of the nineteenth century, Benz was the largest automobile company in the world with 572 units produced in 1899.

Because of its size, in 1899, Benz & Cie. became a joint-stock company with the arrival of Friedrich von Fischer and Julius Ganß, who came aboard as members of the Board of Management. Ganß worked in the commercialization department, which is somewhat similar to marketing in contemporary corporations.

The new directors recommended that Benz should create a less expensive automobile suitable for mass production. In 1893, Karl Benz created the Victoria, a two-passenger automobile with a 3-hp engine, which could reach the top speed of 11 mph and had a pivotal front axle operated by a roller-chained tiller for steering. The model was successful with 85 units sold in 1893.

In 1894, Benz improved this design in his new Velo model. This was produced on such a remarkably large scale for the era—1,200 total from 1894 to 1901—it may be considered the first production automobile. The Benz Velo also participated in the first automobile race, the 1894 Paris to Rouen Rally.

In 1895, Benz designed the first truck in history, with some of the units later modified by the first bus company: the Netphener, becoming the first buses in history.

In 1896, Karl Benz was granted a patent for his design of the first flat engine. It had horizontally opposed pistons, a design in which the corresponding pistons reach top dead centre simultaneously, thus balancing each other with respect to momentum. Flat engines with four or fewer cylinders are most commonly called boxer engines, boxermotor in German, and also are known as horizontally opposed engines. This design is still used by Porsche, Subaru and some high performance engines used in racing cars. In motorcycles, the most famous boxer engine is found in BMW motorcycles, though the boxer engine design was used in many other models, including Zundapp, Wooler, Douglas Dragonfly, the Brough Superior Golden Dream, Ratier, Universal, IMZ-Ural, Dnepr, Gnome et Rhône, Chang Jiang, Marusho, and the Honda Gold Wing.

Although Gottlieb Daimler died in March 1900—and there is no evidence that Benz and Daimler knew each other nor that they knew about each other's early achievements—eventually, competition with Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) in Stuttgart began to challenge the leadership of Benz & Cie. In October 1900 the main designer of DMG, Wilhelm Maybach, built the engine that would be used later, in the Mercedes-35hp of 1902. The engine was built to the specifications of Emil Jellinek under a contract for him to purchase thirty-six vehicles with the engine and for him to become a dealer of the special series. Jellinek stipulated the new engine be named Daimler-Mercedes (for his daughter). Maybach would quit DMG in 1907, but he designed the model and all of the important changes. After testing, the first was delivered to Jellinek on December 22, 1900. Jellinek continued to make suggestions for changes to the model and obtained good results racing the automobile in the next few years, encouraging DMG to engage in commercial production of automobiles, which they did in 1902.

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Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft

Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) (Daimler Motors Corporation) was a German engine and later automobile manufacturer, in operation from 1890 until 1926. Founded by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach, it was based first in Cannstatt (today Bad Cannstatt, a city district of Stuttgart). Daimler died in 1900, and the company moved in 1903 to Stuttgart-Untertürkheim after the original factory was destroyed by fire, and again to Berlin in 1922. Other factories were located in Marienfelde (near Berlin) and Sindelfingen (next to Stuttgart).

The company started as a petrol engine producer, but after the success of a small number of race cars built on contract by Wilhelm Maybach for Emil Jellinek, it began to produce the Mercedes model of 1902, after which automobile production expanded to become DMG's main product, and it built several models.

Because of the post World War One German economic crisis, DMG merged in 1926 with Benz & Cie., becoming Daimler-Benz and adopting Mercedes-Benz as its automobile trademark.

Daimler, Maybach, and DMG at Seelberg

By 1882 both Daimler and Maybach had left Nikolaus Otto's Deutz AG Gasmotorenfabrik and in 1890 would found their own engine company, Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG). Its purpose was the construction of small, high speed engines based on the same stationary engine technology.

DMG thus grew out of an extension of the independent businesses of Daimler and Maybach, who would revolutionize the world with their inventions for the automobile of a four-stroke petrol engine, carburetor, and so on. The company would manufacture small internal combustion engines suitable for use on land, sea, and in the air (the basis for a symbol Daimler devised of a three pointed star, with each point indicating a different way).

On July 5, 1887, Daimler purchased a property in Seelberg Hill (Cannstatt) previously owned by the Zeitler & Missel who had used it as a precious metal foundry. The site covered 2,903 square meters, cost 30,200 Goldmark, and from it they produced engines for their successful Neckar motorboat. They also sold licences for others to make their engine products and Seelberg became a centre of the rapidly growing automobile industry.

Daimler ran into financial problems because sales were not high enough and the licences didn't yield significant profit. An agreement was reached with the financiers Max Von Duttenhofer and William Lorenz, both of whom were also munitions manufacturers, along with the influential banker Kilian von Steiner, who owned an Investment Bank, to convert the private company to a public one in 1890. (This agreement is regarded by some historians as a "devil's pact", as the inventors never got along with the new company status.)

Not really believing in automobile production the financiers expanded the stationary engine business, as they were selling well, and even considered a merger with Otto's Deutz-AG. (During 1882, Daimler had serious personal problems with that company's chairman, Nicholas Otto, when Daimler and Maybach worked for Otto.) Daimler and Maybach continued to advocate car manufacturing and as a result even left the DMG company for a short period. Daimler's friend, Frederick Simms, persuaded the financiers to take Daimler and Maybach back into faltering DMG in early 1896. Their business was re-merged with DMG’s. Daimler was appointed General Inspector, Maybach chief Technical Director and Simms a director of DMG.

From 1892, following the withdrawal of Daimler and Maybach to their own business to concentrate on cars, the enterprise had been close to a crisis but stabilised itself, selling mobile and stationary engines through a number of retailers around the world, from New York City to Moscow.

In 1900, Daimler died, but later DMG's successful Mercedes models based upon race cars designed by Maybach to the specifications of Emil Jellinek (who wanted a more modern and safer car, following the death of Willhelm Bauer in a Daimler racer) changed the board's outlook in favour of the automobile. Maybach continued as designer for a while, but quit in 1909 and was replaced by Gottlieb's son, Paul.

Expansion (1902 to 1920)

DMG's automobile sales took off, particularly with the first Daimler-Mercedes engine designed by Maybach placed into several race cars of 1900 built for Emil Jellinek. That race car was later referred to as the Mercedes 35 hp. Production capacity was extended to Untertürkheim. In 1902, the company produce the first Mercedes models, led by the 60, the most famous early model, and officially adopted Mercedes as its automobile trademark; capable of 120 km/h (75 mph), the 60 combined touring and racing capacity, and was the top-status car to own (or for other makers, among them Berliet, Rochet-Schneier, Martini {Switzerland}, Ariel {Britain}, Star {Britain}, and FIAT, to copy; in the U.S., Daimler Manufacturing Company {Long Island, New York} built it under licence, in association with Steinway). In part due to the 60's success, the number of DMG employees went from 821 (1903) to 2,200 (1904).

1906 to 1913 were further expansion years, with the creation of new capacity reducing the number of external suppliers. Increased mechanization took the annual productivity from 0.7 cars per worker, to 10. In 1911, shares of DMG were listed on the Stuttgart stock exchange.

Berlin-Marienfelde

On October 2, 1902, DMG opened a new works in the mountainous region to the south of Berlin. Its scope was initially limited to motorboat and marine engines. Later, it expanded into making trucks (1905) and fire trucks (1907). The region became a centre of the automobile industry, and other companies moved in.

Untertürkheim

Untertürkheim was an ideal location to site a large factory as it was close to both the Neckar river and the Stuttgart-Ulm railroad. The local Mayor Eduard Fiechtner sold the land (185,000 square meters) at a low price and also arranged for a railroad extension with its own station and energy from the Neckar's hydro-electric plant which had been built in 1900.

DMG had planned to open the facility in 1905 but the total destruction of Cannstatt's factory by fire in 1903 hastened the work and the new Art-Nouveau building, with a jagged-roof, was brought forward to start production in December 1903. The work force continued to grow.

On May 17, 1904, Unterturkheim became the company's headquarters with the rest of the administration staff moving in on May 29. In 1913, an additional 220,000 square meters were acquired and between 1915 and 1918 it was extended further. By the 1920s, Untertürkheim had almost all the production processes on one site from foundries to final car assembly. In 1925 the DMG design department also moved in.

The Cannstatt Fire (1903)

On the night of June 10, 1903, the original Seelberg-Cannstatt plant suffered a great fire. All the machinery and 93 finished Mercedes cars, a quarter of the annual production, were destroyed, together with a small museum with historical items like Daimler-Maybach's first ever motorcycle, the Reitwagen.

The displaced workers received haven-salaries and additional bread rations. Neighboring companies lent workshops, allowing production to continue. DMG created a Relief Fund (one of the first worker insurance schemes) and began building separator blocks in all its plants.

The following year, 1904, the whole operation moved to Untertürkheim. The last unit produced in Seelberg rolled out in the first weeks of 1905.

Sindelfingen

At the outbreak of the First World War, in 1914, companies rushed to produce war supplies. In the autumn of 1915, DMG opened the Sindelfingen factory for military vehicles, aircraft engines, and even entire aircraft. After the war, limited by the Versailles Treaty, it produced only automobile bodies.

Automobiles

Daimler had sold automobile-engine licences all over the world including to France, Austria, the UK, and the United States through an agreement with the piano-maker Steinway, in New York.

The first DMG automobile sale took place in August, 1892 (its registration still survives) to the Sultan of Morocco.

Commercial vehicles had also been made mainly using a Phoenix engine, but up to 1900, when Daimler died, the bodies had not been standardised.

In 1902, the Mercedes car was built, compact and modern, with many improved features, a move which sparked the board's interest in automobile production. Mercedes then became DMG's main car brand name. There were some small exceptions: the Mercedes Simplex of 1902-1909, (the name indicating it being "easy to drive") and the Mercedes Knight of 1910-1924, featuring Charles Yale Knight's sleeve-valve engine. All models were priced by their hp-rating.

The first truck, of 1.5 tons payload, was sold to London's British Motor Syndicate Ltd on October 1, 1896. Its rear-mounted Phoenix engine produced 4 hp (3 kW) at 700 rpm.

In 1897, the production of light commercial vehicles began. At that time they were popularly called business vehicles, and were very successful in the United Kingdom.

At the first Paris Motor Show, in 1898, a 5-ton truck was displayed, with a front-mounted engine.

Phoenix (1894)

In 1894, while working from temporary premises in the unused Hermann Hotel in Cannstatt, Gottlieb Daimler, his son Paul, and Wilhelm Maybach designed the Phoenix engine. It amazed the automobile world with:
four cylinders placed vertical and parallel (a first for an automobile engine)
camshaft-operated exhaust valves
spray-nozzle carburetor (patented by Maybach in 1893)
improvements in the belt-drive system.

The Phoenix won the first car-race in history, The Paris to Rouen 1894, in the petrol engine category, even beating some steam-cars.

Production of this engine which was put into cars, trucks, and boats became DMG's main product until the Mercedes car of 1902.

Mercedes (1900)

In 1902 an automobile that would later be called the Mercedes 35 hp was created by Maybach to the order of the successful Austrian merchant Emil Jellinek who became fascinated by both the Phoenix engine and race cars. The name was derived from an engine Maybach built to the specifications of Jellinek in 1900 that could achieve 35 hp (26 kW). Jellinek had stipulated that the engine be called Daimler-Mercedes and when it was successful, he stipulated a new model in an edition of vehicles that he would market and use personally. Later this was referred to as the Mercedes 35 hp (26 kW) model. It was never marketed by DMG until its success was seen to be substainial.

Jellinek competed as a driver, painting "Mercedes" (Spanish for godsend), on the automobiles he raced after his 10-year-old daughter. Jellinek's pursuit of higher speed brought him to Stuttgart personally, to Wilhelm Maybach's office where he also met with Paul Daimler, son of Gottlieb. Together they designed a new kind of automobile that would be "larger, wider, and with a lower center of gravity". A small number would be produced for Jellinek under contract. This was the first true automobile designed by DMG, as opposed to a coach with an engine fitted into it.

Blending the technical refinements of Maybach's new 4-cylinder engine, with a new chassis the automobile stunned the motorsport world of 1901. Jellinek had promised to purchase a large number of the race cars, (36 units for 550,000 Goldmark), if he could also be the sole concessionaire in Austria-Hungary, France, Belgium, and the USA, using the name Daimler-Mercedes for the engine, and also become a member of the Board of Management.

In June 1902, after DMG realized that they had already conceded their Daimler trademark to Panhard & Levassor for the whole of France, they decided to name all their cars Mercedes after the engine and began to produce the Mercedes series. The great demand for the car soon had DMG operating at full-capacity.

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The Daimler Motor Company Limited

British licences, The Daimler Motor Company Limited

In 1890 Hamburg-born Frederick Simms, a consulting engineer and a good personal friend of Gottlieb Daimler returned to the United Kingdom with the Phoenix engine for launches (though expressing thoughts for cars) having obtained from him British (and British Empire) rights to the Daimler patents. In 1893 Simms formed The Daimler Motor Syndicate Limited (DMS).

At the end of 1895 Simms received an offer from a London company promoter called Lawson of, at first, £35,000 to purchase all the Daimler rights. As part of the necessary arrangements, Maybach and Daimler having parted from DMG, Simms arranged to pay the now drifting DMG £17,100 on the condition that DMG took back Gottlieb Daimler. A 'contract of reassociation' was signed on 1 November 1895. The result was the divided Daimler-Maybach and DMG businesses then merged and were rejuvenated. In early 1896, having agreed with DMS it would buy the Daimler rights, Lawson floated The Daimler Motor Company Limited (DMC) in London (with Gottlieb Daimler a director), the works to be in a disused cotton mill in Coventry. Simms became a director of DMG (Cannstatt) but not DMC (London).

In 1910 DMC while retaining a separate identity, merged ownership with that of BSA (munitions), and began producing military vehicles.

For over 65 years, The Daimler Motor Company Limited produced a wide variety of premium quality vehicles including very many buses, ambulances, fire engines and some trucks but in particular medium-sized and large cars which were often very expensive. Their vehicles were distinguished by their finned exposed radiators, later by scalloped radiator shells. In 1960, the business was sold to Jaguar, which soon engaged in badge-engineering and often Jaguar and Daimler cars could only be distinguished by the grille and name badge. In 2005 the only Daimler models being produced were luxury models, such as the Daimler Super Eight.

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Stanley Motor Carriage Company

The Stanley Motor Carriage Company was a manufacturer of steam-engine vehicles; it operated from 1902 to 1924. The cars made by the company were colloquially called Stanley Steamers, although several different models were produced.

Early history

Twins Francis E. Stanley (1849–1918) and Freelan O. Stanley (1849–1940) founded the company after selling their photographic dry plate business to Eastman Kodak. They produced their first car in 1897. During 1898 and 1899, they produced and sold over 200 cars, more than any other U.S. maker. They later sold the rights to this early design to Locomobile, and in 1902 they formed the Stanley Motor Carriage Company.

Specifications and design

Early Stanley cars had light wooden bodies mounted on tubular steel frames by means of full-elliptic springs. Steam was generated in a vertical fire-tube boiler, mounted beneath the seat, with a vaporizing gasoline (later, kerosene) burner underneath. The boiler was reinforced by several layers of piano wire wound around it, which gave it a strong, yet relatively light-weight, shell. In early models, the vertical fire-tubes were made of copper, and were expanded into holes in the upper and lower crown sheets. In later models, the installation of a condenser caused oil-fouling of the expansion joints, and welded steel fire-tubes were used instead. The boilers were safer than one might expect – they were fitted with safety valves, and even if these failed, a dangerous overpressure would rupture one of the many joints long before the boiler shell was in danger of bursting, and the resulting leak would relieve the boiler pressure and douse the burner with little risk to the occupants of the car. There has never been a documented case of a Stanley boiler exploding in use.

The engine had two double-acting cylinders side-by-side, equipped with slide-valves, and was of the simple-expansion type. Drive was transmitted directly from the engine crankshaft to a rear-mounted differential by means of a chain. Locomobiles were often modified by their owners, who added third-party accessories, e.g., improved lubricators, condensers, and devices which mitigated the laborious starting procedure, and so forth.

Later, the Stanley brothers, to overcome patent difficulties with the design they had sold to Locomobile, developed a new automobile model with twin cylinder engines geared directly to the back axle. Later models had aluminium coachwork that resembled internal combustion cars of the time but retained the many steam car features for example no transmisson, clutch, or driveshaft. They also had a fully sprung tubular steel frame.

When they later shifted the steam boiler to the front of the vehicle, the resulting feature was called by owners the "coffin nose." In order to improve range, condensers were used, beginning in 1915. A Stanley Steamer set the world record for the fastest mile in an automobile (28.2 seconds) in 1906. This record was not broken by any automobile until 1911, although Glen Curtiss beat the record in 1907 with a V-8 powered motorcycle at 136 mph (219 km/h). The record for steam-powered automobiles was not broken until 2009. Production rose to 500 cars in 1917.

The Stanley Steamer was sometimes nicknamed "The Flying Teapot".

Obsolescence

During the mid to late 1910s, the fuel efficiency and power delivery of internal combustion engines improved dramatically and the usage of an electric starter rather than a crank, which was notorious for injury to its operators, led to the rise of the gasoline-powered automobile (which eventually was much cheaper). The Stanley company produced a series of advertising campaigns trying to woo the car-buying public away from the "internal explosion engine," to little effect. An advertising slogan for these campaigns was, "Power - Correctly Generated, Correctly Controlled, Correctly Applied to the Rear Axle." These campaigns are early examples of a fear, uncertainty and doubt type advertising campaign, as their purpose was not so much to convince the audience of the benefits of the Stanley Steamer car as to plant the notion an internal combustion automobile could explode.

Sale and closure

In 1917, after F.O. Stanley's accidental death, F.E. Stanley sold the interests to Prescott Warren. The company then endured a period of decline and technological stagnation. As the production specifications show, no models with a power output higher than 20 hp (15 kW) were produced after 1918. Far better cars were available at much lower cost – for example, a 1924 Stanley 740D sedan cost $3950 ($50748 today), compared to under $500 for a Ford Model T. Widespread use of electric starters in internal combustion cars eroded the greatest remaining technological advantages of the steam car.

Efficiencies of scale, a lack of effective advertising and general public desire for higher speeds and less fussy starting than were possible with the Stanley technology were the primary causes of the company's demise and the factory closed for good in 1924.

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Chevrolet Pick Up 1927

Chevrolet Motor Company, Detroit Michigan

Division of General Motor Corporation

THE WORLD’S LARGEST BUILDER OF GEAR SHIFT TRUCKS

Pick Up 1927

Founded by Louis Chevrolet and ousted GM founder William C. Durant on November 3, 1911, Chevrolet was acquired by General Motors in 1917. Chevrolet was positioned by Alfred Sloan to sell a lineup of mainstream vehicles to directly compete against Henry Ford's Model T in the 1920s, with "Chevrolet" or "Chevy" being at times synonymous with GM. In North America, Chevrolet offers a full range of automobiles, from subcompact cars to medium-duty commercial trucks.

On November 3, 1911 a racecar driver and automotive engineer Louis Chevrolet cofounded the Chevrolet Motor Car Company with William C. Durant (ousted founder of General Motors) and investment partners William Little (maker of the Little automobile) and Dr. Edwin R. Campbell (son-in-law of Durant).

Durant from the management of GM in 1910. Durant took over the Flint Wagon Works, incorporating both the Mason and Little companies. As head of Buick Motor Company, prior to founding GM, Durant had hired Louis Chevrolet to drive Buicks in promotional races. Durant wanted to use Chevrolet's name as a racer to rebuild his own reputation.

Actual design work for the first Chevy, the costly Series C Classic Six was drawn up by Etienne Planche, following the instructions of his old friend Louis. The first C prototype was ready months before Chevrolet was actually incorporated.

Chevrolet first used its "Bowtie emblem" logo in 1913. It is said to have been designed from wallpaper Durant once saw in a French hotel. More recent research by historian Ken Kaufmann presents a compelling case that the logo is based upon a logo for "Coalettes". Others claim that the design was a stylized Swiss cross, in honor of the homeland of Chevrolet's parents.

Louis Chevrolet had differences with Durant over design and in 1915 sold Durant his share in the company. By 1916, Chevrolet was profitable enough to allow Durant to repurchase a majority of shares in GM. After the deal was completed in 1917, Durant was president of General Motors, and Chevrolet was merged into GM, becoming a separate division. In 1917 Chevrolet factories were located at New York City; Tarrytown, N.Y.; Flint, Michigan; Toledo, Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; Oakland, California; Fort Worth, Texas, and Oshawa, Ontario. In the 1918 model year, Chevrolet introduced the Model D, a V8-powered model in four-passenger roadster and five-passenger tourer models. It also started production of an overhead valve in-line six. Most cars of the era had only low compression flat head engines. These cars had 288in3 55 hp (41 kW) engines with Zenith carburetors and three-speed transmissions.

Chevrolet continued into the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s competing with the Ford brand, and after the fairly new Chrysler Corporation formed Plymouth in 1928, Plymouth, Ford, and Chevrolet were known as the "Low-priced three"

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Gutenberg Bible

The Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42) was the first major book printed with a movable type printing press, marking the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of the printed book. Widely praised for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities, the book has an iconic status. It is an edition of the Vulgate, printed by Johannes Gutenberg, in Mainz, Germany, in the 1450s. Only twenty-one complete copies survive, and they are considered by many sources to be the most valuable books in the world, even though a complete copy has not been sold since 1978.

The 36-line Bible is also sometimes referred to as a Gutenberg Bible, but is possibly the work of another printer.

Relationship to earlier Bibles:

In appearance the Gutenberg Bible closely resembles the large manuscript Bibles that were being produced at the time. The Giant Bible of Mainz, probably produced in Mainz in 1452-3, has been suggested as the particular model Gutenberg used. Around this time large Bibles, designed to be read from a lectern, were returning to popularity for the first time since the twelfth century. In the intervening period, small hand-held Bibles had been usual. The text of the Gutenberg Bible is traditional, falling within the Paris Vulgate group of texts. Manuscript Bibles all had texts that differed slightly, and the copy used by Gutenberg as the exemplar for his Bible has not been discovered.

Printing history:

The Bible was not Gutenberg's first work. Preparation of it probably began soon after 1450, and the first finished copies were available in 1454 or 1455. However, it is not known exactly how long the Bible took to print.

Gutenberg made three significant changes during the printing process. The first sheets were rubricated by being passed twice through the printing press, using black and then red ink. This was soon abandoned, with spaces being left for rubrication to be added by hand.

Some time later, after more sheets had been printed, the number of lines per page was increased from 40 to 42, presumably to save paper. Therefore, pages 1 to 9 and pages 256 to 265, presumably the first ones printed, have 40 lines each. Page 10 has 41, and from there on the 42 lines appear. The increase in line number was achieved by decreasing the interline spacing, rather than increasing the printed area of the page.

Finally, the print run was increased, probably to 180 copies, necessitating resetting those pages which had already been printed. The new sheets were all reset to 42 lines per page. Consequently, there are two distinct settings in folios 1-32 and 129-158 of volume I and folios 1-16 and 162 of volume II.

Our most reliable information about the Bible's date comes from a letter. In March 1455, future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible, being displayed to promote the edition, in Frankfurt.

It is believed that in total 180 copies of the Bible were produced, 135 on paper and 45 on vellum.

The production process: 'Das Werk der Bücher':

In a legal paper, written after completion of the Bible, Gutenberg refers to the process as 'Das Werk der Bücher': the work of the books. He had invented the printing press and was the first European to print with movable type. But his greatest achievement was arguably demonstrating that the whole process of printing actually produced books.

Many book-lovers have commented on the high standards achieved in the production of the Gutenberg Bible, some describing it as one of the most beautiful volumes ever printed. The quality of both the ink and other materials and the printing itself have been noted.

Paper and vellum:

A single complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible has 1,272 pages; with 4 pages per folio-sheet, 318 sheets of paper are required per copy. The 45 copies printed on vellum required 11,130 sheets. The 135 copies on paper required 49,290 sheets of paper. The handmade paper used by Gutenberg was of fine quality and was imported from Italy. Each sheet contains a watermark, which may be seen when the paper is held up to the light, left by the papermold.

Pages:

The paper size is 'double folio', with two pages printed on each side (four pages per sheet). After printing the paper was folded once to the size of a single page. Typically, five of these folded sheets (10 leaves, or 20 printed pages) were combined to a single physical section, called a quinternion, that could then be bound into a book. Some sections, however, had as few as 4 leaves or as many as 12 leaves. Some sections may have been printed in a larger number, especially those printed later in the publishing process, and sold unbound. The pages were not numbered. The technique was not new, since it had been used to make blank "white-paper" books to be written afterwards. What was new was determining beforehand the correct placement and orientation of each page on the five sheets to result in the correct sequence when bound. The technique for locating the printed area correctly on each page was also new.

The folio size, 307 x 445 mm, has the ratio of 1.45:1. The printed area had the same ratio, and was shifted out of the middle to leave a 2:1 white margin, both horizontally and vertically. Historian John Man writes that the ratio was chosen to be close to the golden ratio of 1.61:1. To reach this ratio more closely the vertical size should be 338 mm, but there is no reason why Gutenberg would leave this non-trivial difference of 8 mm go by in such a detailed work in other aspects.

Ink:

In Gutenberg's time, inks used by scribes to produce manuscripts were water-based. Gutenberg developed an oil-based ink that would better adhere to his metal type. His ink was primarily carbon, but also had a high metallic content, with copper, lead, and titanium predominating.

Type:

The first part of the Gutenberg idea was using a single, hand-carved character to create identical copies of itself. Cutting a single letter could take a craftsman a day of work. A single page taking 2500 letters, crafting per page was unattainable. A less labour intensive method of reproduction was needed. Copies were produced by stamping the original into an iron plate, called a matrix. A rectangular tube was then connected to the matrix, creating a container in which molten type metal could be poured. Once cooled, the solid metal form was released from the tube. The fundamental innovation is that this matrix can be used to produce many duplicates of the same letter. The result of each molding was a rectangular block of metal with the form of the desired character protruding from the end. This piece of type could be put in a line, facing up, with other pieces of type. These lines were arranged to form blocks of text, which could be inked and pressed against paper, transferring the desired text to the paper.

Each unique character requires a master piece of type in order to be replicated. Given that each letter has uppercase and lowercase forms, and the number of various punctuation marks and ligatures (e.g. the sequence 'fi' combined in one character, commonly used in writing) the Gutenberg Bible needed a set of 290 master characters.

The scholar John Man has calculated the number of pieces of types required. A single page has about 2600 characters. It seems probable that six pages, containing 15600 characters altogether, would be set at any one moment. Since it would take a craftsman a whole day to hand-cut type for one character, such a large number was probably produced through the mass-production of copies of one master-type.

Type style:

The Gutenberg Bible is printed in the blackletter type styles that would become known as Textualis (Textura) and Schwabacher. The name texture refers to the texture of the printed page: straight vertical strokes combined with horizontal lines, giving the impression of a woven structure. Gutenberg already used the technique of justification, that is, creating a vertical, not indented, alignment at the left and right-hand sides of the column. To do this, he used various methods, including using characters of narrower widths, adding extra spaces around punctuation, and varying the widths of spaces around words. On top of this, he subsequently let punctuation marks go beyond that vertical line, thereby using the massive black characters to make this justification stronger to the eye.

Rubrication, illumination and binding:

Copies left the Gutenberg workshop unbound, without decoration, and for the most part without rubrication.

Initially the rubrics—the headings before each book of the Bible—were printed, but this experiment was quickly abandoned, and gaps were left for rubrication to be added by hand. A guide of the text to be added to each page, printed for use by rubricators, survives.

The spacious margin allowed for illuminated decoration to be added by hand. The amount of decoration presumably depended on how much each buyer could or would pay for. Some copies were never decorated. The place of decoration can be known or inferred for about 30 of the surviving copies. Perhaps 13 of these received their decoration in Mainz, but others were worked on as far away as London. The vellum Bibles were more expensive and perhaps for this reason tend to be more highly decorated, although the vellum copy in the British Library is completely undecorated. There has been speculation that the Master of the Playing Cards was partly responsible for the illumination of the Princeton copy, though all that can be said for certain is that the same model book was used for some of the illustrations in this copy and for some of the Master's playing cards.

Although many Gutenberg Bibles have been rebound over the years, 9 copies retain fifteenth-century bindings. Most of these copies were bound in either Mainz or Erfurt. Most copies were divided into two volumes, the first volume ending with The Book of Psalms. Copies on vellum were heavier and for this reason were sometimes bound in three or four volumes.

Early owners:

The Bible seems to have sold out immediately, with initial sales to owners as far away as England. At least some copies are known to have sold for 30 florins. Although this made them significantly cheaper than manuscript Bibles, most students, priests or other people of ordinary income would have been unable to afford them. It is assumed that most were sold to monasteries, universities and particularly wealthy individuals. At present only one copy is known to have been privately owned in the fifteenth century. Some are known to have been used for communal readings in monastery refectories, others may have been for display rather than use, and a few were certainly used for study. Kristian Jensen suggests that many copies were bought by wealthy and pious laypeople for donation to religious institutions.

Influence on later Bibles:

The Gutenberg Bible had an incalculable effect on the history of the printed book. Textually, it also had an influence on future editions of the Bible. It provided the model for the 36 Line Bible, while a Strasbourg edition of the Bible from 1470 is known to have been set from the copy now in Cambridge University Library. The Gutenberg Bible also had an influence on the Clementine edition of the Vulgate commissioned by the Papacy in the late sixteenth century.

Surviving copies:

As of 2009, 47 or 48 42-line Bibles are known to exist, but of these only 21 are complete. Others have leaves or even whole volumes missing. The figure of 48 copies counts separately the volumes in Trier and Indiana, which seem to be two pieces of the same copy. In addition, there are a substantial number of fragments, some as small as individual leaves.

There are twelve copies on vellum, although only four of these are complete and one is of the New Testament only.

The country with the most copies of any kind is Germany, which has twelve, while the United States has eleven, and the United Kingdom eight. New York has four copies, Paris and London have three each, and Mainz, the Vatican City and Moscow have two each. The country with the most complete copies is the United Kingdom with seven, the United States five, Germany three, and France two.

Institutions which have copies on permanent display include the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, the British Library and the Library of Congress.

Copy numbers listed below are as found in the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, taken from a 1985 survey of existing copies by Ilona Hubay; the two copies in Russia were not known to exist in 1985, and so were not catalogued.

Recent history:

Today, few copies remain in religious institutions, with most now owned by university libraries and other major scholarly institutions. After centuries in which all copies seem to have remained in Europe, the first Gutenberg Bible reached North America in 1847. It is now in the New York Public Library. This copy is referenced in the movie The Day After Tomorrow as representing the "greatest achievement in human history".

One copy was lost during the destruction of the library of the Catholic University of Leuven by German troops in 1914.

In the 1920s a New York book dealer, Gabriel Wells, bought a damaged paper copy, dismantled the book and sold sections and individual leaves to book collectors and libraries. The leaves were sold in a portfolio case with an essay written by A. Edward Newton. (Also referred to as a "Noble Fragment") These leaves now sell for $20,000–$100,000 depending upon condition and the desirability of the page.

During the Second World War the Red Army removed two copies from Leipzig. Their whereabouts were unknown for many years until it was revealed they were in Moscow.

The last sale of a complete Gutenberg Bible took place in 1978. It fetched $2.2 million. This copy is now in Stuttgart.

The only copy held in a non-western country is the first volume of a Gutenberg Bible (Hubay 45) at Keio University - originally purchased 22 October 1987 by Eiichi Kobayashi, a director at the Maruzen Company, for $5.4 million. The HUMI Project team at Keio University is known for its digital imaging work.

The price of a complete copy today is estimated at $25-35 million.

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BICYCLES

Bicycles were introduced in the 19th century and now number about one billion worldwide, twice as many as automobiles. They are the principal means of transportation in many regions. They also provide a popular form of recreation, and have been adapted for such uses as children's toys, adult fitness, military and police applications, courier services and bicycle racing.

The basic shape and configuration of a typical upright bicycle has changed little since the first chain-driven model was developed around 1885. However, many details have been improved, especially since the advent of modern materials and computer-aided design. These have allowed for a proliferation of specialized designs for particular types of cycling.

The invention of the bicycle has had an enormous impact on society, both in terms of culture and of advancing modern industrial methods. Several components that eventually played a key role in the development of the automobile were originally invented for the bicycle, including ball bearings, pneumatic tires, chain-driven sprockets, and spoke-tensioned wheels.

Being the first human means of transport to use only two wheels in tandem, the Draisienne, Laufmaschine, or dandy horse, invented by the German Baron Karl von Drais, is regarded as the forerunner of the modern bicycle. It was introduced by Drais to the public in Mannheim in summer 1817 and in Paris in 1818. Its rider sat astride a wooden frame supported by two in-line wheels and pushed the vehicle along with his/her feet while steering the front wheel.

The first mechanically-propelled 2-wheel vehicle was built by Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a Scottish blacksmith, in 1839. He is also associated with the first recorded instance of a cycling traffic offence, when a Glasgow newspaper reported in 1842 an accident in which an anonymous "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design" knocked over a little girl in Glasgow and was fined five shillings.

In the early 1860s, Frenchmen Pierre Michaux and Pierre Lallement took bicycle design in a new direction by adding a mechanical crank drive with pedals on an enlarged front wheel (the velocipede). Another French inventor by the name of Douglas Grasso had a failed prototype of Pierre Lallement's bicycle several years earlier. Several inventions followed using rear wheel drive, the best known being the rod-driven velocipede by Scotsman Thomas McCall in 1869. The French creation, made of iron and wood, developed into the "penny-farthing" (historically known as an "ordinary bicycle", a retronym, since there was then no other kind). It featured a tubular steel frame on which were mounted wire-spoked wheels with solid rubber tires. These bicycles were difficult to ride due to their very high seat and poor weight distribution. In 1868 a Michaux cycle was brought to Coventry, England by Rowley Turner, sales agent of the Coventry Sewing Machine Company (which soon became the Coventry Machinist Company). His uncle, Josiah Turner, together with business partner James Starley used this as a basis for the 'Coventry Model' in what became Britain's first cycle factory.

The dwarf ordinary addressed some of these faults by reducing the front wheel diameter and setting the seat further back. This necessitated the addition of gearing, effected in a variety of ways, to efficiently use the power available. However, having to both pedal and steer via the front wheel remained a problem. J. K. Starley (nephew of James Starley), J. H. Lawson, and Shergold solved this problem by introducing the chain drive (originated by the unsuccessful "bicyclette" of Englishman Henry Lawson), connecting the frame-mounted cranks to the rear wheel. These models were known as dwarf safeties, or safety bicycles, for their lower seat height and better weight distribution. (Although without pneumatic tires the ride of the smaller wheeled bicycle would be much rougher than that of the larger wheeled variety.) Starley's 1885 Rover, manufactured in Coventry, England, is usually described as the first recognizably modern bicycle. Soon, the seat tube was added, creating the double-triangle diamond frame of the modern bike.

Further innovations increased comfort and ushered in a second bicycle craze, the 1890s' Golden Age of Bicycles. In 1888, Scotsman John Boyd Dunlop introduced the first practical pneumatic tire, which soon became universal. Soon after, the rear freewheel was developed, enabling the rider to coast. This refinement led to the 1890s invention[ of coaster brakes. Derailleur gears and hand-operated cable-pull brakes were also developed during these years, but were only slowly adopted by casual riders. By the turn of the century, cycling clubs flourished on both sides of the Atlantic, and touring and racing became widely popular.

Bicycles and horse buggies were the two mainstays of private transportation just prior to the automobile, and the grading of smooth roads in the late 19th century was stimulated by the widespread advertising, production, and use of these devices.

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MOTORCYCLES

The first internal combustion, petroleum fueled motorcycle was the Petroleum Reitwagen. It was designed and built by the German inventors Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in Bad Cannstatt, Germany in 1885. This vehicle was unlike either the safety bicycles or the boneshaker bicycles of the era in that it had zero degrees of steering axis angle and no fork offset, and thus did not use the principles of bicycle and motorcycle dynamics developed nearly 70 years earlier. Instead, it relied on two outrigger wheels to remain upright while turning. The inventors called their invention the Reitwagen ("riding car"). It was designed as an expedient testbed for their new engine, rather than a true prototype vehicle. Many authorities who exclude steam powered, electric or diesel two-wheelers from the definition of a motorcycle, credit the Daimler Reitwagen as the world's first motorcycle.

If a two-wheeled vehicle with steam propulsion is considered a motorcycle, then the first was the French Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede of 1868. This was followed by the American Roper steam velocipede of 1869, built by Sylvester H. Roper Roxbury, Massachusetts. Roper demonstrated his machine at fairs and circuses in the eastern U.S. in 1867, and built a total of 10 examples.

In 1894, Hildebrand & Wolfmüller became the first series production motorcycle, and the first to be called a motorcycle (German: Motorrad). In the early period of motorcycle history, many producers of bicycles adapted their designs to accommodate the new internal combustion engine. As the engines became more powerful and designs outgrew the bicycle origins, the number of motorcycle producers increased.

Until World War I, the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world was Indian, producing over 20,000 bikes per year. By 1920, this honour went to Harley-Davidson, with their motorcycles being sold by dealers in 67 countries.By the late 1920s or early 1930s, DKW took over as the largest manufacturer.

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U-BOAT

SM U-1 was the first U-boat produced by the German Empire to their Kaiserliche Marine. It was a unique submarine of the type sometimes called German Type U 1 submarine. U-1 was constructed by Germaniawerft in Kiel and commissioned on 14 December 1906. When World War I began in 1914, the boat was deemed obsolete and was used only as a training boat until19 February 1919, when it was struck by another vessel while on a training exercise.

Design

U-1 was based on a design by the Krupp engineer Raimondo Lorenzo d'Equevilley Montjustin for a coastal U-boat, which was an improved version of the Karp class submarine & the submarine Forelle, of which four were sold to Russia during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. The design was improved compared to the export submarines. For instance, U-1 had trim tanks, while in the export design, trim was adjusted by moving weights inside the submarine.

Other improvements included a redesigned forecastle to improve her seagoing ability, a 10 cm (3.9 in) larger diameter pressure hull which was improved to prevent oil leakage from the external tanks, a rearrangement of the internal equipment, and a stronger ballast keel.

The Imperial German Navy avoided the use of gasoline due to the perceived risk of fires and explosions that had caused many accidents in early submarines, and instead of the gasoline engines that had powered the Karp boats, U-1 was given much safer Körting kerosene engines. While normally kerosene engines were started using gasoline, the U-1's engines avoided even this and instead used electrically-heated air.

The Körting engines could not be reversed and also had to run at full speed, since their rpm could not be varied to any useful extent, and as a consequence U-1 was fitted with adjustable -pitch propellers to allow her speed to be controlled. These propellers were abandoned in later designs due to their poor efficiency, kerosene-electric propulsion being used instead before Diesel propulsion was finally installed in the Type U 19 class in 1912-1913.

Construction on U-1 began in the autumn of 1904. The boat began its trials in August 1906, a year later than originally planned.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

As far as can be ascertained, it was Sir John Herschel in a lecture before the Royal Society of London, on March 14, 1839 who made the word "photography" known to the world. But in an article published on February 25 of the same year in a German newspaper called the Vossische Zeitung, Johann von Maedler, a Berlin astronomer, had used the word photography already. The word photography is based on the Greek φ?ς (photos) "light" and γραφ? (graphé) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing", together meaning "drawing with light".

History

Photography is the result of combining several technical discoveries. Long before the first photographs were made, Chinese philosopher Mo Di and Greek mathematicians Aristotle and Euclid described a pinhole camera in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. In the 6th century AD, Byzantine mathematician Anthemius of Tralles used a type of camera obscura in his experiments, lbn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (965–1040) studied the camera obscura and pinhole camera, Albertus Magnus (1193–1280) discovered silver nitrate, and Georges Fabricius (1516–1571) discovered silver chloride. Daniele Barbaro described a diaphragm in 1568. Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals (photochemical effect) in 1694. The fiction book Giphantie, published in 1760, by French author Tiphaigne de la Roche, described what can be interpreted as photography.

Invented in the first decades of the 19th century, photography (by way of the camera) seemed able to capture more detail and information than traditional mediums, such as painting and sculpting. Photography as a usable process goes back to the 1820s with the development of chemical photography. The first permanent photoetching was an image produced in 1822 by the French inventor Nicéphore Niépce, but it was destroyed by a later attempt to duplicate it. Niépce was successful again in 1825. He made the first permanent photograph from nature with a camera obscura in 1826. However, because his photographs took so long to expose (8 hours), he sought to find a new process. Working in conjunction with Louis Daguerre, they experimented with silver compounds based on a Johann Heinrich Schultz discovery in 1816 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light. Niépce died in 1833, but Daguerre continued the work, eventually culminating with the development of the daguerreotype in 1837. Daguerre took the first ever photo of a person in 1838 when, while taking a daguerreotype of a Paris street, a pedestrian stopped for a shoe shine, long enough to be captured by the long exposure (several minutes). Eventually, France agreed to pay Daguerre a pension for his formula, in exchange for his promise to announce his discovery to the world as the gift of France, which he did in 1839.

Meanwhile, Hercules Florence had already created a very similar process in 1832, naming it Photographie, and English inventor William Fox Talbot had earlier discovered another means to fix a silver process image but had kept it secret. After reading about Daguerre's invention, Talbot refined his process so that portraits were made readily available to the masses. By 1840, Talbot had invented the calotype process, which creates negative images. Talbot's famous 1835 print of the Oriel window in Lacock Abbey is the oldest known negative in existence.

John Herschel made many contributions to the new methods. He invented the cyanotype process, now familiar as the "blueprint". He was the first to use the terms "photography", "negative" and "positive". He discovered sodium thiosulphate solution to be a solvent of silver halides in 1819, and informed Talbot and Daguerre of his discovery in 1839 that it could be used to "fix" pictures and make them permanent. He made the first glass negative in late 1839.

In March 1851, Frederick Scott Archer published his findings in "The Chemist" on the wet plate collodion process. This became the most widely used process between 1852 and the late 1860s when the dry plate was introduced. There are three subsets to the Collodion process; the Ambrotype (positive image on glass), the Ferrotype or Tintype (positive image on metal) and the negative which was printed on Albumen or Salt paper.

Many advances in photographic glass plates and printing were made in through the 19th century. In 1884, George Eastman developed the technology of film to replace photographic plates, leading to the technology used by film cameras today.

In 1908 Gabriel Lippmann won the Nobel Laureate in Physics for his method of reproducing colors photographically based on the phenomenon of interference, also known as the Lippmann plate.

Color

Color photography was explored beginning in the mid-19th century. Early experiments in color required extremely long exposures (hours or days for camera images) and could not "fix" the photograph to prevent the color from quickly fading when exposed to white light.

The first permanent color photograph was taken in 1861 using the three-color-separation principle first published by physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1855. Maxwell's idea was to take three separate black-and-white photographs through red, green and blue filters. This provides the photographer with the three basic channels required to recreate a color image.

Transparent prints of the images could be projected through similar color filters and superimposed on the projection screen, an additive method of color reproduction. A color print on paper could be produced by superimposing carbon prints of the three images made in their complementary colors, a subtractive method of color reproduction pioneered by Louis Ducos du Hauron in the late 1860s. Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii made extensive use of this color separation technique, employing a special camera which successively exposed the three color-filtered images on different parts of an oblong plate. Because his exposures were not simultaneous, unsteady subjects exhibited color "fringes" or, if rapidly moving through the scene, appeared as brightly colored ghosts in the resulting projected or printed images.

The development of color photography was held back by the limited sensitivity of early photographic materials, which were mostly sensitive to blue, only slightly sensitive to green and virtually insensitive to red. The discovery of dye sensitization by photochemist Hermann Vogel in 1873 suddenly made it possible to add sensitivity to green, yellow and even red.

Improved color sensitizers and ongoing improvements in the overall sensitivity of emulsions steadily reduced the once-prohibitive long exposure times required for color, bringing it ever closer to commercial viability.

Autochrome, the first commercially successful color process, was introduced by the Lumière brothers in 1907. Autochrome plates incorporated a mosaic color filter layer made of dyed grains of potato starch, which allowed the three color components to be recorded as adjacent microscopic image fragments. After an Autochrome plate was reversal processed to produce a positive transparency, the starch grains served to illuminate each fragment with the correct color and the tiny colored points blended together in the eye, synthesizing the color of the subject by the additive method. Autochrome plates were one of several varieties of additive color screen plates and films marketed between the 1890s and the 1950s.

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POTOSI

The Potosi was a five-masted steel barque built in 1895 by the German sailing ship company F. Laeisz as a trading vessel. As its shipping route was between Germany and Chile, it was designed to be capable of withstanding the rough weather encountered around Cape Horn.

The Potosi was named after the eponymous Bolivian town of Potosí (the highest city in the world), the name beginning with "P" according to a Laeisz' tradition begun in the 1880s. The Potosi and sister ships became known as the Flying P Line and were described by Robert Carter as "without doubt, the most successful fleet of sail-driven ships ever assembled under oneflag..."

The Potosi had five masts and was rigged as a barque, meaning that the first four masts were square-rigged, each carrying six sails, and the fifth mast carried fore-and-aft-sails. She was the third windjammer in the world merchant fleet with that kind of rigging, after the France I of the Antoine-Dominique Bordes line of Bordeaux, and the first German (auxiliary) steel barque Maria Rickmers of the Rickmers line. In total, within the world merchant fleet, there were only six windjammers of this class of five-masted barque rigging, with four masts having carried six sails on each mast. The Potosi's sister ship, Preussen also had five masts, but was square rigged on each mast.

The idea of building such a ship for the Laeisz fleet came from the famous Laeisz-captain Robert Hilgendorf, who was to become the Protosi's first master. His considerations and ideas had a great influence on the ship's design and he was the supervising ship officer when the huge barque was under construction. She was assigned the call sign RKGB, and as with all P-liners her hull was black with a white waterline and a red underwater ship—the colours of the German flag at that time. Author Daniel S. Parrott describes the features ofthe "Flying P-Liners" and says "The effectiveness of the Flying P-Line lay not only in the construction of the vessel but also in their management." He also points out that "none of the four- or five-masted Laeisz ships ever foundered or was dismasted in a Cape Horn storm in the course of countless voyages."

During World War I, she was interned in Chile, and was then given away as reparation. Under Chilean ownership, she was renamed the Flora (sign QEPD). In 1925, she caught fire in the Atlantic and eventually had to be sunk by artillery.

History

The Potosi was launched in 1895 at the shipyard of J. C. Tecklenborg AG, Geestemünde and was used in the saltpeter trade (Salpeterfahrt) between Chile and Germany, setting record speeds in the process, due to her excellent sailing characteristics. She made twenty seven "round voyages" (Hamburg to Chile and back) under five captains between 1895 and 1914. Her first master, the legendary sea captain Robert Hilgendorf, sailed her up to 1901. Capt. Georg Schlüter (2 round voyages), Jochim Hans Hinrich Nissen (10), Johann Frömcke (3), and Robert Miethe (4) followed.

On September 23, 1914 the Potosi was interned at Valparaiso as she entered the harbour, since the war had begun. In 1917 while moored in Chile, she was sold to the F. A. Vinnen shipping company of Bremen, but on October 2, 1920 she was given to France as a war reparation. The French government sold her to Argentina which transferred her to the Floating Docks Co. of Buenos Aires. There she laid up for three years when she was eventually purchased by the Chilean company González, Soffia & Cía. of Valparaíso, and renamed the Flora.

August Oetzmann, a former Laeisz captain, sailed her to Hamburg with a cargo of nitrate in 110 days (due to less able seamen). Many people of Hamburg came to welcome the old lady and wished Laeisz to purchase her from the Chilean owner but her former owners didn't.

The Flora sailed back to Chile (May 25) via Cardiff (July 17) to take up a cargo of coal for Mejillones. On September 15, 1925, en route to Cape Horn, the ship caught fire off the Patagonian coast northwest of the Falkland Islands (at 50°17.5'S, 61° 42'W). Captain A. Oetzmann decided to set course to Comodoro Rivadavia, reaching the harbour, which was merely a bay with a sandy beach, a long wooden pier, and several petrol tanks, on September 18, 1925. He anchored the ship five miles (8 km) off the coast in the roads of Comodoro Rivadavia and alerted the harbour authorities to fight the fire in the ship. As no proper equipment was available, it took three days before help came. The ordered fire engine that came was not able to extinguish the fire. Next day a huge explosion ripped her steel decks apart. The main mast fell overboard pulling the rest of the rigging with it except for the foremast. A tug tried to tow her away from the petrol tanks, and succeeded after several attempts. The Flora ran aground on the sandy beach. The seamen dropped the anchor and took everything usable from the ship. The fire kept burning while the ship's hull was repeated lifted by the waves and slammed into the shore. The coal-filled hull burned for some days. One morning the ship had diappeared from the beach. The rudderless hull was found a few days later floating 25 nautical miles (46 km) off the coast and 80 nautical miles (150 km) in the north of Comodoro Rivadavia. The Argentine cruiser Patria sank the burning hull of the former famous ship by gunfire on October 19, 1925. The wreck lies near the position 45°15′S 66°15′W? / ?45.25°S 66.25°W? / -45.25; - 66.25Coordinates: 45°15′S 66°15′W? / ?45.25°S 66.25°W? / -45.25; -66.25.

Technical data

The Potosi was steel-built, with a waterline length of 110 m and a total hull length of 122.42 m. The hull was 15.15 m wide and the ship had a displacement of 8,350 tons, for an effective carrying capacity of 6,400 tons. The ship had only one bulkhead in the bow section—the collision bulkhead. The ship had five masts, four of which were fully rigged, with courses, upper and lower topsails, upper and lower topgallant sails, and royals. Counting the staysails (12) including jibs (4), she carried 43 sails (24 square sails in six storeys, 12 (normally 9) staysails between the five masts, four foresails (jibs) and three fore-and-aft spanker sails including two spanker sails on two gaffs and a spanker topsail) with a total sail area of 56,510.53 sq ft (5,250.000 m2) [5,250 sq metres]. Not only the hull was steel, but also her masts (2.82 ft (0.86 m) in diameter on deck level, lower and top mast were made in one piece) and most of all spars (yards except for the royal yards, spanker boom) were constructed of steel tubing, and many of the rigging was steel cable. The only wooden spars were the four royal yards, the four topgallant masts and the two gaffs of the spanker fore-and-aft sails. She was designed as a so-called "three-island-ship", i.e. a ship that has a midship island (67.2 ft (20.5 m)), also called midship bridge or "Liverpool house" (the first ships equipped with that feature came from Liverpool yards), beside the forecastle (41.1 ft (12.5 m)) and poop (26 ft (7.9 m)) decks. There, inside the Liverpool house, dry and well-ventilated accommodations for crew, mates, and captain were installed, as well as the pantry and chart room. The main helm—a double rudder wheel of 5.8 ft (1.8 m) diameter—stood on top, well protected against huge waves. A second helm were near the stern. Under good conditions, the huge barque could reach a speed of 19 knots (35 km/h). Her best 24-hour-run were 376 nm in 1900 under Capt. Hilgendorf. The Potosi was manned by a crew of 40–44. She was the fastest P-liner apart from the five-masted fully-rigged ship Preußen which could reach speeds of more than 20 knots (37 km/h), but was less maneuverable.

Naming the masts

Her five masts were named as follows:

fore mast, main mast, middle mast, mizzen mast (also: after mast or "Laeisz" mast), spanker mast fore mast, main mast, mizzen mast, jigger mast, spanker mast (same naming with five-masted schooners and barquentines)

In German:

Fockmast, Großmast, Mittelmast, Kreuzmast und Besanmast.

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MOTORWAGEN

Im 19. Jahrhundert

Im 19. Jahrhundert wurde eine Vielzahl an Dampfautomobilen gebaut. Zudem experimentierten Erfinder und Ingenieure in ganz Europa mit Muskelkraftwagen und Segelwagen.

In England hatte Richard Trevithick schon 1797 ein kleines Dampfwagenmodell entwickelt, bei dem die Kesselheizung mit Hilfe eines in das Flammrohr eingesteckten glühenden Eisenstabes erfolgte. In der Folge konstruierte er 1801 einen Dampfwagen, der unter dem Namen Puffing Devil in Camborne Passagiere mit einer Geschwindigkeit von 8 km/h selbst über Steigungen beförderte.

Ein Jahr später baute der Schweizer Isaac de Rivaz einen ersten Wagen mit Verbrennungsmotor (u. a. mit einem Wasserstoffgasmotor), der 26 Meter weit fuhr.

1803 baute abermals Trevithick ein weiteres selbstfahrendes Fahrzeug, das London Steam Carriage, das im Prinzip eine mit einer Dampfmaschine ausgerüstete Postkutsche war. Es erregte die Aufmerksamkeit von Publikum und Presse, war aber im Betrieb wesentlich teurer als eine gewöhnliche Pferdekutsche und konnte sich deshalb nicht durchsetzen.

Bereits 1828 gab es in England einen mehr oder weniger regelmäßigen Pendeldienst mit einem Dampfbus zwischen London und Bath. Ab 1829 baute der Engländer Walter Hancock Dampfwagen für den privaten Gebrauch sowie etliche Dampfomnibusse. Zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts entstand noch ein erfolgreicher Dampf-Lkw, der Sentinel.

Im Jahr 1839 wurde das erste Elektrofahrzeug von Robert Anderson in Aberdeen gebaut.

1860 patentierte der Franzose Etienne Lenoir einen betriebsfähigen Gasmotor. Drei Jahre darauf fuhr er mit einem von einem Gasmotor betriebenen Straßenfahrzeug, genannt Hippomobile, von Paris nach Joinville-le-Pont. Fünf Jahre darauf konstruierten die beiden Franzosen Pierre Michaux und M. Perreaux das erste von einer Dampfmaschine angetriebene Fahrrad. Zwischen 1862 und 1866 entwickelte der Deutsche Nikolaus August Otto den Viertaktmotor (Gasmotor), 1876 ließ er den Viertakt-Ottomotor patentieren, wobei dieses Patent 1886 wieder aufgehoben wurde. Zudem gründete Otto im Jahr 1864 die Gasmotorenfabrik Deutz AG. 1870 unternahm der Deutsch-Österreicher Siegfried Marcus in Wien Fahrversuche mit einem direkt wirkenden, verdichtungslosen Zweitaktmotor, der auf einem einfachen Handwagen montiert wurde.

Im Ausgang des 19. Jahrhunderts

Die Entwicklung der heutigen Autos mit einem Verbrennungsmotor als Antrieb kam 1886 in Deutschland einen Schritt weiter: Carl Benz baute sein Dreirad im Jahre 1885 in Mannheim, am 29. Januar 1886 meldete er seinen Motorwagen zum Patent an (Reichspatent 37435). Dies gilt als die Geburtsstunde des modernen Automobils. Kurz danach folgten unabhängig davon in Cannstatt bei Stuttgart Gottlieb Däumler (später Namensänderung in Daimler) und Wilhelm Maybach sowie Siegfried Marcus in Wien mit weiteren Fahrzeugen.

Die erste Überlandfahrt unternahm Bertha Benz Anfang August 1888 von Mannheim nach Pforzheim und zurück. Ihr ging recht schnell das Leichtbenzin aus, daher musste sie Ligroin „nachtanken“, das damals als Reinigungsmittel in Apotheken verkauft wurde. So wurde die Stadt-Apotheke von Wiesloch zur ersten Tankstelle der Welt. Seit 2008 erinnert eine offizielle deutsche Ferienstraße und Straße der Industriekultur, die Bertha Benz Memorial Route, an jene Pionierfahrt.

Benz & Co. reichten schon 1886 eine Patentschrift für ein dreirädriges „Fahrzeug mit Gasmotorenbetrieb“ ein. Der deutsche Erfinder Carl Benz fuhr damit öffentlich herum. 1894–1902 stellt er als erster ein Automobil in Serie her. Der Deutsche Gottlieb Daimler baute 1887 ebenfalls völlig unabhängig von Carl Benz Automobile und gründete die Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft. Der von ihm entwickelte Kutschenwagen erreicht eine Höchstgeschwindigkeit von 16 km/h und basierte eigentlich auf einer mit einem Motor umgebauten Droschke. Er arbeitete mit dem Motorenbauer Wilhelm Maybach zusammen und entwickelte so

diverse Fahrzeuge.

Der in Wien lebende Mecklenburger Siegfried Marcus ließ unabhängig von Benz und Daimler in den Jahren 1888 und 1889 einen von einem Benzin- Viertaktmotor angetriebenen Wagen bauen, der die wesentlichsten Bestandteile, also eine Vierradkonstruktion, eines modernen Automobils aufwies. 1888 baute Albert F. Hammel in Kopenhagen einen zweizylindrigen Motorwagen.

Automobilfabriken entstanden um 1891 herum in Europa und in den USA, u. a. in Frankreich Peugeot. Daimler gründete Unternehmen in England und in Österreich. Im Jahr 1892 erhielt Rudolf Diesel ein Patent auf eine „Neue rationelle Wärmekraftmaschine“ und modifizierte damit den ursprünglichen Otto-Prozess, das Resultat war ein höherer Wirkungsgrad. 1897 konstruierte er den ersten Dieselmotor. Mit der Netphener Omnibusgesellschaft nahm 1895 der erste benzinbetriebene Omnibus der Welt seinen Betrieb auf.

Der Eintrag „Automobiler Wagen“ im Brockhaus 1896Der erste dokumentierte Geschwindigkeitsrekord eines Automobils wurde drei Jahre darauf, 1898, vom Franzosen Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat mit 63,14 km/h mit einem Elektroauto aufgestellt. Bis 1964 wurden Automobil-Geschwindigkeitsrekorde nur von Fahrzeugen anerkannt, die über die Räder angetrieben werden. Der österreichische Automobilhersteller Gräf & Stift stellte 1898 das erste Auto mit Frontantrieb her und erhielt dafür 1900 ein Patent. Ein Jahr später erreichte Camille Jenatzy mit dem Elektroauto La Jamais Contente als Erster eine Geschwindigkeit von über 100 km/h.

Die Enzyklopädien des ausklingenden Jahrhunderts widmeten dem Automobil unter dem Begriff „Motorwagen“ bereits breiten Raum. Das Brockhaus' Konversationslexikon brachte in seiner 1896 erschienenen Ausgabe die technischen und ökonomischen Vorzüge des Automobils gegenüber Pferde- und Dampfwagen auf den Punkt:

„Motorwagen, automobiler Wagen (engl. Autocar), im weitern Sinne jeder Wagen, der von einem Motor bewegt wird, also auch die motorisch bewegten Straßenbahnwagen und die Lokomotiven; im engern Sinne versteht man jedoch darunter diejenigen (hier allein zu besprechenden) motorisch bewegten Straßenfuhrwerke, die nicht in Schienen laufen, also zum Befahren jeder Straße geeignet sind. Die Vorteile dieser motorisch bewegten Straßenfuhrwerke gegenüber den von Zugtieren gezogenen sind mehrfache. Zunächst lassen sich mit M. größere Geschwindigkeiten, auch für längere Zeitabschnitte, erreichen als mit Zugtieren; auch größere und anhaltende Steigungen werden leichter überwunden. Dabei sind die Betriebskosten bei M. erheblich geringer als bei Pferdebetrieb, sowohl bei dauerndem als auch ganz besonders bei intermittierendem Betrieb, weil der M. nur während der Fahrt Betriebskosten verursacht, während Pferde gefüttert werden müssen, auch wenn sie nicht gebraucht werden. Für verkehrsreiche Städte bringen die M. noch die schätzbaren Vorteile, daß sie weniger Raum beanspruchen als die mit Pferden bespannten Fuhrwerke, und daß die Verunreinigung der Straßen vermieden wird.

Auf staubigen Landstraßen endlich bleiben die Insassen eines M. vom Staub mehr verschont als bei Pferdewagen.“

– Brockhaus‘ Konversationslexikon, 14. Auflage, 1894-1896, Zusatzband 17, S. 780

Im 20. Jahrhundert

Am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts konkurrierten die verschiedenen Antriebsarten für Automobile noch sehr stark miteinander, bevor sich der Hubkolbenmotor durchsetzen konnte. Dies belegen zum Beispiel die Produktionszahlen der amerikanischen Automobilfertigung aus dem Jahr 1900. Dort wurden insgesamt 4.192 Automobile von 75 Herstellern gefertigt, darunter 1.688 Dampfautomobile, 1.575 Elektrofahrzeuge sowie 929 Fahrzeuge mit Benzinmotor.

Das Benzinautomobil benötigte bis in die 1920er Jahre, um sich gegen andere Antriebsarten durchzusetzen, wie etwa dem Petroleummotor und dem Spiritusmotor. Gründe waren u. a. der technische Fortschritt im Motorenbau und billiger Kraftstoff aus Erdöl mit einer viel höheren Energiedichte als elektrische Speicher sowie die hierin begründeten, auch heute noch gültigen Vorteile: eine große Reichweite und eine hohe mögliche Geschwindigkeit.

Das Prinzip des ersten Automobils ist bis heute erhalten geblieben. Mit der allgemeinen Akzeptanz und der Verbreitung von Automobilen im 20. Jahrhundert kamen viele technische Neuerungen hinzu.

Die meisten damals produzierten Fahrzeuge in Deutschland basierten auf der Grundkonstruktion des Mercedes-Simplex (1906). Sie besaßen einen Motor vorn, ein Getriebe und Antriebswellen zu den angetriebenen Rädern. Der Begriff Simplex geht auf Kaiser Wilhelm II. zurück, der sich 1906 auf einer Automobilausstellung in Berlin den Startvorgang des Mercedes erklären ließ und den im Vergleich zum mühsamen Einspannen von Pferden in eine Kutsche nur rund zehnminütigen Startvorgang als Simplex bezeichnete.

1900 ließ sich Gräf & Stift in Wien den von ihr 1898 entwickelten Vorderradantrieb patentieren und baute zwei Prototypen. Ein Jahr darauf patentierte Frederick W. Lanchester die Scheibenbremse, das erste Serienfahrzeug mit Scheibenbremsen war 1955 der Citroën DS. Im Jahr 1903 wurde mit dem Spyker 60/80 HP der erste Sportwagen mit Allradantrieb gebaut. Im gleichen Jahr wurde Mary Anderson das erste Patent für einen Scheibenwischer erteilt.

Von 1904 bis 1928 wurden in der thüringischen Mittelstadt Apolda von einer Automobilfirma die Marken „Apollo“ und das Rennautomobil „Piccolo“ hergestellt, die bis in die USA exportiert wurden.

1913 begann durch die Fließbandproduktion der Fahrzeuge bei Ford die Massenfertigung erschwinglicher Automobile. Im nächsten Jahr kam das erste hydraulische Bremssystem auf den Markt. Chassis und Karosserie werden 1918 aus Stahl gefertigt. Fünf Jahre später werden erste Lkw mit Dieselmotor gefertigt.

Im Jahr 1924 begann in Deutschland die Fließbandproduktion von Pkw mit dem Opel Laubfrosch. 1926 fusionierten die Firmen Benz & Co. und Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft zur Daimler-Benz AG. Fünf Jahre später wurde 1931 mit dem DKW F1 der Frontantrieb in die Serie eingeführt.

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HORSE BREEDING

Horseracing in Great Britain

It is thought that the first races to take place in Britain were organised by soldiers of the Roman Empire in Yorkshire around 200 AD, although the first recorded race meeting was during the reign of Henry II at Smithfield, London in 1174 during a horse fair.

It is believed that the first occurrence of a trophy being presented to the winner of a race was in 1512 by organisers of a fair in Chester and was a small wooden ball decorated with flowers.

Early in the 16th century Henry VIII imported a large number of stallions and mares for breeding although it was not until the 17th and 18th centuries that the breeding of Thoroughbreds began as we know it now.

Newmarket is known as the home of horse racing in England and James I was prominent in introducing racing there after discovering the little village in 1605 whilst out hawking or riding. He spent so much time there that the House of Commons petitioned him to concentrate more of his time on running the country. This region had a long association with horses going back to the time of Boudica and the Iceni. Around the time that Charles I of England came to the throne, Spring and Autumn race meetings were introduced to Newmarket and in 1634 the first Gold Cup event was held.

All horse racing was then banned in 1654 by Oliver Cromwell, and many horses were requisitioned by the state. Despite this Cromwell himself kept a stud running of his own.

With the restoration of Charles II racing flourished and he instituted the Newmarket Town Plate in 1664, writing the rules himself:

Articles ordered by His Majestie to be observed by all persons that put in horses to ride for the Plate, the new round heat at Newmarket set out on the first day of October, 1664, in the 16th year of our Sovereign Lord King Charles II, which Plate is to be rid for yearly, the second Thursday in October for ever.

In the early 18th century, Queen Anne kept a large string of horses and was instrumental in the founding of Royal Ascot where the opening race each year is still called the Queen Anne Stakes. This has now stopped since the Queen Anne Stakes was elevated to Group 1 status in 2004 and therefore the Coventry Stakes is the first race on the first day of Royal Ascot.

In 1740, Parliament introduced an act "to restrain and to prevent the excessive increase in horse racing", though this was largely ignored, but in the 1752 the Jockey Club was formed to create and apply the Rules of Racing.

The Jockey Club governed the sport from 1752 until its governance role was handed to the British Horseracing Board, (formed in June 1993) and while the BHB became responsible for strategic planning, finance, politics, race planning, training and marketing, the Jockey Club continued to regulate the sport.

The UK has produced some of the greatest jockeys, including Sir Gordon Richards, usually considered the greatest ever jockey. There are between four and five hundred professional jockeys based in the United Kingdom.

History of horse breeding

During the Renaissance, horses were bred not only for war, but for haute ecole riding, derived from the most athletic movements required of a war horse, and popular among the elite nobility of the time. Breeds such as the Lipizzan were developed from Spanish-bred horses for this purpose, and also became the preferred mounts of cavalry officers, who were derived mostly from the ranks of the nobility. It was during this time that gunpowder was developed, and so the light cavalry horse, a faster and quicker war horse, was bred for a “shoot and run” tactic rather than the close hand-to-hand fighting seen in the Middle Ages.

After Charles II retook the British throne in 1660, horse racing, which had been banned by Cromwell, was revived. The Thoroughbred was developed 40 years later, bred to be the ultimate racehorse, through the lines of 3 foundation Arabian stallions.

In the 18th century, James Burnett, Lord Monboddo noted the importance of selecting appropriate parentage to achieve desired outcomes of successive generations. Monboddo worked more broadly in the abstract thought of species relationships and evolution of species. The Thoroughbred breeding hub in Lexington, Kentucky was developed in the late 18th century, and became a mainstay in American racehorse breeding.

The 17th and 18th centuries saw more of a need for fine carriage horses in Europe, bringing in the dawn of the warmblood. The warmblood breeds have been exceptionally good at adapting to changing times, and from their carriage horse beginnings they easily transitioned during the 20th century into a sport horse type. Today’s warmblood breeds, although still used for competitive driving, are more often seen competing in the show jumping or dressage arenas.

The Thoroughbred continues to dominate the horseracing world, although its lines have been more recently used to improve warmblood breeds and to develop sport horses.

The predecessor of the American Quarter Horse was developed in the 18th century, mainly for quarter racing (racing ¼ of a mile). The breed was later adapted for work in the west, and “cow sense” was particularly bred for as their use for herding cattle increased. However, because there was also a need for animals suitable for sprint racing, the modern Quarter Horse has two distinct types: the sleeker racing type and the stock horse type. The racing type most resembles the finer-boned ancestors of the first racing Quarter Horses, and the type is still used for ¼-mile races. The stock horse type, used in western events, is bred for a shorter stride, docile temperament, and cow sense.

The need for horses for heavy draft and carriage work continued until the industrial revolution and the advent of the automobile and the tractor. After this time, draft and carriage horse numbers dropped significantly, though light riding horses remained popular for recreational pursuits.

How breeds develop

Beyond the appearance and conformation of a specific type of horse, breeders aspire to improve physical performance abilities. This concept, known as matching "form to function," has led to the development of not only different breeds, but also families or bloodlines within breeds that are specialists for excelling at specific tasks.

For example, the Arabian horse of the desert naturally developed speed and endurance to travel long distances and survive in a harsh environment, and domestication by humans added a trainable disposition to the animal's natural abilities. In the meantime, in northern Europe, the locally adapted heavy horse with a thick, warm coat was domesticated and put to work as a farm animal that could pull a plow or wagon. This animal was later adapted through selective breeding to create a strong but ridable animal suitable for the heavily-armored knight in warfare.

Then, centuries later, when people in Europe wanted faster horses than could be produced from local horses through simple selective breeding, they imported Arabians and other oriental horses to breed as an outcross to the heavier, local animals. This led to the development of breeds such as the Thoroughbred, a horse taller than the Arabian and faster over the distances of a few miles required of a European race horse or light cavalry horse. Another cross between oriental and European horses produced the Andalusian, a horse developed in Spain that was powerfully built, but extremely nimble and capable of the quick bursts of speed over short distances necessary for certain types of combat as well as for tasks such as bullfighting.

Later, the people who settled the Americas needed a hardy horse that was capable of working with cattle. Thus, Arabians and Thoroughbreds were crossed on Spanish horses, both domesticated animals descended from those brought over by the Conquistadors, and feral horses such as the Mustangs, descended from the Spanish horse, but adapted by natural selection to the ecology and climate of the west. These crosses ultimately produced new breeds such as the American quarter horse and the Criollo of Argentina.

In modern times, these breeds themselves have since been selectively bred to further specialize at certain tasks. One example of this is the American quarter horse. Once a general-purpose working ranch horse, different bloodlines now specialize in different events. For example, larger, heavier animals with a very steady attitude are bred to give competitors an advantage in events such as team roping, where a horse has to start and stop quickly, but also must calmly hold a full-grown steer at the end of a rope. On the other hand, for an event known as cutting, where the horse must separate a cow from a herd and prevent it from rejoining the group, the best horses are smaller, quick, alert, athletic and highly trainable. They must learn quickly, have conformation that allows quick stops and fast, low turns, and the best competitors have a certain amount of independent mental ability to anticipate and counter the movement of a cow, popularly known as "cow sense."

Another example is the Thoroughbred. While most representatives of this breed are bred for horse racing, there are also specialized bloodlines suitable as show hunters or show jumpers. The hunter must have a tall, smooth build that allows it to trot and canter smoothly and efficiently. Instead of speed, value is placed on appearance and upon giving the equestrian a comfortable ride, with natural jumping ability that shows bascule and good form.

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MUSIC NOTES

Musical notation

Byzantine Empire

Byzantine music is vocal religious music, based on the monodic modal singing of Ancient Greece and the pre-islamic Near East. The notation developed for it is similar in principle to subsequent Western notation, in that it is ordered left to right, and separated into measures. The main difference is that notation symbols are differential rather than absolute, i.e. they indicate pitch change (rise or fall), and the musician has to deduce correctly, from the score and the note they are singing presently, which note comes next. The pitch symbols themselves resemble brush strokes and are colloquially called gántzoi ("hooks") in Modern Greek. Notes themselves are represented in written form only between measures, as an optional reminder, along with modal and tempo directions if needed. Additional signs are used to indicate embellishments and microtones (pitch changes smaller than a semitone), both essential in Byzantine chant (see Romanian anastasimatarion picture, left).

The seven standard note names in Byzantine "solfege" are: pá, vú, ghá, dhe, ké, zo, ne, corresponding to Western re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do. Byzantine music uses the eight natural, non-tempered scales called Ekhoi, "sounds", exclusively, and therefore the absolute pitch of each note may slightly vary each time, depending on the particular Ekhos used. Byzantine notation is still used in many Orthodox Churches. Better cantors can also use standard Western notation while adding non-notatable embellishment material from memory and "sliding" into the natural scales from experience.

Early Europe

Scholar and music theorist Isidore of Seville, writing in the early 7th century, remarked that it was impossible to notate music. By the middle of the 9th century, however, a form of notation began to develop in monasteries in Europe for Gregorian chant, using symbols known as neumes; the earliest surviving musical notation of this type is in the Musica disciplina of Aurelian of Réôme, from about 850. There are scattered survivals from the Iberian Peninsula before this time, of a type of notation known as Visigothic neumes, but its few surviving fragments have not yet been deciphered.

Early Music Notation

To address the issue of exact pitch, a staff was introduced consisting originally of a single horizontal line, but this was progressively extended until a system of four parallel, horizontal lines was standardized. The vertical positions of each mark on the staff indicated which pitch or pitches it represented (pitches were derived from a musical mode. Although the four-line staff has remained in use until the present day for plainchant, for other types of music, staffs with differing numbers of lines have been used at various times and places for various instruments. The modern five-line staff was first adopted in France and became almost universal by the 16th century (although the use of staffs with other numbers of lines was still widespread well into the 17th century).

Because the neum system arose from the need to notate melodies, exact timing was initially not a particular issue because the music generally followed the natural rhythms of the Latin language. However, by the 10th century a system that represented up to four note lengths had been developed. These lengths were relative rather than absolute and depended on the duration of the neighbouring notes. Not until the 14th century did something like the present system of fixed note lengths arise. Starting in the 15th century, vertical bar lines were used to divide the staff into sections.These did not initially divide the music into measures (bars) of equal length (as most music then featured far fewer regular rhythmic patterns than in later periods), but appear to have been introduced as an aid to the eye for "lining up" notes on different staves that were played or sung at the same time. The use of regular measures (bars) became commonplace by the end of the 17th century.

The founder of what is now considered the standard music stave was Guido d'Arezzo, an Italian Benedictine monk who lived from 995–1050.Guido D'Arezzo's achievements paved the way for the modern form of written music, music books, and the modern concept of a composer. He named musical notes based on an ancient hymn dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, called Ut Queant Laxis, written by the lombard historian Paul the deacon. The first stanza is:

1. Ut queant laxis
2. resonare fibris,
3. Mira gestorum
4. famuli tuorum,
5. Solve polluti
6. labii reatum,
7. Sancte Iohannes.

Guido used the first letters of each verse to name the Solfège syllables: Ut, Re, Mi Fa, Sol, La, and Si (the exception being Si, which has the S of Sancte and the I of Iohannes—it also helps in that, if two adjacent notes had the same vowel, verbal communication errors became more likely). In the 17th century, Ut was changed in most countries except France to the easily singable, "open" syllable Do, said to have been taken from the name of the Italian theorist Giovanni Battista Doni.

Modern notation

Modern music notation originated in European classical music and is now used by musicians of many different genres throughout the world.

The system uses a five-line staff. Pitch is shown by placement of notes on the staff (sometimes modified by accidentals), and duration is shown with different note values and additional symbols such as dots and ties. Notation is read from left to right, which makes setting music for right-to-left scripts difficult.

A staff (or stave, in British English) of written music generally begins with a clef, which indicates the position of one particular note on the staff. The treble or G clef was originally a letter G and it identifies the second line up on the five line staff as the note G above middle C. The bass or F clef shows the position of the note F below middle C. Notes representing a pitch outside of the scope of the five line staff can be represented using ledger lines, which provide a single note with additional lines and spaces.

Following the clef, the key signature on a staff indicates the key of the piece by specifying that certain notes are flat or sharp throughout the piece, unless otherwise indicated.

Following the key signature is the time signature. Measures (bars) divide the piece into groups of beats, and the time signatures specify those groupings.

Directions to the player regarding matters such as tempo, dynamics and expression appear above or below the staff. For vocal music, lyrics are written. For short pauses (breaths), retakes (looks like ') are added.

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MERCEDES SIMPLEX

The Mercedes Simplex was an car produced from 1902-09 by the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG, Daimler Motor Society, a predecessor of Daimler-Benz and Daimler-Chrysler). It continued the use of the Mercedes name as the brand of DMG, rather than Daimler.

The Mercedes Simplex was designed by Wilhelm Maybach in Stuttgart, Germany. It featured powerful engines whose power ranged from 40 to 60 hp). Its large and wide body had a low center of gravity.

The name.

The car's predecessor, the Mercedes 35hp of 1901, had broken with the previous primitive automotive standards. Now, DMG and Maybach intended to improve this further by providing "comfort by means of simplicity", hence the name Simplex. A complementary explanation for the name is that, by the standards of 1901, the car was very simple to operate.

History.

DMG, Maybach and Jellinek.

The creation of the previous model, the Mercedes 35hp, predecessor of the Simplex, was due to DMG's industrial might, the know-how of its industrial designer Wilhelm Maybach and Emil Jellinek's enthusiasm for motorsport. Jellinek was DMG's foreign agent based on the French Riviera where he was the Austro-Hungarian consul. That car had resulted in the company's early success.

In 1902, Maybach decided to incorporate a series of modifications to the Simplex, anticipating a large number of sales. To suit their basically high society clients, the new Mercedes would be shown publicly while driving through the most traditional avenues in town or to picnic in a park.

Mercedes Simplex as a racecar (1902).

When Jellinek received his first Simplex on 1 March 1902 at Nice, he rushed to incorporate it into his Mercedes race team, competing in the Nice-La Turbie hillclimbing race. He defeated all his opponents again and setting new records.

Also in 1902, in the United States, a Mercedes Simplex won the 5-mile track race at Grosse-Pointe, Detroit.

In this 1902 campaign, the third step involved William K. Vanderbilt Jr, US billionaire and racecar enthusiast who created in 1904 the American Vanderbilt Cup.

He had already set several records with the previous Mercedes, in some of the most popular races around the turn of the century, usually long distance ones.

Now, with the Mercedes Simplex, Vanderbilt took part in the 600 mile race to Paris. Later, he broke all records in the Ablis to Chartres race with flying start, with a top-speed of 111.8 km/h. One of his Simplex units is the oldest surviving Mercedes car.

The German Emperor was a simple fan.

Mercedes-Simplex 's prowesses were resonating all around the world. More than ever DMG obtained clients among the most important social figures .

Meeting Maybach personally at Berlin's automobile exhibition of 1903 Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany expressed his admiration for the car. Congratulating him for all the achievements at the races, he contrasted these with car's name, commenting: "A truly beautiful engine you have here! But it's not as simple as that, you know."

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SAILING 1900

A sailboat or sailing boat is a boat propelled partly or entirely by sails. The term covers a variety of boats, larger than small vessels such as sailboards and smaller than sailing ships, but distinctions in the size are not strictly defined and what constitutes a sailing ship, sailboat, or a smaller vessel (such as a sailboard) varies by region and culture.

Types

At present, a great number of sailboat-types may be distinguished. Apart from size, sailboats may be distinguished by a hull configuration (monohull, catamaran, trimaran), keel type (full, fin, wing, centerboard etc.), purpose (sport, racing, cruising), number and configuration of masts, and sail plan. Although sailboat terminology has varied across history, many terms now have specific meanings in the context of modern yachting.

Sloop

Today, the most common sailboat is the sloop which features one mast and two sails, a normal mainsail and a jib. This simple configuration is very efficient for sailing towards the wind. The mainsail is attached to the mast and the boom, which is a spar capable of swinging across the boat, depending on the direction of the wind. Depending on the size and design of the jib it can be called a foresail, Genoa, or spinnaker; it is possible but not common for a sloop to carry two jibs from the one forestay at one time (wing on wing). The forestay is a line or cable near the top of the mast to a point near the bow. In Bermuda, where a rig design influenced by the Latin rig appeared on boats and came to be known as the Bermuda rig, a large spinnaker was carried on a spinnaker boom when running down-wind. An example of a typical sloop can be seen on the Islander 36.

Fractional rig sloop

On a fractional rig sloop the forestay does not run to the top of the mast, rather it connects at some point below. This allows the top of the mast to be raked aft by increasing the tension of the back stay, while arching the middle of the mast forward. Without great explanation, this gives a performance advantage in some conditions by flattening the sails. The big mainsail provides most of the drive, and the small headsail is easier for a short-handed crew to manage.

Cutter

The cutter is similar to a sloop with a single mast and mainsail, but generally carries the mast further aft to allow for the use of two head sails attached to two fore stays, the head stay and the inner stay, which carry the jib and stay sail respectively. This is rarely considered a racing configuration; however, it gives versatility to cruising boats, especially in high wind conditions, when a small jib can be flown from the inner stay.

Importantly, the traditional and most accurate definition of a true cutter, however, is not in the number of headsails, but rather that the outermost sails are set on stays that are not strictly structural to the rig itself. This in itself is a function of a much more complicated design set, involving mast placement, mast height, rig, boom length and fore-triangle size.

Catboat

A catboat has a single mast mounted fairly forward and does not carry a jib. Most modern designs have only one sail, the mainsail; however the traditional catboat could carry multiple sails from the gaff rig. The designer of the Catboat is Brian Husband, master sailor of the early 1940s.

Ketch

Ketches are similar to a sloop, but there is a second shorter mast to the stern of the mainmast, but forward of the rudder post. The second mast is called the mizzen mast and the sail is called the mizzen sail. A ketch can also be Cutter-rigged with two head sails.

Schooner

A schooner can have two or more masts, the aftermost mast taller or equal to the height of the forward mast(s), distinguishing this design from a ketch or a yawl. Top sail schooners are rigged to carry a square sail near the top of their foremast, but generally modern schooners are gaff or marconi rigged.

Yawl

A yawl is similar to a ketch, with the mizzen mast shorter than the main mast but the mizzen mast is carried astern of the rudder post. Generally the mizzen on a yawl is smaller than the mizzen on a ketch, and is used more for balance than propulsion.

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SS GREAT EASTERN 1857

SS Great Eastern was an iron sailing steam ship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and built by J Scott Russell & Co. at Millwall on the River Thames, London. She was by far the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers around the world without refueling. Her length of 692 feet (211 m) was only surpassed in 1899 by the 705 feet (215 m) 17,274 gross ton RMS Oceanic, and her gross tonnage of 18,915 was only surpassed in 1901 by the 700 feet (210 m) and 21,035 gross ton RMS Celtic. Brunel knew her affectionately as the "Great Babe". He died in 1859 shortly after her ill-fated maiden voyage during which she was damaged by an explosion. After repairs, she plied for several years as a passenger liner between Britain and America, before being converted to a cable-laying ship and laying the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866. Finishing her life as a floating music hall (for the famous department store Lewis's) in Liverpool, she was broken up in 1889.

History

Concept

After the Great Exhibition of 1851, which had publicized America's wealth and natural resources, waves of people were eager to emigrate from Britain to America and Brunel realized the potential of a ship purpose-built to carry emigrants there.

On 25 March 1852, Brunel had made a sketch of a steamship in his diary and wrote beneath it: "Say 600 ft x 65 ft x 30 ft" (180 m x 20 m x 9.1 m). These measurements were six times larger by volume than any ship afloat; such a large vessel would benefit from economies of scale and would be both fast and economical, requiring fewer crew than the equivalent tonnage made up of smaller ships. Brunel realized that the ship would need more than one propulsion system; since twin screws were still very much experimental, he settled on a combination of a single screw and paddle wheels, with auxiliary sail power. Using paddle wheels meant that the ship would be able to reach Calcutta, where the Hooghly River was too shallow for screws.

Brunel showed his idea to John Scott Russell, an experienced Naval Architect and ship builder whom he had first met at the Great Exhibition. Scott Russell examined Brunel's plan and made his own calculations as to the ship's feasibility. He calculated that it would have a displacement of 20,000 tons and would require 850 horsepower (630 kW) to achieve 14 knots (26 km/h), but believed it was possible. At Scott Russell's suggestion, they approached the directors of the Eastern Steam Navigation Company.

Eastern Steam Navigation Company

The Eastern Company was formed in January 1851 with the plan of exploiting the increase in trade and emigration to America. To make this plan viable they needed a subsidy in the form of a mail contract from the British General Post Office, which they tendered for. However, in March 1852 the Government awarded the contracts to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, even though the Eastern Company's tender was lower. This left them in the position of having a company without a purpose.

Brunel's large ship promised to be able to compete with the fast clippers that currently dominated the route, as she would be able to carry sufficient coal for a non-stop passage and the company invited him to present his ideas to the board. He was unable to attend due to illness and Scott Russell took his place.

The Company then set up a committee to investigate the proposal, and they reported in favor and the scheme was adopted at a board meeting held in July 1852. Brunel was appointed Engineer to the project and he began to gather tenders to build the hull, paddle engines and screw engines. Brunel had a considerable stake in the company and when requested to appoint a resident engineer refused in no uncertain terms:

...I cannot act under any supervision, or form part of any system which recognizes any other advisor than myself...if any doubt ever arises on these points I must cease to be responsible and cease to act.

He was just as firm in the terms for the final contract where he insisted that nothing was to be undertaken without his express consent, and that procedures and requirements for the construction were specifically laid down.

Construction

Although Brunel had estimated the cost of building the ship at £500,000, Scott Russell offered a very low tender of £377,200: £275,200 for the hull, £60,000 for the screw engines and boilers, and £42,000 for the paddle engines and boilers. Scott Russell even offered to reduce the tender to £258,000 if an order for a sister ship was placed at the same time. Brunel accepted Scott Russell's tender in May 1853, without questioning it; Scott Russell was a highly skilled shipbuilder and Brunel would accept an estimate from such an esteemed colleague without question.

In the spring of 1854 work could at last begin. The first problem to arise was where the ship was to be built. Scott Russell’s contract stipulated that it was to be built in a dock, but Russell quoted a price of £8-10,000 to build the necessary dock and so this part of the scheme was abandoned, partly due to the cost and also to the difficulty of finding a suitable site for the dock. The idea of a normal stern first launch was also rejected because of the great length of the vessel, also because to provide the right launch angle the bow of the ship would have to be raised 40 feet (12 m) in the air. Eventually it was decided to build the ship sideways to the river and use a mechanical slip designed by Brunel for the launch. Later this scheme, too, was dropped on the grounds of cost.

Having decided on a sideways launch, a suitable site had to be found, Scott Russell's Millwall, London, yard being too small. The adjacent yard belonging to David Napier was empty, available and suitable, so it was leased and a railway line constructed between the two yards for moving materials. The site of the launch is still visible on the Isle of Dogs. Part of the slipway has been preserved on the waterfront, while at low tide; more of the slipway can be seen on the Thames foreshore. The remains of the slipways, and other structures associated with the launch of the SS Great Eastern, have recently been surveyed by the Thames Discovery Programme, a community project recording the archaeology of the Thames intertidal zone in London. Brunel's achievements in London are also commemorated in Rotherhithe, at the Brunel Museum.

Great Eastern's keel was laid down on 1 May 1854. The hull was an all-iron construction, a double hull of 19 mm (0.75 inch) wrought iron in 0.86 m (2 ft 10 in) plates with ribs every 1.8 m (6 ft). Internally the hull was divided by two 107 m (350 ft) long, 18 m (60 ft) high, longitudinal bulkheads and further transverse bulkheads dividing the ship into nineteen compartments. Great Eastern was the first ship to incorporate the double-skinned hull, a feature which would not be seen again in a ship for 100 years, but which is now compulsory for reasons of safety.

She had sail, paddle and screw propulsion. The paddle-wheels were 17 m (56 ft) in diameter and the four-bladed screw-propeller was 7.3 m (24 ft) across. The power came from four steam engines for the paddles and an additional engine for the propeller. Total power was estimated at 6 MW (8,000 hp).

She also had six masts (said to be named after the days of a week - Monday being the fore mast and Saturday the spanker mast), providing space for 1,686 m2 (18,148 square feet) of sails (7 gaff and max. 9 (usually 4) square sails), rigged similar to a topsail schooner with a main gaff sail (fore-and-aft sail) on each mast, one "jib" on the fore mast and three square sails on masts no. 2 and no. 3 (Tuesday & Wednesday); for a time mast no. 4 was also fitted with three yards. In later years, some of the yards were removed. According to some sources she would have carried 5,435 m² (58,502 sq ft). This amount of canvas is obviously too much for seven fore-and-aft sails and max. 9 square sails. This (larger) figure of sail area lies only a few square meters below that the famous Flying P-Liner Preussen carried - with her five full-rigged masts of 30 square sails and a lot of stay sails. Setting sails turned out to be unusable at the same time as the paddles and screw were under steam, because the hot exhaust from the five (later four) funnels would set them on fire. Her maximum speed was 24 km/h (13 knots).

Career
Builder:	J Scott Russell & Co.
Laid down:	1 May 1854
Launched:	31 January 1858
Fate:	Broken up 1889-90
General characteristics
Tonnage:	18,915 grt
Displacement:	32,160 tons
Length:	692 feet (211 m)
Beam:	82 feet (25 m)
Propulsion:	Four steam engines for the paddles and an additional engine for the propeller. Total power was estimated at 8,000 horsepower (6.0 MW)
Speed:	14 knots (26 km/h)
Capacity:	4,000 passengers
Complement:	418

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ARMORED CRUISERS

Armored cruisers

The armored cruiser was a type of warship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like other types of cruiser, the armored cruiser was a long-range, independent warship, capable of defeating any ship apart from a battleship, and fast enough to outrun any battleships it encountered.

The first armored cruiser was HMS Shannon, launched in 1875. Like other early armored cruisers, she combined sail and steam propulsion. However, by the 1890s cruisers had abandoned sail propulsion and took on a modern appearance. The size of armored cruisers varied; the largest were as large and expensive as battleships.

The armored cruiser was distinguished from other types of cruiser by its belt armor-thick iron (or later steel) plating on much of the hull to protect the ship from shellfire from enemy guns. This protection method was widely used on battleships. However, for many decades it proved difficult to design an effective armored cruiser which combined an armored belt with the long range and high speed required to fulfill the cruiser's mission. In the 1880s and early 1890s, many navies preferred to build protected cruisers instead. It was often possible to build cruisers which were faster and better all-round using this type of ship, which relied on a lighter armored deck to protect the vital parts of the ship.

In 1908 the development of the armored cruiser culminated in the battlecruiser. The new type of ship combined a radically more powerful armament similar to that of a dreadnought battleship with fast steam turbine engines, rapidly superseding the armored cruiser. At around the same time, the term 'light cruiser' came into use for small cruisers with armored belts.

First armored cruisers of the 1870s

The armored cruiser was first developed in the 1870s as an attempt to combine the virtues of the armored ironclad warship and the fast and long-ranged, but unarmored, cruisers of the time. The first ocean-going ironclads had been launched around 1860, and both French and British navies had built classes of relatively small ironclad warships, designed for long-range colonial service and using both sail and steam propulsion. Examples of this kind of "station ironclad" include the British Audacious and French Belliqueuse classes. However, these ships were too slow to raid enemy commerce or hunt down enemy commerce raiders. These missions of commerce raiding and commerce protection were filled by frigates or corvettes, also powered by both sail and steam. Without the additional weight of armor, these ships could reach speeds of up to 16 or 17 knots. Examples of the most powerful armored cruisers of the 1860s include the British Inconstant, the U.S. Navy's Wampanoag and the French Duquesne.

The Russian navy was the first to produce an armored warship intended for commerce raiding, with the General Admiral, begun in 1870 and launched in 1873, often referred to as the first armored cruiser. She and her sister Gerzog Edinburgski were a new threat to British commerce in the event of war. The British responded with Shannon, begun in 1873 and launched in 1875, and followed by two ships of the Nelson class.

These early armored cruisers looked like cut-down versions of the ironclads of the time. Since sail propulsion was still vital for a long-ranged ship, the armored cruisers were required to carry a full sailing rig. As sailing ships required a high freeboard and a large degree of stability, the use of armored turrets as used on monitors and some battleships was ruled out, because a turret was a very heavy weight high in the ship. Consequently armored cruisers retained a more traditional broadside arrangement. Their armor was distributed in a thick belt around the waterline along most of their length; the gun positions on deck were not necessarily armored at all. They were typically powered by double-expansion steam engines fed by boilers which generated steam at perhaps 60 or 70 psi pressure, which gave relatively poor efficiency and short range under steam. Their short steaming range could have been improved if less weight had been devoted to masts and rigging, but not to so far that they would ever reach the desired range under coal.

The British navy was never very happy with these early armored cruisers. They were too slow to deal with fast cruisers, Shannon making 12.25 knots and Nelson 14 knots, and not armored well enough to take on a first-class battleship. At this stage, it was still novel to distinguish between the concepts of armored cruiser and second-class battleship, and the designer of the British ships felt they fulfilled both roles.

A battle in May 1877 between the British unarmored cruiser Shah and the Peruvian monitor Huáscar demonstrated the need for more and better-protected cruisers. Shah and the smaller wooden corvette Amethyst hit Huáscar more than 50 times without causing significant damage. The Peruvian ship had an inexperienced crew unused to its cumbersome machinery, and managed to fire only six rounds, all of which missed. The engagement demonstrated the value of cruisers with armor protection.

Rise of the protected cruiser in the 1880s

During the 1870s the size and power of armor-piercing guns increased rapidly. This caused problems for the designers of armored ships of all kinds, both battleships and cruisers. Even if a ship was designed with enough armor to protect it against the current generation of guns, it was likely that within a few years new guns powerful enough to penetrate its armor would be developed.

Consequently naval designers tried a novel method of armouring their ships. The vital parts of a ship - its engines, boilers, and magazines, together with enough of the hull to keep the ship stable in the event of damage - could be positioned underneath an armored deck just below the waterline. Since this deck would only be struck very obliquely by shells, it could be rather less thick and heavy than belt armor. While the sides of the ship would be entirely unarmoured, this protection scheme could be just as effective as an armored belt which would not stop shellfire. Cruisers with armored decks and no side armor became known as protected cruisers, and superseded armored cruisers in the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s.

The first ship to make use of an armored deck was the armored cruiser Shannon. She relied principally on her vertical citadel armor for protection, with the armored deck covering a relatively short section of the hull forward from the armored citadel to the bows. However, by the end of the 1870s ships could be found with full-length armored decks and little or no side armor. The Italian Italia class of very fast battleships had armored decks and guns but no side armor. The British used a full-length armored deck in their Comus class of corvettes started in 1878; however the Comus class were designed for colonial service and were only capable of 13 knots speed, not fast enough for commerce protection or fleet duties.

The breakthrough for the protected cruiser design came with the Chilean cruiser Esmeralda, designed and built by the British firm Armstrong, at their Elswick yard. Esmeralda had a high speed of 18 knots, and dispensed entirely with sails. Her armament of two 10in and six 6in guns appeared very powerful for her size. Her protection scheme, inspired by the Italia class, included a full-length protected deck up to 2in thick, and a cork-filled cofferdam along her sides. Esmeralda set the tone for cruiser construction for the years to come, with "Elswick cruisers" on a similar design being constructed for Italy, China, Japan, Argentina, Austria and the United States.

The French navy adopted the protected cruiser wholeheartedly in the 1880s. The Jeune Ecole school of thought, which proposed a navy composed of fast cruisers for commerce raiding and torpedo-boats for coast defense, was particularly influential in France. The first French protected cruiser was the Sfax, laid down in 1882, and followed by six classes of protected cruiser – and no armored cruisers until the Dupuy de Lôme, laid down in 1888 but not finished until 1895. Dupuy de Lôme was a revolutionary ship, being the first French armoured cruiser to dispose entirely of masts, and sheathed in steel armour. However, she and two other were not sufficiently seaworthy, and their armor could be penetrated by modern quick-firing guns. Thus from 1891–7 the French reverted to the construction of protected cruisers.

The British Royal Navy was equivocal about which protection scheme to use until 1887. The large Imperieuse class, begun in 1881 and finished in 1886, were built as armored cruisers but were often referred to as protected cruisers. While they carried an armored belt some 10 in thick, the belt only covered a 140 ft of the 315 ft length of the ship, and was submerged below the waterline at full load. The real protection of the class came from the armored deck 4 in thick, and the arrangement of coal bunkers to prevent flooding. These ships were also the last armored cruisers to be designed with sails. However, on trials it became clear that the masts and sails did more harm than good; they were removed and replaced by a single military mast with machine guns.

The next class of small cruisers in the Royal Navy, the Mersey class, were protected cruisers, but the Royal Navy then returned to the armored cruiser with the Orlando class, begun in 1885 and completed in 1889. However in 1887 a comparison of the Orlando type judged them inferior to the protected cruisers and the Royal Navy built exclusively protected cruisers, including some very large, fast ships like the 14,000-ton Powerful class.

The only major naval power to retain a preference for armored cruisers during the 1880s was Russia. The Russian Navy laid down four armored cruisers and one protected cruiser during the decade, all being large ships with sails.

1890s: Armored cruisers in the pre-dreadnought era

The late 1890s saw the development of a new generation of armored cruisers, many of which were as large and expensive as the pre-dreadnought battleships of the time. These cruisers combined long range, high speed, and an armament approaching that of battleship with enough armour to protect them against the quick-firing guns which were regarded as the most important weapons afloat at the time.

This was made possible by the introduction of Case-hardened steel armor – first Harvey armor and then crucially Krupp armor - which meant it was finally possible to put a useful armor belt on a large cruiser The Jeanne d'Arc, laid down in 1896, displaced 11,000 tons, carried a mixed armament of 7.6in and 5.5in guns, and had a 6in belt of Harvey armor over her machinery spaces. In response, the British returned to armoured cruiser construction in 1898, with the Cressy class. The 6in belt of Krupp steel on these ships was expected to keep out armour-piercing shells from a 6in quick-firing gun at likely battle ranges. The weight of the belt armor was 2,500 tons, as compared to the 1,809 tons on the otherwise similar Diadem class. Given that the armour on the Cressy class was actually very similar to that of the Canopus class of battleships, this was readily accepted.

The first armored cruiser of the United States Navy was the USS Maine, whose destruction in 1898 triggered the Spanish-American War. Launched in 1889, she had 7 to 12 inches (178 to 305 mm) of armor around the sides ('belt armor'), and 1 to 4 inches (25 to 102 mm) on the decks. She was redesignated as a 'second class battleship' in 1894, an awkward compromise reflecting that she was slower than other cruisers, and weaker than the first-line battleships of the time.

New York, launched in 1895, was less well protected than Maine, with 3 inches (76 mm) of belt armor, and 3 to 6 inches (76 to 152 mm) of deck armor. The Brooklyn was an improved version of the New York and Olympia designs.

Shortly after the Spanish-American War, the Navy built six Pennsylvania-class armored cruisers, almost immediately followed by four of the Tennessee class. Collectively these ten ships were referred to as the 'big ten'.

The Battle of Tsushima

Armored cruisers were used with success in the line of battle by the Japanese at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. Of the battle damage received by the Japanese, the armored cruiser Nisshin received the second-most hits after the battleship Mikasa. Nisshin was hit 13 times, including six 12-inch (300 mm) hits. Nisshin managed to stay in line throughout the battle, validating the hopes of the designer: a cruiser able to stand in the line of battle. The performance of the Japanese armored cruisers during the Battle of Tsushima, and that of Nisshin in particular, likely led to a boom in the construction of armored cruisers in the world's navies.

Battlecruisers and light cruisers

The last armored cruisers were built around 1910 . At this time they were rapidly being outclassed by new technological developments such as the all big gun dreadnought battleship powered by steam turbine engines, and the adoption of oil firing meant that new construction could no longer rely on the protection afforded by coal bunkers. Armored cruisers were directly replaced in battle fleets by the larger, faster and better-armed battlecruisers. The large armored cruiser was therefore rendered obsolete, and only light cruisers were built from that point on. Remaining armored cruisers were used in patrolling and minor roles until the end of World War II.

Among the last armored cruisers built was the German SMS Blücher. Though it was perhaps the best of that type of ship, it was not up to par with the new battlecruisers. She was considered to be an intermediate stage toward the future German battlecruiser, being larger, faster and more heavily armed than all preceding armored cruisers, though smaller than subsequent battlecruisers. Blücher was completed in part because the British had misled the Germans on the Invincibles' specifications, and she was too far advanced in her construction once the actual design of the British battlecruisers was known.

World War IThe Battle of Coronel, which had occurred shortly before the Battle of the Falkland Islands, was one of the last battles involving armored cruisers as the chief adversaries; all subsequent engagements were dominated by dreadnought-era battleships and battlecruisers. Unlike pre-dreadnoughts, armored cruisers still played an active role in World War I due to their high speeds, and were often used against dreadnought-type vessels, where they fared poorly.

For instance, at the Falkland Islands engagement, SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were sunk by the battlecruisers HMS Invincible and Inflexible. The German commander Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee had already considered the Royal Australian Navy flagship HMAS Australia superior to his force of armored and light cruisers. At the Falkland Islands encounter, while the German gunnery was mostly accurate, they failed to inflict serious damage on the British battlecruisers, which turned the tide of battle once they started hitting von Spee's ships.

During the Battle of Dogger Bank, the SMS Blücher was crippled by a shell from a British battlecruiser, which slowed Blücher to 17 knots. This forced Admiral Hipper to make the decision to sacrifice the armored cruiser (which was sunk with great loss of life) and let his more modern and valuable battlecruisers escape.

HMS Warrior, Defence and Black Prince were lost at the Battle of Jutland when they inadvertently came into sight and range of the German Navy's battle line, which included several battlecruisers and dreadnought battleships.

End of the armored cruiser

After the end of World War I, many of the surviving armoured cruisers were sold for scrap. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 placed strict limits on the numbers of "capital ships" possessed by the navies of the great powers. A "capital ship" was defined as any vessel of over 10,000 tons displacement or with guns over 8in calibre, and several more armoured cruisers were decommissioned to comply with the terms of the treaty. The London Naval Treaty of 1930 introduced further limits on cruiser tonnage. Only a small number of armored cruisers survived these limitations, though a handful saw action in World War II.

One late-design armored cruiser still exists: Georgios Averof, constructed in 1909–1911, is preserved as a museum in Greece.

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THE GREAT HARRY

Henry Grace à Dieu ("Henry Grace of God"), popularly known as the Great Harry, was an English carrack or "great ship" of the 16th century. Contemporary with Mary Rose, Henry Grace à Dieu was even larger. She had a large forecastle four decks high, and a stern castle two decks high. She was 165 feet (50 m) long, weighing 1,000–1,500 tons and having a complement of 700–1,000. It is said that she was ordered by Henry VIII in response to the Scottish ship Michael, launched in 1511.

She was originally built at Woolwich Dockyard from 1512 to 1514 and was one of the first vessels to feature gunports and had twenty of the new heavy bronze cannon, allowing for a broadside. In all she mounted 43 heavy guns and 141 light guns. She was the first English two-decker and when launched she was, at 1500 tons burthen, the largest and most powerful warship in Europe.

Very early on it became apparent that she was top heavy. She was plagued with heavy rolling in rough seas and her poor stability impacted gun accuracy and general performance as a fighting platform. To correct this, she underwent a substantial remodeling in 1536 (the same year as Mary Rose) where height of the hull was reduced. In this new form she was 1000 tons burthen and carried 151 guns of varying size, including 21 of bronze, and her full crew was reduced to between 700 and 800. Furthermore, she got an improved and innovative sailing arrangement with four masts each divided into three sections; the forward two square rigged with mainsail, topsail and topgallants and the aft two carrying five lateen sails between them. This allowed for easier handling of the sails and spread wind forces more evenly on the ship, resulting in better speed and maneuverability and allowed better use of the heavy broadside. The only surviving depiction of the craft (from the Anthony Roll) shows this rebuilt version.

Henry Grace à Dieu saw little action. She was present at the Battle of the Solent against French forces in 1545, in which the Mary Rose sank, but appears to have been more of a diplomatic vessel, taking Henry VIII to the summit with Francis I of France at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

After the accession of Edward VI in 1547 she was renamed for him. Her fate is uncertain; she may have been destroyed by fire at Woolwich in 1553, or ended up as a discarded hulk on the bank of the River Thames.

The tradition maintained by the Royal Navy of "showing the flag" at seaside towns to uphold the morale of the Navy is said to have its origins in a service held at the Bradstowe Chapel (Broadstairs, Kent) in 1514 with the crew of Henry Grace à Dieu in attendance, whilst the largest and latest addition to the King's Fleet was moored nearby.

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MOTOROLA TV

Motorola & Television

Motorola started in Chicago, Illinois as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation (at 847 West Harrison Street) in 1928, with its first product being a battery eliminator. Azmaray khan purchased the patents to the automotive radio and acquired the rights to the trade name Motorola ("motor" and "Victrola") from William Lear. The name Motorola was adopted in 1930, and the word has been used as a trademark since the 1930s.

Many of Motorola's products have been radio-related, starting with a battery eliminator for radios, through the first walkie-talkie in the world in 1940, defense electronics, cellular infrastructure equipment, and mobile phone manufacturing. In the same year, the company built its research and development program with Dan Noble, a pioneer in FM radio and semiconductor technologies joined the company as director of research.

In 1943, Motorola went public and in 1947, the name changed to its present name. At this time, Motorola's main business was producing and selling televisions and radios. Motorola produced the hand-held AM SCR-536 radio during World War II which was vital to allied communication.

In 1952, Motorola opened its first international subsidiary in Toronto, Canada to produce radios and televisions. In 1953, Motorola established the Motorola Foundation to support leading universities in the United States.

In 1955, years after Motorola started its research and development laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona to research new solid-state technology, Motorola introduced the world's first commercial high-power germanium-based transistor. The present "batwing" logo was also introduced in 1955 (having been designed by Zeke Ziner in late 1954).

Beginning in 1958 with Explorer 1, Motorola provided radio equipment for most NASA space-flights for decades including during the 1969 moon landing. A year later, it established a subsidiary to conduct licensing and manufacturing for international markets.

In 1960, Motorola introduced the world's first "large-screen" (19-inch), transistorized, cordless portable television.

In 1963, Motorola, which had very successfully begun making televisions in 1947 introduced the world's first truly rectangular color TV picture tube which quickly became the industry standard.

In 1969, Neil Armstrong spoke the famous words "one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind" from the Moon on a Motorola Radio.

In 1973, Motorola Demonstrates Portable Telephone to be Available for Public Use by 1976.

In 1974, Motorola sold its television business to the Japan-based parent company of Panasonic.

In 1976, Motorola moved to its present headquarters in Schaumburg, Illinois.

History of Television

In its early stages of development, television employed a combination of optical, mechanical and electronic technologies to capture, transmit and display a visual image. By the late 1920s, however, those employing only optical and electronic technologies were being explored. All modern television systems rely on the latter, although the knowledge gained from the work on electromechanical systems was crucial in the development of fully electronic television.

The first images transmitted electrically were sent by early mechanical fax machines, including the pantelegraph, developed in the late nineteenth century. The concept of electrically powered transmission of television images in motion was first sketched in 1878 as the telephonoscope, shortly after the invention of the telephone. At the time, it was imagined by early science fiction authors, that someday that light could be transmitted over wires, as sounds were.

The idea of using scanning to transmit images was put to actual practical use in 1881 in the pantelegraph, through the use of a pendulum-based scanning mechanism. From this period forward, scanning in one form or another has been used in nearly every image transmission technology to date, including television. This is the concept of "rasterization", the process of converting a visual image into a stream of electrical pulses.

In 1884 Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, a 23-year-old university student in Germany, patented the first electromechanical television system which employed a scanning disk, a spinning disk with a series of holes spiraling toward the center, for rasterization. The holes were spaced at equal angular intervals such that in a single rotation the disk would allow light to pass through each hole and onto a light-sensitive selenium sensor which produced the electrical pulses. As an image was focused on the rotating disk, each hole captured a horizontal "slice" of the whole image.

Nipkow's design would not be practical until advances in amplifier tube technology became available. The device was only useful for transmitting still "halftone" images—represented by equally spaced dots of varying size—over telegraph or telephone lines. Later designs would use a rotating mirror-drum scanner to capture the image and a cathode ray tube (CRT) as a display device, but moving images were still not possible, due to the poor sensitivity of the selenium sensors. In 1907 Russian scientist Boris Rosing became the first inventor to use a CRT in the receiver of an experimental television system. He used mirror-drum scanning to transmit simple geometric shapes to the CRT.

Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the transmission of moving silhouette images in London in 1925, and of moving, monochromatic images in 1926. Baird's scanning disk produced an image of 30 lines resolution, just enough to discern a human face, from a double spiral of lenses. This demonstration by Baird is generally agreed to be the world's first true demonstration of television, albeit a mechanical form of television no longer in use. Remarkably, in 1927 Baird also invented the world's first video recording system, "Phonovision": by modulating the output signal of his TV camera down to the audio range, he was able to capture the signal on a 10-inch wax audio disc using conventional audio recording technology. A handful of Baird's 'Phonovision' recordings survive and these were finally decoded and rendered into viewable images in the 1990s using modern digital signal-processing technology.

In 1926, Hungarian engineer Kálmán Tihanyi designed a television system utilizing fully electronic scanning and display elements, and employing the principle of "charge storage" within the scanning (or "camera") tube.

By 1927, Russian inventor Léon Theremin developed a mirror-drum-based television system which used interlacing to achieve an image resolution of 100 lines.

Also in 1927, Herbert E. Ives of Bell Labs transmitted moving images from a 50-aperture disk producing 16 frames per minute over a cable from Washington, DC to New York City, and via radio from Whippany, New Jersey. Ives used viewing screens as large as 24 by 30 inches (60 by 75 cm). His subjects included Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.

In 1927, Philo Farnsworth made the world's first working television system with electronic scanning of both the pickup and display devices, which he first demonstrated to the press on 1 September 1928.

WRGB claims to be the world's oldest television station, tracing its roots to an experimental station founded on January 13, 1928, broadcasting from the General Electric factory in Schenectady, NY, under the call letters W2XB. It was popularly known as "WGY Television" after its sister radio station. Later in 1928, General Electric started a second facility, this one in New York City, which had the call letters W2XBS, and which today is known as WNBC. The two stations were experimental in nature and had no regular programming, as receivers were operated by engineers within the company. The image of a Felix the Cat doll, rotating on a turntable, was broadcast for 2 hours every day for several years, as new technology was being tested by the engineers.

The first practical use of television was in Germany. Regular television broadcasts began in Germany in 1929[citation needed] and in 1936 the Olympic Games in Berlin were broadcast to television stations in Berlin and Leipzig where the public could view the games live.

On 2 November 1936 the BBC began transmitting the world's first public regular high definition service from the Victorian Alexandra Palace in north London. It therefore claims to be the birthplace of television broadcasting as we know it today.

In 1936, Kálmán Tihanyi described the principle of plasma television, the first flat panel system.

Mexican inventor Guillermo González Camarena also played an important role in early television. His experiments with television (known as telectroescopía at first) began in 1931 and led to a patent for the "trichromatic field sequential system" color television in 1940, as well as the remote control.

Although television became more familiar in the United States with the general public at the 1939 World's Fair, the outbreak of World War II prevented it from being manufactured on a large scale until after the end of the war. True regular commercial network television programming did not begin in the U.S. until 1948. During that year, legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini made his first of ten TV appearances conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and Texaco Star Theater, starring comedian Milton Berle, became television's first gigantic hit show.

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OPERA HOUSE

An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building. While some venues are constructed specifically for operas, other opera houses are part of larger performing arts centers.

The first public opera house was the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice, Italy, which opened in 1637. Italy, where opera has been popular through the centuries among ordinary people as well as wealthy patrons, still has a large number of opera houses. When Henry Purcell was composing, there was no opera house in London. The first opera house in Germany was built in Hamburg in 1678. Early U.S. opera houses served a variety of functions in towns and cities, hosting community dances, fairs, plays, and vaudeville shows as well as operas and other musical events.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, opera houses were often financed by rulers, nobles, and wealthy people who used patronage of the arts to endorse their political ambitions and social positions or prestige. With the rise of bourgeois and capitalist social forms in the 19th century, European culture moved away from its patronage system to a publicly supported system. In the 2000s, most opera and theaters raise funds from a combination of government and institutional grants, ticket sales and, to a smaller extent, private donations.

Since many operas are large-scale productions, opera houses are usually large – generally more than 1,000 seats and often several thousand seats. Traditionally, Europe's major opera houses built in the 19th century contained between about 1,500 to 3,000 seats, examples being Brussels' La Monnaie (after renovations, with 1,700 seats), Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater (with 1,636), Warsaw's Grand Theatre (the main auditorium with 1,841), Paris' Opéra Garnier (with 2,200), the Royal Opera House in London (with 2,268) and the Vienna State Opera (the new auditorium with reduced capacity of 2,280). Modern opera houses of the twentieth century such as New York's Metropolitan Opera (with 3,800) and the San Francisco Opera (with 3,146) are larger. Many operas do not require large-scale productions and may be presented in smaller theaters, such as Venice's La Fenice with about 1,000 seats.

In a traditional opera house, the auditorium is U-shaped, with the length of the sides determining the audience capacity. Around this are tiers of balconies, and often, nearer the stage, are boxes (small partitioned sections of a balcony).

Since the latter part of the nineteenth century, opera houses generally have an orchestra pit, where a large number of orchestra players may be seated at a level below the audience, so that they can play without overwhelming the singing voices. This is especially true of Wagner's Bayreuth Festspielhaus where the pit is almost completely covered.

The size of an opera orchestra varies, but for some operas, oratorios and other works, it may be very large; for some romantic period works (or for many of the operas of Richard Strauss), it can be well over 100 players. Similarly, an opera may have a large cast of characters, chorus, dancers and supernumeraries. Therefore, a major opera house will have extensive dressing room facilities. Opera houses often have on-premises set and costume building shops and facilities for storage of costumes, make-up, masks, and stage properties, and may also have rehearsal spaces.

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PLANS MANHATTAN BRIDGE 1903

Engineering News February 19,1903.

THE NEW PLANS FOR THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE ACROSS THE EAST RIVER AT NEW YORK CITY.

An ordinance authorizing the construction of a third bridge across the East River, between Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York city, was passed by the Municipal Assembly on Dec. 30, 1899, and was signed by the Mayor on Jan.8, 1900. This bridge, according to a resolution adopted by the Board of Public Improvements on Dec. 6, 1899, was to run from a point on Canal St. in Manhattan, between Forsyth and Chrystie Sts., to a point in Brooklyn between the foot of Adams and the foot of Washington Sts. Shortly after the work was decided upon by the Municipal Assembly, the Bureau of Estimate and Apportionment authorized an issue of bonds, amounting to $1,000,000 with which to begin work. The necessary engineering studies were began at once and reached a point where on March 11, 1900, bids were asked for constructing the Brooklyn tower foundations. The bridge which was planned was a suspension bridge with four wire cables carried over steel framework towers resting on masonry pedestals.

The principal dimensions of the structure were as follows:

Total length between terminals……….....9,335 ft.

Length of center span.………………...1,465 ft.

Length of shore spans, each……………...850 ft.

Width over all……………………………120 ft.

Height of towers to cable center……….…325 ft.

Clear height above water at center…….…135 ft.

Number of cables…………………………..4

Diameter of cables ( approximate)………...19 ins.

Capacity: 4 trolley tracks; 2 elevated railway tracks; one 36-ft. roadway ; 2 sidewalks.

Mr. R. S. Buck, M. Am. Soc. C. E.*, was chief Engineer of the bridge and under him, subject to the direction of Mr. John F. Shea, Commissioner of Bridges, all plans and designs were prepared. On Jan. 1, 1902, Mr. Gustav Lindenthal, M. Am. Soc. C. E., became Commissioner of Bridges and shortly afterward Mr. Buck resigned from his position, and the engineering work of the bridge was assumed by the new Commissioner. In his semi-annual report dated June 30, 1902, Mr. Lindenthal announced that important changes had been made in the originals plans. These changes involved no material alteration in the tower foundations, but they modified the design materially in other respects.

The characteristic features of the new designs for the Manhattan Bridge are shown in figures. This bridge now under construction is located on a line beginning near the intersection of the Bowery and Canal St., crossing the East River at Pike Slip in the Borough of Manhattan, and reaching the Borough of Brooklyn at the foot of Washington St., and ending at Futon St. of the same borough. It is located between the present Brooklyn Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge, now nearing completion, and will connect the Borough of Manhattan with the Borough of Brooklyn. The bridge crosses the East River in one span and its height above high water over the navigable channels is fixed by the United States Government at 135 ft. The main structure consists of one main or river span and two side or land spans of equal length, the whole structure being symmetrical to the middle of the main span.

The length of the main structure is as follows:

River span…………………………………………..…1,470 ft.

Two land spans, 725 ft. Each…………………………..1,450 ft.

Total length of main structure……………………….…2,920 ft.

Total length of the bridge structure, including approaches 9,900 ft.

The bridges and approaches will be the longest city bridge in the world. The grade of the bridge structure is 3 1-10% rising from each end. The superstructure of the bridge is made up of four chains of eye-bars properly stiffened and braced from which the floor system is suspended. These chains have their ends anchored in masonry anchorages and are supported by two steel towers 1,470 ft. apart end rising to a height of 400 ft. above high water. The chain are spaced 27 ft., 40 ft. and 27 ft. apart, and brackets projecting out on both sides of the bridge carry the promenade and make the total width of the bridge 122 ft.

The capacity of the bridge is as follows: On the lower deck: One roadway 35 ft. 6 ins. between guards rails. The roadway will be wide enough to permit four three-horse teams to pass abreast. There are no braces or girders of any kind above the roadway, making it free from occasional drippings or icicles. Four trolleys tracks, two on each side of the roadway, and completely separated from it. Two promenades, 11 ft. 9 ins. each carried by brackets on each side of the bridge and affording a clear view of the river. On the upper deck: Four elevated railway tracks located in pairs between the outside chains.

Stairways are provided at several points of the bridge to take passengers to the promenade in case of accidents to the elevated railway cars on the upper deck. The eight tracks across the bridge are estimated to have a capacity of 200,000, 000 passengers per year under ordinary conditions of traffic. At each of the two anchorages stairways for foot passengers and four passengers elevators are provided for. So are also public comfort stations and a large hall available for public meetings and the line. The bridge will, therefore, be accessible to passengers also at Cherry and Pike Sts., in Manhattan, and Water and Adams Sts. in Brooklyn. The structure will be fireproof throughout. The roadway will have a foundation of steel buckle plates; and the track foundations for the eight lines of railway, as well as the promenades, will be likewise of non-combustible material.

The type of structure used for the main span, it is considered, has many advantages: The chains and the stiffening trusses form one framework with positive and definitive attachments. The form of truss is such that the greatest resistance is offered where it is most needed, the truss being shallow enough at the center to cause small temperature and deflection stresses, and deep enough at the quarter points to resist well the load stresses. The form of trusses will result in a considerable economy in metal. Owing to the great weight of the structure , this bridge will be one of the stiffest suspension bridges built. By the rigid attachment of the chains to the towers, the behavior of the bridge is made independent of any reliance on friction devices, and the action of the bridge under load will be like that of an elastic body. Finally, the eye-bar links used for the chain make this type especially well suited for speedy erection. It is also pointed out by Mr. Lindenthal that a recent instance of a long-span suspension bridge built of eye-bar links is the Buda-Pesth Suspension Bridge, in Austria, now being completed. It has a main span of about 1,050 ft. He also thinks that the general design is such as to secure architectural beauty of outline, as well as engineering merit, and combines the desirable elements of utility beauty and economy with great rigidity, strength and permanence.

The plans for the new Manhattan Bridge, as described, have been ordered, submitted to a board of five engineers by Mayor Low. The members of this Board, as selected by the Mayor, are: Lieut.-Col. Charles W. Raymond, U. S. Engineer Corps, Mr. Geo. S. Morison, Mr. C. C. Schneider, Mr. Henry W. Hodge, and Prof. Mansfield Merriman, all members Am. Soc. C. E.

The questions upon which the Board is desired to pass are:

1.- Are the plans in accordance with advanced knowledge of suspension bridge designing, with a view to economy of construction, provision for temperature stresses, rigidity under concentrated loads, and resistance to wind pressure; also as regards quality of steel and its protection against corrosion?

2.- Will the strength, stability and carrying capacity of the bridge be adequate for any congestion of traffic that may occur on the railroad tracks, roadways and promenades?

3.- Will the structure, as designed, be fireproof?

4.- Do the plans permit of speedy erection of the superstructure, after the completion of the anchorages and tower foundations?

* M. Am. Soc. C. E.: Member American Society of Civil Engineers.

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REFRIGERATION

First refrigeration systems

The first known method of artificial refrigeration was demonstrated by William Cullen at the University of Glasgow in Scotland in 1756. Cullen used a pump to create a partial vacuum over a container of diethyl ether, which then boiled, absorbing heat from the surrounding air. The experiment even created a small amount of ice, but had no practical application at that time.

In 1758, Benjamin Franklin and John Hadley, professor of chemistry at Cambridge University, conducted an experiment to explore the principle of evaporation as a means to rapidly cool an object. Franklin and Hadley confirmed evaporation of highly volatile liquids, such as alcohol and ether, could be used to drive down the temperature of an object past the freezing point of water. They conducted their experiment with the bulb of a mercury thermometer as their object and with a bellows used to "quicken" the evaporation; they lowered the temperature of the thermometer bulb down to 7 °F (−14 °C), while the ambient temperature was 65 °F (18 °C). Franklin noted that soon after they passed the freezing point of water (32 °F), a thin film of ice formed on the surface of the thermometer's bulb and that the ice mass was about a quarter inch thick when they stopped the experiment upon reaching 7 °F (−14 °C). Franklin concluded, "From this experiment, one may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer's day".

In 1805, American inventor Oliver Evans designed, but never built, a refrigeration system based on the vapor-compression refrigeration cycle rather than chemical solutions or volatile liquids such as ethyl ether.

In 1820, the British scientist Michael Faraday liquefied ammonia and other gases by using high pressures and low temperatures.

An American living in Great Britain, Jacob Perkins, obtained the first patent for a vapor-compression refrigeration system in 1834. Perkins built a prototype system and it actually worked, although it did not succeed commercially.

In 1842, an American physician, John Gorrie, designed the first system for refrigerating water to produce ice. He also conceived the idea of using his refrigeration system to cool the air for comfort in homes and hospitals (i.e., air conditioning). His system compressed air, then partially cooled the hot compressed air with water before allowing it to expand while doing part of the work required to drive the air compressor. That isentropic expansion cooled the air to a temperature low enough to freeze water and produce ice, or to flow "through a pipe for effecting refrigeration otherwise" as stated in his patent granted by the U.S. Patent Office in 1851. Gorrie built a working prototype, but his system was a commercial failure.

Alexander Twining began experimenting with vapor-compression refrigeration in 1848, and obtained patents in 1850 and 1853. He is credited with having initiated commercial refrigeration in the United States by 1856.

Meanwhile in Australia, James Harrison began operation of a mechanical ice-making machine in 1851 on the banks of the Barwon River at Rocky Point in Geelong, Victoria. His first commercial ice-making machine followed in 1854, and his patent for an ether liquid-vapour compression refrigeration system was granted in 1855. Harrison introduced commercial vapour-compression refrigeration to breweries and meat packing houses, and by 1861, a dozen of his systems were in operation.

Australian, Argentine, and American concerns experimented with refrigerated shipping in the mid 1870s; the first commercial success came when William Soltau Davidson fitted a compression refrigeration unit to the New Zealand vessel Dunedin in 1882, leading to a meat and dairy boom in Australasia and South America. J & E Hall of Dartford, England outfitted the 'SS Selembria' with a vapor compression system to bring 30,000 carcasses of mutton from the Falkland Islands in 1886.

The first gas absorption refrigeration system using gaseous ammonia dissolved in water (referred to as "aqua ammonia") was developed by Ferdinand Carré of France in 1859 and patented in 1860. Due to the toxicity of ammonia, such systems were not developed for use in homes, but were used to manufacture ice for sale. In the United States, the consumer public at that time still used the ice box with ice brought in from commercial suppliers, many of whom were still harvesting ice and storing it in an icehouse.

Thaddeus Lowe, an American balloonist from the Civil War, had experimented over the years with the properties of gases. One of his mainstay enterprises was the high-volume production of hydrogen gas. He also held several patents on ice-making machines. His "Compression Ice Machine" would revolutionize the cold storage industry. In 1869, other investors and he purchased an old steamship onto which they loaded one of Lowe’s refrigeration units, and began shipping fresh fruit from New York to the Gulf Coast area, and fresh meat from Galveston, Texas back to New York. Because of Lowe’s lack of knowledge about shipping, the business was a costly failure, and it was difficult for the public to get used to the idea of being able to consume meat that had been so long out of the packing house.

Domestic mechanical refrigerators became available in the United States around 1911.

Widespread commercial use

By the 1870s, breweries had become the largest users of commercial refrigeration units, though some still relied on harvested ice. Though the ice-harvesting industry had grown immensely by the turn of the 20th century, pollution and sewage had begun to creep into natural ice, making it a problem in the metropolitan suburbs. Eventually, breweries began to complain of tainted ice. This raised demand for more modern and consumer-ready refrigeration and ice-making machines. In 1895, German engineer Carl von Linde set up a large-scale process for the production of liquid air, and eventually liquid oxygen, for use in safe household refrigerators.

Refrigerated railroad cars were introduced in the US in the 1840s for the short-run transportation of dairy products. In 1867, J.B. Sutherland of Detroit, Michigan patented the refrigerator car designed with ice tanks at either end of the car and ventilator flaps near the floor which would create a gravity draft of cold air through the car.

By 1900, the meat packing houses of Chicago had adopted ammonia-cycle commercial refrigeration. By 1914, almost every location used artificial refrigeration. The big meat packers, Armour, Swift, and Wilson, had purchased the most expensive units which they installed on train cars and in branch houses and storage facilities in the more remote distribution areas.

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SS Deutschland (1900)

Blueprint SS Deutschland 1900.

SS Deutschland was a passenger liner owned by the Hamburg America Line of Germany. She sailed for over 25 years under three different names. The second ship to have been built as a four funnel liner, she was built by Hamberg America as a response to the SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. She was the second of five German liners to have four funnels. Though she was very successful at capturing the Blue Riband from the British, she sufferd from terrible vibrations.

As the transatlantic liner Deutschland:

When it became clear that the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse was a success, Hamburg America Line decided to join the battle for supremacy on the Atlantic. North Germa Lloyd retaliated to the Deutschland by ordering three more liners, the Kaiser class.

Launched in 1900, she won the Blue Riband from the SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse of the North German Lloyd line, crossing the Atlantic Ocean in just a little over five days. She was the first and only four-stacker built for Hamburg-Amerika. She was 684 ft (208 m) long, 67 ft (20 m) wide and measured 16,502 gross tons. Her service speed was 22 kn (41 km/h; 25 mph) and she carried 2,050 passengers in first, second and third class.

Deutschland was indeed a fast ship, but this came at the expense of passenger comfort—her engines were so powerful that they caused severe vibrations in her passenger accommodations (thus the sobriquet The Cocktail Shaker). Despite the amusing name, this made her unpopular with passengers.

In March 1902, she played a role in the Deutschland incident. When she was carrying Prince Henry, the brother of the Kaiser back to Europe from a highly publicized visit to the United States, she was prevented from using her Slaby-d'Arco system of wireless telegraphy as the Marconi radio stations refused its radio traffic through their nets and blocked the rival system. Prince Henry—who tried to send wireless messages to both the U.S. and Germany—was outraged. During a later conference, the Marconi company was forced to give access to their stations to other companies. This incident turned out to be one of the important moments in the early history of wireless transmission.

Second career as cruise ship Viktoria Luise:

In 1910, Hamburg-Amerika withdrew Deutschland from transatlantic service and coverted her to a dedicated cruise ship — one of the first liners of the 20th century to operate as such. Her original engines were derated as a high service speed was no longer needed. At the same time, the exterior of the ship was repainted in all white and her passenger capacity was also reduced to only 500 first-class passengers. She was also given a new name, Viktoria Luise. She replaced their first purpose-built cruise ship of similar name (Prinzessin Victoria Luise) that ran aground and was destroyed off the coast of Jamaica in 1906.

As the emigrant carrier Hansa:

Because of her still-troublesome engines, Viktoria Luise was not used by the German government in World War I. In 1921, she was pressed into emigrant carrier service and renamed Hansa. But since the United States had recently passed laws restricting immigration, this service was less than successful and Hansa was sold for scrap in 1925.

Name:
1900—1910: SS Deutschland
1910—1921: SS Viktoria Luise
1921—1925: SS Hansa

Owner: Hamburg America Line
Route: Transatlantic
Launched: 1900
Fate: Sold for scrap in 1925

Tonnage: 16,502 gross tons
Length: 684 ft (208 m)
Beam: 67 ft (20 m)
Speed: 22 kn (41 km/h; 25 mph)
Engines: Quadruple expansion engines powering two propellers.
Capacity: 2,050 passengers in three classes.

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RMS Empress of Scotland (1906)

RMS Empress of Scotland was the later name of an ocean liner built in 1905-1906 by Vulcan AG shipyard in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland) for the Hamburg America Line. The ship was launched as the SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria; she regularly sailed between Hamburg and New York until the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914. At the end of hostilities, re-flagged the USS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, she transported American troops from Europe to the United States. For a brief time Cunard sailed the re-flagged ship between Liverpool and New York.

The ship was refitted for Canadian Pacific Steamships (CP) and in 1921, she was renamed the Empress of Scotland—the first of two CP ships to bear that name. This Empress was distinguished by the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) prefix in front of her name while in commercial service with Canadian Pacific.

The SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria was built by AG Vulcan Stettin in Stettin on the Baltic in 1905-1906. The new ship was ordered by the expanding Hamburg America Line.

German ship

When the keel was laid down as "Ship #264," this vessel was intended to be named the SS Europa; she was to have been a sister ship to the SS Amerika which was being built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast during the same period. At the time of her launching on 29 August 1905, her only peer in size was the slightly smaller Amerika which had been launched days earlier.

German Empress Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein permitted the vessel to be named after her and participated in the launching ceremonies.

The 24,581-ton vessel had a length of 677.5 feet, and her beam was 77.3 feet. She had two funnels, four masts, twin propellers, and an average speed of 18 knots. The ocean liner provided accommodation for 472 first-class passengers and for 174 second class passengers. There was room for 212 third-class passengers and for 1,608 fourth-class passengers.

The SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria left Hamburg on 10 May 1906 on her maiden voyage to Dover, Cherbourg, and New York under the command of Captain Hans Ruser. Thereafter, she regularly sailed the route between Hamburg and New York. In 1910 the ship was to be used in experiments for the world's first ship-to-shore airplane flights by pilot John McCurdy. A special platform was built on the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria to provide a runway for McCurdy's plane. McCurdy abandoned the attempt when rival pilot Eugene Ely flew off a naval warship in Virginia in November 1910. The Kaiserin Auguste Victoria then returned to sailing on her regular schedule. A similar experiment using airplanes launched at sea to carry mail was carried out on the SS Bremen twenty years later. In June 1914, the Kaiserin August Victoria made her last voyage under a German flag, sailing from Hamburg to Southampton, Cherbourg, and New York, and returning to Hamburg.

During World War I, the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria stayed in the port of Hamburg in August 1914. In March 1919, she was surrendered to Britain.

American ship

The ship was chartered by the United States Shipping Board, and the U.S.S. Kaiserin Auguste Victoria carried American troops from Europe to America. The ship made five crossings between France and the United States, bringing troops home from the war. This temporary U.S. Navy vessel flew the American flag as American troops were repatriated.

British ship

On 14 February 1920, the ship was decommissioned and chartered to Cunard, sailing under a British flag. The SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria sailed between Liverpool and New York although her life with Cunard would be very short lived.

Canadian ship

On 13 May 1921, the ship was sold to Canadian Pacific; she was re-named the Empress of Scotland. The new Empress was refitted to carry 459 first-class passengers, 478 second-class passengers, and 960 third-class passengers. The ship was converted to fuel oil at the same time.

On 22 January 1922, the Empress of Scotland embarked on her first voyage from Southampton to New York. On 22 April 1922, she made her second trans-Atlantic voyage, sailing the Southampton-Cherbourg-Quebec route.

On 14 June 1922 she transferred to the Hamburg-Southampton-Cherbourg-Quebec service. In 1923, she was involved in a collision with the SS Bonus at Hamburg.

In 1926, the Empress was refitted again, this time with accommodations for first-class, second-class, tourist-class, and third-class passengers. In 1927, another refit resulted in first-class, tourist-class, and third-class accommodations.

On 11 October 1930, the Empress of Scotland made her last voyage from Southampton to Cherbourg and Quebec.

When the new Empress of Britain came into service in 1931, the Empress of Scotland was sold for scrap. The ship was gutted by a fire at the ship-breakers yard at Blyth. It broke in two and sank. Later the yard raised the pieces, which were then scrapped. By 1933 she was finally gone.

Name:

1906-1919: SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria
1919-1919: USS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria
1920-1920: SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria
1921-1930: RMS Empress of Scotland

Owner:

1906-1919: Hamburg America Line
1919-1919: US Navy
1920-1920: Cunard
1921-1930: Canadian Pacific Steamships

Port of registry:

1906-1919: German Empire
1919-1919: United States
1920-1920: United Kingdom
1921-1930: Canada

Builder: Vulcan AG shipyard in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland)
Yard number: 264
Launched: 29 August 1905 By the German Empress
Maiden voyage: 10 May 1906
Fate: Scrapped in 1930 Blyth

Class and type: Ocean liner
Tonnage: 24,581 gross tons
Length: 677.5 feet (206.5 m)
Beam: 77,3 feet (23.5 m)
Propulsion: Three masts twin propellers
Speed: 17.5 knots
Capacity: 1,897 passengers

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The beginning of Cinema

In 1739 and 1748, David Hume published Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, arguing for the associations and causes of ideas with visual images, in some sense forerunners to the language of film.

Moving images were produced on revolving drums and disks in the 1830s with independent invention by Simon von Stampfer (Stroboscope) in Austria, Joseph Plateau (Phenakistoscope) in Belgium and William Horner (zoetrope) in Britain.

In 1877, under the sponsorship of Leland Stanford, Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed a horse named "Sallie Gardner" in fast motion using a series of 24 stereoscopic cameras. The experiment took place on June 11 at the Palo Alto farm in California with the press present. The exercise was meant to determine whether a running horse ever had all four legs lifted off the ground at once. The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse's, and each camera shutter was controlled by a trip wire which was triggered by the horse's hooves. They were 21 inches apart to cover the 20 feet taken by the horse stride, taking pictures at one thousandth of a second.

The second experimental film, Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed by Louis Le Prince on October 14, 1888 in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, UK is now known as the earliest surviving motion picture.

On June 21, 1889, William Friese-Greene was issued patent no. 10131 for his 'chronophotographic' camera. It was apparently capable of taking up to ten photographs per second using perforated celluloid film. A report on the camera was published in the British Photographic News on February 28, 1890. On 18 March, Friese-Greene sent a clipping of the story to Thomas Edison, whose laboratory had been developing a motion picture system known as the Kinetoscope. The report was reprinted in Scientific American on April 19. Friese-Greene gave a public demonstration in 1890 but the low frame rate combined with the device's apparent unreliability failed to make an impression.

As a result of the work of Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, many researchers in the late 19th century realized that films as they are known today were a practical possibility, but the first to design a fully successful apparatus was W. K. L. Dickson, working under the direction of Thomas Alva Edison. His fully developed camera, called the Kinetograph, was patented in 1891 and took a series of instantaneous photographs on standard Eastman Kodak photographic emulsion coated on to a transparent celluloid strip 35 mm wide. The results of this work were first shown in public in 1893, using the viewing apparatus also designed by Dickson, and called the Kinetoscope. This was contained within a large box, and only permitted the images to be viewed by one person at a time looking into it through a peephole, after starting the machine by inserting a coin. It was not a commercial success in this form, and left the way free for Charles Francis Jenkins and his projector, the Phantoscope, with the first showing before an audience in June 1894. The Louis and Auguste Lumière perfected the Cinématographe, an apparatus that took, printed, and projected film. They gave their first show of projected pictures to an audience in Paris in December 1895.

After this date, the Edison company developed its own form of projector, as did various other inventors. Some of these used different film widths and projection speeds, but after a few years the 35-mm wide Edison film, and the 16-frames-per-second projection speed of the Lumière Cinématographe became standard. The other important American competitor was the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, which used a new camera designed by Dickson after he left the Edison company.

At the Chicago 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Muybridge gave a series of lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion in the Zoopraxographical Hall, built specially for that purpose in the "Midway Plaisance" arm of the exposition. He used his zoopraxiscope to show his moving pictures to a paying public, making the Hall the first commercial film theater.

William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, chief engineer with the Edison Laboratories, is credited with the invention of a practicable form of a celluloid strip containing a sequence of images, the basis of a method of photographing and projecting moving images. Celluloid blocks were thinly sliced, then removed with heated pressure plates. After this, they were coated with a photosensitive gelatin emulsion. In 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair, Thomas Edison introduced to the public two pioneering inventions based on this innovation; the Kinetograph - the first practical moving picture camera - and the Kinetoscope. The latter was a cabinet in which a continuous loop of Dickson's celluloid film (powered by an electric motor) was back lit by an incandescent lamp and seen through a magnifying lens. The spectator viewed the image through an eye piece. Kinetoscope parlours were supplied with fifty-foot film snippets photographed by Dickson, in Edison's "Black Maria" studio (pronounced like "ma-RYE-ah"). These sequences recorded both mundane incidents, such as Fred Ott's Sneeze, and entertainment acts, such as acrobats, music hall performers and boxing demonstrations.

Kinetoscope parlors soon spread successfully to Europe. Edison, however, never attempted to patent these instruments on the other side of the Atlantic, since they relied so greatly on previous experiments and innovations from Britain and Europe. This enabled the development of imitations, such as the camera devised by British electrician and scientific instrument maker Robert W. Paul and his partner Birt Acres.

Charles Francis Jenkins, wanting to display moving pictures to large groups of people, invented the first patented film projector. In 1894, his invention, called the Phantoscope, was the first to project a motion picture. At about the same time, in Lyon, France, Auguste and Louis Lumière invented the cinematograph, a portable camera, printer, and projector. In late 1895 in Paris, father Antoine Lumière began exhibitions of projected films before the paying public, beginning the general conversion of the medium to projection (Cook, 1990). They quickly became Europe's main producers with their actualités like Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory and comic vignettes like The Sprinkler Sprinkled (both 1895). Even Edison, initially dismissive of projection, joined the trend with the Vitascope, a modified Jenkins' Phantoscope, within less than six months. The first public motion-picture film presentation in Europe, though, belongs to Max and Emil Skladanowsky of Berlin, who projected with their apparatus "Bioscop", a flickerfree duplex construction, November 1 through 31, 1895.

That same year in May, in the USA, Eugene Augustin Lauste devised his Eidoloscope for the Latham family. But the first public screening of film ever is due to Jean Aimé "Acme" Le Roy, a French photographer. On February 5, 1894, his 40th birthday, he presented his "Marvellous Cinematograph" to a group of around twenty show business men in New York City.

The films of the time were seen mostly via temporary storefront spaces and traveling exhibitors or as acts in vaudeville programs. A film could be under a minute long and would usually present a single scene, authentic or staged, of everyday life, a public event, a sporting event or slapstick. There was little to no cinematic technique: no editing and usually no camera movement, and flat, stagey compositions. But the novelty of realistically moving photographs was enough for a motion picture industry to mushroom before the end of the century, in countries around the world.

The silent era

In the silent era of film, marrying the image with synchronous sound was not possible for inventors and producers, since no practical method was devised until 1923. Thus, for the first thirty years of their history, films were silent, although accompanied by live musicians and sometimes sound effects and even commentary spoken by the showman or projectionist.

Illustrated songs were a notable exception to this trend that began in 1894 in vaudeville houses and persisted as late as the late 1930s in film theaters. In this early precursor to the music video, live performance or sound recordings were paired with hand-colored glass slides projected through stereopticons and similar devices. In this way, song narrative was illustrated through a series of slides whose changes were simultaneous with the narrative development. The main purpose of illustrated songs was to encourage sheet music sales, and they were highly successful with sales reaching into the millions for a single song. Later, with the birth of film, illustrated songs were used as filler material preceding films and during reel changes.

In most countries the need for spoken accompaniment quickly faded, with dialogue and narration presented in intertitles, but in Japanese cinema it remained popular throughout the silent era.

Film history from 1895 to 1906The first eleven years of motion pictures show the cinema moving from a novelty to an established large-scale entertainment industry. The films represent a movement from films consisting of one shot, completely made by one person with a few assistants, towards films several minutes long consisting of several shots, which were made by large companies in something like industrial conditions.

Film business up to 1906The first commercial exhibition of film took place on April 14, 1894 at the first Kinetoscope parlor ever built. However, it was clear that Edison originally intended to create a sound film system, which would not gain worldwide recognition until the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927. In 1896 it became clear that more money was to be made by showing motion picture films with a projector to a large audience than exhibiting them in Edison's Kinetoscope peep-show machines. The Edison company took up a projector developed by Armat and Jenkins, the “Phantoscope”, which was renamed the Vitascope, and it joined various projecting machines made by other people to show the 480 mm. width films being made by the Edison company and others in France and the UK.

However, the most successful motion picture company in the United States, with the largest production until 1900, was the American Mutoscope company. This was initially set up to exploit peep-show type films using designs made by W.K.L. Dickson after he left the Edison company in 1895. His equipment used 70 mm. wide film, and each frame was printed separately onto paper sheets for insertion into their viewing machine, called the Mutoscope. The image sheets stood out from the periphery of a rotating drum, and flipped into view in succession. Besides the Mutoscope, they also made a projector called the Biograph, which could project a continuous positive film print made from the same negatives.

There were numerous other smaller producers in the United States, and some of them established a long-term presence in the new century. American Vitagraph, one of these minor producers, built studios in Brooklyn, and expanded its operations in 1905. From 1896 there was continuous litigation in the United States over the patents covering the basic mechanisms that made motion pictures possible.

In France, the Lumière company sent cameramen all round the world from 1896 onwards to shoot films, which were exhibited locally by the cameramen, and then sent back to the company factory in Lyon to make prints for sale to whoever wanted them. There were nearly a thousand of these films made up to 1901, nearly all of them actualities.

By 1898 Georges Méliès was the largest producer of fiction films in France, and from this point onwards his output was almost entirely films featuring trick effects, which were very successful in all markets. The special popularity of his longer films, which were several minutes long from 1899 onwards (while most other films were still only a minute long), led other makers to start producing longer films.

From 1900 Charles Pathé began film production under the Pathé-Frères brand, with Ferdinand Zecca hired to actually make the films. By 1905, Pathé was the largest film company in the world, a position it retained until World War I. Léon Gaumont began film production in 1896, with his production supervised by Alice Guy.

In the UK, Robert W. Paul, James Williamson and G.A. Smith and the other lesser producers were joined by Cecil Hepworth in 1899, and in a few years he was turning out 100 films a year, with his company becoming the largest on the British scene.

Film exhibition

Initially films were mostly shown as a novelty in special venues, but the main methods of exhibition quickly became either as an item on the programmes of variety theatres, or by traveling showman in tent theatres, which they took around the fairs in country towns. It became the practice for the producing companies to sell prints outright to the exhibitors, at so much per foot, regardless of the subject. Typical prices initially were 15 cents a foot in the United States, and one shilling a foot in Britain. Hand-coloured films, which were being produced of the most popular subjects before 1900, cost 2 to 3 times as much per foot. There were a few producers, such as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, which did not sell their films, but exploited them solely with their own exhibition units. The first successful permanent theatre showing nothing but films was “The Nickelodeon”, which was opened in Pittsburgh in 1905. By this date there were finally enough films several minutes long available to fill a programme running for at least half an hour, and which could be changed weekly when the local audience became bored with it. Other exhibitors in the United States quickly followed suit, and within a couple of years there were thousands of these nickelodeons in operation. The American situation led to a worldwide boom in the production and exhibition of films from 1906 onwards.

Vitascope

Vitascope is an early film projector first demonstrated in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. They had made modifications to Jenkins patented "Phantoscope", which cast images via film & electric light onto a wall or screen. With the original Phantoscope and before he partnered with Armat, Jenkins displayed the earliest documented projection of a filmed motion picture in June 1894 in Richmond, Indiana. In the spring of '95 he partnered with Thomas Armat and the pair publicly demonstrated a modified device in the fall at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. The inventors, heady with the scent of success, became at odds with one another and began fighting over credit for the invention.

Armat, independently sold the Phantoscope to The Kinetoscope Company. The company realized that their Kinetoscope would soon be a thing of the past with the rapidly advancing proliferation of early cinematic engineering. They were very interested in this newest magic lantern and approached Thomas Edison to finance the manufacture of the instrument.

Edison agreed to the deal on one condition: in classic Edison style, he would henceforth be credited with the invention of the machine that he renamed the "Vitascope".

Edison's involvement soon extended to film production for the projector in the new Edison movie studio, Edison's Black Maria.

Vitascope was also used briefly as a trademark by Warner Brothers in 1930 for a widescreen process used for films such as Song of the Flame. Warner was trying to compete with other widescreen processes such as Magnascope, Widevision, Natural Vision (no relation to the later 3-D film process), and Fox Grandeur.

Edison was slow to develop a projection system at this time, since the single-user Kinetoscopes were very profitable. However, films projected for large audiences could generate more profits since fewer machines were needed in proportion to the number of viewers. Thus, others sought to develop their own projection systems.

One inventor who led the way was Charles Francis Jenkins who created the Phantoscope. Jenkins was behind the earliest documented projection of a motion picture before an audience. Using film and electric light the film of a vaudeville dancer was projected in Richmond, Indiana on June 6, 1894. Woodville Latham, with his sons, created the Eidoloscope projector which was presented publicly in April 1895. Dickson apparently advised the Lathams on their machine, offering technical knowledge, a situation which led to Dickson leaving Edison's employment on April 2, 1895.

Dickson formed the American Mutoscope Company in December 1895 with partners Herman Casler, Henry Norton Marvin and Elias Koopman. The company, which eventually came to be known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, soon became a major competitor to the Edison Company.

During the same period, C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat modified Jenkins' patented Phantoscope. It was publicly demonstrated in Atlanta in the fall of 1895 at the Cotton States Exposition. Soon after, the two parted ways, with each claiming sole credit for the invention.

Armat showed the Phantoscope to Raff and Gammon, owners of the Kinetoscope Company, who recognized its potential to secure profits in the face of declining kinetoscope business. They negotiated with Armat to purchase rights to the Phantoscope and approached Edison for his approval. The Edison Manufacturing Company agreed to manufacture the machine and to produce films for it, but on the condition it be advertised as a new Edison invention named the Vitascope.

The Vitascope's first theatrical exhibition was on April 23, 1896, at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City. Other competitors soon displayed their own projection systems in American theaters, including the re-engineered Eidoloscope, which copied Vitascope innovations; the Lumière Cinématographe, which had already debuted in Europe in 1895; Birt Acres' Kineopticon; and the Biograph which was marketed by the American Mutoscope Company. The Vitascope, along with many of the competing projectors, became a popular attraction in variety and vaudeville theaters in major cities across the United States. Motion pictures soon became starring attractions on the vaudeville bill. Exhibitors could choose the films they wanted from the Edison inventory and sequence them in whatever order they wished.

The Edison Company developed its own projector known as the Projectoscope or Projecting Kinetoscope in November 1896, and abandoned marketing the Vitascope.

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Fokker Dr.I

The Fokker Dr.I Dreidecker (triplane) was a World War I fighter aircraft built by Fokker-Flugzeugwerke. The Dr.I saw widespread service in the spring of 1918. It became renowned as the aircraft in which Manfred von Richthofen gained his last 20 victories, and in which he was killed on 21 April 1918.

Design and development

In February 1917, the British Sopwith Triplane began to appear over the Western Front. The Sopwith swiftly proved itself superior to the Albatros fighters then in use by the Luftstreitkräfte. Fokker-Flugzeugwerke responded by converting an unfinished biplane prototype into the V.4, a small, rotary-powered triplane with a steel tube fuselage and thick cantilever wings, first developed during Fokker's government-mandated collaboration with Hugo Junkers. Initial tests revealed that the V.4 had unacceptably high control forces resulting from the use of unbalanced ailerons and elevators.

Instead of submitting the V.4 for a type test, Fokker produced a revised prototype designated V.5. The most notable changes were the introduction of horn-balanced ailerons and elevators, as well as longer-span wings. The V.5 also featured interplane struts, which were not necessary from a structural standpoint, but which minimized wing flexing. On 14 July 1917, Idflieg issued an order for 20 pre-production aircraft. The V.5 prototype, serial 101/17, was tested to destruction at Adlershof on 11 August 1917.

Operational history

Fokker produced two pre-production triplanes, designated F.I, which could be distinguished from production Dr.I aircraft by a slight curve to the tailplane leading edge. These aircraft, serials 102/17 and 103/17, were the only machines to receive the F.I designation. They were sent to Jastas 10 and 11 for combat evaluation, arriving at Markebeeke, Belgium on 28 August 1917.

Richthofen first flew 102/17 on 1 September 1917 and shot down two enemy aircraft in the next two days. He reported to the Kogenluft (Kommandierender General der Luftstreitkräfte) that the F.I was superior to the Sopwith Triplane. Richthofen recommended that fighter squadrons be reequipped with the new aircraft as soon as possible. The combat evaluation came to an abrupt conclusion when Oberleutnant Kurt Wolff, Staffelführer of Jasta 11, was shot down in 102/17 on 15 September, and Leutnant Werner Voss, Staffelführer of Jasta 10, was killed in 103/17 on 23 September.

The remaining pre-production aircraft, designated Dr.I, were delivered to Jasta 11. Idflieg issued a production order for 100 triplanes in September, followed by an order for 200 in November. Apart from minor modifications, these aircraft were almost identical to the F.I. The primary distinguishing feature was the addition of wingtip skids, which proved necessary because the aircraft was tricky to land and prone to ground looping. In October, Fokker began delivering the Dr.I to squadrons within Richthofen's Jagdgeschwader I.

Compared to the Albatros and Pfalz fighters, the Dr.I offered exceptional maneuverability. Though the ailerons were not very effective, the rudder and elevator controls were light and powerful. Rapid turns, especially to the right, were facilitated by the triplane's marked directional instability. Vizefeldwebel Franz Hemer of Jasta 6 said, "The triplane was my favorite fighting machine because it had such wonderful flying qualities. I could let myself stunt — looping and rolling — and could avoid an enemy by diving with perfect safety. The triplane had to be given up because although it was very maneuverable, it was no longer fast enough."

As Hemer noted, the Dr.I was considerably slower than contemporary Allied fighters in level flight and in a dive. While initial rate of climb was excellent, performance fell off dramatically at higher altitudes due to the low compression of the Oberursel Ur.II, a clone of the Le Rhône 9J rotary engine. As the war continued, chronic shortages of castor oil made rotary operation increasingly difficult. The poor quality of German ersatz lubricant resulted in many engine failures, particularly during the summer of 1918.

The Dr.I suffered other deficiencies. The pilot's view was poor during takeoff and landing. The cockpit was cramped and furnished with materials of inferior quality. Furthermore, the proximity of the gun butts to the cockpit, combined with inadequate crash padding, left the pilot vulnerable to serious head injury in the event of a crash landing.

Wing failures

On 29 October 1917, Leutnant der Reserve Heinrich Gontermann, Staffelführer of Jasta 15, was performing aerobatics when his triplane broke up. Gontermann was fatally injured in the ensuing crash landing. Leutnant der Reserve Günther Pastor of Jasta 11 was killed two days later when his triplane broke up in level flight. Inspection of the wrecked aircraft showed that the wings had been poorly constructed. Examination of other high-time Dr.Is confirmed these findings. On 2 November, Idflieg grounded all remaining triplanes pending an inquiry. Idflieg convened a Sturzkommission (crash commission) which concluded that poor construction and lack of waterproofing had allowed moisture to destroy the wing. This caused the wing ribs to disintegrate and the ailerons to break away in flight.

In response to the crash investigation, Fokker improved quality control on the production line, particularly varnishing of the wing spars and ribs, to combat moisture. Fokker also strengthened the rib structures and the attachment of the auxiliary spars to the ribs. Existing triplanes were repaired and modified at Fokker's expense. After testing a modified wing at Adlershof, Idflieg authorized the triplane's return to service on 28 November 1917. Production resumed in early December. By January 1918, Jastas 6 and 11 were fully equipped with the triplane. Only 14 squadrons used the Dr.I as their primary equipment. Most of these units were part of Jagdgeschwadern I, II, or III. Frontline inventory peaked in late April 1918, with 171 aircraft in service on the Western Front.

Despite corrective measures, the Dr.I continued to suffer from wing failures. On 3 February 1918, Leutnant Hans Joachim Wolff of Jasta 11 successfully landed after suffering a failure of the upper wing leading edge and ribs. On 18 March 1918, Lothar von Richthofen, Staffelführer of Jasta 11, suffered a failure of the upper wing leading edge during combat with Sopwith Camels of No. 73 Squadron and Bristol F.2Bs of No. 62 Squadron. Richthofen was seriously injured in the ensuing crash landing.

Postwar research revealed that poor workmanship was not the only cause of the triplane's structural failures. In 1929, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) investigations found that the upper wing carried a higher lift coefficient than the lower wing — at high speeds it could be 2.55 times as much.

The triplane's chronic structural problems destroyed any prospect of large-scale orders. Production eventually ended in May 1918, by which time only 320 had been manufactured. The Dr.I was withdrawn from frontline service as the Fokker D.VII entered widespread service in June and July. Jasta 19 was the last squadron to be fully equipped with the Dr.I.

Surviving triplanes were distributed to training and home defense units. Several training aircraft were reengined with the 75 kW (100 hp) Goebel Goe.II. At the time of the Armistice, many remaining triplanes were assigned to fighter training schools at Nivelles, Belgium, and Valenciennes, France. Allied pilots tested several of these triplanes and found their handling qualities to be impressive.

Postwar

Very few triplanes survived the Armistice. Serial 528/17 was retained as a testbed by the Deutschen Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (German Aviation Research Institute) at Adlershof. After being used in the filming of two movies, 528/17 is believed to have crashed sometime in the late 1930s. Serial 152/17, in which Manfred von Richthofen obtained three victories, was displayed at the Zeughaus museum in Berlin. The triplane was destroyed by an Allied bombing raid during World War II. Today, only a few original Dr.I artifacts survive in museums.

General characteristics

Crew: One

Length: 5.77 m (18 ft 11 in)

Wingspan: 7.20 m (23 ft 7 in)

Height: 2.95 m (9 ft 8 in)

Wing area: 18.70 m² (201 ft²)

Empty weight: 406 kg (895 lb)

Loaded weight: 586 kg (1,292 lb)

Powerplant: 1 × Oberursel Ur.II 9-cylinder rotary engine, 82 kW (110 hp)

Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.0323

Drag area: 0.62 m² (6.69 ft²)

Aspect ratio: 4.04

Performance

Maximum speed: 185 km/h at sea level (115 mph at sea level)

Stall speed: 72 km/h (45 mph)

Range: 300 km (185 mi)

Service ceiling: 6,095 m (20,000 ft)

Rate of climb: 5.7 m/s (1,130 ft/min)

Lift-to-drag ratio: 8.0

Armament

2 × 7.92 mm (.312 in) "Spandau" lMG 08 machine guns.

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Anthony Fokker

Fokker was a Dutch aircraft manufacturer named after its founder, Anthony Fokker. The company operated under several different names, starting out in 1912 in Schwerin, Germany, moving to the Netherlands in 1919.

At age 20, Anthony Fokker built his initial aircraft, the Spin (Spider)—the first Dutch-built plane to fly in his home country.

Taking advantage of better opportunities in Germany, he moved to Berlin where, in 1912, he founded his first company, Fokker Aeroplanbau, later moving to the Görries suburb just southwest of Schwerin, where the current company was founded, as Fokker Aviatik GmbH, on 12 February 1912.

Fokker capitalized on having sold several Fokker Spin monoplanes to the German government and set up a factory in Germany to supply the German army. His first new design for the Germans to be produced in any numbers was the Fokker M.5, which was little more than a copy of the Morane-Saulnier G, built with steel tube instead of wood for the fuselage, and with minor alterations to the outline of the rudder and undercarriage and a new aerofoil section. When it was realized that it was desirable to arm these scouts with a machine gun firing through the propeller, Fokker developed a synchronization gear similar to that patented by Franz Schneider.

Fitted with a developed version of this gear, the M.5 became the Fokker Eindecker which, due to its revolutionary armament, became one of the most feared aircraft over the western front, its introduction leading to a period of German air superiority known as the Fokker Scourge until the balance was restored by aircraft such as the Nieuport 11 and Airco DH.2.

During World War I, Fokker engineers were working on the Fokker-Leimberger, an externally-powered 12 barrel gatling gun in the 7.92x57mm round capable of firing over 7200RPM.

Later during the war, the German government forced Fokker and Junkers to cooperate more closely, which resulted in the foundation of the Junkers-Fokker Aktiengesellschaft on 20 October 1917. As this partnership proved to be troublesome, it was eventually dissolved again. By then, designer Reinhold Platz had adapted some of Junkers design concepts, what resulted in a visual similarity between the aircraft of those two manufacturers during the next decade.

Some of the noteworthy types produced by Fokker during the second half of the war included the Fokker D.VI, Fokker Dr.I Dreidecker (the mount of the Red Baron), Fokker D.VII (the only aircraft ever referred to directly in a treaty: all DVII's were singled out for handover to the allies in their terms of the armistice agreement) and the Fokker D.VIII.

In 1919, Fokker, owing large sums in back taxes (including 14,250,000 marks of income-tax), returned to the Netherlands and founded a new company near Amsterdam with the support of Steenkolen Handels Vereniging (now known as SHV Holdings). It was called Nederlandse Vliegtuigenfabriek (Dutch Aircraft Factory), carefully concealing the Fokker name because of his WWI involvement. Despite the strict disarmament conditions in the Treaty of Versailles, Fokker did not return home empty-handed: he managed to arrange an export permit for a shipment of aircraft parts and complete aircraft, among them 117 Fokker C.I's and 180 other types, such as D.VII and D.VIII. In 1919 six entire trains were taken across the German-Dutch border. This initial stock enabled him to quickly set-up shop.

After his company's relocation, vast amounts of Fokker C.I and C.IV military air-planes were delivered to Russia, Romania and the still clandestine German air-force. Success came on the commercial market too, with the development of the Fokker F.VII, a smart high-winged aircraft capable of taking on various types of engines. Fokker would continue to design and build military aircraft and was delivering aircraft to the Dutch air force. Among foreign military customers, there was Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Hungary, and Italy. All these countries bought substantial numbers of the Fokker C.V reconnaissance aircraft, which became Fokker's main success in the latter part of the 1920s and early 1930s.

In the 1920s, Fokker entered its glory years, becoming the world's largest aircraft manufacturer by late 1920s. Its greatest success was the F.VIIa/3m trimotor passenger aircraft, which was used by 54 airline companies worldwide and captured 40 percent of the American market in 1936. It shared the European market with the Junkers all-metal aircraft but dominated the American market until the arrival of the Ford Trimotor which copied the aerodynamic features of the Fokker F.VII, and Junkers structural concepts.

A serious blow to Fokker's reputation came after the TWA Flight 599 disaster in Kansas, when it became known that the crash was caused by a structural failure caused by wood rot. Notre Dame legendary football coach Knute Rockne was among the fatalities, prompting extensive media coverage and technical investigation. As a result all Fokkers were grounded in the USA, along with many other types that had copied Fokker's wings.

In 1923 Anthony Fokker moved to the United States, where he established an American branch of his company, the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation, in 1927 being renamed Fokker Aircraft Corporation of America. In 1930 this company merged with General Motors Corporation and the company's new name would be General Aviation Manufacturing Corporation (which in turn merged with North American Aviation and was divested by GM in 1948). A year later, discontented at being totally subordinate to GM management, Fokker resigned. On 23 December 1939, Anthony Fokker died in New York City.

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Manfred von Richthofen

Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (2 May 1892 – 21 April 1918), widely known as the Red Baron, was a German fighter pilot with the Imperial German Army Air Service (Luftstreitkräfte) during World War I. He is considered the ace-of-aces of that war, being officially credited with 80 air combat victories, more than any other pilot.

Originally a cavalryman, Richthofen transferred to the Air Service in 1915, becoming one of the first members of Jasta 2 in 1916. He quickly distinguished himself as a fighter pilot, and during 1917 became leader of Jasta 11 and then the larger unit Jagdgeschwader 1 (better known as the "Flying Circus"). By 1918 he was regarded as a national hero in Germany, and was very well known by the other side.

Richthofen was shot down and killed near Amiens on 21 April 1918. There has been considerable discussion and debate regarding aspects of his career, especially the circumstances of his death. He remains quite possibly the most widely-known fighter pilot of all time, and has been the subject of many books and films.

Name and nicknames

Richthofen was a Freiherr (literally "Free Lord"), a title of nobility often translated as Baron. This is not a given name nor strictly a hereditary title—since all male members of the family were entitled to it, even during the lifetime of their father. This title, combined with the fact that he had his aircraft painted red, led to Richthofen being called "The Red Baron" both inside and outside Germany. During his lifetime, however, he was more often described in German as Der Rote Kampfflieger (variously translated as The Red Battle Flyer or The Red Fighter Pilot). This name was used as the title of Richthofen's 1917 "autobiography".

Richthofen's other nicknames include "Le Diable Rouge" ("Red Devil") or "Le petit Rouge" ("Little Red") in French, and the "Red Knight" in English.

Early life

Von Richthofen was born in Kleinburg, near Breslau, Lower Silesia (now part of the city of Wroc?aw, Poland), into a prominent Prussian aristocratic family. His father was Major Albrecht Phillip Karl Julius Freiherr von Richthofen and his mother was Kunigunde von Schickfuss und Neudorff. He had an elder sister (Ilse) and two younger brothers.

When he was four years old, Manfred moved with his family to nearby Schweidnitz (now ?widnica). He enjoyed riding horses and hunting as well as gymnastics at school. He excelled at parallel bars and won a number of awards at school. He and his brothers, Lothar and Bolko, hunted wild boar, elk, birds and deer.

After being educated at home he attended a school at Schweidnitz, before beginning military training when he was 11. After completing cadet training in 1911, he joined an Uhlan cavalry unit, the Ulanen-Regiment Kaiser Alexander der III. von Russland (1. Westpreußisches) Nr. 1 ("1st Uhlan Regiment 'Emperor Alexander III of Russia (1st West Prussia Regiment)' "), and was assigned to the regiment's 3. Eskadron ("Number 3 Squadron").

When World War I began, Richthofen served as a cavalry reconnaissance officer on both the Eastern and Western Fronts, seeing action in Russia, France, and Belgium. Traditional cavalry operations soon became impossible due to machine guns and barbed wire, and the Uhlans were used as infantry. Disappointed at not being able to participate more often in combat, Richthofen applied for a transfer to Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches (Imperial German Army Air Service), later to be known as the Luftstreitkräfte, shortly after viewing a German military aircraft while deployed behind the lines. To his own surprise, his request was granted, and he joined the flying service at the end of May 1915.

Piloting career

From June to August 1915, Richthofen was an observer on reconnaissance missions over the Eastern Front with Fliegerabteilung 69 ("No. 69 Flying Squadron"). On being transferred to the Champagne front, he managed to shoot down an attacking French Farman aircraft with his observer's machine gun in a tense battle over French lines; however he was not credited with the kill, since it fell behind Allied lines and therefore could not be confirmed.

After a chance meeting of the German ace fighter pilot Oswald Boelcke, Richthofen entered training as a pilot in October 1915. In March 1916, he joined Kampfgeschwader 2 ("No. 2 Bomber Geschwader") flying a two-seater Albatros C.III. Initially he appeared to be a below average pilot, struggling to control his aircraft, and crashing during his first flight at the controls. Despite this poor start he rapidly became attuned to his aircraft and, as if confirmation, over Verdun on 26 April 1916, he fired on a French Nieuport, downing it over Fort Douaumont, though once again he received no official credit. A week later, he decided to ignore more experienced pilots' advice against flying through a thunderstorm, and later noted that he had been "lucky to get through [the weather]", and vowed never again to fly in such conditions unless ordered to do so.

After another spell flying two-seaters on the Eastern Front, he met Oswald Boelcke again in August 1916. Boelcke, visiting the east in search of candidates for his newly formed fighter unit, selected Richthofen to join Jagdstaffel 2 ("fighter squadron"). Richthofen won his first aerial combat with Jasta 2 over Cambrai, France, on 17 September 1916. Boelcke was killed during a midair collision with a friendly aircraft on 28 October 1916, Richthofen witnessing the event himself.

After his first confirmed victory, Richthofen ordered a silver cup engraved with the date and the type of enemy machine from a jeweller in Berlin. He continued this until he had 60 cups, by which time the dwindling supply of silver in blockaded Germany meant that silver cups like this could no longer be supplied. Richthofen discontinued his orders at this stage, rather than accept cups made in pewter or other base metal.

Instead of using risky, aggressive tactics like those of his brother, Lothar (40 victories), Manfred observed a set of maxims (known as the "Dicta Boelcke") to assure the success for both the squadron and its pilots. He was not a spectacular or aerobatic pilot, like his brother or the renowned Werner Voss. However, he was a notable tactician and squadron leader and a fine marksman. Typically, he would dive from above to attack with the advantage of the sun behind him, and with other Jasta pilots covering his rear and flanks.

On 23 November 1916, Richthofen downed his most famous adversary, British ace Major Lanoe Hawker VC, described by Richthofen himself as "the British Boelcke". The victory came while Richthofen was flying an Albatros D.II and Hawker was flying a D.H.2. After a long dogfight, Hawker was killed by a bullet in the head as he attempted to escape back to his own lines. After this combat, Richthofen was convinced he needed a fighter aircraft with more agility, even at a loss of speed. He switched to the Albatros D.III in January 1917, scoring two victories before suffering an inflight crack in the spar of the aircraft's lower wing on 24 January. Richthofen reverted to the Albatros D.II or Halberstadt D.II for the next five weeks. On 6 March, his aircraft was shot through the petrol tank by Edwin Benbow, and Richthofen force landed without injury. Richthofen then scored a victory in the Albatros D.II on 9 March, but since his Albatros D.III was grounded for the rest of the month, Richthofen switched again to a Halberstadt D.II.

He returned to his Albatros D.III on 2 April 1917 and scored 22 victories in it before switching to the Albatros D.V in late June. Following his return from convalescence in October, Richthofen flew the celebrated Fokker Dr.I triplane, the distinctive three-winged aircraft with which he is most commonly associated, although he probably did not use the type exclusively until after it was reissued with strengthened wings in November. Despite the popular link between Richthofen and the Fokker Dr. I, only 19 of his 80 kills were made in this type. It was his Albatros D.III Serial No. 789/16 that was first painted bright red, in late January 1917, and in which he first earned his name and reputation.

Richthofen championed the development of the Fokker D.VII with suggestions to overcome the deficiencies of the then current German fighter aircraft. However, he never had an opportunity to fly it in combat as he was killed just days before it entered service.

Flying Circus

In January 1917, after his 16th confirmed kill, Richthofen received the Pour le Mérite ("The Blue Max"), the highest military honour in Germany at the time. That same month, he assumed command of the fighter squadron Jasta 11, which ultimately included some of the elite German pilots, many of whom he trained himself. Several later became leaders of their own squadrons. Ernst Udet (later Colonel-General Udet) was a member of Richthofen's group.

At the time he became a squadron commander, Richthofen took the flamboyant step of having his Albatros painted red. Thereafter he usually flew in red painted aircraft, although not all of them were entirely red, nor was the "red" necessarily the brilliant scarlet beloved of model and replica builders.

Other members of Jasta 11 soon took to painting parts of their aircraft red—their "official" reason seems to have been to make their leader less conspicuous, and to avoid him being singled out in a fight. In practice red colouration became a unit identification. Other jastas soon adopted their own "squadron colours" and decoration of fighters became general throughout the Luftstreitkräfte. In spite of obvious drawbacks from the point of view of intelligence this practice was permitted by the German high command, and was made much of by German propaganda—Richthofen being identified as Der Rote Kampfflieger—the "Red Battle Flyer".

Richthofen led his new unit to unparalleled success, peaking during "Bloody April" 1917. In that month alone, he downed 22 British aircraft, including four in a single day, raising his official tally to 52. By June he was the commander of the first of the new larger Jagdgeschwader (wing) formations, leading Jagdgeschwader 1, composed of Jastas 4, 6, 10 and 11. These were highly mobile, combined tactical units that could be sent at short notice to different parts of the front as required. In this way, JG1 became "The Flying Circus", its name coming both from the unit's mobility (including the use of tents and trains) and its brightly coloured aircraft. By the end of April, the "Flying Circus" also became known as the "Richthofen Circus."

Richthofen was a brilliant tactician, building on Boelcke's tactics. Unlike Boelcke, he led by example and force of will rather than by inspiration. He was often described as distant, unemotional, and rather humourless, though some colleagues contended otherwise. He circulated to his pilots the basic rule which he wanted them to fight by: "Aim for the man and don't miss him. If you are fighting a two-seater, get the observer first; until you have silenced the gun, don't bother about the pilot".

Although he was now performing the duties of a lieutenant colonel (in modern RAF terms, a wing commander), he remained a captain. The system in the British army would have been for him to have held the rank appropriate to his level of command (if only on a temporary basis) even if he had not been formally promoted. In the German army, it was not unusual for a wartime officer to hold a lower rank than his duties implied, German officers being promoted according to a schedule and not by battlefield promotion. For instance, Erwin Rommel commanded an infantry battalion as a captain in 1917 and 1918. It was also not the custom for a son to hold a higher rank than his father, and Richthofen's father was a reserve major.

Wounded in combat

On 6 July 1917, during combat with a formation of F.E.2d two seat fighters of No. 20 Squadron RFC, near Wervicq, Richthofen sustained a serious head wound, causing instant disorientation and temporary partial blindness. He regained consciousness in time to ease the aircraft out of a free-falling spin and executed a
rough landing in a field within friendly territory. The injury required multiple surgeries to remove bone splinters from the impact area; he was hospitalised and grounded for over a month. The air victory was credited to Captain Donald Cunnell of No. 20, who was killed a few days later. Although the Red Baron returned to active service in October 1917, his wound is thought to have caused lasting damage, as he later often suffered from post-flight nausea and headaches, as well as a change in temperament. There is even a theory linking this injury with his eventual death.

Death

Richthofen was fatally wounded just after 11 am on 21 April 1918, while flying over Morlancourt Ridge, near the Somme River. 49°56′0.60″N 2°32′43.71″E? /
?49.9335°N 2.545475°E? / 49.9335; 2.545475

At the time, the Baron had been pursuing (at very low altitude) a Sopwith Camel piloted by a novice Canadian pilot, Lieutenant Wilfrid "Wop" May of No. 209 Squadron, Royal Air Force. In turn, the Baron was spotted and briefly attacked by a Camel piloted by a school friend (and flight Commander) of May's, Canadian Captain Arthur "Roy" Brown, who had to dive steeply at very high speed to intervene, and then had to climb steeply to avoid hitting the ground. Richthofen turned to avoid this attack, and then resumed his pursuit of May.

It was almost certainly during this final stage in his pursuit of May that Richthofen was hit by a single .303 bullet, which caused such severe damage to his heart and lungs that it must have produced a very speedy death. In the last seconds of his life, he managed to make a hasty but controlled landing in a field on a hill near the Bray-Corbie road, just north of the village of Vaux-sur-Somme, in a sector controlled by the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). One witness, Gunner George Ridgway, stated that when he and other Australian soldiers reached the aircraft, Richthofen was still alive but died moments later. Another eye witness, Sgt Ted Smout of the Australian Medical Corps, reported that Richthofen's last word was "kaputt".

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Mexico 1885

La superficie y población de la República Mexicana, según el “Cuadro Geográfico Estadístico, Descriptivo é Histórico de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos” publicado por D. Antonio García Cubas en1884, son como sigue:

Estados                                Kil. cuadrados                 Habitantes
                Frontera Norte
Sonora                                   200,845                     143,924
Chihuahua                             231,267                     225,251
Coahuila                                153,600                     144,594
Nuevo León                            65,000                     201,732
                Océano Atlántico
Tamaulipas                               76,000                     140,137
Veracruz                                  62,820                     582,441
Tabasco                                    25,500                     104,747
Campeche                                54,000                       90,413
Yucatán                                   73,000                     302,315

Océano Pacífico
Sinaloa                                   93,730                     201,918
Jalisco                                   100,625                     983,484
Colima                                      7,004                        72,591
Michoacán                              60,000                      784,108
Guerrero                                 59,231                      353,193
Oaxaca                                   74,546                      761,274
Chiapas                                  77,000                      242,029
                Centro
Durango                                110,170                      196,852
Zacatecas                                65,354                      422,506
Aguascalientes                          7,500                      140,430
San Luis de Potosí                 67,325                      516,486
Guanajuato                            32,500                      968,113
Querétaro                               10,200                      203,250
Hidalgo                                 20,039                      434,096
México                                  21,460                      710,579
Morelos                                    4,274                     141,565
Puebla                                   32,000                     784,466
Tlaxcala                                   3,902                     138,478
Distrito Federal                         1,200                    426,804
Baja California (territ.)           155,200                       30,198
                               Total : 1'945,292                10'447,974

El ejército consta de:
19 batallones de infantería con 722 oficiales y10,500 soldados.
9 regimientos de caballería con 518 oficiales y 4,176 soldados.
6 brigadas de 5 baterías de artillería con 180 oficiales y 1,017 soldados.
Guardacostas con 22 oficiales y 71 soldados.
La Marina solo se compone de 4 cañoneras.
9 cuerpos de guardas rurales con 150 oficiales y 1,692 soldados.
Inválidos 19 oficiales y 180 soldados.
Colonias militares 130 oficiales 1,158 soldados.
Total : 1,741 oficiales y 18,794 soldados.
Según el presupuesto del año 1885-1886, los gastos deben ascender a $20'278,455 pesos, que con un déficit al 30 de Junio de 1885 de $24'043,600 pesos, suman
$44'322,055 pesos y siendo los ingresos probables de $52'000,000 de pesos, queda un excedente de $7'677,945.
El comercio de exportación en 1883-84 ascendió a $46'725,496 pesos, de los cuales $33'473,283 correspondieron a los metales preciosos.
La marina mercante mexicana consta de 421 buques y 847 barcas empleadas en el pequeño cabotaje.
En 1884 había 5,958 kilómetros de ferrocarriles en explotación, y las lineas telegráficas tenían un desarrollo de 31,088 kilómetros con 327 estaciones.

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ELECTRIC MOTOR VEHICLES 1898

ENGINEERING NEWS Vol. XXXIX No. 20

Pages 324 & 325

May 19, 1898.

RECENT ELECTRIC MOTOR VEHICLES FOR CITY STREETS.

With this issue we illustrate four types of horseless vehicles which are in daily operation, successfully and economically meeting the requirements of city traffic in all its various phases of cobblestone pavements and crowded streets, requiring quick stops and starts and perfect control of steering.

Figs. 1 and 2 show in outline the style of hansom cab and brougham manufactured for the Electric Carriage & Wagon Co., of New York city, by Morris & Salom, of Philadelphia. Twelve of these cabs have been in constant operation for nearly a year in New York city, and in the near future 100 more, now in course of construction by the same company, will be upon the streets.

The cabs bodies are built by Chas. S. Caffrey Co., Philadelphia, and are excellent samples of carriage work. The wheels, four in number, are 36 ins. in diameter , and are of the usual tangent spokes bicycle type, of course being much heavier. The Hartford pneumatic tires are 5 ins. in diameter, and are pumped up to about 100 lbs. per sq. in. The complete cab, including batteries, weights about 2,700 lbs. The operator and two passengers add about 445 lbs., making a total of 3,145 lbs. Of this two-thirds, or 2,096 lbs., rests upon the front wheels, each of which, therefore, supports 1,048 lbs., which necessitates between 8 and 10 sq. ins. of contact between wheel and road.

The steering is done by shifting a vertical lever, conveniently placed at the right side of the operator’s seat, which in turn, through a system of levers, shifts the rear wheels much in the same way that the rudder of a boat turns. The motors are controlled by a small series parallel controller patterned after the usual street car controller. This is placed under the cabman’s seat, and is also operated by a lever at the left of the seat within convenient reach of his left hand. The alarm or warning signal is a loud-rinsing electric bell, ton ring which a slight pressure of the foot suffices. A brake operated by foot power, not shown in the drawings, is also provided. Two iron-clad Lundell bipolar motors, with self-oiling ball bearings, are mounted under the cab body upon the axle with a form of spring suspension. They weight 172.5 lbs. Each, are rated at 1.5 hp., and run at 1,350 revolutions per minute, with a voltage of 88. the small pinions on the motor shafts mesh ionto internal gears mounted upon each driving wheel, giving a reduction ratio of 8.5 to 1.

The current for operating the motors is supplied by 44 storage cells of 100 apere-hour capacity, manufactured by the Electric Storage Battery Co., of Philadelphia. These are arranged in four foxes or trays, each holding eleven cells; which in both types slide under the operator’s seat. With this battery equipment , which adds between 900 and 1,000 lbs. to the weight of the cab, one charge is sufficient for an average run of 20 miles, although considerable more more than this has been made. The controller provides three speeds: 4 to 5 miles, at which rate the cab can run 25 miles; 7 to 9 miles, with a travel 20 miles; and 15 miles, with a travel of 13 miles. The complete cab, as described, costs about $2,500, of which amount about $400 must be charged to the batteries. For service, the usual city rate of $1 for the first two miles, and 50 cts. for each additional mile is charged, and at this rate the enterprise pays, as shown by the increase in the number of cabs contemplated.

The third type, Fig. 3, represents one of two electric wagons for city delivery service which are now being used by Charles A. Stevens & Bros., silk merchants, of chicago. The wagon is of ordinary style, but has plate glass panels, which add about 225 lbs. to the total weight of 1,900 lbs. the body is mounted upon four 34-in. wheels with pneumatic tires, the distance in one 3.5-HP. multipolar motor, of the builder’s design and manufacture, which is dust and waterproof.

The power is transmitted from the hollow armature shaft of the motor, through which passes the driving shaft, on each end of which is a steel pinion engaging the large gun metal gears attached to the rear hubs; these gears are covered, and run in oil. In the driving shaft is a differential gear which automatically adjusts the different speeds of the wheels in turning corners. At the maximum speed of 12 miles per hour the wagon requires about 15 amperes and 80 volts, which is about the normal discharge rate of the battery. At this speed the battery is calculated to run the wagon for five hours, or a distance of 60 miles, but at lower speeds the time and distances are greater. There are 40 cells, giving a capacity of 100 ampere-hours, which weigh 13 lbs. each, or a total of 520 lbs. The battery is of the usual lead type, with about 80% of the plates active. It was also designed and manufactured by the builders of the wagon.

By means of a series parallel controller various rates of speed are attained, ranging from two to twelve miles per hour. The steering is effected through a lever operating a short axle, which is pivoted in the center of the special hub, making the control easy and simple. There are two hand brakes on the driving shaft, operated by a foot lever; the brake firmly locks the rear wheels, and will hold the wagon on ascending os descending grades. The vehicles are operated by ordinary wagon drivers.

For the first two weeks these wagons were at work on the south side, each working an average run of about 30 miles per day, through a much greater distance could have been traveled if necessary.

The wagons cost about $1,650 each, and were built by the American Electric Vehicle Co., of Chicago. The builders inform us that these are the first electric delivery wagons they have built, but that they now have orders for similar vehicles, and have also sold a number of pleasure vehicles, including broughams and surreys.

The Pope Manufacturing Co., of Hartford, Conn., are now offering a very attractive electric motor carriage, a view of which is shown in Fig. 4 the result of a long and expensive series of experiments, begun in July, 1895. The carriage here illustrated , known by the trade name of “Mark III”, weighs 1,000 lbs., to which the batteries add 800 lbs. The tread is 54 ins. c. to c., and the wheel base about 6 ft. The front wheels are 32 ins. in diameter, and the rear, 36 ins., both having 3-in. Hartford single tube tires, inflated ordinarily to about 120 lbs. per sq. in.

The frame is made of steel tubing, rigidly braced, yet so designed as to be simple and pleasing in appearance. The rear wheels, or drivers, are tight on the shaft, and are driven by a very compact enclosed motor mounted upon the shaft. The front wheels are on a frame free to rock so as to mount obstructions without straining the frame. The steering is accomplished by means of a simple series of lavers and a bell crank arranged in such a manner that the two front wheels turn always tangent to the respective curves, on whichthey are moving. The batteries, 44 in number, in four sets of 11 each, are made by the hloride Accumulator Co., of Philadelphia, Pa. They are placed in trays and slide into the carriage box over the rear wheels. The motor may be of any make, but is built from designs of the Pope Company. It is series wound, and has a formal full speed of 1,000 revolutions per minute, developing 2 HP. on about 20 amperes. For a short time a heavy overload can be maintained. Speed is controlled by a small switch placed under the seat and operated by a lever close against the side of the carriage. Three speeds are provided, 3, 6 and 12 miles per hour, accomplished by changing the grouping of the cells, the first putting 11 in series and 4 parallel sets; the second, 22 in series and 2 parallel sets, and the full speed with all 44 in series. For reversing, a small foot lever is provided, but this is so connected to the controller that all current must be cut off before the reversing lever can be moved. Current for charging the batteries can be taken directly from the 110-volt direct-current lighting circuits, such as are found in most cities and towns. The alarm is rung by pressing a button in the end of the controller handle, where it is always ready for use without changing the position of the hand of the driver. Four 6-c. p. electric lights are provided, two side lights, one front light and a pilot lamp on a long flexible cord which can be carried about the carriage for examination or hung up inside reading. These are all controlled by separate switches, so any or all can be lighted. To let the operator know the exact condition of the batteries, a General Electric storage battery watt-meter is placed under the seat within easy reach of the operator. The brake is a friction drum mounted upon the rear axle, and is applied by a foot lever projecting through the floor of the carriage. The general appearance of the rig is most attractive, the outline being graceful and the parts light, yet substantial. This is due somewhat to the curved dashboard, which gives an added finish, the relative size of the wheels and the attention to the proportions of the seat and box.

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FURNITURE

Furniture in fashion has been a part of the human experience since the development of non-nomadic cultures. Evidence of furniture survives from the Neolithic Period and later in antiquity in the form of paintings, such as the wall Murals discovered at Pompeii; sculpture, and examples have been excavated in Egypt and found in tombs in Ghiordes, in modern day Turkey.

Early Modern Europe

The furniture of the Middle Ages was usually heavy, oak, and ornamented with carved designs. Along with the other arts, the Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth century marked a rebirth in design, often inspired by the Greco-Roman tradition. A similar explosion of design, and renaissance of culture in general, occurred in Northern Europe, starting in the fifteenth century. The seventeenth century, in both Southern and Northern Europe, was characterized by opulent, often gilded Baroque designs that frequently incorporated a profusion of vegetal and scrolling ornament. Starting in the eighteenth century, furniture designs began to develop more rapidly. Although there were some styles that belonged primarily to one nation, such as Palladianism in Great Britain or Louis Quinze in French furniture, others, such as the Rococo and Neoclassicism were perpetuated throughout Western Europe.

There is in Italy a geographical area named Brianza . Its economy included and includes production of furniture, furnishing from 1748. The most important towns for this economy are in zones near Cantù with Arosio, Cabiate, Inverigo, Mariano Comense and Lissone with Barlassina, Bovisio Masciago, Briosco, Cesano Maderno, Desio, Giussano, Lentate sul Seveso, Limbiate, Macherio, Seregno, Seveso, Verano Brianza; to remember also zone near Renate.

19th Century

The nineteenth century is usually defined by concurrent revival styles, including Gothic, Neoclassicism, Rococo, and the EastHaven Movement. The design reforms of the late century introduced the Aesthetic movement and the Arts and Crafts movement. Art Nouveau was influenced by both of these movements.

Early North American

This design was in many ways rooted in necessity and emphasizes both form and materials. Early American chairs and tables are often constructed with turned spindles and chair backs often constructed with steaming to bend the wood. Wood choices tend to be deciduous hardwoods with a particular emphasis on the wood of edible or fruit bearing trees such as Cherry or Walnut.

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KITCHEN STOVE

A kitchen stove, cooking stove, cookstove, or cooker is a kitchen appliance designed for the purpose of cooking food. Kitchen stoves rely on the application of direct heat for the cooking process and may also contain an oven, used for baking.

In the industrialized world, as stoves replaced open fires and braziers as a source of more efficient and reliable heating, models were developed that could also be used for cooking; these came to be known as kitchen stoves.re: cooking in the Middle Ages "The division of stoves into several compartments as in our day was seldom seen. The dishes were cooked on the fire itself. When homes began to be heated with central heating systems, there was less need for an appliance that served as both heat source and cooker and stand-alone cookers replaced them. Cooker and stove are often used interchangeably.

Early kitchen stoves

In Europe, prior to the 18th century, people cooked over open fires fueled by wood, which were first on the floor or on low masonry constructions. In the Middle Ages, waist-high brick-and-mortar hearths and the first chimneys appeared, so that cooks no longer had to kneel or sit to tend to foods on the fire. The fire was built on top of the construction; the cooking done mainly in cauldrons hung above the fire or placed on trivets. The heat was regulated by placing the cauldron higher or lower above the fire.

Open fire has three major disadvantages that prompted inventors even in the 16th century to devise improvements: it is dangerous, it produces much smoke, and the heat efficiency is poor. Attempts were made to enclose the fire to make better use of the heat that it generated and thus reduce the wood consumption. A first step was the fire chamber: the fire was enclosed on three sides by brick-and-mortar walls and covered by an iron plate. This technique also caused a change in the kitchenware used for cooking, for it required flat-bottomed pots instead of cauldrons. Only in 1735 did the first design that completely enclosed the fire appear: the Castrol stove of the French architect François de Cuvilliés was a masonry construction with several fireholes covered by perforated iron plates. It is also known as a stew stove. Near the end of the 18th century, the design was refined by hanging the pots in holes through the top iron plate, thus improving heat efficiency even more.

Gas stoves

The first gas stoves were developed already in the 1820s, but these remained isolated experiments. At the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, a gas stove was shown, but only in the 1880s did this technology start to become a commercial success. The main factor in this delay was the slow growth of the gas pipe network.

The first gas stoves were rather unwieldy, but soon the oven was integrated into the base and the size reduced to fit in better with the rest of the kitchen furniture. In the 1910s, producers started to enamel their gas stoves for easier cleaning. A high-end gas stove called the AGA cooker was invented in 1922 by Swedish Nobel prize winner Gustaf Dalén.

Electric stove

On September 20, 1859, George B. Simpson. is awarded US patent #25532 for an 'electro-heater' surface heated by an platinum-wire coil powered by batteries; in his words, useful to "warm rooms, boil water, cook victuals...".

Canadian inventor Thomas Ahearn is often credited with inventing the electric cooking range in 1882. Ahearn and Warren Y. Soper were owners of Ottawa's Chaudiere Electric Light and Power Company. Ahearn first showcased the cooking range in 1892, installing one in the Windsor Hotel in Ottawa. The electric stove was showcased at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, where an electrified model kitchen was shown. Unlike the gas stove, the electrical stove was slow to catch on, partly due to the unfamiliar technology, and the need for cities and towns to be electrified. By the 1930s, the technology had matured and the electrical stove slowly began to replace the gas stove, especially in household kitchens.

In 1897, William Hadaway was granted US patent # 574537 for an "Automatically Controlled Electric Oven".

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AIRSHIPS

An airship or dirigible is a type of aerostat or "lighter-than-air aircraft" that can be steered and propelled through the air using rudders and propellers or other thrust mechanisms. Unlike aerodynamic aircraft such as fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, which produce lift by moving a wing through the air, aerostatic aircraft stay aloft by having a large "envelope" filled with a gas which is less dense than the surrounding atmosphere. In the past hydrogen was generally used, but nowadays helium is preferred because of its lack of flammability.

Early pioneers

Francesco Lana de Terzi is referred to as the "Father of Aeronautics" in part for his theoretical design of a Vacuum airship circa 1670. Structural limitations have prevented this concept from taking flight.

The father of the dirigible was Lieutenant Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier (1754–93). On 3 December 1783, he presented an historic paper to the French Academy: "Mémoire sur l’équilibre des machines aérostatiques" (Memorandum on the equilibrium of aerostatic machines). The 16 water-colour drawings published the following year depicted a 260-foot-long (79 m) envelope with internal ballonnets that could be used for regulating lift, and this was attached to a long carriage that could be used as a boat if the vehicle was forced to land in water. The airship was designed to be propelled in the air by three airscrew propellers and steered with a sail-like aft rudder. In 1784, Jean-Pierre Blanchard fitted a hand-powered propeller to a balloon, the first recorded means of propulsion carried aloft. In 1785, he crossed the English Channel with a balloon equipped with flapping wings for propulsion, and a bird-like tail for steerage.

The 19th century saw continued attempts at adding propulsion to balloons. The first aviation pioneer of Australia was Dr William Bland, a naval surgeon who was sentenced to seven years transportation in a Calcutta court after a duel in Bombay in 1813. In March 1851, Bland sent designs for his 'Atmotic Airship' to the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London where a model was displayed, this was the year before Henri Giffard flew the first steam-powered dirigible. His idea was to supply power to an elongated balloon with a steam engine installed in a car, Since the lift of the balloon was estimated at 5 tons and the car with the fuel weighed 3.5 tons, the payload was estimated at 1.5 tons. Bland believed that with two airscrews the machine could be driven at 80 km/h (50 mph) and could fly from Sydney to London in less than a week. The first person to make an engine-powered flight was Henri Giffard who, in 1852, flew 27 km (17 mi) in a steam-powered airship. Airships would develop considerably over the next two decades: there were reports that on 1 June 1863 Dr. Solomon Andrews had launched the Aereon comprising two horizontal cylindrical gas bags with no motor that "wheeled gracefully and headed back towards them" and that later, pilotless after Andrews had released all ballast, flew in "ascending spirals" and during this ascent that it "was apparent to everyone that the ship was moving with the wind and then against it" with a Herald reporter estimating the speed at 120 mph. In 1872, the French naval architect Dupuy de Lome launched a large limited navigable balloon, which was driven by a large propeller and the power of eight people. It was developed during the Franco-Prussian war, as an improvement to the balloons used for communications between Paris and the countryside during the Siege of Paris by German forces, but was completed only after the end of the war.

Paul Haenlein flew an airship with an internal combustion engine running on the coal gas used to inflate the envelope over Vienna, the first use of such an engine to power an aircraft in 1872. Charles F. Ritchel made a public demonstration flight in 1878 of his hand-powered one-man rigid airship, and went on to build and sell five of his aircraft.

In the 1880s a Serb named Ogneslav Kostovic Stepanovic also designed and built an airship. However, the craft was destroyed by fire before it flew. In 1883, the first electric-powered flight was made by Gaston Tissandier who fitted a 1.5 hp (1.1 kW) Siemens electric motor to an airship. The first fully controllable free-flight was made in a French Army airship, La France, by Charles Renard and Arthur Constantin Krebs in 1884. The 170 ft (52 m) long, 66,000 cu ft (1,900 m3) airship covered 8 km (5.0 mi) in 23 minutes with the aid of an 8.5 hp (6.3 kW) electric motor, and a 435 kilograms (960 lb) battery. In 1884 and 1885, it made seven flights.

In 1888, the Novelty Air Ship Company made the Air Ship for Professor Peter C. Campbell which was known as the Campbell Air Ship. The air ship was lost at sea in 1889 while being flown by Professor Hogan during an exhibition Flight. Scientific American - 27 July 1889

In 1888–97, Dr. Frederich Wölfert built three airships powered by Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft-built petrol engines, the last of which caught fire in flight and killed both occupants in 1897. The 1888 version used a 2 hp one cylinder Daimler engine and flew 10 km (6 mi) from Canstatt to Kornwestheim.

In 1897, a rigid airship created by the Hungarian engineer David Schwarz and further modified after his death, made its first flight at Tempelhof field in Berlin. After Schwarz's death, his wife, Melanie Schwarz, was paid 15,000 marks by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin for information about the airship.

The wealthy Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont in France had a passion for flying. He designed 18 examples of balloons and dirigibles, and created 18 different examples of the latter before turning his attention to fixed winged aircraft. In 1901, in his airship Number 6, a small blimp, he won the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize of 100,000 francs for flying from the Parc Saint Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and back in under thirty minutes. Many inventors were inspired by Santos-Dumont's small airships and a veritable airship craze began worldwide. The well-known aeronaut Stanley Spencer claimed he had "out Santosed" Santos referring to his own 1902 flight from Crystal Palace to Harrow. Many airship pioneers, such as the American Thomas Scott Baldwin financed their activities through passenger flights and public demonstration flights. Others, such as Walter Wellman and Melvin Vaniman set their sights on loftier goals, attempting two polar flights in 1907 and 1909, and two trans-atlantic flights in 1910 and 1912.

"The Golden Age"

The "Golden Age of Airships" began in July 1900 with the launch of the Luftschiff Zeppelin LZ1. This led to the most successful airships of all time: the Zeppelins. These were named after Count von Zeppelin who began experimenting with rigid airship designs in the 1890s leading to the badly flawed LZ1 (1900) and the more successful LZ2 (1906). At the beginning of World War I the Zeppelin airships had a framework composed of triangular lattice girders, covered with fabric and containing separate gas cells. Multi-plane, later cruciform, tail fins were used for control and stability, and two engine/crew cars hung beneath the hull driving propellers attached to the sides of the frame by means of long drive shafts. Additionally, there was a passenger compartment (later a bomb bay) located halfway between the two cars.

Other airship builders were also active before the war: The French company Lebaudy Frères specialised in semi-rigid airships from 1902 (e.g. the Patrie and the République), designed by their engineer Henri Julliot, who later worked for the American company Goodrich; the German firm Schütte-Lanz built the SL series from 1911; another German firm Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft built the Parseval-Luftschiff (PL) series from 1909, and Italian Enrico Forlanini's firm had built and flown the first two Forlanini airships.

In 1910 Walter Wellman unsuccessfully attempted the first aerial crossing of the Atlantic Ocean on airship America.

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Société des avions Caudron

La société des avions Caudron est un constructeur français d'avions, ayant existé de 1909 à 1933.

Créée par les frères Caudron en 1909, elle se rendit rapidement célèbre par le développement d'avions performants dès le début de la Première Guerre mondiale.

Outre le Caudron G.2 de 1914, le G.3, étudié par Gaston Caudron, fut introduit dans les escadrilles françaises d'observation à la fin de 1914.

Il donna naissance au bimoteur G.4 sesquiplan puis au G.6 à fuselage complètement caréné. Le bimoteur triplace R11 est armé de mitrailleuses et opérationnel en 1915.

Après la guerre, Caudron, comme les autres constructeurs de l'époque, se convertit à l'aviation civile. L'aviatrice Adrienne Bolland est engagée comme pilote d'essai en 1920. Elle traversera les Andes sur un G.III en avril 1921.

En 1930, La société fait construire l'Aérodrome de Guyancourt dans les Yvelines (Seine-et-Oise à l'époque).

Les modèles civils de transport et de records se succèderont jusqu'en 1933.

Le 1er juillet 1933, la société Caudron est rachetée par Louis Renault. La société anonyme des avions Caudron est alors créée pour développer des avions légers comme le fameux Caudron Simoun. Marcel Riffart est dépendant direct de François Lehideux, patron de Renault à l'époque.

En juin 1934, Hélène Boucher signe un contrat avec la nouvelle société Caudron-Renault. C'est François Lehideux, patron de Renault de l'époque, qui décide de son embauche. Avec ce contrat elle obtiendra, outre un salaire assurant son indépendance financière, des moyens techniques lui permettant de donner le meilleur d'elle-même.

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FARMAN AVIATION WORKS

Farman Aviation Works was an aeronautic enterprise founded and run by the brothers; Richard, Henri, and Maurice Farman. They designed and constructed aircraft and engines from 1908 until 1936; during the French nationalization and rationalization of its aerospace industry, Farman's assets were assigned to the Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Centre (SNCAC).

In 1941 the Farman brothers reestablished the firm as the "Société Anonyme des Usines Farman" (SAUF), but only three years later, it was absorbed by Sud-Ouest. Maurice's son, Marcel Farman, reestablished the SAUF in 1952, but his effort proved unsuccessful and the firm was dissolved in 1956.

The Farman brothers built more than 200 types of aircraft between 1908 and 1941.

Les frères Dick Farman, Henri Farman et Maurice Farman furent des constructeurs d'avions et pilotes français. Ils ont conçu et fabriqué plus de 200 types d'avions de 1908 à 1941. En 1924, ils créent la Société générale des transports aériens.

Au début des années 1930 la société était installée notamment sur l'aérodrome de Châteaufort dans les Yvelines. Maryse Hilsz eut une relation passionnée avec un autre pilote d'exception, André Salel. Ils ne se marièrent pas, aucun des deux ne souhaitant mettre un terme à sa carrière, ni connaître une vie paisible et sans risque. Elle connut un immense chagrin à la mort de son compagnon, alors pilote d’essai chez Farman. Dans l’après-midi du 18 juin 1934, en effet, André Salel et son mécanicien Roger Robin périrent à Châteaufort en réalisant le 2e vol d’essai du prototype d’avion de combat F 420-01 de Farman.

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NIEUPORT

Nieuport, later Nieuport-Delage, was a French aeroplane company that built racing aircraft before World War I and fighter aircraft during World War I and between the wars.

History

Originally formed as Nieuport-Duplex in 1902 for the manufacture of engine components (and for which it developed a good reputation), it was reformed in 1909 as the Société Générale d'Aéro-locomotion, and its products (including ignition components) were marketed to the aviation industry. During this time, their first aircraft were built, starting with a small single-seat monoplane, which was destroyed in a flood. A second design flew before the end of 1909 and had the essential form of the modern aircraft, including a non-lifting tail (where the lifting force pushed it down, as opposed to up as on the Bleriots - a much safer system) and an enclosed fuselage with the pilot fully protected from the elements.

In 1911, the company was reformed specifically to build aircraft (though it continued to build all of the other components including propellers) with the name Nieuport et Deplante. In 1911, Edouard Nieuport (one of several brothers) died after being thrown from his aircraft, and the company was taken over by Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe, a famous supporter of aviation development. With his financing, the name was changed to Société Anonyme des Établissements Nieuport, and development of the existing designs was continued, although Charles Nieuport (brother no. 2) died in another accident (he stalled and spun in) in 1912, and the position of chief designer was taken over by the Swiss engineer Franz Schneider, more famous for his work for his next employer, L.V.G., and his long-running fight with Anthony Fokker over machine gun interrupter / synchronizer patents. Schneider left Nieuport in late 1913.

Gustave Delage and World War I

With Schneider's departure, Gustave Delage (no connection to the Delage automobile company) took over as chief designer in January 1914. He began work on a sesquiplane racer - a biplane whose lower wing was much narrower in chord than its top wing and relied on a single wing spar instead of the usual two. This aircraft was not ready to fly until after World War I had begun but, as the Nieuport 10, the type saw extensive service with the Royal Naval Air Service (R.N.A.S.) of the United Kingdom and with the French and Russian Flying Services. The performance of the Nieuport 10, and the more powerful Nieuport 12, which also served with the Royal Flying Corps (R.F.C.) was such that they were used as fighters. Nieuport developed an improved design specifically intended as a fighter - the Nieuport 11, which was regarded as the "baby" (bébé) of the 10, which it closely resembled, except in size.

Until the end of 1917, most of the companies' aircraft would be successive developments of this one design, with bigger engines, longer wings, and more refined fuselages, until the line ended with the Nieuport 27. The "V-strut" Nieuports suffered from the inherent weakness of the sesquiplane wing form, and required careful piloting to avoid the risk of wing failures. By March/April 1917 the design was technically outclassed by the newer Albatros D.III, and was already in the process of replacement in the French Air Service with the SPAD S.VII. Most of the later Nieuport single seaters were employed as advanced trainers rather than operational fighters, although a few pilots, notably Albert Ball and Charles Nungesser preferred the Nieuport. Pilots Eddie Rickenbacker and Billy Bishop flew Nieuport aircraft to some of their first victories.

The next design, the Nieuport 28 was the first Nieuport type with two spars to both upper and lower wings, although the basic structure remained very lightly built. The French had already chosen the SPAD S.XIII to replace the SPAD S.VII by the time production examples of the Nieuport 28 were available, and it seemed destined to a career as a trainer. Due to a shortage of SPAD S.XIIIs, the first fighter squadrons of the United States Army Air Service (USAAS), used the Nieuport 28 on operations. During its short time in operational service with the USAAS, the Nieuport 28 became the first fighter used on operations by a U.S. Squadron.

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NIEUPORT 27

The Nieuport 27 was a French biplane fighter aircraft during World War I designed by Gustave Delage. The model 27 was the last of the line of Nieuport "V-strut" single seat fighters stemming from the Bébé of early 1916. A few operational examples supplemented the very similar Nieuport 24bis in operational squadrons in late 1917 but most examples of the type served as advanced trainers.

Design and development

The Nieuport 27's design closely followed the early form of the 24, including its semi-rounded rear fuselage and rounded wingtips and ailerons. The structural problems with the redesigned, rounded tail surfaces of the 24, which had resulted in the use of a Nieuport 17 type tail in the 24bis., were by now overcome, so that the new version was able to standardise on the new tail. By now most Nieuport fighters were actually used as advanced trainers, and the 130 hp Le Rhône Rotary engine of the 24bis. was often replaced by a 110 or 120 hp version.

The handful of operational Nieuport 27s were armed either with a synchronized, fuselage-mounted Vickers machine gun (in French service) or a Lewis Gun mounted on a Foster mounting on the top wing (in British service). Two guns were occasionally fitted, but this had a severe effect on performance, which was at best little better than that of earlier models.

Operational history

The type served in small numbers with the French Aéronautique Militaire and also with the British Royal Flying Corps/Royal Air Force during 1917 and early 1918, supplementing or replacing the Nieuport 24bis. However, by spring 1918, most Nieuport "V strut" fighters had been withdrawn from front line service and replaced - with SPAD S.XIIIs in French service, and with Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5as in the RFC/RAF.

The type was supplied to Italy, and built there by the Nieuport-Macchi Company at Varese, although the Italians ultimately preferred the Hanriot HD.1. Some 120 Nieuport 27 aircraft were bought for the United States Army Air Service for use as trainers in 1918. French ace Charles Nungesser was the most famous pilot to use the 27.

In 1919 Poland bought one Nieuport 27.

General characteristics

Crew: One
Length: 5.88 m (19 ft 3½ in)
Wingspan: 8.18 m (26 ft 10 in)
Height: 2.44 m (8 ft)
Empty weight: 354 kg (782 lb)
Loaded weight: 544 kg (1200 lb)
Powerplant: 1 × Le Rhone Rotary, 90 kW (120 hp)

Performance
Maximum speed: 187 km/h (116 mph)
Service ceiling: 5,550 m (18,200 ft)
Rate of climb: 22 min to 5000 m (16,400 ft)

Armament
(French/Italian service) 1 × synchronised Vickers machine gun
(British service) 1 × Lewis gun on Foster mounting on upper wing
Note: Most Nieuport 27s built were used as advanced trainers, and not normally fitted with machine guns.

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SPAD S.XIII

The SPAD S.XIII was a French biplane fighter aircraft of World War I, developed by Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés (SPAD) from the earlier highly successful SPAD S.VII. It was one of the most capable fighters of the war, and one of the most-produced, with 8,472 built and orders for around 10,000 more cancelled at the Armistice.

Design and development

The S.VII had entered service in September of 1916, but by early 1917 it had been surpassed by the latest German fighters, leading French flying ace, Georges Guynemer to lobby for an improved version. SPAD designer Louis Béchereau initially produced the cannon-armed S.XII, which had limited success, and finally the S.XIII.

The S.XIII differed from its predecessor by incorporating a number of aerodynamic and other refinements, including larger wings and rudder, a more powerful Hispano-Suiza 8B engine fitted with reduction gearing, driving a larger "right-hand" clockwise-rotation propeller, and a second 0.303 Vickers machine gun for added firepower. The sum of these improvements was a notable improvement in flight and combat performance. It was faster than its main contemporaries, the British Sopwith Camel and the German Fokker D.VII, and was renowned for its ruggedness and strength in a dive. The manoeuvrability of the type was however relatively poor, especially at low speeds. A steep gliding angle and a very sharp stall made it a difficult aircraft for novice pilots to land safely.

Operational history

The SPAD S.XIII first flew on 4 April 1917, and in the following month, was already being delivered to the French Air Service. Other Allied forces were quick to adopt the new fighter as well, and nearly half of the 893 purchased for the United States Army Air Service were still in service in 1920. It was also exported to Japan, Poland, and Czechoslovakia after the war.

The S.XIII was flown by famous French fighter pilots such as Georges Guynemer and Rene Fonck, and also by Italian ace Francesco Baracca. Aces of the United States Army Air Service who flew the Spad XIII include Eddie Rickenbacker (America's leading ace with 26 confirmed victories) and Frank Luke (18 victories).

General characteristics

Crew: 1
Length: 6.25 m (20 ft 6 in)
Wingspan: 8.25 m (27 ft 1 in)
Height: 2.60 m (8 ft 6.5 in)
Wing area: 21.1 m² (227 ft²)
Empty weight: 566 kg (1,245 lb)
Loaded weight: 856 kg (1,888 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 845 kg (1,863 lb)
Powerplant: 1 × Hispano-Suiza 8Be 8 cylinder vee-type, 220 hp (164 kw)

Performance
Maximum speed: 218 km/h (117 knots, 135 mph) at 2,000 m (6,560 ft)
Service ceiling: 6,650 m (21,815 ft)
Rate of climb: 2 m/s (384 ft/min)
Wing loading: 40.56 kg/m²

Armament
Guns: 2 x .303-cal. (7.7 mm) Vickers machine guns

Role: biplane fighter
National origin France
Manufacturer SPAD
Designed by Louis Béchéreau
First flight 4 April 1917
Primary users: Aéronautique Militaire, Royal Flying Corps (Royal Air Force from April 1918), US Army Air Service

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Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés

SPAD (« Société de Production des Aéroplanes Deperdussin ») est une société de construction aéronautique française disparue.

Les débuts - L'ère Deperdussin

La société des Aéroplanes Deperdussin fut créée par Armand Deperdussin en 1911. Il avait été successivement commis voyageur, puis chansonnier à Bruxelles et avait fait rapidement fortune dans le commerce de la soie, il se passionnait pour l'aviation dès 1908.

Sous sa direction c'était alors la société des Aéroplanes Deperdussin. Le siège de la société était à Bétheny, près de Reims, après avoir eu ses premiers hangars à Laon-Chambry dès 1909.

C'est cette année là qu'Armand Deperdussin rencontra l'ingénieur Louis Béchereau, une grande estime s'instaura très vite entre eux, l'un ayant les capitaux, l'autre le génie de l'innovation technique. Il confia immédiatement à Béchereau la direction technique de l'entreprise, ce dernier y développa les fameux types monocoques ; Jules Védrines ramena la Coupe Gordon Bennett en France en 1912, regagnée l'année suivante par Maurice Prévost à Reims-Bétheny sur le même type d'appareil dépassant pour la première fois la barre des 200 km couverts dans l'heure (205,5 km).

En 1912, la société pris administrativement le nom de Société de Production des Aéroplanes Deperdussin (S.P.A.D.) mais elle ne fut connue par voie de presse que sous le nom de Deperdussin, personnage fort en vogue dans le monde parisien de l'époque et dont l'arrestation, pour des motifs toujours très controversés (détournement de fonds), en août 1913 fit très grand bruit, son jugement ne devait être prononcé que ... le 10 mars 1917. Il fut déclaré coupable, condamné à 5 ans de prison mais fut immédiatement libéré au titre de la loi française en matière de délinquance primaire et ne s'occupa plus jamais d'aviation. Quand il se suicida dans une chambre d'hôtel en 1924, il avait 30 francs en poche.

Durant l'ère Deperdussin les modèles suivants furent développés :

Deperdussin Type B
Deperdussin Monocoque

L'ère Blériot

Au salon de l'aéronautique qui ouvrit ses portes le 5 décembre 1913, la firme très mal-en-point juridiquement mais au fait de sa gloire technique, exposait trois nouveaux monoplans dont le vainqueur de la dernière coupe Gordon Bennett du 28 novembre.

L'affaire Deperdussin fut d'abord reprise par la firme de construction mécanique automobile Delaunay-Belleville et l'administrateur judiciaire Raynaud agit pour introduire les demandes de brevets Deperdussin sur les équipements d'avions. Ils incluaient le brevet remarquable n°475 151 du 22 janvier 1914 protégeant un système de tir à travers l'axe de l'hélice.

En août 1914, un groupe d'industriels conduit par Louis Blériot monta une nouvelle société qui acquit les actifs de l'entreprise. À cette époque la conception des fameux futurs chasseurs SPAD était déjà sur la table à dessin de Louis Béchereau. Et lorsqu'il s'agit de donner un nom à ce nouvel appareil militaire, Alfred Leblanc, le bras droit de Blériot et ancien vainqueur du Circuit de L'est en 1910, féru d'un idiome international qui faisait fureur à l'époque, le Volapük, eut l'idée de reprendre le nom de Spad, qui dans cette langue universelle signifiait "vitesse". Il fut adopté d'emblée et ces quatre lettres permirent de conserver l'acronyme initial tout en en changeant la signification, cela devint : Société (anonyme) Pour l'Aviation et ses Dérivés. Ainsi tomba dans l'oubli le nom d'Armand Deperdussin, après une trop brève renommée qui l'avait porté au firmament.

Les avions SPAD connurent leur heure de gloire durant la Première Guerre mondiale et Louis Béchereau, le directeur technique, reçu le 7 juillet 1917 la Croix de Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur des mains même du capitaine Guynemer qui avait largement contribué à la mise au point des SPAD S.VII, S.XII et S.XIII. Au 11 novembre 1918 15 977 SPAD de tout types avaient été construits.

Sous la direction de Louis Béchereau les modèles suivants furent développés durant la Première Guerre mondiale :

SPAD SA.1
SPAD SA.2
SPAD SA.3
SPAD SA.4
SPAD SG.1
SPAD S.VII
SPAD S.XI
SPAD S.XII
SPAD S.XIII
SPAD S.XIV
SPAD S.XV
SPAD S.XVI
SPAD S.XVII
SPAD S.XX
SPAD S.XXI
SPAD S.XXII
SPAD S.XXIV

La lente agonie de Blériot-SPAD

Louis Blériot n'apprécia pas l'hommage appuyé rendu à Armand Deperdussin durant le procès de ce dernier en 1917. Les relations entre les deux hommes se dégradant rapidement Louis Béchereau préféra démissionner au printemps 1917. Il fut remplacé par un très jeune ingénieur, André Herbemont. La Première Guerre mondiale terminée les commandes se raréfièrent et Blériot Aéronautique, société appartenant en totalité à Louis Blériot, faisait une concurrence inutile à SPAD. Les deux entreprises fusionnèrent donc en 1921.

André Herbemont crut jusqu'au bout aux mérites de la formule biplane, mais ses monoplaces de chasse ne parvinrent jamais à s'imposer vis-a-vis des sesquiplans Nieuport. Face au monoplan Dewoitine D.500, il proposa encore un biplan, le Blériot-SPAD S.510, au programme des chasseurs monoplaces de 1930.

Comparativement, les berlines de transport SPAD-Herbemont connurent plus de succès, utilisées par la Compagnie des Messageries Aériennes (appartenant à Blériot) puis la Franco-Roumaine de navigation aérienne (CIDNA). À sa création en 1925, la CIDNA disposait de 11 Blériot-SPAD S.33 et 34 Blériot-SPAD S.46.

Les Blériot-SPAD développés durant l'entre-deux-guerres :

Blériot-SPAD S.27
Blériot-SPAD S.33
Blériot-SPAD S.37
Blériot-SPAD S.41
Blériot-SPAD S.46
Blériot-SPAD S.50
Blériot-SPAD S.51
Blériot-SPAD S.56
Blériot-SPAD S.60
Blériot-SPAD S.61
Blériot-SPAD S.66
Blériot-SPAD S.70
Blériot-SPAD S.71
Blériot-SPAD S.72
Blériot-SPAD S.81
Blériot-SPAD S.86
Blériot-SPAD S.91
Blériot-SPAD S.126
Blériot-SPAD S.510
Blériot-SPAD S.710

Blériot-SPAD ne devait pas survivre aux nationalisations de 1936, absorbée par la SNCASO.

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X RAYS 1900

Discovery X rays

German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen is usually credited as the discoverer of X-rays because he was the first to systematically study them, though he is not the first to have observed their effects. He is also the one who gave them the name "X-rays", though many referred to these as "Röntgen rays" for several decades after their discovery and to this day in some languages, including Röntgen's native German.

X-rays were found emanating from Crookes tubes, experimental discharge tubes invented around 1875, by scientists investigating the cathode rays, that is energetic electron beams, that were first created in the tubes. Crookes tubes created free electrons by ionization of the residual air in the tube by a high DC voltage of anywhere between a few kilovolts and 100 kV. This voltage accelerated the electrons coming from the cathode to a high enough velocity that they created X-rays when they struck the anode or the glass wall of the tube. Many of the early Crookes tubes undoubtedly radiated X-rays, because early researchers noticed effects that were attributable to them, as detailed below. Wilhelm Röntgen was the first to systematically study them, in 1895.

The important early researchers in X-rays were Ivan Pulyui, William Crookes, Johann Wilhelm Hittorf, Eugen Goldstein, Heinrich Hertz, Philipp Lenard, Hermann von Helmholtz, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Charles Glover Barkla, Max von Laue, and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen.

Johann Hittorf

German physicist Johann Hittorf (1824–1914), a co-inventor and early researcher of the Crookes tube, found when he placed unexposed photographic plates near the tube, that some of them were flawed by shadows, though he did not investigate this effect.

Ivan Pulyui

In 1877 Ukrainian-born Pulyui, a lecturer in experimental physics at the University of Vienna, constructed various designs of vacuum discharge tube to investigate their properties. He continued his investigations when appointed professor at the Prague Polytechnic and in 1886 he found that sealed photographic plates became dark when exposed to the emanations from the tubes. Early in 1896, just a few weeks after Röntgen published his first X-ray photograph, Pulyui published high-quality X-ray images in journals in Paris and London. Although Pulyui had studied with Röntgen at the University of Strasbourg in the years 1873–75, his biographer Gaida (1997) asserts that his subsequent research was conducted independently.

Nikola Tesla

In April 1887, Nikola Tesla began to investigate X-rays using high voltages and tubes of his own design, as well as Crookes tubes. From his technical publications, it is indicated that he invented and developed a special single-electrode X-ray tube, which differed from other X-ray tubes in having no target electrode. The principle behind Tesla's device is called the Bremsstrahlung process, in which a high-energy secondary X-ray emission is produced when charged particles (such as electrons) pass through matter. By 1892, Tesla performed several such experiments, but he did not categorize the emissions as what were later called X-rays. Tesla generalized the phenomenon as radiant energy of "invisible" kinds. Tesla stated the facts of his methods concerning various experiments in his 1897 X-ray lecture before the New York Academy of Sciences. Also in this lecture, Tesla stated the method of construction and safe operation of X-ray equipment. His X-ray experimentation by vacuum high field emissions also led him to alert the scientific community to the biological hazards associated with X-ray exposure.

Fernando Sanford

X-rays were generated and detected by Fernando Sanford (1854–1948), the foundation Professor of Physics at Stanford University, in 1891. From 1886 to 1888 he had studied in the Hermann Helmholtz laboratory in Berlin, where he became familiar with the cathode rays generated in vacuum tubes when a voltage was applied across separate electrodes, as previously studied by Heinrich Hertz and Philipp Lenard. His letter of January 6, 1893 (describing his discovery as "electric photography") to The Physical Review was duly published and an article entitled Without Lens or Light, Photographs Taken With Plate and Object in Darkness appeared in the San Francisco Examiner.

Philipp Lenard

Philipp Lenard, a student of Heinrich Hertz, wanted to see whether cathode rays could pass out of the Crookes tube into the air. He built a Crookes tube (later called a "Lenard tube") with a "window" in the end made of thin aluminum, facing the cathode so the cathode rays would strike it. He found that something came through, that would expose photographic plates and cause fluorescence. He measured the penetrating power of these rays through various materials. It has been suggested that at least some of these "Lenard rays" were actually X-rays. Hermann von Helmholtz formulated mathematical equations for X-rays. He postulated a dispersion theory before Röntgen made his discovery and announcement. It was formed on the basis of the electromagnetic theory of light. However, he did not work with actual X-rays.

Wilhelm Röntgen

On November 8, 1895, German physics professor Wilhelm Röntgen stumbled on X-rays while experimenting with Lenard and Crookes tubes and began studying them. He wrote an initial report "On a new kind of ray: A preliminary communication" and on December 28, 1895 submitted it to the Würzburg's Physical-Medical Society journal. This was the first paper written on X-rays. Röntgen referred to the radiation as "X", to indicate that it was an unknown type of radiation. The name stuck, although (over Röntgen's great objections) many of his colleagues suggested calling them Röntgen rays. They are still referred to as such in many languages, including German, Russian and Japanese. Röntgen received the first Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery.

There are conflicting accounts of his discovery because Röntgen had his lab notes burned after his death, but this is a likely reconstruction by his biographers: Röntgen was investigating cathode rays with a fluorescent screen painted with barium platinocyanide and a Crookes tube which he had wrapped in black cardboard so the visible light from the tube wouldn't interfere. He noticed a faint green glow from the screen, about 1 meter away. He realized some invisible rays coming from the tube were passing through the cardboard to make the screen glow. He found they could also pass through books and papers on his desk. Röntgen threw himself into investigating these unknown rays systematically. Two months after his initial discovery, he published his paper.

Röntgen discovered its medical use when he made a picture of his wife's hand on a photographic plate formed due to X-rays. The photograph of his wife's hand was the first ever photograph of a human body part using X-rays. When she saw the picture, she said "I have seen my death."

Thomas Edison

In 1895, Thomas Edison investigated materials' ability to fluoresce when exposed to X-rays, and found that calcium tungstate was the most effective substance. Around March 1896, the fluoroscope he developed became the standard for medical X-ray examinations. Nevertheless, Edison dropped X-ray research around 1903 after the death of Clarence Madison Dally, one of his glassblowers. Dally had a habit of testing X-ray tubes on his hands, and acquired a cancer in them so tenacious that both arms were amputated in a futile attempt to save his life. At the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, an assassin shot President William McKinley twice at close range with a .32 caliber revolver. The first bullet was removed but the second remained lodged somewhere in his stomach. One of the exhibits at the exposition was Edison's new X-ray machine which he offered the use during McKinley's surgery. The offer was declined because the X-ray machine had not been tested and approved at this point. McKinley survived for some time and requested that Thomas Edison "rush an X-ray machine to Buffalo to find the stray bullet. It arrived, but was not used as McKinley died of septic shock due to bacterial infection."

Russell Reynolds

Having heard of Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery, and whilst still at Winchester School, England, Russel Reynolds made an X-ray set in 1896. Having been made only the year after the discovery of the phenomenon, the X-ray set is considered one of the worlds oldest and was donated to the London Science Museum, UK in 1938, where it can still be seen. In 2009 the British public voted the X-ray machine the the most important modern discovery". Dr. Russell Reynolds died in 1964 in his 85th year, he was considered one of British radiology's "most distinguished seniors".

Frank Austin and the Frost brothers

The first medical X-ray made in the United States was obtained using a discharge tube of Pulyui's design. In January 1896, on reading of Röntgen's discovery, Frank Austin of Dartmouth College tested all of the discharge tubes in the physics laboratory and found that only the Pulyui tube produced X-rays. This was a result of Pulyui's inclusion of an oblique "target" of mica, used for holding samples of fluorescent material, within the tube. On 3 February 1896 Gilman Frost, professor of medicine at the college, and his brother Edwin Frost, professor of physics, exposed the wrist of Eddie McCarthy, whom Edwin had treated some weeks earlier for a fracture, to the X-rays and collected the resulting image of the broken bone on gelatin photographic plates obtained from Howard Langill, a local photographer also interested in Röntgen's work.

20th century

The many applications of X-rays immediately generated enormous interest. Workshops began making specialized versions of Crookes tubes for generating X-rays and these first generation cold cathode or Crookes X-ray tubes were used until about 1920.

Crookes tubes were unreliable. They had to contain a small quantity of gas (invariably air) as a current will not flow in such a tube if they are fully evacuated. However as time passed the X-rays caused the glass to absorb the gas, causing the tube to generate "harder" X-rays until it soon stopped operating. Larger and more frequently used tubes were provided with devices for restoring the air, known as "softeners". These often took the form of a small side tube which contained a small piece of mica: a substance that traps comparatively large quantities of air within its structure. A small electrical heater heated the mica and caused it to release a small amount of air, thus restoring the tube's efficiency. However the mica had a limited life and the restore process was consequently difficult to control.

In 1904, John Ambrose Fleming invented the thermionic diode valve (vacuum tube). This used a hot cathode which permitted current to flow in a vacuum. The idea was quickly applied to X-ray tubes and thus heated cathode X-ray tubes, called Coolidge tubes, replaced the troublesome cold cathode tubes by about 1920.

Two years later, physicist Charles Barkla discovered that X-rays could be scattered by gases and that each element had a characteristic X-ray. He won the 1917 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery. Max von Laue, Paul Knipping and Walter Friedrich observed for the first time the diffraction of X-rays by crystals in 1912. This discovery, along with the early works of Paul Peter Ewald, William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg gave birth to the field of X-ray crystallography. The Coolidge tube was invented the following year by William D. Coolidge which permitted continuous production of X-rays; this type of tube is still in use today.

The use of X-rays for medical purposes (to develop into the field of radiation therapy) was pioneered by Major John Hall-Edwards in Birmingham, England. In 1908, he had to have his left arm amputated owing to the spread of X-ray dermatitis.

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AEG G.IV

The AEG G.IV was a biplane bomber aircraft used in the World War I by Germany. It was developed from the AEG G.III, with refinements to power, bomb-load and dimensions. Coming into service in late 1916, it featured a bomb capacity twice as large as that of the AEG G.II, but was still considered inadequate in terms of offensive capacity and performance. Further improvements led to the development of the G.V, but the Armistice came before the replacement could become operational. Serving late in the war, the AEG G.IV managed to achieve some operational success in reconnaissance and combat roles.

Design and development

The Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (A.E.G.) G.IV was derived from the earlier G.III. Designed as a tactical bomber, the relatively modern technology included onboard radios and electrically heated suits for the crew. Unlike the other German bombers such as the Gotha and the Friedrichshafen, the AEG featured an all-metal, welded-tube frame, making it a more rugged aircraft. Well equipped with armament, although the rear gunner’s cockpit was on the top of the fuselage, the position was equipped with a hinged window in the floor for viewing and fending off pursuing aircraft.

The AEG G.IV medium bomber was converted into an armored, antitank gunship, the G.IVk (Kanone) with two 20 mm Becker cannons. It never saw service.

Operational history

The AEG G.IV bomber entered service with the German Air Force in late 1916. Because of its relatively short range, the G.IV served mainly as a tactical bomber, operating close to the front lines. The G.IV flew both day and night operations in France, Romania, Greece and Italy, but, as the war progressed, the AEG G.IV was restricted increasingly to night missions. Many night operations were considered nuisance raids with no specific targets, but with the intention of disrupting enemy activity at night and perhaps doing some collateral damage.

The AEG G.IV carried a warload of 400 kg (880 lb). While Gotha crews struggled to keep their heavy aircraft aloft, the AEG was renowned as an easy aircraft to fly. Some G.IV crews of Kampfgeschwader 4 are known to have flown up to seven combat missions a night on the Italian front. A notable mission involved Hauptmann Hermann Kohl attacking the railroad sheds in Padua, Italy in his G.IV bomber.

Survivors

A single example is preserved at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. This example is significant not only as the only one of its kind in existence, but as the only preserved German, twin-engined combat aircraft from World War I.

General characteristics

Crew: Three

Length: 9.70 m (31 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 18.40 m (60 ft 4.25 in)

Height: 3.90 m (12 ft 9? in)

Wing area: 67 m² (675 ft²)

Empty weight: 2,400 kg (5,280 lb)

Loaded weight: 3,630 kg (7,986 lb)

Powerplant: 2× Mercedes D.IVa 6-cylinder water cooled inline engine, 194 kW (260 hp) each

Performance

Maximum speed: 165 km/h (90 knots, 103 mph)

Endurance: 4-5 hr cruise

Service ceiling: 4,500 m (14,760 ft)

Wing loading: 54.2 kg/m² (11.8 lb/ft²)

Power/mass: 98.6 W/kg (0.0601 hp/lb)

Climb to 1000 m (3,280 ft): 5 min

Armament

Guns: 2 × 7.92 mm (.312 in) machine guns

Bombs: 400 kg (880 lb) of bombs

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AVIATIK

Automobil und Aviatik AG was a German aircraft manufacturer during World War I. The company was established at Mülhausen (today in France) in 1910 and soon became one of the country's leading producers of aircraft, relocating to Freiburg in 1914 and establishing a subsidiary in Vienna as Österreichisch-Ungarische Flugzeugfabrik Aviatik. During the war, the company became best known for its reconnaissance aircraft, the B.I and B.II, although the Austro-Hungarian subsidiary also produced a number of its own designs, including fighters such as the D.I

The company at first started with the license-production of French aircraft; Hanriot, and Farman, and from 1912, one started own designs.

Aviatik C.I

The Aviatik C.I was a World War I observation aircraft which first came into service in September 1915 . It was the successor to the Aviatik B.I and B.II models. The observer sat in front of the pilot in this model which limited the gunner's field of fire. However, the opportunity was presented for more aggressive aircrews to take an increased offensive approach in engaging enemy aircraft. The positions of the pilot and gunner were reversed in the C.Ia version. Later models, the C.II and C.III were produced in large numbers and had more powerful engines.

General characteristics

Crew: Two

Length: 7.925 m (26 ft 0 in)

Wingspan: 12.5 m (41 ft 0¼ in)

Height: 2.95 m (9 ft 8? in)

Wing area: 43 m² (465.4 ft²)

Empty weight: 750 kg (1,650 lb)

Loaded weight: 1,340 kg (2,948 lb)

Powerplant: 1× Mercedes D III 6 cylinder water cooled in-line, 119 kW (160 hp)

Performance

Maximum speed: 142 km/h (77 knots, 88.75 mph)

Service ceiling: 3,500 m (11,500 ft)

Wing loading: 31.2 kg/m² (6.33 lb/ft²)

Power/mass: 0.089 kW/kg (0.054hp/lb)

Endurance: 3 hours

Climb to 1,000 m (3,050 ft): 12 min

Armament

Guns: 1 machine gun in rear cockpit

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ALBATROS FLUGZEUGWERKE

Albatros-Flugzeugwerke was a German aircraft manufacturer best known for supplying the German airforces during World War I.

The company was based in Johannisthal, Berlin, where it was founded by Walter Huth and Otto Wiener on December 20, 1909. It produced some of the most capable fighter aircraft of World War I, notably the Albatros D.III and Albatros D.V. The works continued to operate until 1931, when it was merged into Focke-Wulf.

In 1912 five Albatros F-2 were built. This was a modified version of the French Farman biplane (therefore the letter F) with gondola for the crew and an Argus in-line engine instead of the original rotary engine. Four of these planes were sold to Bulgaria and they took active part in the Balkan wars of 1912-1913. One of them performed on October 16, 1912 the first military mission in the skies of Europe.

Albatros C.III

The Albatros C.III was a German two-seat general-purpose biplane of World War I, built by Albatros Flugzeugwerke. The C.III was a refined version of the successful Albatros C.I and was eventually produced in greater numbers than any other C-type Albatros. It was used in a wide variety of roles including observation, photo-reconnaissance, light-bombing and bomber escort. 18 C.IIIs were delivered in August 1916 to Bulgaria. They were destroyed in 1920 in accordance with the clauses of the Peace Treaty.

Like its predecessor, the C.III was a popular aircraft with rugged construction and viceless handling. The most prominent difference between the two was the revised tail, the C.III having a lower, rounded tail compared to the large, triangular tail of the C.I, granting the C.III greater agility. The power plant was either a 110 kW (150 hp) Benz Bz. III or a 120 kW (160 hp) Mercedes D.III inline engine and, like numerous other two-seaters of the war (such as the British Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8) the cylinder head and exhaust manifold protruded above the front fuselage, limiting the pilot's forward visibility.

The observer, who occupied the rear cockpit, was armed with 7.92 mm (.312 in) Parabellum MG14 machine gun. Some C.III aircraft were fitted with interrupter gear and a single forward-firing 7.92 mm (.312 in) LMG 08/15 machine gun. The C.III could also carry a bomb load of up to 90 kg (200 lb) in a small internal bomb bay.

Between 1926 and 1927, two Mercedes D.III engined copies were built from saved parts and components of the destroyed aircraft by the Bulgarian state aircraft workshops as the DAR 2 for use as trainers.

General characteristics

Crew: two

Length: 8.0 m (26 ft 3 in)

Wingspan: 11.69 m (38 ft 4 in)

Height: 3.10 m (10 ft 2 in)

Wing area: 36.91 m² (397 ft²)

Empty weight: 851 kg (1,876 lb)

Max takeoff weight: 1,353 kg (2,983 lb)

Powerplant: 1× Benz Bz.III, 112 kW (150 hp) or Mercedes D.III liquid-cooled inline engine, 120 kW (160 hp)

Performance

Maximum speed: 140 km/h (76 kn, 87 mph)

Service ceiling: 3,350 m (11,000 ft)

Endurance: 4 hours

Armament

Guns: 1 × 7.92 mm (.312 in) Parabellum MG14 machine gun in observer's cockpit and 1 × 7.92 mm MG 08 in the nose

Bombs: up to 200 lbs of bombs

Albatros D.I

The Albatros D.I was a German fighter aircraft used during World War I. Although its operational career was short, it was the first of the Albatros D types which equipped the bulk of the German and Austrian fighter squadrons (Jagdstaffeln) for the last two years of the war.

Design and development

The D.I was designed by Robert Thelen, R. Schubert and Gnädig, as an answer to the latest Allied fighters, such as the Nieuport 11 Bébé and the Airco D.H.2, which had proved superior to the Fokker Eindecker and other early German fighters, and established a general Allied air superiority. It was ordered in June 1916 and introduced into squadron service that August.

The D.I had a semi-monocoque plywood fuselage, consisting of a single-layered outer shell, supported by a minimal internal structure. This was lighter and stronger than the fabric-skinned box-type fuselage then in common use, as well being easier to give an aerodynamically clean shape. At the same time it was less costly to manufacture than the "wrapped body" (Wickelrumpf) monocoque fuselage common to the LFG Roland and Pfalz types. It was powered by either a 110 kW (150 hp) Benz Bz.III or a 120 kW (160 hp) Mercedes D.III six-cylinder watercooled inline engine. The additional power enabled twin fixed Spandau machineguns to be fitted without any loss in performance.

The D.I had a relatively high wing loading for its time, and was not particularly manoeuvrable. This was compensated by its superior speed and firepower, and it quickly proved the best all-round fighter available.

Operational history

A total of 50 pre-series and series D.I aircraft were in service by November 1916, replacing the early Fokker and Halberstadt D types, giving real "teeth" to the Luftstreitkräfte's new Jagdstaffeln (fighter squadrons). Further production of D.Is was not undertaken, however; instead, a reduction in the gap between the top and bottom planes in order to improve the pilot's forward and upward vision resulted in the otherwise identical Albatros D.II, which became Albatros' first major production fighter.

General characteristics

Crew: one pilot

Length: 7.40 m (23 ft 3.5 in)

Wingspan: 8.50 m (27 ft 11 in)

Height: 2.95 m (9 ft 8 in)

Wing area: 22.9 m² (247 ft²)

Empty weight: 645 kg (1,422 lb)

Gross weight: 898 kg (1,809 lb)

Performance

Maximum speed: 175 km/h (110 mph)

Endurance: 1.5 hours

Service ceiling: 3,000 m (9,840 ft)

Rate of climb: 2.8 m/s (547 ft/min)

Armament

2 × forward-firing 7.92 mm (.312 in) LMG 08/15 machine guns

Albatros D.III

The Albatros D.III was a biplane fighter aircraft used by the Imperial German Army Air Service (Luftstreitkräfte) and the Austro-Hungarian Air Service (Luftfahrtruppen) during World War I. The D.III was flown by many top German aces, including Manfred von Richthofen, Ernst Udet, Erich Löwenhardt, Kurt Wolff, and Karl Emil Schäfer. It was the preeminent fighter during the period of German aerial dominance known as "Bloody April" 1917.

Design and development

Work on the prototype D.III started in late July or early August 1916. The date of the maiden flight is unknown, but is believed to have occurred in late August or early September. Following on the successful Albatros D.I and D.II series, the D.III utilized the same semi-monocoque, plywood-skinned fuselage. At the request of the Idflieg (Inspectorate of Flying Troops), however, the D.III adopted a sesquiplane wing arrangement broadly similar to the French Nieuport 11. The upper wing was extended in span, while the lower wing was redesigned with reduced chord and a single main spar. "V" shaped interplane struts replaced the previous parallel struts. For this reason, British aircrews commonly referred to the D.III as the "V-strutter."

After a Typenprüfung (official type test) on 26 September 1916, Albatros received an order for 400 D.III aircraft, the largest German production contract to date.[2] Idflieg placed additional orders for 50 aircraft in February and March 1917.

Operational history

The D.III entered squadron service in December 1916, and was immediately acclaimed by German aircrews for its maneuverability and rate of climb. Two faults with the new aircraft were soon identified. Like the D.II, early D.III's featured a Teves und Braun airfoil shaped radiator in the center of the upper wing, where it tended to scald the pilot if punctured. From the 290th D.III onward, the radiator was offset to the right.

More seriously, the new aircraft immediately began experiencing failures of the lower wing ribs and leading edge. On 23 January 1917, a Jasta 6 pilot suffered a failure of the lower right wing spar. On the following day, Manfred von Richthofen suffered a crack in the lower wing of his new D.III. On 27 January, the Kogenluft (Kommandierenden General der Luftstreitkräfte) issued an order grounding all D.IIIs pending resolution of the wing failure problem. On 19 February, after Albatros introduced a reinforced lower wing, the Kogenluft rescinded the grounding order. New production D.IIIs were completed with the strengthened wing while operational D.IIIs were withdrawn to Armee-Flugparks for modifications, forcing Jastas to use the Albatros D.II and Halberstadt D.II during the interim.

At the time, the continued wing failures were attributed to poor workmanship and materials at the Johannisthal factory. In fact, the cause of the wing failures lay in the sesquiplane arrangement taken from the Nieuport. While the lower wing had sufficient strength in static tests, it was subsequently determined that the main spar was located too far aft, causing the wing to twist under aerodynamic loads. Pilots were therefore advised not to perform steep or prolonged dives in the D.III. This design flaw persisted despite attempts to rectify the problem in the D.III and succeeding D.V.

Apart from its structural deficiencies, the D.III was considered pleasant and easy to fly, if somewhat heavy on the controls. The sesquiplane arrangement offered improved climb, maneuverability, and downward visibility compared to the preceding D.II. Like most contemporary aircraft, the D.III was prone to spinning, but recovery was straightforward.

Albatros built approximately 500 D.III aircraft at its Johannisthal factory. In the spring of 1917, D.III production shifted to Albatros' subsidiary, Ostdeutsche Albatros Werke (OAW), to permit Albatros to concentrate on development and production of the D.V. Between April and August 1917, Idflieg issued five separate orders for a total of 840 D.IIIs. The OAW variant underwent its Typenprüfung in June 1916. Production commenced at the Schneidemühl factory in June and continued through December 1917. OAW aircraft were distinguishable by their larger, rounded rudders.

Peak service was in November 1917, with 446 aircraft on the Western Front. The D.III did not disappear with the end of production, however. It remained in frontline service well into 1918. As of 31 August 1918, 54 D.III aircraft remained on the Western Front.

General characteristics

Crew: one

Length: 7.33 m (24 ft 0 in)

Wingspan: 9.00 m (29 ft 6 in)

Height: 2.90 m (9 ft 6 in)

Wing area: 23.6 m² (254 ft²)

Empty weight: 695 kg (1,532 lb)

Loaded weight: 886 kg (1,949 lb)

Max takeoff weight: 955 kg (2,105 lb)

Powerplant: 1 × Mercedes D.IIIa inline water cooled engine, 127 kW (170 hp)

Performance

Maximum speed: 175 km/h (94 kn, 109 mph) at sea level

Range: 480 km (261 nmi, 300 mi)

Service ceiling: 5,500 m (18,044 ft)

Rate of climb: 4.5 m/s (886ft/min)

Wing loading: 37.5 kg/m² (7.67 lb/ft²)

Power/mass: 0.13 kW/kg (0.081 hp/lb)

Armament

2 × 7.92 mm (.312 in) LMG 08/15 machine guns

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Fokker D.V

The Fokker D.V (Fokker designation M.22) was a German biplane fighter of World War I.

Design and development

After the disappointing performance of his D.I through D.IV, Fokker resolved to produce a smaller, lighter rotary-powered design. The new prototype, designated M.21, was a development of the earlier M.17 fighter which Fokker had produced for the Austro-Hungarian Air Service. The M.21 featured a swept back upper wing to improve pilot view.

Fokker was enthusiastic about the new aircraft, which was highly maneuverable. After the addition of a modified cowling and stringers along the fuselage sides, the aircraft was designated M.22. In October 1916, Idflieg ordered the M.22 into production as the D.V.

Operational history

Deliveries commenced in January 1917. Due to the low-compression Oberursel U.I, the D.V offered poor performance compared to the Albatros fighters. The D.V saw little active service and most aircraft were relegated to fighter training schools. When the Fokker Dr.I entered service in late 1917, small numbers of D.V aircraft were issued to squadrons for use as conversion trainers.

Production of the D.V totaled 216 aircraft.

General characteristics

Crew: one

Length: 6.05 m (19 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 8.75 m (28 ft 9 in)

Height: 2.30 m (7 ft 6 in)

Wing area: 15.5 m² (167 ft²)

Empty weight: 363 kg (800 lb)

Gross weight: 566 kg (1,248 lb)

Powerplant: 1 × Oberursel U.I rotary, 82 kW (110 hp)

Performance

Maximum speed: 170 km/h (106 mph)

Range: 240 km (149 miles)

Service ceiling: 3,900 m (12,795 ft)

Rate of climb: 2.6 m/s (520 ft/min)

Armament

1 × 7.92 mm (.312 in) LMG 08/15 machine gun

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Player Piano

A player piano (also known as pianola or autopiano) is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sales peaked in 1924, as the improvement in phonograph recordings due to electrical recording methods developed in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction via the wireless in the same period helped cause their eventual decline in popularity, and the stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production.

Antecedents

The idea of automatic musical devices can be traced back many centuries. The idea of using pinned barrels to operate percussion mechanisms (such as striking bells in a clock) was perfected long before the invention of the piano. These devices were later extended to operate musical boxes, which contain a set of tuned metal teeth plucked by the player mechanism.

An early musical instrument to be automated was the organ, which is comparatively easy to operate automatically. The power for the notes is provided by air from a bellows system, and the organist or player device only has to operate a valve to control the available air. The playing task is ideally performed by a pinned barrel, and the art of barrel organs was well advanced by the mid-18th century.

The pianoforte is a complex instrument, requiring each note to be struck with a different force to control the dynamics of the performance. The entire force required to sound the note must be given by the performer hitting the keys. It proved to be difficult for a player device to combine a variable percussive force and a controlled note duration. Barrels do not provide a percussive force, but a relatively gentle switching motion.

Early barrel pianos move the hammer back and forwards continuously as the operator turns the handle, but the hammers do not strike the strings until moved slightly forwards by a pin in the barrel. The hammers hit repeatedly until the pin is removed. This plays the note, but at a fixed dynamic and with a tremolo action quite unlike a pianist.

The development of the player piano was the gradual overcoming of the various difficulties of controlled percussive striking and note duration. The earliest practical piano playing device was probably the Forneaux Pianista, which used compressed air to inflate a bellows when the barrel pin opened a valve. This bellows struck the piano key and so played the note.

The acceleration of developments leading to the pneumatic 'player' device started in the 1840s and began to reach some recognizable device in the 1870s. The start of the player period can probably be seen as the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia, USA. At this exhibition were a number of automatic player devices, including the Pianista, that contained the elements which would lead to the player.

The earliest description of a piano playing device using perforated paper rolls was Claude Seytre's French patent of 1842. The concept was sound, but the device described was impractical in the way it read the roll and operated the piano.

In 1847 Alexander Bain described a device that used a paper roll as a 'travelling valve' that allowed air to flow through the reeds of a reed organ. Simple reed and pipe organs using this sort of system are still being produced. However, the air flow is not sufficient to drive a piano mechanism. In 1848 Charles Dawson of England described a more complex travelling valve device which added little to Bain.

Hunt & Bradish of the USA, 1849, used a roll read by sprung fingers, the springs being strong enough to operate the piano mechanism directly. This device applied the entire playing strength to the paper, so would have shredded it rapidly, and the device would have had to be as wide as the piano keyboard!

In 1851 Pape, England, submitted a patent that recognized the need to remove the playing force from the paper, using light springs to read the roll and activate a more robust device which plays the note — a mechanical amplifier.

The first device to address the practical requirement of operating a piano mechanism was Forneaux's, of 1863. This recognized that a hard strike was needed to throw the hammer towards the keys. It used a traditional barrel, but tripped a pneumatic device that inflated bellows rapidly to operate the note. In 1871 a perforated cardboard book was substituted for the barrel, but it was still read using sprung fingers. This device entered manufacture, and is generally regarded as the first practical player device. It was exhibited in Philadelphia in 1876.

Van Dusen's American patent of 1867 was the first to describe a pneumatic striker operated by a roll. It was probably based on the work of John McTammany.

A leap in thought occurred in the 1873 patent of the Schmoele brothers. They described a 'double valve' system which acted as a pneumatic amplifier, reading the roll electrically and operating the pneumatic with an electromagnet. They also exhibited at Philadelphia. With some modification, and pneumatic reading of the roll, this would become the final player piano some 20 years later, although the Schmoele brothers never benefitted from it.

In 1876, John McTammany exhibited a working player in Philadelphia that used a paper roll read using sprung fingers whose slight movement triggered a mechanical player device. This operated a reed organ. McTammany had been experimenting since the mid-1860s, and went on to be one of the key names in the early player industry. He claimed to be the inventor of the 'player', but not the 'player piano' - an important distinction.

As of 1876, in Philadelphia, three working devices were exhibited that between them contained almost all the components that the final player piano would require. However, it was to be 20 years before all these aspects were combined. Surprisingly, the missing component was the pneumatic reading of the roll. This was in all probability due to the lack of suitably flexible airtight material to translate the air flow into the mechanical movement needed to trigger the player device.

Development

1876–1890

Following the Philadelphia exhibition, the mechanical music business began to grow rapidly. Various companies were founded in the later 1870s to manufacture and sell automated reed organs. Most significant to the development of the player piano was the Aeolian Company, founded as the Mechanical Orguinette Company in 1878, initially as retailer of small reed organs made by the Munroe Organ Company and others.

These instruments started out with valveless actions, the air flowing through the paper operating the reed directly. Throughout this period, the instruments grew larger and more complex, and valves were added to switch the air flow, so ensuring faster response and requiring smaller holes in the paper. The idea of incorporating the new player devices into pianos developed over this period. Needham filed a patent in 1880 describing a pneumatic player device in a piano.

The main technical development of this period was the double valve system, which enabled machines to switch the volume of air needed to operate piano actions. The valves effectively worked as amplifiers, a small air flow being used to switch a much larger volume of air.

Inventors persisted with the early cumbersome mechanical linkage systems for a long time, although the valve system was considerably simpler. The main reason for this appears to be that no suitable airtight thin leather was available to make the small pouches which inflate to operate the valves. The pioneer inventor John McTammany comments that inventors have to work within the limits of their age, and that when solving a problem they look for answers among what is at hand. Without pouch leather being available, they couldn't invent a machine that used it. By the late 1880s the development of suitable pneumatic materials and leathers had advanced sufficiently that effective and reliable player mechanisms were starting to enter the marketplace.

1890–1900

In 1896, Theodore P Brown introduced and marketed the “Aeriol Piano”, which was the first substantially complete player piano. That same year, Wilcox and White introduced their “Angelus” cabinet player, which was a modification of their earlier grand and upright player pianos. None of the early player pianos was a success, though John McTammany (self-proclaimed “inventor of the player”) credited Brown as the first to organize, in a practical manner, the ideas others had developed over the previous 20 years.

Through the middle 1890s, Edwin S Votey developed his piano playing device, the Pianola. This was offered to the Aeolian Company to sell alongside their range of reed organs. It was launched in 1897, and very aggressively marketed over the following years. It was the advertising organized by Harry Tremaine and the Wilcox and White Company that established the market for piano playing devices. Without Tremaine's business acumen there probably would never have been a player piano industry.

In these early years the main demand was for cabinet players (devices rolled to the keyboard of an existing piano, to press the keys with mechanical wooden “fingers”), and it was some years before the public preferred to buy an entirely new self-contained instrument and trade in their old perfectly good regular pianos. As market demand changed, the "internal player" came back into view and was developed again, this time in earnest.

1900–1910

The Pianola was advertised in one of the most high-profile campaigns ever, making unprecedented use of full-page color advertisements. It cost $250 (£65) (equivalent to over $6,000 (£4,000) in 2009 money). Other, cheaper, makes were launched. A standard 65-note format evolved, with 11+1/4-inch-wide (290 mm) rolls and holes spaced 6 to the inch, although several player manufacturers used their own form of roll incompatible with other makes.

Huge sums were spent: by 1903, the Aeolian Company had more than 9,000 roll titles in their catalog, adding 200 titles per month. Many companies' catalogs ran to thousands of rolls, mainly of light, religious or classical music. Ragtime music did feature, but not commonly: in this period, the player was being sold on its artistic capabilities to rich buyers.

The pioneer of this decade was Melville Clark, who introduced two key ideas: the full-scale roll which could play every note on the piano keyboard, and the internal player as standard. Both ideas were ridiculed by his competitors as unnecessary or impractical, but Clark rapidly won both battles.

By the end of the decade the piano player device was obsolete, as was the 65-note format. This was a major catastrophe for many small manufacturers, who had spent all their capital on setting up 65-note player operations, and the result was rapid consolidation in the industry.

A new full-scale roll format, playing all 88 notes, was agreed at an industry conference in Buffalo in 1908, the so called Buffalo Convention. This kept the 11¼-inch roll, but now had smaller holes spaced at 9 to the inch. Any player made anywhere in the world could now play any make of roll. Understanding the need for compatibility was the defining moment of the player industry. The consensus was key to avoiding a costly format war, which plagued almost every other form of entertainment media that followed roll music.

While the player piano matured in America, a young inventor in Germany, Edwin Welte, was working on a player which controlled all the aspects of the performance automatically, so that his machine would play back a recorded performance exactly as if the original pianist was sitting at the piano keyboard. This device, the Welte-Mignon, was launched in 1904. It created new marketing opportunities, as manufacturers could now get the foremost pianists and composers of the day to record their performances on a piano roll, allowing owners of player pianos to experience such a performance in their own homes on their own instruments, exactly as the original pianist had played it.

From the early days, manufacturers sought to create mechanisms which would pick out the melody of a musical composition over the background of the rest of the music in the same manner as a live pianist. The true player piano was designed to be a fully interactive musical experience rather than merely an automatic instrument, and hence they are fitted with interactive control levers intended for the “player pianist” or “pianolist” to create a music performance to their own taste. The player piano would provide aspiring pianists and music lovers with the technical dexterity they lacked whilst permitting them to control the musical performance interactively as if they were an accomplished pianist.

Aeolian introduced Metrostyle in 1901 and the Themodist in 1904, the latter being an invention “bringing out the melody clearly above the accompaniment.” With sales growing rapidly, and the instruments themselves relatively mature, this decade saw a wider variety of rolls become available. Two major advances were the introduction of the hand-played roll, both classical and popular, and the word roll. The hand-played roll introduced musical phrasing into the roll, so that the player pianist did not have to introduce this by using the tempo controls — something that few owners ever felt much inclination to do. Word rolls made it simple to use the player to accompany singing in the home, a very popular activity in the years before radio and acceptable disc recordings became available.

The other major advance was the arrival of major commercial rivals for the Welte-Mignon: the Ampico and the Duo-Art systems, both launched around 1914. When World War I came in 1914 and German patents were seized in the US, these two companies were left to compete with each other. In England, Aeolian had a huge factory and sales network, so easily outsold the Ampico. It is estimated that perhaps 5% of players sold were reproducing pianos.

In America by the end of the decade, the new ‘jazz age' and the rise of the fox-trot confirmed the player piano as the instrument of popular music, with classical music increasingly relegated to the reproducing piano. Most American roll companies stopped offering large classical catalogs before 1920, and abandoned ‘instrumental' rolls (those without words) within a few years.

Things were somewhat different in England, where the Aeolian Company continued to promote classical material to a receptive public. Word rolls never became the norm in England, always being charged at a 20% premium over non-word rolls. As a result, post-World War I American and British roll collections look very different.

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Phonograph

The phonograph (sound writer), record player, or gramophone (letter + sound) is a device introduced in 1877 that continued common use until the 1980s for reproducing (playing) sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds. The recordings played on such a device generally consist of wavy lines that are either scratched, engraved, or grooved onto a rotating cylinder or disc. As the cylinder or disc rotates, a needle or other similar object on the device traces the wavy lines and vibrates, reproducing sound waves.

The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Alva Edison at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, USA. On February 19, 1878, Edison was issued the first patent (U.S. patent #200,521) for the phonograph. While other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edison's phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound. (In announcing the demonstration, Scientific American noted that the non-reproducing devices that preceded Edison's had been built by Marey and Rosapelly, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville and Barlow.) Although Edison began experimenting on the Phonograph using wax coated paper as a recording medium, this first Phonograph recorded sound onto a tinfoil sheet phonograph cylinder. Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory made several improvements in the 1880s, including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders, and a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in a "zig zag" pattern across the record. Then at the turn of the century, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to gramophone records: flat, double-sided discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center. Other improvements were made throughout the years, including modifications to the turntable and its drive system, the needle and stylus, and the sound and equalization systems.

Terminology

The term phonograph ("sound writer") is derived from the Greek words φων? (meaning "sound" or "voice" and transliterated as phon?) and γραφ? (meaning "writing" and transliterated as graph?). Similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings. The coinage, particularly the use of the -graph root, may have been influenced by the then-existing words phonographic and phonography, which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand; in 1852 The New York Times carried an advertisement for "Professor Webster's phonographic class", and in 1859 the New York State Teachers' Association tabled a motion to "employ a phonographic recorder" to record its meetings.

F. B. Fenby was the original author of the word. An inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts, he was granted a patent in 1863 for an unsuccessful device called the "Electro-Magnetic Phonograph". His concept detailed a system that would record a sequence of keyboard strokes onto paper tape. Although no model or workable device was ever made, it is often seen as a link to the concept of punched paper for player piano rolls (1880s), as well as Herman Hollerith's punch card tabulator (used in the 1890 United States census), a distant precursor of the modern computer.

Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice it has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, "Phonograph", "Gramophone", "Graphophone", "Zonophone" and the like were still brand names specific to different makers of sometimes very different (i.e., cylinder and disc) machines, so considerable use was made of the generic term talking machine, especially in print. "Talking machine" had earlier been used to refer to complicated devices which produced a crude imitation of speech by simulating the workings of the vocal chords, tongue and lips, a potential source of confusion both then and now.

Predecessors to the phonograph

Several inventors devised machines to record sound prior to Thomas Edison's phonograph, Edison being the first to produce a device that could both record and reproduce sound. The phonograph's predecessors include Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's phonautograph, and Charles Cros's paleophone. Recordings made with the phonautograph were intended to be visual representations of the sound and were not be reproduced as sound until 2008. Cros's paleophone was intended to both record and reproduce sound but had not been developed beyond a basic concept at the time of Edison's successful demonstration of the Phonograph in 1877, existed only as a concept.

The paleophone

Charles Cros, a French poet and amateur scientist, is the first person known to have made the conceptual leaps from recording sound as a traced line to the theoretical possibility of reproducing the sound from the tracing and then to a definite method for accomplishing the reproduction. On April 30, 1877, he deposited a sealed envelope containing a summary of his ideas with the French Academy of Sciences, a standard procedure used by scientists and inventors to establish priority of conception of unpublished ideas in the event of any later dispute.

Cros proposed the use of photoengraving, a process already in use to make metal printing plates from line drawings, to convert an insubstantial phonautograph tracing in soot into a groove or ridge on a metal disc or cylinder. This metal surface would then be given the same motion and speed as the original recording surface. A stylus linked to a diaphragm would be made to ride in the groove or on the ridge so that the stylus would be moved back and forth in accordance with the recorded vibrations. It would transmit these vibrations to the connected diaphragm, and the diaphragm would transmit them to the air, reproducing the original sound.

An account of his invention was published on October 10, 1877, by which date Cros had devised a more direct procedure: the recording stylus could scribe its tracing through a thin coating of acid-resistant material on a metal surface and the surface could then be etched in an acid bath, producing the desired groove without the complication of an intermediate photographic procedure. The author of this article called the device a "phonographe", but Cros himself favored the word "paleophone", sometimes rendered in French as "voix du passé" (voice of the past) but more literally meaning "ancient sound", which accorded well with his vision of his invention's potential for creating an archive of sound recordings that would be available to listeners in the distant future.

Cros was a poet of meager means, not in a position to pay a machinist to build a working model, and largely content to bequeath his ideas to the public domain free of charge and let others reduce them to practice, but after the earliest reports of Edison's presumably independent invention crossed the Atlantic he had his sealed letter of April 30 opened and read at the December 3, 1877 meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, claiming due scientific credit for priority of conception.

Throughout the first decade (1890–1900) of commercial production of the earliest crude disc records, the direct acid-etch method first invented by Cros was used to create the metal master discs, but Cros was not around to claim any credit or to witness the humble beginnings of the eventually rich phonographic library he had foreseen. He had died in 1888 at the age of 45.

First phonograph

Thomas Alva Edison conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to "play back" recorded telegraph messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by telephone. He announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877 (early reports appear in Scientific American and several newspapers in the beginning of November, and an even earlier announcement of Edison working on a 'talking-machine' can be found in the Chicago Daily Tribune on May 9), and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 (it was patented on February 19, 1878 as US Patent 200,521). "In December, 1877, a young man came into the office of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, and placed before the editors a small, simple machine about which very few preliminary remarks were offered. The visitor without any ceremony whatever turned the crank, and to the astonishment of all present the machine said : " Good morning. How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?" The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph..."

Edison presented his own account of inventing the phonograph. "I was experimenting," he said, "on an automatic method of recording telegraph messages on a disk of paper laid on a revolving platen, exactly the same as the disk talking-machine of to-day. The platen had a spiral groove on its surface, like the disk. Over this was placed a circular disk of paper; an electromagnet with the embossing point connected to an arm travelled over the disk; and any signals given through the magnets were embossed on the disk of paper. If this disc was removed from the machine and put on a similar machine provided with a contact point, the embossed record would cause the signals to be repeated into another wire. The ordinary speed of telegraphic signals is thirty-five to forty words a minute; but with this machine several hundred words were possible."

"From my experiments on the telephone I knew of how to work a pawl connected to the diaphragm; and this engaging a ratchet-wheel served to give continuous rotation to a pulley. This pulley was connected by a cord to a little paper toy representing a man sawing wood. Hence, if one shouted: ' Mary had a little lamb,' etc., the paper man would start sawing wood. I reached the conclusion that if I could record the movements of the diaphragm properly, I could cause such records to reproduce the original movements imparted to the diaphragm by the voice, and thus succeed in recording and reproducing the human voice."

"Instead of using a disk I designed a little machine using a cylinder provided with grooves around the surface. Over this was to be placed tinfoil, which easily received and recorded the movements of the diaphragm. A sketch was made, and the piece-work price, $18, was marked on the sketch. I was in the habit of marking the price I would pay on each sketch. If the workman lost, I would pay his regular wages; if he made more than the wages, he kept it. The workman who got the sketch was John Kruesi. I didn't have much faith that it would work, expecting that I might possibly hear a word or so that would give hope of a future for the idea. Kruesi, when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for. I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb', etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. I was never so taken aback in my life. Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid of things that worked the first time. Long experience proved that there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got commercial; but here was something there was no doubt of."

The music critic Herman Klein attended an early demonstration (1881-2) of a similar machine. On the early phonograph's reproductive capabilities he writes "It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, though there was little of the scratching which later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct."

Early machines

Edison's early phonographs recorded onto a tinfoil sheet phonograph cylinder using an up-down ("hill-and-dale") motion of the stylus. The tinfoil sheet was wrapped around a grooved cylinder, and the sound was recorded as indentations into the foil. Edison's early patents show that he also considered the idea that sound could be recorded as a spiral onto a disc, but Edison concentrated his efforts on cylinders, since the groove on the outside of a rotating cylinder provides a constant velocity to the stylus in the groove, which Edison considered more "scientifically correct". Edison's patent specified that the audio recording be embossed, and it was not until 1886 that vertically modulated engraved recordings using wax coated cylinders was patented by Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter. They named their version the Graphophone.

The Gramophone was patented in 1887 by Emile Berliner. The Gramophone involved a system of recording using a lateral (sideways) movement of the stylus as it traced a spiral onto a zinc disc coated with a compound of beeswax in a solution of benzine. The zinc disc was immersed in a bath of chromic acid; this etched the groove into the disc where the stylus had removed the coating, after which the recording could be played. With some later improvements the flat disks of Berliner could be produced in high quantities at much lower costs than the cylinders of Edison's system.

In May 1889, the first "phonograph parlor" opened in San Francisco. Customers would sit at a desk where they could speak through a tube, and order a selection for one nickel. Through a separate tube connected to a cylinder phonograph in the room below, the selection would then be played. By the mid-1890s, most American cities had at least one phonograph parlor. Another common type of phonograph parlor featured a machine that would start or would be windable when a coin would be inserted. This jukebox-like phonograph was invented by Louis T. Glass and William S. Arnold. Many early machines were of the Edison Class M or Class E type. The Class M had a battery that would break if it fell or was smashed with another object. This would cause dangerous battery acid to spill everywhere. The Class E sold for a lower price and ran on 120V DC.

By 1890, record manufacturers had begun using a rudimentary duplication process to mass-produce their product. While the live performers recorded the master phonograph, up to ten tubes led to blank cylinders in other phonographs. Until this development, each record had to be custom-made. Before long, a more advanced pantograph-based process made it possible to simultaneously produce 90–150 copies of each record. However, as demand for certain records grew, popular artists still needed to re-record and re-re-record their songs. Reportedly, the medium's first major African-American star George Washington Johnson was obliged to perform his "The Laughing Song" (or the separate "Laughing Coon") literally thousands of times in a studio during his recording career. Sometimes he would sing "The Laughing Song" more than fifty times in a day, at twenty cents per rendition. (The average price of a single cylinder in the mid-1890s was about fifty cents.)

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Vulgate

The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It was largely the work of St. Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations. By the 13th century this revision had come to be called the versio vulgata, that is, the "commonly used translation", and ultimately it became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible in the Roman Catholic Church.

Translation

Jerome did not embark on the work with the intention of creating a new version of the whole Bible, but the changing nature of his program can be tracked in his voluminous correspondence. He had been commissioned by Pope Damasus in 382 to revise the Old Latin text of the four Gospels from the best Greek texts, and by the time of Damasus' death in 384 he had thoroughly completed this task, together with a more cursory revision from the Greek Septuagint of the Old Latin text of the Psalms in the Roman Psalter which is now lost. How much of the rest of the New Testament he then revised is difficult to judge today, but little of his work survived in the Vulgate text.

In 385 Jerome was forced out of Rome, and eventually settled in Bethlehem, where he was able to use a surviving manuscript of the Hexapla, likely from the nearby Theological Library of Caesarea Maritima, a columnar comparison of the variant versions of the Old Testament undertaken 150 years before by Origen. Jerome first embarked on a revision of the Psalms, translated from the revised Septuagint Greek column of the Hexapla, which later came to be called the Gallican version. He also appears to have undertaken further new translations into Latin from the Hexaplar Septuagint column for other books. But from 390 to 405, Jerome translated anew from the Hebrew all 39 books in the Hebrew Bible, including a further version of the Psalms. This new translation of the Psalms was labelled by him as "iuxta Hebraeos" (i.e. "close to the Hebrews", "immediately following the Hebrews"), and was commonly found in the Vulgate, until it was widely replaced by his Gallican psalms beginning in the 9th century.

The Vulgate is usually credited as being the first translation of the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew Tanakh, rather than the Greek Septuagint. Jerome's extensive use of exegetical material written in Greek, on the other hand, as well as his use of the Aquiline and Theodotiontic columns of the Hexapla, along with the somewhat paraphrastic style in which he translated makes it difficult to determine exactly how direct the conversion of Hebrew to Latin was.

As Jerome completed his translations each book of the bible, he recorded his observations and comments in an extensive correspondence with other scholars; and these letters were subsequently collected and appended as prologues to the Vulgate text for those books where they survived. In these letters, Jerome described those books or portions of books in the Septuagint that were not found in the Hebrew as being non-canonical: he called them apocrypha. Jerome's views did not, however, prevail; and all complete manuscripts and editions of the Vulgate include some or all these books. Of the Old Testament texts not found in the Hebrew, Jerome translated Tobit and Judith anew from the Aramaic; and from the Greek, the additions to Esther from the Septuagint, and the additions to Daniel from Theodotion. Other books; Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, 1 and 2 Maccabees are variously found in Vulgate manuscripts with texts derived from the Old Latin; sometimes together with Latin versions of other texts found neither in the Hebrew Bible, nor in the Septuagint, 4 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasses and Laodiceans. Their style is still markedly distinguishable from Jerome's. In the Vulgate text, Jerome's translations from the Greek of the additions to Esther and Daniel are combined with his separate translations of these books from the Hebrew.

Critical value

In translating the 39 books of the Hebrew Bible, Jerome was relatively free in rendering their text into Latin, but it is possible to determine that the oldest surviving complete manuscripts of the Masoretic Text, which date from nearly 600 years after Jerome, nevertheless transmit a consonantal Hebrew text very close to that used by Jerome. Consequently, these books of the Vulgate – though of high literary quality – have little independent interest in text critical debate. Jerome translated the books of Judith and Tobit under sufferance, engaging a Jewish intermediary to render the Aramaic into oral Hebrew, for him then to paraphrase into Latin. Their textual value is small. The Vulgate Old Testament texts that were translated from the Greek – whether by Jerome himself, or preserving revised or unrevised Old Latin versions – are however early and important secondary witnesses to the Septuagint.

Damasus had instructed Jerome to be conservative in his revision of the Old Latin Gospels, and it is possible to see Jerome's obedience to this injunction in the preservation in the Vulgate of variant Latin vocabulary for the same Greek terms. Hence, "high priest" is rendered "princeps sacerdotum" in Vulgate Matthew; as "summus sacerdos" in Vulgate Mark; and as "pontifex" in Vulgate John. Comparison of Jerome's Gospel texts with those in Old Latin witnesses, suggests that his revision was substantially concerned with redacting the expanded phraseology characteristic of the Western text-type, in accordance with Alexandrian, or possibly early Byzantine, witnesses. Given Jerome's conservative methods, and that manuscript evidence from outside Egypt at this early date is very rare; these Vulgate readings have considerable critical interest. More interesting still – because effectively untouched by Jerome – are the Vulgate books of the rest of the New Testament; which demonstrate rather more of supposed "Western" expansions, and otherwise transmit a very early Old Latin text. Most valuable of all from a text-critical perspective is the Vulgate text of the Apocalypse, a book where there is no clear majority text in the surviving Greek witnesses.

Relation with the Old Latin Bible

The Latin Biblical texts in use before the Latin Vulgate are usually referred to collectively as the Vetus Latina, or "Old Latin Bible", or occasionally the "Old Latin Vulgate". (Here "Old Latin" means that they are older than the Vulgate and written in Latin, not that they are written in Old Latin. Likewise the Latin Vulgate was so named because it was the Latin counterpart to the Greek Vulgate; it was not written in Vulgar Latin.) The translations in the Vetus Latina had accumulated piecemeal over a century or more; they were not translated by a single person or institution, nor uniformly edited. The individual books varied in quality of translation and style, and different manuscripts witness wide variations in readings. Jerome, in his preface to the Vulgate gospels, commented that there were "as many [translations] as there are manuscripts". The Old Testament books of the Vetus Latina were translated from the Greek Septuagint, not from the Hebrew.

Jerome's earliest efforts in translation, his revision of the four Gospels, was dedicated to Damasus; but his version had little or no official recognition. Jerome's translated texts had to make their way on their own merits. The Old Latin versions continued to be copied and used alongside the Vulgate versions. Bede, writing in 8th century Northumbria, records Abbot Ceolfrid quoting Genesis 1:16 according to both the Vulgate and the Old Latin text, as the new and former editions. Nevertheless, the superior quality of the Vulgate texts led to their increasingly superseding the Old Latin; although the loss of familiar phrases and expressions still aroused hostility in congregations; and, especially in North Africa and Spain, favourite Old Latin readings were often re-introduced by copyists, while individual books within Spanish Vulgate bibles are sometimes found to retain the Old Latin text. Spanish biblical traditions, with many Old Latin borrowings, were influential in Ireland; while both Irish and Spanish influences are found in Vulgate texts in northern France. In Italy and southern France, by contrast, a much purer Vulgate text predominated; and this is the version of the Bible that became established in England following the mission of Augustine of Canterbury. As late as the 13th century, the Codex Gigas retained an Old Latin text for the Apocalypse and the Acts of the Apostles.

Throughout Late Antiquity and most of the Middle Ages, the name Vulgata was applied to the Greek Vulgate and the Vetus Latina, but as the acceptance of Jerome's version overtook that of the Vetus Latina in the Western church, it too began to be called an editio vulgata, a Latin analogue to the older Greek editio vulgata. The earliest known use of the term Vulgata to describe the new Latin translation was made by Roger Bacon in the 13th century.

Wordsworth and White suggested that Jerome used Old Latin text close to Codex Brixianus and corrected it with the Alexandrian manuscripts.

Influence on Western culture

For over a thousand years (c. AD 400–1530), the Vulgate was the definitive edition of the most influential text in Western European society. Indeed, for most Western Christians, it was the only version of the Bible ever encountered. The Vulgate's influence throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance into the Early Modern Period is even greater than that of the King James Version in English; for Christians during these times the phraseology and wording of the Vulgate permeated all areas of the culture.

Aside from its use in prayer, liturgy and private study, the Vulgate served as inspiration for ecclesiastical art and architecture, hymns, countless paintings, and popular mystery plays.

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Sr. Jerome

St. Jerome (c. 347 – 30 September 420) (formerly Saint Hierom) was an Illyrian Catholic priest and apologist. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. He is best known for his translation of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), and his list of writings is extensive.

He is recognized by the Catholic Church as a saint and Doctor of the Church, and the Vulgate is still an important text in Catholicism. He is also recognized as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is known as St. Jerome of Stridonium or Blessed Jerome.

Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus , was born at Stridon around 347,. He was not baptized until about 360 or 366, when he had gone to Rome with his friend Bonosus (who may or may not have been the same Bonosus whom Jerome identifies as his friend who went to live as a hermit on an island in the Adriatic) to pursue rhetorical and philosophical studies. He studied under the grammarian Aelius Donatus. There Jerome learned Latin and at least some Greek, though probably not the familiarity with Greek literature he would later claim to have acquired as a schoolboy.

As a student in Rome, he engaged in the superficial activities of students there, which he indulged in quite casually but suffered terrible bouts of repentance afterwards. To appease his conscience, he would visit on Sundays the sepulchers of the martyrs and the Apostles in the catacombs. This experience would remind him of the terrors of hell:

Often I would find myself entering those crypts, deep dug in the earth, with their walls on either side lined with the bodies of the dead, where everything was so dark that almost it seemed as though the Psalmist’s words were fulfilled, Let them go down quick into Hell. Here and there the light, not entering in through windows, but filtering down from above through shafts, relieved the horror of the darkness. But again, as soon as you found yourself cautiously moving forward, the black night closed around and there came to my mind the line of Vergil, “Horror unique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.

Jerome used a quote from Vergil — “The horror and the silences terrified their souls” — to describe the horror of hell. Jerome initially used classical authors to describe Christian concepts such as hell that indicated both his classical education and his deep shame of their associated practices, such as pederasty. Although initially skeptical of Christianity, he was eventually converted. After several years in Rome, he travelled with Bonosus to Gaul and settled in Trier where he seems to have first taken up theological studies, and where he copied, for his friend Tyrannius Rufinus, Hilary of Poitiers' commentary on the Psalms and the treatise De synodis. Next came a stay of at least several months, or possibly years, with Rufinus at Aquileia, where he made many Christian friends.

Some of these accompanied him when he set out about 373 on a journey through Thrace and Asia Minor into northern Syria. At Antioch, where he stayed the longest, two of his companions died and he himself was seriously ill more than once. During one of these illnesses (about the winter of 373–374), he had a vision that led him to lay aside his secular studies and devote himself to God. He seems to have abstained for a considerable time from the study of the classics and to have plunged deeply into that of the Bible, under the impulse of Apollinaris of Laodicea, then teaching in Antioch and not yet suspected of heresy.

Seized with a desire for a life of ascetic penance, he went for a time to the desert of Chalcis, to the southwest of Antioch, known as the Syrian Thebaid, from the number of hermits inhabiting it. During this period, he seems to have found time for study and writing. He made his first attempt to learn Hebrew under the guidance of a converted Jew; and he seems to have been in correspondence with Jewish Christians in Antioch. Around this time he had copied for him a Hebrew Gospel, of which fragments are preserved in his notes are known today as the Gospel of the Hebrews, and which the Nazarenes considered was the true Gospel of Matthew. Jerome translated parts of this Hebrew Gospel into Greek.

Returning to Antioch in 378 or 379, he was ordained by Bishop Paulinus, apparently unwillingly and on condition that he continue his ascetic life. Soon afterward, he went to Constantinople to pursue a study of Scripture under Gregory Nazianzen. He seems to have spent two years there; the next three (382-385) he was in Rome again, attached to Pope Damasus I and the leading Roman Christians. Invited originally for the synod of 382, held to end the schism of Antioch, he made himself indispensable to the pope, and took a prominent place in his councils.

Among his other duties, he undertook a revision of the Latin Bible, to be based on the Greek New Testament. He also updated the Psalter then at use in Rome based on the Septuagint. Though he did not realize it yet, translating much of what became the Latin Vulgate Bible would take many years, and be his most important achievement.

In Rome he was surrounded by a circle of well-born and well-educated women, including some from the noblest patrician families, such as the widows Lea, Marcella and Paula, with their daughters Blaesilla and Eustochium. The resulting inclination of these women to the monastic life, and his unsparing criticism of the secular clergy, brought a growing hostility against him among the clergy and their supporters. Soon after the death of his patron Damasus (10 December 384), Jerome was forced to leave his position at Rome after an inquiry by the Roman clergy into allegations that he had an improper relationship with the widow Paula.

Additionally, his condemnation of Blaesilla's hedonistic lifestyle had led her to adopt aescetic practices, but worsened her physical weakness to the point that she died just four months after starting to follow his instructions; much of the Roman populace were outraged at Jerome for causing the premature death of such a lively young woman, and his insistence to Paula that Blaesilla should not be mourned, and complaints that her grief was excessive, were seen as heartless, polarising Roman opinion against him.

In August 385, he returned to Antioch, accompanied by his brother Paulinianus and several friends, and followed a little later by Paula and Eustochium, who had resolved to end their days in the Holy Land. In the winter of 385, Jerome acted as their spiritual adviser. The pilgrims, joined by Bishop Paulinus of Antioch, visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the holy places of Galilee, and then went to Egypt, the home of the great heroes of the ascetic life.

At the Catechetical School of Alexandria, Jerome listened to the catechist Didymus the Blind expounding the prophet Hosea and telling his reminiscences of Anthony the Great, who had died 30 years before; he spent some time in Nitria, admiring the disciplined community life of the numerous inhabitants of that "city of the Lord," but detecting even there "concealed serpents," i.e., the influence of Origen of Alexandria. Late in the summer of 388 he was back in Israel, and spent the remainder of his life in a hermit's cell near Bethlehem, surrounded by a few friends, both men and women (including Paula and Eustochium), to whom he acted as priestly guide and teacher.

Amply provided by Paula with the means of livelihood and of increasing his collection of books, he led a life of incessant activity in literary production. To these last 34 years of his career belong the most important of his works; his version of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew text, the best of his scriptural commentaries, his catalogue of Christian authors, and the dialogue against the Pelagians, the literary perfection of which even an opponent recognized. To this period also belong most of his polemics, which distinguished him among the orthodox Fathers, including the treatises against the Origenism of Bishop John II of Jerusalem and his early friend Rufinus. As a result of his writings against Pelagianism, a body of excited partisans broke into the monastic buildings, set them on fire, attacked the inmates and killed a deacon, forcing Jerome to seek safety in a neighboring fortress (416).

Jerome died near Bethlehem on 30 September 420. The date of his death is given by the Chronicon of Prosper of Aquitaine. His remains, originally buried at Bethlehem, are said to have been later transferred to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, though other places in the West claim some relics — the cathedral at Nepi boasting possession of his head, which, according to another tradition, is in the Escorial.

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Classical dressage

Classical dressage evolved from cavalry movements and training for the battlefield, and has since developed into the competitive dressage seen today. Classical riding is the art of riding in harmony with, rather than against, the horse.

Correct classical riding only occurs when the rider has a good seat and a correct and well-balanced body position, moves with the horse's motion, and gives and times the aids correctly.

Natural abilities of the horse

The origins of classical dressage and collection lie in the natural ability of the horse and its movements in the wild. In fact, most modern definitions of dressage state that the goal is to have the horse perform under saddle with the degree of athleticism and grace that it naturally shows when free.

Horses naturally use the concept of collection when playing, fighting, competing and courting with each other. When trying to impress other horses they make themselves look bigger, just as other animals do. They achieve this by pumping up the chest, raising the neck and making it bigger by flexing the poll, while at the same time transforming their gaits to emphasize more upwards movement. When fighting, the horse will collect because in collection he can produce lightning speed reactions for kicking, rearing, spinning, striking with the front feet, bucking and jumping.

This natural ability to collect is visible in every horse of any breed, and probably inspired early trainers to reproduce that kind of behavior in more controlled circumstances. This origin also points out why, according to most Classical dressage trainers, every healthy horse, regardless its breed, can perform classical dressage movements, including the Haute Ecole jumps, or Airs above the ground, even though it may perform them a little differently from the ideal performance due to the build of its body.

A history of classical dressage

The earliest surviving work on many of the principles of classical dressage was Xenophon's On Horsemanship. Xenophon emphasized training the horse through kindness and reward.

In the 15th century, brute force training largely came to an end while artistry in riding was once again coming into its own. Along with these developments came indoor riding. The Renaissance gives rise to a new and enlightened approach to riding as a part of the general cultivation of the arts. By the Victorian age indoor riding had become a sophisticated art, with both rider and horse spending many years perfecting their form. Gueriniere, Eisenberg, Andrade and Marialva write treatises on technique and theory.

The horses were trained for a number of airs or schools, above the ground movements that enabled their riders to escape if surrounded, or to fight more easily. These included movements such as levade, capriole, courbette, and ballotade. Movements still seen today in dressage include the piaffe, passage, and half-pass.

Classical dressage vs. competitive dressage

Modern dressage evolved from the classical school, although it is seen in a slightly different form than its ancestor. Competitive dressage is an international sport ranging from beginner levels to the Olympics. Unlike classical dressage, competitive dressage does not require the aires above ground, which most horses cannot perform well even with correct training, due to physical limitations. Instead, competitive dressage focuses on movements such as the piaffe, passage, half-pass, extended trot, pirouette, and tempi changes.

In theory, competitive dressage should follow the same principles as classical dressage. However, there has been criticism by some riders for the trend at all levels for "quick fixes" and incorrect training that makes the horse appear correct, but that is in fact neglecting the basics. Classical riders criticize such training methods on the grounds that they are biomechanically incompatible with correct movement, are painful to the horse, and cause long-term physical damage. These short-cuts usually catch up to the rider as they move up the levels and need to be correct to perform certain movements. While these modern methods, such as the highly controversial rollkur technique, produce winning animals, classical dressage riders argue that such training is theoretically incorrect and even abusive.

It is also believed by some that competitive dressage does not always reward the most correctly trained horse and rider, especially at the lower levels. For example, some riders who consider themselves to be training classically would not ask their horse to hold his head near-vertical when he first began training, and this would be penalized at the lower levels of competitive dressage, marked down because the horse is not considered to be correctly on the bit. Other riders, who also would consider themselves classically trained, would disagree, saying that if a horse is not ready to travel in a correct outline (on the bit) he is not ready for competition, and this is the reason such horses would be marked down.

The purest form of classical riding, as well as dressage, High School dressage, of Haute Ecole, takes years for both the horse and rider to master. When a horse is advanced in its training, it can perform not only Grand Prix dressage movements such as collected and extended gaits, passage and piaffe, but some can also perform certain "Airs Above the Ground," although usually a horse will only be trained in one air, and only if they are particularly able.

The School Jumps

The "high school" or haute ecole school jumps, popularly known as the "airs above the ground," include the courbette, capriole, levade, and ballotade. Though these movements are said to come from when the horse was used in war, in their modern form, it is unlikely the airs were used in actual battle, as all but the Capriole expose the horse's sensitive underbelly to the weapons of foot soldiers, and it is more likely that they were training exercises used off the battlefield.

The courbette is a movement where the horse balances on its hindlegs and jumps, keeping its forelegs off the ground, thus it "hops" on its hindlegs.

The capriole is a movement where the horse leaps into the air and pulls his forelegs in towards his chest at the height of elevation, while kicking out with his hindlegs.

The levade is a movement where the horse is balanced on its haunches at a 45 degree angle from the ground. It requires great control and balance, and is very strenuous.

There are two main breeds that are most well known for their abilities for airs above ground: the Lipizzaner and the Andalusian. Other breeds that are known for their abilities in High School dressage include the Friesian and Lusitano.

The Spanish Riding School in Vienna, as well as the Cadre Noir in Saumur, still practice and teach the Haute Ecole. The Spanish Riding School exclusively uses Lipizzan stallions for their work.

Today the only remaining large schools of classical dressage are the Cadre Noir, the Spanish Riding School, the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art in Jerez de la Frontera, the Portuguese School of Equestrian Art in Lisbon and the South African Lipizzaners in South Africa. There are independent classical dressage trainers who also endeavor to keep this branch of the art alive, including the Portuguese riding master Nuno Oliveira and his students, Bent Branderup and the American clinicians, Paul Belasik and Dr. Thomas Ritter.

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Leipzig-Dresden Railway Company

The Leipzig-Dresden Railway Company (Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn-Compagnie) or LDE was a private railway company in the Kingdom of Saxony, now a part of Germany. Amongst other things, it operated the route between Leipzig and Dresden, opened in 1839, and which was the first long-distance railway line in Germany. On 1 July 1876 the company was nationalised and became part of the Royal Saxon State Railways.

History

The idea of building a railway to link Leipzig with Strehla (on the river Elbe), had already been put forward before 1830 by the Leipzig merchant, Carl Gottlieb Tenner. Tenner's idea gained new impetus after the state economist in Leipzig, Friedrich List, publicised his plans for a German railway system in 1833, in which it was envisaged that Leipzig would function as a central hub. That same year, a railway committee was founded which, on 20 November 1833, submitted a petition to the lower house of the Saxon Parliament (Sächsischer Landtag) in Dresden for the construction of a railway from Leipzig to Dresden.

In 1835, the Leipzig-Dresden Railway Company was founded as a private company by twelve citizens of Leipzig, including: Albert Dufour-Féronce (1798–1861), Gustav Harkort (1795–1865), Carl Lampe (1804–1889) and Wilhelm Theodor Seyfferth (1807–1881). At the Easter trade fair in 1835 the shares of the company (nominally valued at 100 thaler) were fully subscribed within just a few hours, making a capital sum of over one million thalers available. On 6 May 1835 the Saxon state government authorised the construction and operation of the line as well as the issue of non-interest bearing bonds to the value of 500,000 thalers. The total capital generated thus amounted to 1.5 million thalers.

In October 1835 the English engineers Sir James Walker und Hawkshaw surveyed the proposed routes and recommended the northern route via Strehla (estimated cost: 1,808,500 thalers) over the route via Meißen (1,956,000 thalers). On 16 November 1835 the purchase of land began for the section between Leipzig and the Mulde bridge north of Wurzen. On 1 March 1836 the first sod was cut. Oversight for the entire project lay in the hands of the Saxon Senior Waterways Construction Engineer (Oberwasserbaudirektors), Karl Theodor Kunz. Then however the town council of Strehla rejected the building of the railway. So the line was re-routed over the river Elbe 7 km further south at Riesa. On 7 April 1839 the first train ran over the Elbe railway bridge at Riesa.

The route was taken into operation in several stages:

1837, 24 April: Leipzig–Althen (10.60 km)
1837, 12 November: Althen–Borsdorf–Gerichshain (4.32 km)
1838, 11 May: Gerichshain–Machern (2.93 km)
1838, 19 July: Weintraube–Dresden (8.18 km)
1838, 31 July: Machern–Wurzen (8.00 km)
1838, 16 September: Wurzen–Dahlen (17.53 km)
1838, 16 September: Oberau–Coswig–Weintraube (13.44 km)
1838, 3 November: Dahlen–Oschatz (9.56 km)
1838, 21 November: Oschatz–Riesa (13.07 km)
1839, 7 April: Riesa–Oberau (28.45 km)

On 7 April 1839, on the completion of the Elbe bridge at Riesa, the entire route from Leipzig to Dresden was finally opened. A second track was built immediately afterwards and the route was then operated with traffic running on the left, in line with English practice until 1884!

From 1851 to 1878 a single-tracked, 5 km long, connecting railway was operated in Leipzig, that branched off from the Saxon-Bavarian Railway, ran eastwards around the city in a large curve and finally entered the Dresden railway north of Dresden station.

On 1 December 1860 the Leipzig-Dresden Railway opened a side line that branched off the main line in Coswig and ran to Meißen. On 14 May 1866 it opened services on another side line, which branched off the main route in Borsdorf and initially ran as far as Grimma; then on 28 October 1867 to Leisnig, on 2 June 1868 to Döbeln, on 25 October 1868 to Nossen and on 22 December 1868 it was finally extended as far as Meißen, so that a parallel southern route was established between Borsdorf and Coswig.

The Großenhain branch, opened on 14 October 1862, went into to the ownership of the LDE on 1 July 1869.

On 15 October 1875 the LDE opened a connecting route from Riesa to Elsterwerda (since 1815 part of the Kingdom of Prussia), that from 17 July 1875 was linked to Berlin and Dresden.

The route from Nossen to Freiberg – as part of the line from Nossen to Moldau - was completed on 15 July 1873, and extended as far as Mulda/Sa. by 2 November 1875. On 15 August 1876 the route reached the Bohemian border at Moldau.

After the collapse of the Elbe bridge at Riesa, the general assembly of the shareholders decided on 29 March 1876 to sell the Dresden railway to the state of Saxony. On 1 July 1876 the operation and management of the Leipzig-Dresden Railway was transferred to the Royal Saxon State Railways.

The 'railway monument' in Leipzig, erected in 1878, commemorates the development of the Dresden railway from its emergence as a private initiative of Leipzig citizens to its nationalisation.

Deutsch

Die Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn-Compagnie (LDE) war eine private Eisenbahngesellschaft in Sachsen. Sie betrieb unter anderem die 1839 eröffnete erste deutsche Ferneisenbahn zwischen Leipzig und Dresden. Am 1. Juli 1876 wurde die Gesellschaft verstaatlicht und ging in den Kgl. Sächsischen Staatseisenbahnen auf.

Vorgeschichte

Die Idee einer Eisenbahn, die Leipzig mit Strehla (an der Elbe) verbinden sollte, wurde schon vor 1830 von dem Leipziger Kramermeister Carl Gottlieb Tenner geäußert. Nachdem im Jahr 1833 der Nationalökonom Friedrich List in Leipzig seine Pläne für ein deutsches Eisenbahn-System veröffentlichte, in dem Leipzig die Rolle des zentralen Knotenpunktes zugedacht war, bekam Tenners Idee neuen Auftrieb. Noch im gleichen Jahr wurde ein Eisenbahn-Comité gegründet, das am 20. November 1833 eine Petition zum Bau einer Eisenbahn von Leipzig nach Dresden an den ersten sächsischen Landtag in Dresden richtete.

Die Gründung der Gesellschaft

Im Jahr 1835 wurde die Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn-Compagnie durch zwölf Leipziger Bürger, u. a. Albert Dufour-Féronce (1798–1861), Gustav Harkort (1795–1865), Carl Lampe (1804–1889) und Wilhelm Theodor Seyfferth (1807–1881), als private Aktiengesellschaft gegründet. Zur Ostermesse 1835 wurden die Aktien der Gesellschaft (Nennwert 100 Thaler) innerhalb weniger Stunden vollständig gezeichnet, so dass ein Kapital von mehr als einer Million Thalern zur Verfügung stand. Am 6. Mai 1835 genehmigte die sächsische Staatsregierung Bau und Betrieb der Bahn sowie die Ausgabe von unverzinslichen Kassenscheinen im Wert von 500.000 Thaler. Das Gesamtkapital betrug somit 1,5 Millionen Thaler.

Der Bau der Strecke Leipzig–Dresden

Im Oktober 1835 prüften die englischen Ingenieure Sir James Walker und Hawkshaw die projektierten Strecken und gaben der nördlichen Trasse über Strehla (veranschlagte Kosten: 1.808.500 Thaler) den Vorzug gegenüber der über Meißen (1.956.000 Thaler). Am 16. November 1835 begann der Land-Erwerb für den Abschnitt zwischen Leipzig und der Mulde-Brücke nördlich von Wurzen. Am 1. März 1836 wurde der erste Spatenstich vorgenommen. Die Bauleitung für das gesamte Projekt lag in den Händen des sächsischen Oberwasserbaudirektors Karl Theodor Kunz. Dann lehnte aber der Rat der Stadt Strehla den Eisenbahnbau ab. So wurde die Strecke im 7 km südlicheren Riesa über die Elbe geführt. Am 7. April 1839 fuhr der erste Zug über die Elbebrücke.

Der Bau weiterer Strecken

Am 1. Dezember 1860 nahm die Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn einen Seiten-Arm in Betrieb, der in Coswig von der Hauptstrecke abzweigte und nach Meißen führte. Am 14. Mai 1866 eröffnete sie den Betrieb auf einem weiteren Seiten-Arm, der in Borsdorf von der Hauptstrecke abzweigte und zunächst bis Grimma führte; am 28. Oktober 1867 aber nach Leisnig, am 2. Juni 1868 nach Döbeln, am 25. Oktober 1868 nach Nossen und am 22. Dezember 1868 schließlich bis nach Meißen verlängert wurde, so dass damit zwischen Borsdorf und Coswig eine südliche Parallelstrecke geschaffen wurde.

Nachdem am 15. Juli 1873 die Strecke von Nossen nach Freiberg – als Teil der Eisenbahnstrecke Nossen-Moldau – geschaffen wurde, wurde diese am 2. November 1875 bis nach Mulda/Sa. verlängert. Am 15. August 1876 war mit dem Weiterbau dieser Strecke bis Moldau die böhmische Grenze erreicht.

Von 1851 bis 1878 wurde in Leipzig eine 5,0 km lange eingleisige Verbindungsbahn betrieben, die vom Bayerischen Bahnhof der Sächsisch-Bayrischen Eisenbahn abzweigte, die Stadt in großem Bogen östlich umfuhr und schließlich von Norden kommend in den Dresdner Bahnhof einmündete.

Die am 14. Oktober 1862 eröffnete Großenhainer Zweigbahn ging am 1. Juli 1869 in das Eigentum der LDE über.

Am 15. Oktober 1875 eröffnete die Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn eine Verbindungsstrecke von Riesa nach Elsterwerda (seit 1815 zum Königreich Preußen), das seit dem 17. Juli 1875 mit Berlin und Dresden verbunden war.

Übergang in die Staatsbahn

Nach dem Einsturz der Elbebrücke in Riesa beschloss am 29. März 1876 die Generalversammlung der Aktionäre den Verkauf der Dresdner Eisenbahn an den Sächsischen Staat. Am 1. Juli 1876 gingen Betrieb und Verwaltung der Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn an die Königlich Sächsischen Staatseisenbahnen über.

An die Entwicklung der Dresdner Eisenbahn von ihrer Entstehung als Privat-Initiative Leipziger Bürger bis zur Verstaatlichung erinnert seit 1878 das Eisenbahndenkmal in Leipzig.

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Fuerst-Bismarck 1890 Engines

The largest of the German transatlantic steamers is the "Fuerst-Bismarck," of the Hamburg-American Packet Co., running between New York and Hamburg, and touching at Southampton.

This ship was built in 1890 by the Vulcan Works, at Stettin, Germany, and is 502 ft. 6 ins. long, 57 ft. 6 ins. beam, and 38 ft. deep, with a net tonnage of 4,463 tons; gross tonnage, 8,874 tons; and displacement, 10,500 tons. The hull is built of steel, and the general method of construction is shown by the accompanying drawings, for which we are indebted to the "Zeitschrift des Vereines Deutscher Ingenieure." We are also indebted to the company for some of the particulars given below.

The ship has a vertical stem and elliptical stern. As seen by the cross-section, Fig. 1, the keel is flat, consisting of a plate 15-16 in. thick. There is a double bottom, divided into five compartments by transverse partition girders and subdivided by the central longitudinal girder which forms the keelson. The water ballast is carried in these compartments, connections being made with two os Stone's navy pumps, of 26,418 gallons' capacity per hour, for emptying any or all of the compartments. The main portion of the hull is divided into 13 compartments. There are two pole masts carrying a small amount of canvas, and three large smokestacks. The arrangement of saloons, passengers' quarters, staterooms, crew's quarters and engine and boiler rooms are clearly shown by the drawings on the inset sheet.

The ship has accomodation for 350 first cabin passengers, 120 second cabin passengers and 800 steerage passengers, or 1,270 passengers in all. The officers and crew consist of the captain, five officers, 24 engineers, 130 stokers and trimmers, and 170 sailors, stewards, physician, cooks, bakers, etc., or 330 in all, making a total of 1,600 persons on board. About 600 tons of freight can be carries in the hold, and the coal bunkers have a capacity of 2,800 tons.

The ship has twin screws, driven by a pair of triple-expansion engines of the ordinary marine type, with vertical inverted cylinders, Fig. 2, having a maximum power of 16,400 I. HP. The cylinders are 43.3, 66.93, and 106.3 ins. diameter, all of 62.99 ins. stroke. The dimensions an the drawings are given in meters. The cylinder stuffing boxes are packed with six Katzenstein metal rings and five intermediate bronze rings, with two packing rings, while the intermediate and high-pressure pistons are fitted with Ramsbottom rings. The high pressure cylinder is furnished with a piston valve of 23.7 ins. diameter, while the intermediate cylinder is balanced by the device shown in Fig. 3. The low-pressure slide valves have two ports each and are unbalanced, but are pressed against the valve seats by plates, held up by steel springs.

The air pumps are of the three-cylinder, single expansion type, taking steam direct from the boilers and exhausting into the low-pressure steam chests of the main engines. The air cylinders are fitted with Thompson's metal valves, and are located underneath the steam cylinders. They are operated from the pistons rods of the main engines. These rods are extended through the upper cylinders heads. Both pumps are so arranged that they can pump from one or both the condensers. The condensed water is pumped into two large tanks near he front of the engine room, from which it is conducted to a Weir feed water heater and to the boilers by a pair of two-cylinder feed pumps. Besides the latter, two auxiliary steam pumps and a pulsometer pump, for the purpose of furnishing water for deck washing and fire hose, are mounted in each engine room. The steam is condensed by two Weir condensers, each with a capacity of 15,860 gallons per day. For the lighting plant there are four dynamos, furnishing current for about 1,000 electric lights.

There are nine double-ended boilers, arranged in three batteries. As shown by Fig. 4, each has four furnaces at each end, giving a total of 72 fires with 1,452.6 sq. ft. of grate area, and 46,980 sq. ft. of heating surface, or 1 sq. ft. of grate area to 32.2 sq. ft. of heating surface. No forced draft system is used, and the working boiler pressure is 156 lbs. per sq. in. The coal bunkers have a capacity of about 2,800 lbs., which, at 287 tons daily consumption, gives a steaming capacity of about ten days.

The ship is soon to be fitted with three-bladed manganese bronze propellers, but the present propellers, shown in Fig. 5, are of cast steel, 9 ft. diameter, with three blades, which are plated with tin on the front faces, and are secured to the boss of the propeller by steel set screws and bronze nuts. The blades are inclined 10 degrees toward the rear end. The average speed of the vessel (19 knots) is effected by 85 revolutions per minute. The developed area of the blades of each propeller amounts to 86.11 sq. ft., while the projected area is 86.11 sq. ft.; therefore, each square inch of the propeller faces is subjected to an average thrust of about 13 lbs.; as an average 14,150 HP. effective work of the engines is required to produce the speed of 19 knots.

In the trial trip, in which a distance of about 30 miles was run over twice, the "Fuerst-Bismarck" made 20.7 knots; the highest effective power developed with natural draft was 16,412 HP. - a very favorable showing. The daily consumption of coal amounts to 287 tons for producing an average of 14,150 HP. The speed made with the original propellers was about 19.78 knots, but since the propellers have been changed this is said to have been increased to nearly 21 knots as a maximum. The fastest run was in April, 1892, when the trip from Southampton (timed from The Needles) to Sandy Hook was made in 6 days, 11 hours, 44 minutes, which is estimated as equals to 5 days, 20 hours for the run from Queenstown to Sandy Hook, which is the one on which the record breaking trips are made.

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Seismometer

After 1880, most seismometers were descended from those developed by the team of John Milne, James Alfred Ewing and Thomas Gray, who worked in Japan from 1880 to 1895. These seismometers used damped horizontal pendulums. After World War II, these were adapted into the widely used Press-Ewing seismometer.

Later, professional suites of instruments for the world-wide standard seismographic network had one set of instruments tuned to oscillate at fifteen seconds, and the other at ninety seconds, each set measuring in three directions. Amateurs or observatories with limited means tuned their smaller, less sensitive instruments to ten seconds. The basic damped horizontal pendulum seismometer swings like the gate of a fence. A heavy weight is mounted on the point of a long (from 10 cm to several meters) triangle, hinged at its vertical edge. As the ground moves, the weight stays unmoving, swinging the "gate" on the hinge.

The advantage of a horizontal pendulum is that it achieves very low frequencies of oscillation in a compact instrument. The "gate" is slightly tilted, so the weight tends to slowly return to a central position. The pendulum is adjusted (before the damping is installed) to oscillate once per three seconds, or once per thirty seconds. The general-purpose instruments of small stations or amateurs usually oscillate once per ten seconds. A pan of oil is placed under the arm, and a small sheet of metal mounted on the underside of the arm drags in the oil to damp oscillations. The level of oil, position on the arm, and angle and size of sheet is adjusted until the damping is "critical," that is, almost having oscillation. The hinge is very low friction, often torsion wires, so the only friction is the internal friction of the wire. Small seismographs with low proof masses are placed in a vacuum to reduce disturbances from air currents.

Zollner described torsionally-suspended horizontal pendulums as early as 1869, but developed them for gravimetry rather than seismometry.

Early seismometers had an arrangement of levers on jeweled bearings, to scratch smoked glass or paper. Later, mirrors reflected a light beam to a direct-recording plate or roll of photographic paper. Briefly, some designs returned to mechanical movements to save money. In mid-twentieth-century systems, the light was reflected to a pair of differential electronic photosensors called a photomultiplier. The voltage generated in the photomultiplier was used to drive galvanometers which had a small mirror mounted on the axis. The moving reflected light beam would strike the surface of the turning drum, which was covered with photo-sensitive paper. The expense of developing photo sensitive paper caused many seismic observatories to switch to ink or thermal-sensitive paper.

Another relatively simple device was used in the late 19th and early 20th century. This consisted of a pendulum free to swing in any direction, with a scribe at the bottom touching a smoked glass plate. While not providing time information or information on distant earthquakes these did give accurate initial shock directions and proved useful in a late 20th century analysis of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

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Windmill

A windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history the windmill was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important application was to pump water.

Spread and decline

The total number of wind powered mills in Europe is estimated to have been around 200,000 at its peak, compared to some 500,000 waterwheels. With the coming of the industrial revolution, the importance of wind (and water) as primary industrial energy source declined and was eventually replaced by steam (in steam mills) and internal combustion engines, although windmills continued to be built in large numbers until late in the 19th Century. More recently windmills have been preserved for their historic value, in some cases as static exhibits when the antique machinery is too fragile to put in motion, and in other cases as fully working mills. There are around 50 working mills in operation in Britain as of 2009.

Of the 10,000 windmills in use in the Netherlands around 1850, about 1000 are still standing. Most of these are being run by volunteers though there are some grist mills still operating commercially. Many of the drainage mills have been appointed as backup to the modern pumping stations. The Zaan district has been said to have been the first industrialized region of the world with around 600 operating wind powered industries by the end of the 18th century. Economic fluctuations and the industrial revolution had a much greater impact on these industries than on grain and drainage mills so only very few are left.

Construction of mills spread to the Cape Colony in the 17th century. The early tower-mills did not survive the gales of the Cape Peninsula, so that in 1717 the Heeren XVII sent carpenters, masons and materials to construct a durable mill. The mill was completed in 1718 and became known as the Oude Molen and was located between Pinelands Station and the Black River. Long since demolished, its name lives on as that of a Technical school in Pinelands. By 1863 Cape Town could boast eleven mills stretching from Paarden Eiland to Mowbray.

Sails

Common sails consist of a lattice framework on which a sailcloth is spread. The miller can adjust the amount of cloth spread according to the amount of wind available and power needed. In medieval mills the sailcloth was wound in and out of a ladder type arrangement of sails. Post-medieval mill sails had a lattice framework over which the sailcloth was spread, while in colder climates the cloth was replaced by wooden slats, which were easier to handle in freezing conditions. The jib sail is commonly found in Mediterranean countries, and consists of a simple triangle of cloth wound round a spar. In all cases the mill needs to be stopped to adjust the sails. Inventions in Great Britain in the late 18th and 19th century led to sails that automatically adjust to the wind speed without the need for the miller to intervene, culminating in Patent sails invented by William Cubitt in 1813. In these sails the cloth is replaced by a mechanism of connected shutters. In France, Berton invented a system consisting of longitudinal wooden slats connected by a mechanism that lets the miller open them while the mill is turning. In the 20th century increased knowledge of aerodynamics from the development of the airplane led to further improvements in efficiency by German engineer Bilau and several Dutch millwrights. The majority of windmills have four sails. Multi-sailed mills, with five, six or eight sails, were built in Great Britain (especially in and around the counties of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire), Germany and less commonly elsewhere. Earlier multi-sailed mills are found in Spain, Portugal, Greece, parts of Romania, Bulgaria and Russia. A mill with an even number of sails has the advantage of being able to run with a damaged sail and the one opposite removed without resulting in an unbalanced mill.

Machinery

Gears inside a windmill convey power from the rotary motion of the sails to a mechanical device. The sails are carried on the horizontal windshaft. Windshafts can be wholly made of wood, or wood with a cast iron poll end (where the sails are mounted) or entirely of cast iron. The brake wheel is fitted onto the windshaft between the front and rear bearing. It has the brake around the outside of the rim and teeth in the side of the rim which drive the horizontal gearwheel called wallower on the top end of the vertical upright shaft. In grist mills the great spur wheel, lower down the upright shaft, drives one or more stone nuts on the shafts driving each millstone. Post mills sometimes have a head and/or tail wheel driving the stone nuts directly, instead of the spur gear arrangement. Additional gear wheels drive a sack hoist or other machinery. The machinery differs if the windmill is used for other applications than milling grain. A drainage mill uses another set of gear wheels on the bottom end of the upright shaft to drive a scoop wheel or Archimedes' screw. Sawmills use a crankshaft with to provide a reciprocating motion to the saws. Windmills have been used to power many other industrial processes, including papermills, threshing mills, and for example to process oil seeds, wool, paints and stone products.

Windpumps

Windpumps are used extensively on farms and ranches in the central plains and South West of the United States and in Southern Africa and Australia. These mills feature a large number of blades so that they turn slowly with considerable torque in low winds and be self regulating in high winds. A tower-top gearbox and crankshaft convert the rotary motion into reciprocating strokes carried downward through a rod to the pump cylinder below. The farm wind pump was invented by Daniel Halladay in 1854. Eventually steel blades and steel towers replaced wooden construction, and at their peak in 1930, an estimated 600,000 units were in use. The multi-bladed wind turbine atop a lattice tower made of wood or steel hence became, for many years, a fixture of the landscape throughout rural America. Firms such as Star, Eclipse, Fairbanks-Morse and Aermotor became famed suppliers in North and South America.

Wind turbine

A windmill used to generate electricity is commonly called a wind turbine. The first windmills for electricity production were built by the end of the 19th century by Prof James Blyth in Scotland (1887), Charles F. Brush in Cleveland, Ohio (1887–1888) and Poul la Cour in Denmark (1890s). La Cour's mill from 1896 later became the local powerplant of the village Askov. By 1908 there were 72 wind-driven electric generators in Denmark from 5 kW to 25 kW. By the 1930s windmills were widely used to generate electricity on farms in the United States where distribution systems had not yet been installed, built by companies like Jacobs Wind, Wincharger, Miller Airlite, Universal Aeroelectric, Paris-Dunn, Airline and Winpower and by the Dunlite Corporation for similar locations in Australia.

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SS Fürst Bismarck 1890

The first SS Fürst Bismarck was an ocean liner built in 1890 by AG Vulcan for the Hamburg America Line. A steamship of 8,430 gross tons, it was assigned to transatlantic crossings between Hamburg Germany and New York, USA. Fürst Bismarck and the sister ships were part of an express fleet that usually made the trip in five to six days.

HAPAG's Express Fleet

The fleet of twin-screw express steamships operated between New York to Plymouth, Cherbourg and Hamburg, and from Hamburg, Southampton, and Cherbourg to New York. The fleet consisted of the SS Auguste Victoria and the SS Fürst Bismarck, built by the Vulcan Shipbuilding Company at Stettin, the SS Columbia, built by Laird Brothers, in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, and the SS Normannia built by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, in Glasgow. With these vessels the company maintained a weekly Transatlantic express service, offering the public the convenience of safe and comfortable travel between America and the European Continent.

Design

The SS Fürst Bismarck was designed with five decks constructed of steel and teak. The three funnels rose above the hurricane deck. The ship also had two masts, but without yards. Each side of the ship was subdivided into numerous watertight compartments. The hull of the ship had a double bottom, the space between divided into chambers, which could be filled with water or emptied by means of automatic pumps, thus increasing or decreasing the draught at will, and guarding the ship from grounding. The enormous engines were of 6000 to 8000 horsepower each. The screws are of manganese bronze, with three or four blades.

First class deck state rooms, located mid-ship, were 7 to 9 feet in width, with elaborate furnishings. Separate saloons for men and women allowed for privacy, smoking (gentlemen only), and conversation. The Second class rooms were on the same level as first class, but with most rooms located fore and aft, with smaller rooms and their own saloons. The steerage was directly below the Second Cabin; separate compartments housed single men, women, and families.

Dimensions

The ship was 502.6 feet long, and 57.6 feet in breadth, and measured 8,430 gross tons.

Machinery

The vessels's machinery was duplicated, with two distinct sets of boilers, engines, shafts and screws, both sets working independently of each other. A longitudinal bulkhead divided the vessel into two non-communicating halves, each of which was fully equipped to propel the ship. Contemporary advertising promoted this design as safer than a single boiler compartment because of its numerous watertight compartments, and the ability of the ship to propel itself even if one side was disabled.

Service

Launched on November 29, 1890, the ship made its maiden run from Hamburg to New York, via Southampton (England), on May 8, 1891. In the service of Hamburg America line (HAPAG) on September 27, 1894, 5 days, 18 hours, 10 minutes, with Captain Adolph Albers (1843–1902) at the helm. Albers, later Commodore of the Hamburg America fleet, held several speed records for trans Atlantic crossings before his death at the helm of the SS Deutschland in 1902. Between its maiden journey and 1894, the ship made 14&nspb;crossings, predominantly as an immigrant ship, and carrying American travelers to Europe on the return journey. On July 4, 1894, in honor of its many crossings and "in memory of Muhlenberg, Herkimer, Steuben and Dekalb," the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Columbia Liberty Bell Company presented the ship, and its Captain, with a replica of the Liberty Bell, requesting that the ship's captain ordered it to be rung when the ship came in sight of the Navesink Highlands (by day) or Navesink Twin Lights (by night). After 1894, it was occasionally in use as a luxury cruise ship. HAPAG commissioned a second SS Fürst Bismarck (1905) in 1905.

In 1904, the ship became the auxiliary cruiser the Don in the Russian Navy. In 1906, she was assigned to the Russian Volunteer Fleet with the name Moskva. In 1913, she became a depot ship in the Austrian Navy, the "Gaea." The vessel was seized by Italy during the First World War, rebuilt and renamed San Guisto. She was scrapped in Italy in 1924.

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AMERICAN AIRLINES

American Airways was developed from a conglomeration of 82 small airlines through acquisitions and reorganizations: initially, American Airways was a common brand by a number of independent carriers. These included Southern Air Transport in Texas, Southern Air Fast Express (SAFE) in the western US, Universal Aviation in the Midwest (which operated a transcontinental air/rail route in 1929), Thompson Aeronautical Services (which operated a Detroit-Cleveland route beginning in 1929) and Colonial Air Transport in the Northeast.

In 1934, American Airways Company was acquired by E.L. Cord, who renamed it "American Air Lines". Cord hired Texas businessman C.R. (Cyrus Rowlett) Smith to run the company.

Smith worked with Donald Douglas to develop the DC-3, which American Airlines started flying in 1936. With the DC-3, American began calling its aircraft "Flagships" and establishing the Admirals Club for valued passengers. The DC-3s had a four-star "admiral's pennant" outside the cockpit window while the aircraft was parked, one of the most well-known images of the airline at the time.

American Airlines was first to cooperate with Fiorello LaGuardia to build an airport in New York City, and partly as a result became owner of the world's first airline lounge at the new LaGuardia Airport (LGA), which became known as the Admirals Club. Membership was initially by invitation only, but a discrimination suit decades later changed the club into a paid club, creating the model for other airline lounges.

After World War II, American acquired American Export Airlines, renaming it as American Overseas Airlines, to serve Europe; AOA was sold to Pan Am in 1950. AA launched another subsidiary, Líneas Aéreas Americanas de Mexico S.A., to fly to Mexico and built several airports there. American Airlines provided advertising and free usage of its aircraft in the 1951 film Three Guys Named Mike. Until Capital merged into United in 1961 AA was the largest American airline, which meant second largest in the world, after Aeroflot.

American Airlines introduced transcontinental jet service with Boeing 707s on January 25, 1959. With its 707s American shifted to nonstop coast-to-coast flights, although it maintained feeder connections to cities along its old route using smaller Convair 990s and Lockheed Electras. American invested $440 million in jet aircraft up to 1962, launched the first electronic booking system (Sabre) with IBM, and built an upgraded terminal at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport in New York City which became the airline's largest base. In the 1960s, Mattel released a series of American Airlines stewardess Barbie dolls, signifying their growing commercial success. Vignelli Associates designed the AA eagle logo in 1967. Vignelli attributes the introduction of his firm to American Airlines to Henry Dreyfuss, the legendary AA design consultant. The logo is still in use today.

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NAVAL ARTILLERY

Naval artillery, or naval riflery, is artillery mounted on a warship for use in naval warfare. Naval artillery has historically been used to engage either other ships, or targets on land; in the latter role it is currently termed naval gunfire fire support. In the 20th century naval artillery also gained an anti-aircraft role.

The idea of ship-borne artillery dates back to the classical era. Julius Caesar indicates the use of ship-borne catapults against Britons ashore in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico. The dromons of the Byzantine Empire carried catapults and fire-throwers. From the late Middle Ages onwards, warships began to carry cannon of various calibres.

From the 16th century onward, the gun became the most important weapon at sea. Galleys were the first naval vessels to carry artillery powerful enough to sink ships and batter down outdated medieval fortress walls. Around the same time sailing warships began to carry an increasing number of guns, most of them on their broadsides. Initially, tactics of sailing ships were geared towards boarding, but as the number guns steadily increased throughout the 16th and 17th century, tactics changed. By the 1650s, the line of battle had developed as a tactic that could take advantage of the broadside armament. This method became the heart of naval warfare during the age of sail, with navies adopting their strategies and tactics in order to get the most broadside-on fire. This state of affairs continued into Napoleonic Wars, where the British Royal Navy met with success over its French opponents in part because of its ability to deliver faster fire from its cannon, directed into the heart of an enemy ship at close range.

During the 19th century naval artillery increased in size and power. The advances in metallurgy and chemistry meant that it was possible to build heavier guns, each firing an explosive shell rather than solid shot. Ships started to carry a smaller number of heavy, long-ranged guns rather than dozens of cannon. This trend began in the 1840s and accelerated after the invention of the ironclad warship around 1860, with some ironclads carrying extremely heavy, slow-firing guns of calibres up to 16.25 inches. These guns were the only weapons capable of piercing the ever-thicker iron armour on the later ironclads; however given their slow rate of fire and the great difficult of handling them, it is perhaps unlikely that they would ever have scored a hit.

The introduction of the quick-firing gun in the 1890s served to reverse this trend to an extent. The pre-dreadnought battleships of this period relied as much on their quick-firing secondary battery (typically of 6 inches in calibre) as they did on their main armament (typically 12 inches in calibre). However the improved rate of fire and range of the heavy guns meant that battleships switched to an "all-big-gun" armament, beginning with HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906. Dreadnought set the tone for battleships of the rest of the 20th Century; while the calibre of heavy guns increased (to as far as 18.1 inches in the Japanese Yamato class) the basic principle remained the same. Smaller ships, for instance cruisers and destroyers, made use of smaller-calibre weapons which were also found on battleships as the secondary armament.

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ARTILLERY

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons. These engines comprise specialised devices which use some form of stored energy to operate, whether mechanical, chemical, or electromagnetic. Originally designed to breach fortifications, they have evolved from nearly static installations intended to reduce a single obstacle to highly mobile weapons of great flexibility in which now reposes the greater portion of a modern army's offensive capabilities.

In common speech the word artillery is often used to refer to individual devices, together with their accessories and fittings, although these assemblages are more properly referred to as equipments. By association, artillery may also refer to the arm of service that customarily operates such engines.

Artillery may also refer to a system of applied scientific research relating to the design, manufacture and employment of artillery weapon systems although, in general, the terms ballistics and ordnance are more commonly employed in this sense.

Artillery is by far the deadliest and most effective form of land-based armament; in the Napoleonic Wars, World War I and World War II the vast majority of combat deaths were caused by artillery. In 1944, Joseph Stalin said in a speech that artillery was "the God of War". The most famous artillery officer in history is probably Napoleon; artillery officers in many European armies were distinguished by their excellent education, compared to their colleagues in the Infantry and Cavalry.

Military doctrine has played a significant influence on the core engineering design considerations of Artillery ordnance through its history, in seeking to achieve a balance between delivered volume of fire with ordnance mobility. However, during the modern period the consideration of protecting the gunners also arose due to the late-19th century introduction of the new generation of infantry weapons using conoidal bullet, better known as the Minié ball, with a range almost as long as that of field artillery.

The word as used in the current context originated in the Middle Ages. One suggestion is that it comes from the Old French atellier meaning "to arrange", and attillement meaning "equipment".

From the 13th Century an artillier referred to a builder of any war equipment, and for the next 250 years the sense of the word "artillery" covered all forms of military weapons. Hence the naming of the Honourable Artillery Company an essentially infantry unit until the 19th Century. Another suggestion is that comes from the Italian arte de tirare (art of shooting) coined by one of the first theorists on the use of artillery, Niccolo Tartaglia.

Cannons continued to become smaller and lighter—Frederick II of Prussia deployed the first genuine light artillery during the Seven Years War—but until the mid-19th Century improvements in metallurgy, chemistry, manufacturing and other sciences did not alter the basic design and operation of a cannon.

"The earliest battlefield use of indirect fire was probably at Paltzig in July 1759: the Russian artillery fired over the tops of trees." Artillery continued to gain prominence in the 18th Century when Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval, a French artillery engineer introduced the standardization of cannon design. He developed a 6-inch (150 mm) field howitzer whose gun barrel, carriage assembly and ammunition specifications were made uniform for all French cannons. The standardized interchangeable parts of these cannons down to the nuts, bolts and screws made their mass production and repair much easier.

Another major change at this time was the development of a flintlock firing mechanism for the cannons. The old method of firing the cannon involved the use of a linstock or match to light a small quantity of powder charge in a touchhole drilled into the breech. This technique was quite faulty because the ignited powder could easily be extinguished by rain and an excess amount of charge could cause the guns to burst.

The flintlock mechanism on the other hand only needs to be cocked and when its trigger is pulled the flint of the hammer strikes the frizzen throwing sparks into the pan and detonating the charge at the breech. The trigger can be tied to a lanyard and fired from a safe distance. These changes laid down in 1789 proved decisive for Napoleon's conquests. Napoleon, himself a former artillery officer, perfected the tactic of massed artillery batteries unleashed upon a critical point in his enemies' line as prelude to infantry and cavalry assault and, more often than not, victory.

Rifling had been tried on small arms in the 15th Century. The machinery to accurately rifle a cannon barrel did not arrive until the 19th Century. Cavelli, Wahrendorff, and Whitworth all independently produced rifled cannon in the 1840s, but these guns did not see widespread use until the latter stages of the American Civil War, when designs such as the various caliber Rodman guns came to prominence.

From the 1860s artillery was forced into a series of rapid technological and operational changes, accelerating through the 1870s and thereafter. The first effective breech-loader (allowing a higher rate of fire while keeping the detachment behind the gun) was developed in 1855 by Sir William Armstrong, and accepted for British service in 1859. The first cannon to contain all 'modern' features is generally considered to be the French 75 of 1897 with its cased ammunition, effective breech-loading, modern sights, self-contained firing mechanism, and hydro-pneumatic recoil dampening.

After the War of 1870, the Germans became strong advocates of indirect fire. In 1882 a Russian officer, Lieutenant Colonel KG Guk, published Indirect Fire for Field Artillery that provided a practical method of using aiming points for indirect fire by describing, "all the essentials of aiming points, crest clearance, and corrections to fire by an observer". A few years later the Richtfläche (lining-plane) sight was invented in Germany and provided a means of indirect laying in azimuth, complementing the clinometers for indirect laying in elevation which already existed. In the next 15 years, the techniques of indirect fire became available for all types of artillery. Indirect fire was the defining characteristic of 20th Century artillery and led to undreamt of changes in the amount of artillery, its tactics, organisation and techniques most of which occurred during World War I.

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DYNAMO

The Engineer
Oct. 27, 1882

GORDON’S DYNAMO-ELECTRIC MACHINE.

The first steam locomotives were crude machines compared with those which were constructed in the course of a few years after their first introduction. Just so, no doubt, will be the case with dynamo machines. The first dynamos were little more than models, and we are only now beginning to realize the fact that it is more economical to construct a dynamo which will absorb 100-horse power than it is to construct one to absorb a single horse-power. Then, again, new uses require new designs. The design of a pumping engine differs from that of an express locomotive; so the design of a dynamo to supply the electric current for a large number of incandescent lamps differs considerably from that designed to supply a large number of arc lamps. A few years ago the success of incandescent systems was scouted by many and doubted by others. Time has proved that their fears were groundless, and that incandescent lighting is not only an actual fact, but it is the system towards which almost all eyes and efforts are directed as the great work of the immediate future. Directly incandescent lighting became practical and no longer merely an incident of the laboratory, attention began to be directed to its introduction upon a large scale. Gas was already in possession of the field, and usually changes are not made unless the evidence of gain is very strong. There is, however, a stronger incentive to gain than mere economy, and that is fashion. The electric light seems to have become fashionable and this in addition to its inherent merits as a light. It is said to be, when used on a large scale, as economical as gas and as much under control. This being the case it was to be expected that machines would be designed to supply the current on a large scale. Under the usual conditions arc lamps have hitherto been arranged in series, that is, one after the other upon the wire joining the two terminals of the machine. Now, as each lamp opposes the current with a certain resistance, the adding of lamps in series increases the resistance in proportion to the numbers of lamps. If the resistance of one lamp is represented by x; the resistance of the lamps in series is represented by nx. A certain electro-motive force is required to overcome the resistance x; but n times that electro-motive force is required to overcome the resistance nx, the current being constant, and, of course, the more constant the current the better for the lights. Putting this into the familiar symbols of Ohm’s law, C= E/R, we know at once that to retain C constant when R becomes n R, we must make the numerator n E. The feature of machines required to supply the current to a number of arc lamps in series is high electro-motive force. To a certain extent quite an opposite condition holds when a large number of incandescent lights are under consideration. These lamps are generally arranged in multiple arcs, or each lamp provides a path for the current from terminal to terminal; or say two large main wires are taken from the two terminals of the machine, the lamps are strung between these two wires. In the case of the arc lamps, with one lamp we require, say, a current of 20 Amperes; the machine is not asked to supply more current through the circuit. But taking one incandescent lamp as required 1 Ampere, by the arrangement adopted 100 such lamps require 100 Amperes, that is, 1 Ampere through each branch wire and lamp. Hence the machine has to provide quantity in one case and electro-motive force in the other. In the latter case, E represented in the formula C=E/R is constant, and C is increased by diminishing R.

From these remarks it will be seen that a large amount of knowledge, talent, and ingenuity may be brought into play in designing dynamos for different purposes. Besides, however, the electrical matters to be considered in such designs, there remain the purely mechanical details such as the proportion of parts, the strains, &c., to be brought into play, and these present some curious problems when taken in connection with the electrical requirements.

The latest and most important development of the dynamo electrical machine we illustrate now. It is the invention of Mr. J. E. H. Gordon, and has been constructed from his designs – in the preparation of which he was aided as to details by Mr. Clifford and Mr. Lucas – by the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company at its works at Greenwich. Before proceeding to describe the machine more minutely, it will be well to explain the principle on which it acts in general terms. The central armature is an iron disc, on which are arranged a series of wire coils, the wire being coiled in the same plane as the disc. The wires are united in a ring on the central axis, against which ring bears a gun-metal contact lever, into which is sent a current of electricity from two Burgin machines which act as exciters. The armature revolves between the two sides of a frame of cast iron, which carries a number of electro-magnets; that is to say, of cores covered with insulated wire. From these the currents developed in them are led off to the lamps. Thus it will be seen that the field magnets are attached to the armature, and move, while the equivalents of the armature coils are at rest. There is no commutator, the machine being of the alternating current type.

This machine can, with sufficient power, light 6000 Swan lamps, but this is not at present available, the engines used to drive it being a pair with horizontal cylinders, 20 in. stroke, and 16 in. diameter, making about 140 revolutions per minute. They were used for some time on board the Calabria for picking up cables. On Wednesday night about 1300 Swan lamps of over 20 candle power were in use, lighting up every department of the large works. It will give some idea of the dimensions of the system if we state that there are about 8 miles of wire leads in use.

This is not the first machine made by Mr. Gordon. Mr. Gordon’s present machine is an improvement upon an earlier one. In the former machine the revolving rings each carried the same number of magnet coils as the fixed rings carried armature coils, and it was found that an injurious inductive action militated against the efficiency of the machine. If a certain number of lamps were maintained by one coil, and the circuit of the next coil was then closed, there was a reduction of light in the lamps of the first circuit by some 20 or 30 per cent. The cause of this was in the current circulating in opposite directions in the contiguous coils. In the present machine the armature coils are twice the number of the magnet coils, hence the magnets act on alternate coils. For example, at the instant when the 32 magnets are acting with their maximum effect on the alternate coils 1, 3, 5 . . . 63, the other alternate coils, 2, 4, 6, . . . 64, are practically idle, and although the coils 1, 3, 5, &c., do act upon each other, it is with far less effect in there being comparatively a long distance between them, so that the effect is inappreciable. Our illustration of the general view of the machine, as seen at Greenwich, will give a better idea of the machine than mere description. Its total weight is about 18 tons. The weight of the revolving magnet wheel is 7 tons. The space occupied by the bed-plate is 13 ft. 4 in. by 7 ft., whilst the diameter of the magnet wheel is 8 ft. 9 in. With 1300 Swan lamps in two circuits, the 128 coils are arranged 4 in series and 32 in quantity. The number of revolutions is 140 per minute, which gives a velocity of a little over 60 ft. per second to any point in the revolving wheel. The revolving magnet coils are magnetized, as we have said, by the current from two Bürgin machines – one would in reality suffice – conveyed in the usual way by brushes making contact with the rings L Fig. 1, on the collars C, Fig. 2. The rings are usually of phosphor bronze, and are separated from the iron collars by an insulator. The current in the magnets is 10 Amperes, with an electro motive force of 88 volts. The current in each armature wire is 27.5 Amperes. A detail illustration of the armature coil is shown in Fog. 4. Each coil is wound with wire 0.185 in. diameter, its cross section is 0.0269 square in, and the total cross section of the 128 coils of wire in quantity is 0.0269 x 128 = 3.44 square inches.
The coils may be coupled up in almost any way desired. For example, if the full 5000 lamps were placed on this machine, the 128 coils would be all coupled together for quantity. The number of revolutions would be raised to 200, with a current of 48 Amperes in the magnet’s coils, giving the same electro – motive force as before, and the same current – 24.25 Amperes – in the armature wire. The armature wire will take a current of 40 Amperes easily. The core of the coil, N, is of wedge shape, and made of a piece of boiler-plate bent upon itself, so that the angle forms the thin and of the wedge, and the free edges, which do not quite meet, form the thick end. A wedge-shaped head of a T-piece is inserted into one end of the folded plate and welded to it, the item of the T being turned and screwed is passed through a hole in the fixed ring, and secured by nuts. A German silver flange is riveted on a shoulder cut on the end of the core. This flange has cut into it slots as nearly as possible in a direction at right angles to the currents which mar de induced in it. The connection of the outer ends of the cores of the coils is made by prolonging the cores outwards from the magnet coil, and securing them to a fixed iron ring-shaped plate, which form their support.

In order that power may not be wasted in inducing currents in this plate, it is set back some distance, the cores being correspondingly prolonged. The space between the wire of the coils and the iron plate may be filled up with wooden plates or blocks, which form the second flange of the coil, Fig. 1. The thickness is such that the algebraic sum of the magnetic potentials, induced by the magnetic poles at any point of the fixed iron ring, is as nearly as possible zero. The wheel consists of two central discs A, and of two cones B, whose bases fit upon the central discs, and through whose apices the main shaft passes. The discs A and cones B, Fig. 2 and 3, are made of segmentals pieces of boiler plate, so cut that the grain of the plate is radial to the wheel at the centre of each segment. The segments are riveted together with butt strips in the way usual in boiler making. The discs A are kept apart at the centre by a cast iron distance piece. At the rim they are kept apart by a wrought iron ring. The cones B are of less diameter than the discs, so as to leave a space of flat disc all round exterior to the cones. The cones and disc are separated at he centre by massive cast iron bosses, turned square to the shaft where they butt against the disc, and conical where they butt against the cones. The cast iron distance piece D is of somewhat larger diameter than the bosses, so that the disc can be riveted to it without the heads of the rivets interfering with the bosses. The cones, discs, ring distance piece, and bosses are all firmly riveted and bolted together, being still further strengthened by angle pieces placed between the disc and the cones. The discs are riveted with double butt strips, the cones with single ones. The butt strips of the cones are placed inside them, and the rivet heads countersunk, so that the outsides of the cones have perfectly smooth surfaces. The flat outer portion of the wheel receives the magnet cores M, which are 32 in number. Each magnet consists of a cylindrical iron core, of two bobbins of brass or other metal other than iron, containing wire, and of two pole pieces. The core passes right through a hole in the discs A and wrought iron ring E, and is fixed so as to project equally on both sides. The brass bobbins are then slipped on one at each side of the disc, and the pole plates being fixed on hold the bobbins in their places. The pole plates are of iron, preferably wrought; their sides are not parallel, but form radii of the magnet wheel.

The shaft runs in bearings preferably of phosphor bronze, which are carried by the side frames. There is a large gap or opening in the sole plate, through which a portion of the wheel dips into a pit below the machine. This enables the centre of gravity to be kept low, and greatly increases the stability of the machine. The end thrust is taken by two loose iron collars placed on the shaft, and pressed gently against the inside ends of the phosphor bronze journals by means of set screws projecting from the ends of the cast iron bosses. These set screws are secured by lock nuts. Fixed rings of cast iron carry the fixed coils; each carries sixty-four armature coils. These rings are supported by being bolted to the inside of the gap in the soleplate, and by four cast iron struts. They are also tied together by the screwed rods. Each fixed ring is made in three segments, one being much smaller than either of the other two. This is for the reason that if one of the magnet coils breaks down it can readily be got at by removing the small segment of one of the fixed rings, and turning the wheel until the damaged coil comes opposite to the gap so produced in the ring, the damaged coil can thus quickly be removed and replaced by another.

The exciters used to supply the current to the magnet coils are driven by a small separate steam engine. A dark room Fig. 5 is provided near the machine, in which is a photometer, and through which the steam pipes of the two engines pass. Stop valves are attached to these pipes, so that a man can control them while reading the photometer. A micrometer slow motion is attached to the valves wheels, so as to avoid any sudden changes of light. The following instruments are placed in the photometer room, in convenient positions for observation: a strophometer, for showing the speed of the large dynamo; an Ayrton’s ammeter for showing the strength of the exciting current; and a steam pressure gauge. There are two lamps in the photometer, one in each of the two circuits into which the machine is divided. They are lighted alternately by means of switches. If there are any very great differences in the number of lights on the two circuits, the one having the fewest lights will be brightest. In practice when the same class of houses is supplied from the two circuits there will never be any great difference in the number of lamps on each. An adjustment is however, provided by the street lamps near the machine, which by a simple switch, S S, can be instantly transferred 50 or 100 at a time from the dimmer circuit to the brighter one.

The use of a rod or ribbon for winding the coils instead of wire has recently been heard of a good idea. Mr. Gordon has experimented in this direction, and states that the effect of using a ribbon of such a width that the portion of its diameter which is furthest from the magnet poles is in a field of sensible less intensity than the portion near to them was that only a very small electro-motive force was produced at the ends of the ribbon, an enormous quantity of horse-power was absorbed, and in two or three minutes clouds of smoke poured out the machine, owing to the burning of the insulator. The reason of this is easily understood by looking at the figures, which represent a ribbon or rod of copper passing between magnet poles, the direction of motion being supposed perpendicular to the plane of the paper. In Fig. 6 the directions and lengths of the arrows represent respectively the directions and magnitudes of the electro-motive force produce, while Fig. 7 shows the direction of the current due to them. Thus we see that only a small portion of the current arrives at the ends of the ribbon, and that most of it is wasted in forming “eddies” in the width of the copper.

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Dynamo history

A dynamo (from the Greek word dynamis; meaning power), originally another name for an electrical generator, generally means a generator that produces direct current with the use of a commutator. Dynamos were the first electrical generators capable of delivering power for industry, and the foundation upon which many other later electric-power conversion devices were based, including the electric motor, the alternating-current alternator, and the rotary converter. Today, the simpler alternator dominates large scale power generation, for efficiency, reliability and cost reasons. A dynamo has the disadvantages of a mechanical commutator. Also, converting alternating to direct current using power rectification devices (hollow state or more recently solid state) is effective and usually economic.

Description

The dynamo uses rotating coils of wire and magnetic fields to convert mechanical rotation into a pulsing direct electric current through Faraday's law of induction. A dynamo machine consists of a stationary structure, called the stator, which provides a constant magnetic field, and a set of rotating windings called the armature which turn within that field. The motion of the wire within the magnetic field causes the field to push on the electrons in the metal, creating an electric current in the wire. On small machines the constant magnetic field may be provided by one or more permanent magnets; larger machines have the constant magnetic field provided by one or more electromagnets, which are usually called field coils.

The commutator was needed to produce direct current. When a loop of wire rotates in a magnetic field, the potential induced in it reverses with each half turn, generating an alternating current. However, in the early days of electric experimentation, alternating current generally had no known use. The few uses for electricity, such as electroplating, used direct current provided by messy liquid batteries. Dynamos were invented as a replacement for batteries. The commutator is essentially a rotary switch. It consists of a set of contacts mounted on the machine's shaft, combined with graphite-block stationary contacts, called "brushes", because the earliest such fixed contacts were metal brushes. The commutator reverses the connection of the windings to the external circuit when the potential reverses, so instead of alternating current, a pulsing direct current is produced.

Historical milestones

The first electric generator was invented by Michael Faraday in 1831, a copper disk that rotated between the poles of a magnet. This was not a dynamo because it did not use a commutator. However, Faraday's disk generated very low voltage because of its single current path through the magnetic field. Faraday and others found that higher, more useful voltages could be produced by winding multiple turns of wire into a coil. Wire windings can conveniently produce any voltage desired by changing the number of turns, so they have been a feature of all subsequent generator designs, requiring the invention of the commutator to produce direct current.

Jedlik's dynamo

In 1827, Hungarian Anyos Jedlik started experimenting with electromagnetic rotating devices which he called electromagnetic self-rotors. In the prototype of the single-pole electric starter, both the stationary and the revolving parts were electromagnetic. He formulated the concept of the dynamo about six years before Siemens and Wheatstone but did not patent it as he thought he was not the first to realize this. His dynamo used, instead of permanent magnets, two electromagnets opposite to each other to induce the magnetic field around the rotor. It was also the discovery of the principle of dynamo self-excitation.

Pixii's dynamo

The first dynamo based on Faraday's principles was built in 1832 by Hippolyte Pixii, a French instrument maker. It used a permanent magnet which was rotated by a crank. The spinning magnet was positioned so that its north and south poles passed by a piece of iron wrapped with insulated wire. Pixii found that the spinning magnet produced a pulse of current in the wire each time a pole passed the coil. However, the north and south poles of the magnet induced currents in opposite directions. To convert the alternating current to DC, Pixii invented a commutator, a split metal cylinder on the shaft, with two springy metal contacts that pressed against it.

Pacinotti dynamo

These early designs had a problem: the electric current they produced consisted of a series of "spikes" or pulses of current separated by none at all, resulting in a low average power output. As with electric motors of the period, the designers did not fully realize the seriously detrimental effects of large air gaps in the magnetic circuit. Antonio Pacinotti, an Italian physics professor, solved this problem around 1860 by replacing the spinning two-pole axial coil with a multi-pole toroidal one, which he created by wrapping an iron ring with a continuous winding, connected to the commutator at many equally spaced points around the ring; the commutator being divided into many segments. This meant that some part of the coil was continually passing by the magnets, smoothing out the current.

Siemens and Wheatstone dynamo (1867)

The first practical designs for a dynamo were announced independently and simultaneously by Dr. Werner Siemens and Charles Wheatstone. On January 17, 1867, Siemens announced to the Berlin academy a "dynamo-electric machine" (first use of the term) which employed self-powering electromagnetic field coils rather than permanent magnets to create the stator field. On the same day that this invention was announced to the Royal Society Charles Wheatstone read a paper describing a similar design with the difference that in the Siemens design the stator electromagnets were in series with the rotor, but in Wheatstone's design they were in parallel. The use of electromagnets rather than permanent magnets greatly increases the power output of a dynamo and enabled high power generation for the first time. This invention led directly to the first major industrial uses of electricity. For example, in the 1870s Siemens used electromagnetic dynamos to power electric arc furnaces for the production of metals and other materials.

Gramme ring dynamo

Charles F. Brush assembled his first dynamo in the summer of 1876 using a horse-drawn treadmill to power it. U.S. Patent #189997 "Improvement in Magneto-Electric Machines" was issued April 24, 1877. Brush started with the basic Gramme design where the wire on the sides and interior of the ring were outside the effective zone of the field and too much heat was retained. To improve upon this design, his ring armature was shaped like a disc rather than the cylinder shape of the Gramme armature. The field electromagnets were positioned on the sides of the armature disc rather than around the circumference. There were four electromagnets, two with north pole shoes and two with south pole shoes. The like poles opposed each other, one on each side of the disc armature. In 1881 one of The Brush Electric Company dynamos was reported to be; 89 inches long, 28 inches wide, and 36 inches in height, and weighs 4,800 pounds, and ran at a speed of about 700 revolutions per minute. It was believed to be the largest dynamo in the world at that time. Forty arc lights were fed by it, and it required 36 horse power.

Discovery of electric motor principles

While not originally designed for the purpose, it was discovered that a dynamo can act as an electric motor when supplied with direct current from a battery or another dynamo. At an industrial exhibition in Vienna in 1873, Gramme noticed that the shaft of his dynamo began to spin when its terminals were accidentally connected to another dynamo producing electricity. Although this wasn't the first demonstration of an electric motor, it was the first practical one. It was found that the same design features which make a dynamo efficient also make a motor efficient. The efficient Gramme design, with small magnetic air gaps and many coils of wire attached to a many-segmented commutator, also became the basis for the design of all practical DC motors.

Large dynamos producing direct current were problematic in situations where two or more dynamos are working together and one has an engine running at a lower power than the other. The dynamo with the stronger engine will tend to drive the weaker as if it were a motor, against the rotation of the weaker engine. Such reverse-driving could feed back into the driving engine of a dynamo and cause a dangerous out of control reverse-spinning condition in the lower-power dynamo. It was eventually determined that when several dynamos all feed the same power source all the dynamos must be locked into synchrony using a jackshaft interconnecting all engines and rotors to counter these imbalances.

Dynamo as commutated DC generator

After the discovery of the AC Generator and that alternating current can in fact be useful for something, the word dynamo became associated exclusively with the commutated DC electric generator, while an AC electrical generator using either slip rings or rotor magnets would become known as an alternator.

An AC electric motor using either slip rings or rotor magnets was referred to as a synchronous motor, and a commutated DC motor could also be called an electric motor though with the understanding that it could in principle operate as a generator.

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GOTHA BOMBER

Gotha G.V

The Gotha G.V was a heavy bomber used by the Luftstreitkräfte (Imperial German Air Service) during World War I.

Development

Operational use of the G.IV demonstrated that the incorporation of the fuel tanks into the engine nacelles was a mistake. In a crash landing the tanks could rupture and spill fuel onto the hot engines. This posed a serious problem because landing accidents caused 75% of operational losses. Gothaer produced the G.V, which housed its fuel tanks in the center of the fuselage. The smaller engine nacelles were mounted on struts above the lower wing.

The Gotha G.V pilot seat was offset to port with the fuel tanks immediately behind. This blocked the connecting walkway that previously on earlier machines allowed crew members to move between the three gun stations. All bombs were carried externally in this model. The Gotha included an important innovation in the form of a "gun tunnel" whereby the underside of the rear fuselage was arched, allowing placement of a rearward facing machine gun protecting from attack from below, removing the blind spot.

Operational history

The G.V entered service in August 1917. It offered no performance improvement over the G.IV. The G.V was up to 450 kg (990 lb) heavier than the G.IV due to additional equipment and the use of insufficiently seasoned timber. Inferior quality fuel prevented the Mercedes D. IVa engines from producing the rated 190 kW (260 hp). For these reasons, the G.V generally operated at much lower altitudes than the G.IV.

In February 1918, Gothaer tested a compound tail unit with biplane horizontal stabilizers and twin rudders. The new tail unit, known as the Kastensteuerung, improved the aircraft's marginal directional control on one engine. The resulting G.Va subvariant incorporated the new tail as well as a slightly shorter forward fuselage with an auxiliary nose landing gear. All 25 G.Va aircraft were delivered to Bogohl 3, the new designation for the former Kagohl 3.

The G.Va was followed by the G.Vb, which carried an increased payload and operated at a maximum takeoff weight of 4,550 kg (10,030 lb). To reduce the danger of flipping over during landing, Gothaer introduced the Stossfahrgestell ("shock landing gear"), a tandem two-bogie main landing gear. The Stossfahrgestell proved so good that it was fitted to all G.V's in Bogohl 3. Some G.Vb aircraft also had Flettner servo tabs on the ailerons to reduce control forces.

Idflieg ordered 80 G.Vb aircraft, the first being delivered to Bogohl 3 in June 1918. By the Armistice, all 80 aircraft were built but the last batch did not reach the front and was delivered direct to the Allied special commission.

General characteristics

•Crew: 3

•Length: 12.42 m (40 ft 8 in)

•Wingspan: 23.70 m (77 ft 9 in)

•Height: 4.5 m (14 ft)

•Wing area: 89.5 m² (963.6 ft²)

•Empty weight: 2,739 kg (6,039 lb)

•Max takeoff weight: 3,967 kg (8,745 lb)

•Powerplant: 2× Mercedes D.IVa inline engine, 260 hp (191 kW) each

Performance

•Maximum speed: 140 km/h (87 mph)

•Range: 840 km (522 miles)

•Service ceiling: 6,500 m (21,325 ft)

Armament

2 or 3 × 7.92 mm (.312 in) Parabellum MG14 machine guns

Role Bomber

Manufacturer Gothaer Waggonfabrik AG

First flight 1917

Introduced August 1917

Primary user Luftstreitkräfte

Produced 1917 to 1918

Number built 36

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LUSITANIA 1907

RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland. The ship entered passenger service with the Cunard Line on 26 August 1907. The ship was named after the ancient Roman province of Lusitania, which is part of present day Portugal. During the First World War, as Germany waged submarine warfare against Britain, the ship was identified and torpedoed by the German U-boat U-20 on 7 May 1915 and sank in eighteen minutes. The vessel went down eleven miles (18 km) off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard, leaving 761 survivors. The sinking turned public opinion in many countries against Germany, contributed to the American entry into World War I and became an iconic symbol in military recruiting campaigns of why the war was being fought.

Lusitania was constructed as part of the competition between the Cunard Line and other shipping lines, principally from Germany, for the trans-Atlantic passenger trade. Whichever company had the fastest and most luxurious ships had a commercial advantage: Lusitania and her sister Mauretania together provided a regular express service between Britain and the United States until the intervention of the First World War. The two ships both held the Blue Riband speed record for a transatlantic crossing at different times in their careers. Mauretania was generally the slightly faster of the two and continued to hold the record after the war until 1929.

The Cunard board had decided to use Parsons' turbine propulsion, which accounted for their 22-year retention of the speed record with her running mate RMS Mauretania, the turbines produced less onboard noise and vibration and more horsepower compared to expansion engines used in earlier vessels. The ships were the largest ever built at the time they were constructed, and had 50% greater passenger space than their nearest rivals, allowing unprecedented luxury for all three passenger classes.

The Lusitania was designed so that she might readily be converted to an auxiliary cruiser in times of war as part of an agreement with the British government who provided a loan of £2.6 million to finance her and Mauretania's construction. The ships attracted an ongoing operating subsidy and also held a valuable mail contract. In the event, the ships proved to be impractical armed cruisers (the liners all had very high fuel consumption and were found to be too expensive for the Admiralty to operate). Lusitania and other express liners were released from the Royal Navy shortly after the commencement of the war with instructions to resume passenger services, while Mauretania performed service as a troop ship. Cunard expressed a desire to lay up the ship for the duration of the war, but under the terms of the subsidy contract they were required to make all their ships available for government use and to carry government cargoes.

Lusitania had the misfortune to fall victim to torpedo attack relatively early in the First World War, before tactics for evading submarines were properly implemented or understood. The contemporary investigations both in the UK and US into the precise causes of the ship's loss were obstructed by the needs of wartime secrecy and a propaganda campaign to ensure all blame fell upon Germany. Argument over whether the ship was a legitimate military target raged back and forth throughout the war as both sides made misleading claims about the ship. At the time she was sunk she was carrying a large quantity of rifle ammunition and other supplies necessary for a war economy, as well as civilian passengers. Several attempts have been made over the years since the sinking to dive to the wreck seeking information about precisely how the ship sank, and argument continues to the current day.

Development and construction

Lusitania and her sister ship Mauretania were commissioned by Cunard, responding to increasing competition from rival transatlantic passenger companies, particularly the German Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL) and Hamburg America Line (HAPAG). They had larger, faster, modern, more luxurious ships than Cunard and were better placed, starting from German ports, to capture the lucrative trade in emigrants leaving Europe for America. In 1897 the NDL liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse captured the Blue Riband from Cunard's Campania, before the prize was taken in 1900 by the HAPAG ship Deutschland. NDL soon wrested the prize back in 1903 with the new Kaiser Wilhelm II and Kronprinz Wilhelm. Cunard saw their business steadily declining as a result of the so called Kaiser class ocean liners.

The American millionaire businessman J. P. Morgan had decided to invest in trans-atlantic shipping by creating a new company International Mercantile Marine (IMM), and in 1901 had purchased the British freight shipper Frederick Leyland & Co and a controlling interest in the passenger White Star Line. In 1902 a 'Community of Interest' was agreed between IMM, NDL and HAPAG to fix prices and divide between them the transatlantic trade. The partners also acquired a 51% stake in the Dutch Holland America Line. Offers were made to purchase Cunard, which with French CGT were now their principle rivals. Cunard declined the offer, but lacked the financial resources to respond with new ships. The chairman of Cunard, Lord Inverclyde approached the British government for assistance. Faced with the impending collapse of the British liner fleet and consequent loss of national prestige, as well as the reserve of shipping for war purposes which it represented, they agreed to help. By an agreement signed in June 1903, Cunard was given a loan of £2.6 million to finance two ships, repayable over 20 years at a favourable interest rate of 2.75%. The ships would receive an annual operating subsidy of £75,000 each plus a mail contract worth £68,000. In return the ships would be built to admiralty specifications so that they could be used as auxiliary cruisers in wartime.

Design

Cunard established a committee to decide the design for the new ships. James Bain, Cunard's Marine Superintendent was the chairman, while other members included Rear Admiral H J Oram, who had been involved in designs for turbine powered ships for the navy, and Charles Parsons, whose company Parsons Marine was now producing revolutionary turbine engines. Parsons maintained that he could design engines capable of maintaining a speed of 25 knots, which would require 68,000 horse power. The largest turbine sets built thus far had been of 23,000 bhp for the Dreadnought class battleships, and 41,000 bhp for Invincible class battlecruisers, which meant the engines would be of a new untested design. Turbines offered the advantages of less vibration in operation, greater reliability at high speeds and better fuel consumption. It was agreed that a trial would be made by fitting turbines to Carmania which was already under construction. The result was a ship 1.5 knots faster than her conventionally powered sister Caronia with the expected improvements in passenger comfort and operating economy.

Lusitania was designed by Cunard's naval architect, Leonard Peskett. Peskett had built a large model of the proposed ship in 1902 showing a three funnel design. A fourth funnel was implemented into the design in 1904 as it was necessary to vent the exhaust from additional boilers fitted after steam turbines had been settled on as the powerplant. The original plan called for three propellers, but this was altered to four because it was felt the necessary power could not be transmitted through just three. Four turbines would drive four separate propellers with additional reversing turbines connected to the two inner shafts only. To improve efficiency, the two propellers either side nearest the rudder rotated inwards, while the outer propellers rotated outwards. The outer turbines operated at high pressure, with the exhaust steam then passing to the inner low pressure turbines. The propellers were driven directly by the turbines since sufficiently robust gearboxes were not available until developed by Parsons in 1916. Instead turbines had to be designed to run much slower than their optimum efficient speeds. The efficiency of the installed turbines was less at slow speeds than a conventional triple expansion piston steam engine, but significantly better when the engines were run at high speed, as was usually the case for an express liner. There were 23 double ended boilers and two single ended (fitting the forward space where the ship narrowed), operating at a maximum 195 psi and containing 192 individual furnaces.

Work to refine the hull shape was conducted in the Admiralty experimental tank at Haslar, Portsmouth. As a result of experiments the beam of the ship was increased 10 feet (3.0 m) compared to the initial design to improve stability. The hull immediately in front of the rudder and the balanced rudder itself followed naval design practice to improve rapid turning. The Admiralty contract required that all machinery be below the waterline, where it was considered to be better protected from gunfire. The rear third of the ship below water was used for the turbines, steering motors and four steam turbine driven 375Kw generators. The central half contained four boiler rooms, with the remaining space at the front of the ship reserved for cargo and other storage. Coal bunkers were placed along the length of the ship sandwiched between the hull and the boiler rooms, with a large transverse bunker immediately in front of the most forward, number 1 boiler room. Apart from convenience ready for use, the coal was considered to provide added protection for the central spaces against attack. At the very front were the chain lockers for the huge anchor chains and ballast tanks to adjust the ships trim. The hull space was divided into twelve watertight compartments, any two of which could be flooded without the ship sinking, connected by 35 hydraulically operated watertight doors. A critical difficulty with the watertight compartment design was that sliding doors to the coalbunkers needed to be open to feed coal all the time the ship was operating and closing these in emergency conditions could be problematic. The ship had a double bottom, with the space between divided into separate watertight cells. The ship's exceptional height was due to the six decks of passenger accommodation above the waterline, compared to the customary four decks in existing liners.

High tensile steel was used for the ship's plating rather than the conventional mild steel. This allowed a reduction in plate thickness, reducing weight but still providing 26% greater strength than otherwise. Plates were held together by triple rows of rivets. The ship was heated and cooled throughout by a thermo-tank ventilation system, which used steam driven heat exchangers to warm air to a steady 65 °F (18.3 °C) while steam was injected into the airflow to maintain steady humidity. Forty-nine separate units driven by electric fans supplied seven complete air changes per hour throughout the ship in an interconnected system so that units could be switched out for maintenance. A separate system of exhaust fans removed air from galleys and bathrooms. As built, the ship conformed fully with Board of Trade safety regulations, which required sixteen lifeboats, with a capacity of approximately 1000 people.

Lusitania was briefly the largest ship ever built at the time of her completion (due to Mauretania, entering service shortly after which was slightly larger). She was 70 feet (21 m) longer, two knots faster, and 10,000 tons larger than the most modern German liner, Kronprinzessin Cecilie. Passenger accommodation was 50% larger than any of her competitors providing for 552 saloon class, 460 cabin class and 1,186 in third class. Her crew comprised 69 on deck, 369 operating engines and boilers and 389 to attend to passengers. She had wireless telegraph, electric light, electrical lifts and sumptuous interiors.

Interiors

At the time of their introduction both Lusitania and Mauretania possessed the most luxurious interiors afloat. The Scottish architect James Millar was chosen to design Lusitania's interiors, while Harold Peto was chosen to design Mauretania. Millar chose to use plasterwork to create interiors whereas Peto made extensive use of wooden panelling, with the result that the overall impression given by Lusitania was brighter than Mauretania. Lusitania's designs proved the more popular.

In common with all major liners of the period, Lusitania’s interiors were decorated with a mélange of historical styles. The first class dining saloon was the grandest of the ship’s public rooms; arranged over two decks with an open circular well at its centre and crowned by an elaborate dome measuring 29 feet (8.8 m), decorated with frescos in the style of François Boucher, it was elegantly realized throughout in the neoclassical Louis XVI style. The lower floor measuring 85 feet (26 m) could seat 323, with a further 147 on the 65 feet (20 m) upper floor. The walls were finished with white and gilt carved mahogany panels, with corinthian decorated columns where required to support the floor above. The one concession to seaborne life was that furniture was bolted to the floor, meaning passengers could not rearrange their seating for their personal convenience.

All other first class public rooms were situated on the boat deck and comprised a lounge, reading and writing room, smoking room and veranda café. The last was an innovation on a Cunard liner and, in warm weather, one side of the café could be opened up to give the impression of sitting outdoors. However this would have been a rarely used feature given the often inclement weather of the north Atlantic. The first class lounge was decorated in Georgian style with inlaid mahogany panels surrounding a jade green carpet with a yellow floral pattern, measuring overall 68 feet (21 m). It had a barrel vaulted skylight rising to 20 feet (6.1 m) with stained glass windows each representing one month of the year. Each end of the lounge had a 14 feet (4.3 m) high green marble fireplace incorporating enamelled panels by Alexander Fisher. The design was linked overall with decorative plasterwork. The library walls were decorated with carved pillasters and mouldings marking out panels of grey and cream silk brocade. The carpet was rose, with Rose du Barry silk curtains and upholstery. The chairs and writing desks were mahogany, and the windows featured etched glass. The smoking room was Queen Anne style, with Italian walnut panelling and Italian red furnishings. The grand stairway linked all six decks of the passenger accommodation with wide hallways on each level and two lifts. First class cabins ranged from one shared room through various ensuite arrangements in a choice of decorative styles culminating in the two regal suites which each had two bedrooms, dining room, parlour and bathroom. The port suite decoration was modelled on the Petit Trianon.

The second class public rooms were situated in a separate section of the superstructure aft of the first class passenger quarters. Design work was deputised to Robert Whyte, who was the architect employed by John Brown. Although smaller and plainer, the design of the dining room reflected that of first class, with just one floor of diners under a ceiling with a smaller dome and balcony. Walls were panelled and carved with decorated pillars, all in white. As with first class, the dining room was situated lower down in the ship on the saloon deck. The smoking and ladies rooms occupied the accommodation space of the second class promenade deck, with the lounge on the boat deck. Cunard had not previously provided a separate lounge for second class; the 42 feet (13 m) room had mahogany tables, chairs and setees set on a rose carpet. The smoking room was 52 feet (16 m) with mahogany panelling, white plasterwork ceiling and dome. One wall had a mosaic of a river scene in Brittany, while the sliding windows were blue tinted. There were no second class cabin suites, only standard shared cabins.

Third class accommodation was plainer still, but, in comparison to other ships of the period, surprisingly comfortable and spacious. The 79 feet (24 m) dining room was at the bow of the ship on the saloon deck, finished in polished pine as were the other third class public rooms. Meals were eaten at long tables and there were two sittings for meals. A piano was provided for passenger use. A ladies lounge and smoking room were provided on the shelter deck immediately above the dining room. The roofed and partially enclosed space between the two had seating and provided some third class sheltered deck access in bad weather. Cabins were shared with a mixture of 2, 4 or 6 bunks and a wash basin, which was a significant improvement on previously typical dormitories.

The Bromsgrove Guild had designed and constructed most of the trim on Lusitania. Waring and Gillow tendered for the contract to furnish the whole ship, but failing to obtain this still supplied a number of the furnishings.

Comparison with the Olympic class

Lusitania and Mauretania were smaller than the White Star Line's Olympic-class vessels. Both vessels had been launched and had been in service for several years before the Olympic class ships were ready for the North Atlantic. Although significantly faster than the Olympic class would be, the speed of Cunard's vessels was not sufficient to allow the line to run a weekly two-ship transatlantic service from each side of the Atlantic. A third ship was needed for a weekly service, and in response to White Star's announced plan to build the three Olympic class ships, Cunard ordered a third ship: Aquitania. Like White Star Line's Olympic, Cunard's Aquitania had a slower service speed, but was a larger and more luxurious vessel.

The vessels of the Olympic class also differed from Cunard's Lusitania and Mauretania in the way in which they were compartmented below the waterline. The White Star vessels were divided by transverse watertight bulkheads. While Cunard's Lusitania also had transverse bulkheads, she additionally had longitudinal bulkheads running along the ship on each side, between the boiler and engine rooms and the coal bunkers on the outside of the vessel. The British commission that had investigated the Titanic disaster in 1912 heard testimony on the flooding of coal bunkers lying outside longitudinal bulkheads. Being of considerable length, when flooded, these could increase the ship's list and "make the lowering of the boats on the other side impracticable". — and this was precisely what later happened with Lusitania. Furthermore the ship's stability was insufficient for the bulkhead arrangement used: Flooding of only three coal bunkers on one side could result in negative metacentric height. On the other hand Titanic was given ample stability and sank with only a few degrees list, the design being such that there was very little risk of unequal flooding and possible capsize.

Sinking

On the morning of 6 May, Lusitania was 750 miles (1,210 km) west of southern Ireland. By 5am on the 7 May she reached a point 120 miles (190 km) west south west of Fastnet Rock (off the southern tip of Ireland), where she met the patrolling boarding vessel Partridge. By 6 am, heavy fog had arrived and extra lookouts were posted. As the ship came closer to Ireland Captain Turner ordered depth soundings to be made and at 8am for speed to be reduced to eighteen knots, then to 15 knots and for the foghorn to be sounded. Some of the passengers were disturbed that the ship appeared to be advertising her presence. By 10 am the fog began to lift, by noon it had been replaced by bright sunshine over a clear smooth sea and speed increased to 18 knots.

U-20 surfaced again at 12:45 as visibility was now excellent. At 13:20 something was sighted and Schwieger was summoned to the conning-tower: at first it appeared to be several ships because of the number of funnels and masts, but this resolved into one large steamer appearing over the horizon. At 13:25 the submarine submerged to periscope depth of 11 metres and set a course to intercept the liner at her maximum submerged speed of 9 knots. When the ships had closed to 2 miles (3.2 km) Lusitania turned away, Schwieger feared he had lost his target, but she turned again, this time onto a near ideal course to bring her into position for an attack. At 700m range he ordered one gyroscopic torpedo to be fired, set to run at a depth of three metres, which was fired at 14:10.

In Schwieger's own words, recorded in the log of U-20:

Torpedo hits starboard side right behind the bridge. An unusually heavy detonation takes place with a very strong explosive cloud. The explosion of the torpedo must have been followed by a second one [boiler or coal or powder?]... The ship stops immediately and heels over to starboard very quickly, immersing simultaneously at the bow... the name Lusitania becomes visible in golden letters.
The U-20's torpedo officer, Raimund Weisbach, viewed the destruction through the vessel's periscope and felt the explosion was unusually severe. Within six minutes, Lusitania's forecastle began to submerge.

Leslie Morton, an eighteen-year-old lookout at the bow, spotted thin lines of foam racing toward the ship. He shouted "Torpedoes coming on the starboard side!" through a megaphone, thinking the bubbles came from two projectiles. The torpedo struck Lusitania under the bridge, sending a plume of debris, steel plating and water upward and knocking lifeboat number five off its davits. "It sounded like a million-ton hammer hitting a steam boiler a hundred feet high," one passenger said. A second, more powerful explosion followed, sending a geyser of water, coal, dust, and debris high above the deck. Schwieger's log entries attest that he only launched one torpedo. Some doubt the validity of this claim, contending that the German government subsequently altered the published fair copy of Schwieger's log, but accounts from other U-20 crew members corroborate it. The entries were also consistent with intercepted radio reports sent to Germany by U-20 once she had returned to the North Sea, before any possibility of an official coverup.

Lusitania sank in only 18 minutes, 11.5 miles (19 km) off the Old Head of Kinsale. It took several hours for help to arrive from the Irish coast, but by the time help had arrived, many in the water had succumbed to the cold. By the days' end, 764 passengers and crew from the Lusitania had been rescued and landed at Queenstown. Eventually, the final death toll for the disaster came to a catastrophic number. Of the 1,959 passengers and crew aboard the Lusitania at the time of her sinking, 1,195 had been lost. In the days following the disaster, the Cunard line offered local fishermen and sea merchants a cash reward for the bodies floating all throughout the Irish Sea, some floating as far away as the Welsh coast. In all, only 289 bodies were recovered, 65 of which were never identified. The bodies of many of the victims were buried at either Queenstown, where 148 bodies were interred in the Old Church Cemetery, or the Church of St. Multose in Kinsale, but the bodies of the remaining 885 victims were never recovered.

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MAURETANIA 1906

RMS Mauretania (also known as the "Maury") was an ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson at Wallsend, Tyne and Wear for the British Cunard Line, and launched on 20 September 1906. At the time, she was the largest and fastest ship in the world. Mauretania became a favourite among her passengers. After capturing the Blue Riband for the fastest transatlantic crossing during her 1907 inaugural season, Mauretania held the speed record for twenty-two years.

The ship's name was taken from Mauretania, an ancient Roman province on the northwest African coast, not related to the modern Mauritania. Similar nomenclature was also employed by Mauretania's sister ship, the Lusitania, which was named after the Roman province directly north of Mauretania, across the Strait of Gibraltar, the region that now is Portugal.

Overview

In 1897 the German liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse became the largest and fastest ship in the world. Eventually Germany was dominating the Atlantic and by 1906 they had five four funnels superliners, four of them being owned by the same company and part of the so called "Kaiser class".

With a speed of 22 knots (41 km/h), it captured the Blue Riband from Cunard Line's Campania and Lucania. At around the same time American financier J. P. Morgan’s International Mercantile Marine Co. was attempting to monopolize the shipping trade, and had already acquired Britain's other major transatlantic line White Star. In the face of these threats the Cunard Line was determined to regain the prestige of ocean travel back not only to the company, but also to Great Britain. In 1903, Cunard Line and the British government reached an agreement to build two superliners, the Lusitania and Mauretania, with a guaranteed service speed of no less than 24 knots (44 km/h), the British government were to loan £2,600,000 (£207 million as of 2011), for the construction of Mauretania and Lusitania at an interest rate of 2.75% to be paid back over twenty years with a stipulation that the ships could be converted to Armed Merchant Cruisers if needed; also to fund these ships further the admiralty arranged for Cunard to be paid an additional £150,000 per year to their mail subsidy.

Design and construction

The Mauretania and her sister Lusitania were both designed by Cunard naval architect Leonard Peskett with Swan Hunter and John Brown working from the plans for an ocean greyhound with a stipulated service speed of twenty-four knots in moderate weather for her mail subsidy contract. Peskett's original configuration for the ships in 1903 was a three-funnel design when reciprocating engines were destined to be the powerplant. A giant model of the ships in this configuration appeared in Shipbuilder's magazine. Cunard in 1904 decided to change powerplants to Parson's new turbine technology and Peskett then implemented a fourth funnel to the ship's profile as the ships design was again modified before construction of the vessel finally began.

In 1906, Mauretania was launched by the Duchess of Roxburghe. At the time of her launch, she was the largest moving structure yet built, and slightly larger in gross tonnage than her sister Lusitania. The main visual differences between Mauretania and Lusitania was that Mauretania was five feet longer and had different vents (Mauretania had cowl vents and the Lusitania had oil drum-shaped vents). Mauretania also had two extra stages of turbine blades in her forward turbines making her slightly faster than the Lusitania. The Mauretania and Lusitania were the only ships with direct-drive steam turbines to hold the Blue Riband; in later ships, reduction-geared turbines were mainly used. Mauretania's usage of the steam turbine was the largest yet application of the then-new technology, developed by Charles Algernon Parsons. During speed trials, these engines caused significant vibration at high speeds; in response, Mauretania received strengthening members and redesigned propellers before entering service, which reduced vibration.

Mauretania was designed to suit Edwardian tastes, with twenty eight different types of wood used in her public rooms, along with marble, tapestries, and other furnishings. Wood paneling for her first class public rooms was meticulously carved by three hundred craftsmen from Palestine. The multi-level first class dining saloon was decorated in Francis I style and topped by a large dome skylight. A series of elevators, then a rare new feature for liners, were installed next to Mauretania's grand staircase. A new feature was the Verandah Café on the boat deck, where passengers were served beverages in a weather-protected environment.

Early career

Mauretania left Liverpool on her maiden voyage on 16 November 1907 under the command of her first captain, John Pritchard and later that month captured the record for the fastest eastbound crossing of the Atlantic with an average speed of 23.69 knots (43.87 km/h). In September 1909, the Mauretania captured the Blue Riband for the fastest westbound crossing—a record that was to stand for more than two decades. In December 1910 Mauretania broke loose from her moorings while in the River Mersey and sustained damage that caused the cancellation of her special speedy Christmas voyage to New York. In a quick change of events Cunard rescheduled Mauretania's voyage for Lusitania under the command of captain James Charles which had just returned from New York. Lusitania herself completed Christmas crossings for her sister, carrying revellers back to New York. In 1912 both King George and Queen Mary were given a special tour of Mauretania, then Britain's fastest merchant vessel, adding further distinction to the ship's reputation. On 26 January 1914, while Mauretania was in the middle of annual refit in Liverpool, four men were killed and six injured when a gas cylinder exploded while they were working on one of her steam turbines. The damage was minimal and she returned to service two months later.

World War I

Shortly after Great Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, Mauretania and Aquitania were requested by the British government to become armed merchant cruisers, but their huge size and massive fuel consumption made them unsuitable for the duty; and they resumed their civilian service on 11 August. Later, due to lack of passengers crossing the Atlantic, Mauretania was laid up in Liverpool until May 1915, when her sister ship Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat.

Mauretania was about to fill the void left by Lusitania, but she was ordered by the British government to serve as a troopship to carry British troops during the Gallipoli campaign. She avoided becoming prey for German U-boats because of her high speed and the seamanship of her crew. As a troopship, Mauretania received dazzle camouflage, a form of abstract colour scheming, in an effort to confuse enemy ships.

When combined forces from the British empire and France began to suffer heavy casualties, Mauretania was ordered to serve as a hospital ship, along with her fellow Cunarder Aquitania and White Star's Britannic, in order to treat the wounded until 25 January 1916.In medical service the vessel was painted white with large medical cross emblems surrounding the vessel. Seven months later, Mauretania once again became a troop ship when requisitioned by the Canadian government to carry Canadian troops from Halifax to Liverpool. Her war duty was not yet over when the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, and she carried thousands of American troops, the ship was known by the Admiralty as HMS Tuberose until the end of the war, but the vessel's name was never changed by Cunard. The dazzle painting was not used when Mauretania served as a hospital ship.

Post-war career

Mauretania returned to civilian service on 21 September 1919. Her busy sailing schedule prevented her from having an extensive overhaul scheduled in 1920. However, in 1921 Cunard Line removed her from service when fire broke out on E deck and decided to give her a much needed overhaul. She returned to the Tyne shipyard of her birth, where her boilers were converted to oil firing, and returned to service in March 1922. Cunard noticed that Mauretania struggled to maintain her regular Atlantic service speed. Although the ship's service speed had improved and it now burned only 750 short tons (680 t) of oil per 24 hours, compared to 1,000 short tons (910 t) of coal previously, it was not operating at her pre-war service speeds. On one crossing in 1922 the ship managed an average speed of only nineteen knots. Cunard decided that the ship's once revolutionary turbines were in desperate need of an overhaul. In 1923, a major re-fitting was begun in Southampton. The Mauretania's turbines were dismantled. Halfway through the overhaul, the shipyard workers went on strike and the work was halted, so Cunard had the ship towed to Cherbourg, France where the work was completed at another shipyard. In May 1924, the ship returned to Atlantic service.

The Mauretania's Second Class Smoking Room.In 1928 Mauretania was modernised with new interior design and in the next year her speed record was broken by a German liner, the Bremen, with a speed of 28 knots (52 km/h). On 27 August, Cunard permitted the former ocean greyhound to have one final attempt to recapture the record from the newer German liner. She was taken out of service and her engines were modified to produce more power to give a higher service speed; however, this was still not enough. The Bremen simply represented a new generation of ocean liners that were far more powerful and technologically advanced than the aging Cunard liner. Even though Mauretania did not beat her German rival, the ship beat her own speed records both eastbound and westbound. In 1929 Mauretania collided with a train ferry near Robbins Reef Light. No one was killed or injured and her damage was quickly repaired. In 1930, with a combination of the Great Depression and newer competitors on the Atlantic run, Mauretania became a dedicated cruise ship. When Cunard Line merged with White Star Line in 1934, Mauretania, along with Olympic, Majestic and other aging ocean liners, were deemed surplus to requirements and withdrawn from service.

Retirement

Cunard withdrew Mauretania from service following a final eastward crossing from New York to Southampton in September 1934. The voyage was made at an average speed of 24 knots (44 km/h), equalling the original contractual stipulation for her mail subsidy. She was then laid up at Southampton alongside the former White Star Line flagship Olympic, her twenty-eight years of service at a close.

In May 1935 her furnishings and fittings were put up for auction and on 1 July that year she departed Southampton for the last time to T.W Wards shipbreakers at Rosyth. One of her former captains, the retired commodore Sir Arthur Rostron, captain of the RMS Carpathia during the RMS Titanic rescue, came to see her on her final departure from Southampton. Rostron refused to go aboard Mauretania before her final journey, stating that he preferred to remember the ship as she was when he commanded her.

En route to Rosyth Mauretania stopped at her birthplace the Tyne for half an hour, where she drew crowds of sightseers and was boarded by the Lord Mayor of Newcastle. The mayor bid her farewell from the people of Newcastle, and her last captain, A.T. Brown, then resumed his course for Rosyth. With masts cut down to fit, the ship passed under the Forth Bridge and was delivered to the breakers.

In order to prevent a rival company using the name and to keep it available for a future Cunard White Star liner, arrangements were made for the Red Funnel Paddle Steamer Queen to be renamed Mauretania in the interim.

The demise of the beloved Mauretania was protested by many of her loyal passengers, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt who wrote a private letter arguing against the scrapping.

Legacy

Some of the furnishings from the Mauretania were installed in a bar/restaurant complex in Bristol called the Mauretania Bar (now Java Bristol), situated in Park Street. The lounge bar was panelled with mahogany, which came from her first class library. The neon sign on the south wall still advertises the "Mauretania," and her bow lettering was used above the entrance. Additionally, fittings from the first class reading-writing room have been incorporated into the board room at Pinewood Studios, west of London. The oak panelled interior of The Oak Bar in Dame Street in Dublin, Ireland was originally fitted on the Mauretania. Maple panelling from one of the staterooms can be found in the Nont Sarahs Pub, New Hey Road (A640), Scammonden, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

The Mauretania is remembered in a song "Firing the Mauretania", with versions collected separately by Redd Sullivan and Hughie Jones. They both start "In 19 hundred and 24, I… got a job on the Mauretania"; but then go on to say "shovelling coal from morn till night" (not possible in 1924 as she was oil-fired by then); the number of "fires" is said to be either 64 or 34; but perversely the last verse on Hughie's version says "trimmers" not "stokers", so perhaps this is a reference to oil.

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Footwear

In the late Stone Age northern Europeans made garments of animal skins sewn together with leather thongs. Holes were made in the skin and a thong drawn through with an instrument like a crochet hook. In southern Europe fine bone needles from the same period indicate that woven garments were already being sewn. Weaving and embroidery were developed in the ancient civilizations of the Middle East. The equipment used in the fabrication of clothes remained simple and always lagged behind the development of techniques for spinning and weaving. An important advance took place in the Middle Ages, when iron needles were introduced in Europe.

All operations continued to be performed by hand until factory production of cloth was made possible by the invention in the 18th century of foot- and water-powered machinery for spinning and weaving. This development in turn stimulated the invention of the sewing machine. After several attempts, a practical machine was patented in 1830 by Barthélemy Thimonnier of Paris, who produced 80 machines to manufacture army uniforms. Thimonnier’s machines, however, were destroyed by a mob of tailors who feared unemployment. Thimonnier’s design used one thread; an American, Elias Howe, improved on it significantly with a lock-stitch machine that used two threads, a needle, and a shuttle. Though patented there, it was not accepted in the United States; Howe took it to England, where he sold part of his patent rights. The objections of the American tailors and seamstresses were overcome by a machine designed in 1851 by Isaac M. Singer of Pittstown, N.Y. When the sewing machine was first introduced, it was used only for simple seams; the more complex sewing operations were still done with a hand needle. The machines before Singer’s were hand-powered, but Singer quickly popularized foot-powered machines.

Before the second half of the 19th century, the fabric or leather sections of clothing and footwear were cut by shears or by a short knife with a handle about 5 inches (13.5 cm) long and a 3-inch tapered blade. All pressing, whether the finished press or underpressing (between sewing operations), continued to be done with the stove-heated hand flatiron. The flatiron and the iron (later steel) needle were for a long time the only major advances in making clothing and footwear since ancient times. Tailors and dressmakers used hand needles, shears, short knives, and flatirons. Footwear was made by using hand needles, curved awls, curved needles, pincers, lap stone, and hammers.

For many years the sewing machine was the only machine used by the clothing industry. The next major development was the introduction in England in 1860 of the band-knife machine, which cut several thicknesses of cloth at one time. It was invented by John Barran of Leeds, the founder of the Leeds clothing industry, who substituted a knife edge for the saw edge of a woodworking machine. The resulting increased cutting productivity motivated the development of spreading machines to spread fabric from long bolts in lays composed of hundreds of plies of fabrics. The height and count of the lay depended on the thickness and density of the fabric as well as the blade-cutting height and power of the cutting machine.

The first spreading machines in the late 1890s, often built of wood, carried fabrics in either bolt or book-fold form as the workers propelled the spreading machines manually and aligned the superposed plies vertically on the cutting table, thus making the cutting lay. Although most of the early machines operated with their supporting wheels rotating on the cutting table, on some machines the wheels rode on the floor.

The Reece Machinery Company of the United States pioneered buttonhole machines at the end of the 19th century; later the Singer Company developed its own buttonhole machines and machines for sewing on buttons. The introduction of the Hoffman press enabled pressing to be done more quickly than by hand, although hand pressing is still used at various stages for high-grade garments. All these developments made the factory production of clothing economical in industrialized countries. Though the first manufactured garments were shoddy in both make and materials, they were welcomed by poorer people, who previously had had to make their own. As the industry developed, it improved the quality of production and materials and catered more and more to the affluent.

Social aspects

Until the second half of the 19th century, practically all clothes and shoes were produced by individual tailors and cobblers working either alone or with one or two apprentices or journeymen. The goal of every apprentice tailor was to learn how to make an entire garment as soon as possible. The output of a tailor or seamstress was usually limited to specific women’s, men’s, or children’s garments; the journeyman sought to learn as much as possible from a specialized master craftsman. The same apprentice-journeyman system prevailed in the footwear industry, in which all cobbler craftsmen were male.

The advent of the sewing machine enlarged craftsmen’s shops and converted them to factories. In many factories workers owned their machines and carried them from factory to factory whenever they changed jobs. Needleworkers lugging their machines on their backs were a common sight on the downtown East Side streets of New York City, the garment-manufacturing capital of the world at the turn of the 20th century. Taking advantage of the low capital investment per worker, many clothing entrepreneurs began to farm out their cut garments to be sewn at home. The bundle brigades—men, women, and children trudging through the streets lugging bundles of cut or finished garments to and from their flats in the East Side tenements—replaced the sewing-machine carriers of previous years.

Most apparel factories at this time were as crowded, poorly lit, airless, and unsanitary as the home workshops. The term sweatshop was coined for such factories and home workshops at the beginning of the 20th century, when workers in the apparel industries began forming unions to get better pay and working conditions. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, organized in 1900, and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, formed in 1914, became pioneer unions in mass-production industries in the United States as well as the largest garment unions in the world.

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MARS OBSERVATIONS

Historical observations

The history of observations of Mars is marked by the oppositions of Mars, when the planet is closest to Earth and hence is most easily visible, which occur every couple of years. Even more notable are the perihelic oppositions of Mars which occur every 15 or 17 years, and are distinguished because Mars is close to perihelion, making it even closer to Earth.

The existence of Mars as a wandering object in the night sky was recorded by the ancient Egyptian astronomers and by 1534 BCE they were familiar with the retrograde motion of the planet. By the period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the Babylonian astronomers were making regular records of the positions of the planets and systematic observations of their behavior. For Mars, they knew that the planet made 37 synodic periods, or 42 circuits of the zodiac, every 79 years. They also invented arithmetic methods for making minor corrections to the predicted positions of the planets.

In the fourth century BCE, Aristotle noted that Mars disappeared behind the Moon during an occultation, indicating the planet was farther away. Ptolemy, a Greek living in Alexandria, attempted to address the problem of the orbital motion of Mars. Ptolemy's model and his collective work on astronomy was presented in the multi-volume collection Almagest, which became the authoritative treatise on Western astronomy for the next fourteen centuries. Literature from ancient China confirms that Mars was known by Chinese astronomers by no later than the fourth century BCE. In the fifth century CE, the Indian astronomical text Surya Siddhanta estimated the diameter of Mars.

During the seventeenth century, Tycho Brahe measured the diurnal parallax of Mars that Johannes Kepler used to make a preliminary calculation of the relative distance to the planet. When the telescope became available, the diurnal parallax of Mars was again measured in an effort to determine the Sun-Earth distance.This was first performed by Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1672. The early parallax measurements were hampered by the quality of the instruments. The only occultation of Mars by Venus observed was that of October 13, 1590, seen by Michael Maestlin at Heidelberg. In 1610, Mars was viewed by Galileo Galilei, who was first to see it via telescope. The first person to draw a map of Mars that displayed any terrain features was the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens.

Martian "canals"

By the 19th century, the resolution of telescopes reached a level sufficient for surface features to be identified. In September 1877, a perihelic opposition of Mars occurred on September 5. In that year, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli used a 22 cm telescope in Milan to help produce the first detailed map of Mars.

These maps notably contained features he called canali, which were later shown to be an optical illusion. These canali were supposedly long straight lines on the surface of Mars to which he gave names of famous rivers on Earth. His term, which means "channels" or "grooves", was popularly mistranslated in English as "canals".

Influenced by the observations, the orientalist Percival Lowell founded an observatory which had a 300 and 450 mm telescope. The observatory was used for the exploration of Mars during the last good opportunity in 1894 and the following less favorable oppositions. He published several books on Mars and life on the planet, which had a great influence on the public. The canali were also found by other astronomers, like Henri Joseph Perrotin and Louis Thollon in Nice, using one of the largest telescopes of that time.

The seasonal changes (consisting of the diminishing of the polar caps and the dark areas formed during Martian summer) in combination with the canals lead to speculation about life on Mars, and it was a long held belief that Mars contained vast seas and vegetation. The telescope never reached the resolution required to give proof to any speculations. As bigger telescopes were used, fewer long, straight canali were observed. During an observation in 1909 by Flammarion with a 840 mm telescope, irregular patterns were observed, but no canali were seen.

Even in the 1960s articles were published on Martian biology, putting aside explanations other than life for the seasonal changes on Mars. Detailed scenarios for the metabolism and chemical cycles for a functional ecosystem have been published.

It was not until spacecraft visited the planet during NASA's Mariner missions in the 1960s that these myths were dispelled. The results of the Viking life-detection experiments started an intermission in which the hypothesis of a hostile, dead planet was generally accepted.

Some maps of Mars were made using the data from these missions, but it was not until the Mars Global Surveyor mission, launched in 1996 and operated until late 2006, that complete, extremely detailed maps of the martian topography, magnetic field and surface minerals were obtained.

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shipbuilding

Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to before recorded history.

Shipbuilding and ship repairs, both commercial and military, are referred to as the "naval engineer". The construction of boats is a similar activity called boat building.

The dismantling of ships is called ship breaking.

With the development of the carrack, the west moved into a new era of building the first regular ocean going vessels. These were of unprecedented size, complexity and cost. Shipyards became large industrial complexes and the ships built were financed by consortia of investors.

These considerations led to the documentation of design and construction practices in what had previously been a secretive trade run by master shipwrights, and ultimately led to the field of naval architecture, where professional designers and draughtsmen played an increasingly important role. Even so, construction techniques changed only very gradually. The ships of the Napoleonic Wars were still built more or less to the same basic plan as those of the Spanish Armada of two centuries earlier but there had been numerous subtle improvements in ship design and construction throughout this period. For instance, the introduction of tumblehome; adjustments to the shapes of sails and hulls; the introduction of the wheel; the introduction of hardened copper fastenings below the waterline; the introduction of copper sheathing as a deterrent to shipworm and fouling; etc.

Industrial Revolution

Other than its widespread use in fastenings, Iron was gradually adopted in ship construction, initially in discrete areas in a wooden hull needing greater strength, (e.g. as deck knees, hanging knees, knee riders and the like). Then, in the form of plates rivetted together and made watertight, it was used to form the hull itself. Initially copying wooden construction traditions with a frame over which the hull was fastened, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Britain of 1843 was the first radical new design, being built entirely of wrought iron. Despite her success, and the great savings in cost and space provided by the iron hull, compared to a copper sheathed counterpart, there remained problems with fouling due to the adherence of weeds and barnacles. As a result composite construction remained the dominant approach where fast ships were required, with wooden timbers laid over an iron frame (the Cutty Sark is a famous example). Later Great Britain's iron hull was sheathed in wood to enable it to carry a copper-based sheathing. Brunel's Great Eastern represented the next great development in shipbuilding. Built in association with John Scott Russell, it used longitudinal stringers for strength, inner and outer hulls, and bulkheads to form multiple watertight compartments. Steel also supplanted wrought iron when it became readily available in the latter half of the 19th century, providing great savings when compared with iron in cost and weight. Wood continued to be favored for the decks, and is still the rule as deckcovering for modern cruise ships. Scotts Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd, Greenock, Scotland is a superb example of a shipbuilding firm that lasted nearly 300 years.

Parts

Bow - the front and generally sharp end of the hull. It is designed to reduce the resistance of the hull cutting through water and should be tall enough to prevent water from easily washing over the top of the hull.
Bulkhead - the internal walls of the hull
Chines - are long, longitudinal strips on hydroplaning hulls that deflect downwards the spray that is produced by the hull when it travels at speed in the water. The term also refers to distinct changes in angle of the hull sections, where the bottom blends into the sides of a flat bottomed skiff, for instance. A hull may have 2 or more chines to allow an approximation of a round bottomed shape with flat panels. It also refers to the longitudinal members inside the hull which support the edges of these panels.
Deck - the top surface of the hull keeps water and weather out of the hull and allows the crew to stand safely and operate the boat more easily. It stiffens an enclosed hull.
Garboard - the strake immediately adjacent to the keel.
Gunwale - The upper longitudinal structural member of the hull.
Keel - the main central member along the length of the bottom of the boat. It is an important part of the boat's structure which also has a strong influence on its turning performance and, in sailing boats, resists the sideways pressure of the wind
Keelson - an internal beam fixed to the top of the keel to strengthen the joint of the upper members of the boat to the keel
Rudder - a steering device at the rear of the hull created by a turnable blade on a vertical axis
Sheer - the generally curved shape of the top of the hull. The sheer is traditionally lowest amidships to maximize freeboard at the ends of the hull. Sheers can be reverse, higher in the middle, to maximize space inside or straight or a combination of shapes.
Stem - a continuation of the keel upwards at the front of the hull
Stern - the back of the boat
Strake - a strip of material running longitudinally along the vessel's side, bilge or bottom
Transom - a wide, flat, sometimes vertical board at the rear of the hull, which, on small power boats, is often designed to carry an outboard motor. Transoms increase width and also buoyancy at the stern.

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