John Rennie. 

 British engineei 



RENNIE 



Rennie, JOHN (1761-1821). Brit- 

 ish engineer. Born at Phantassie, 

 Haddingtonshire, June 7, 1761, 

 and educated 

 at Edinburgh 

 University, in 

 1784 he ob- 

 tained a po 

 s i i i ii 11 with 

 James Watt, 

 and the same 

 year designed 

 for him a 

 steam engine 

 which was the 

 best till then 

 produced. In 1791 he began as 

 an engineer at Blackf riars, London, 

 on his own account, carried out 

 the construction of the Kennet 

 and Avon, Rochdale, and other 

 canals, and was responsible for 

 the building or improvement of 

 many docks and harbours, includ- 

 ing the London docks, Hull docks, 

 and the dockyards at Sheerness 

 and Chatham, and the great break- 

 water at Plymouth. Waterloo, 

 London, Southwark, and Kelso 

 Bridges were also all products of 

 Rennie' s genius. One of the great- 

 est civil engineers of his time, 

 Rennie was elected F.R.S., 1798, 

 and died in London, Oct. 4, 1821. 



His eldest son, George (1791- 

 1866), extended the operations of 

 the firm, adding shipbuilding on a 

 large scale. His second son, Sir John 

 Rennie (1794-1874), was also a dis- 

 tinguished engineer, and construc- 

 ted works at Woolwich, Sheernesa, 

 Plymouth, etc., for the Admiralty. 

 See Autobiography, 1875 ; Lives 

 of the Engineers, S. Smiles, 1904. 

 Reno. City of Nevada, U.S.A., 

 the co. seat of Washoe co. On the 

 Truckee river, it is 32 m. N. of 

 Carson City, and is served by the 

 Southern Pacific and other rlys. 

 It is the seat of the state university, 

 and has a U.S.A. agriculture ex- 

 perimental station. Farming, 

 stock-raising, and mining are im- 

 portant local industries, and the 

 city has manufactures of rly. 

 plant, flour, lumber products, 

 machinery, and plaster. Meat 

 packing and iron-founding are also 

 carried on. Settled in 1868, Reno 

 was incorporated in 1879, and 

 became a city in 1899. Pop. 13,600. 

 Renoir, PIERRE AUGUSTS (b. 

 1841). French painter. Born at 

 Limoges, Feb. 25, 1841, he settled 

 in Paris in 1859, and studied under 

 Gleyre, becoming associated with 

 the Impressionist group. His prin- 

 cipal subjects were from con- 

 temporary Paris life, but he also 

 painted landscapes, flower studies, 

 and some Algerian scenes. His art, 

 of which there are fine examples in 

 the Luxembourg, is distinguished 

 by movement and gaiety of colour. 



Sir Peter Renouf . 

 British Egyptologist 



6562 



Renonf, Sm PETER LE PAGE 

 (1822-97). British Egyptologist. 

 Born in Guernsey, Aug. 23, 1822, 

 he studied at 

 Oxford, and 

 became a 

 Roman Catho- 

 lic, 1842. He 

 was professor 

 of ancient his- 

 tory and Ori- 

 ental languages 

 inDublin,1855> 



a x n d u ia fP?^ t * 

 of schools, 1 864. 



His contribu- 

 tions to hieroglyphic study, and his 

 Hibbert lectures on Egyptian Re- 

 ligion, 1879, made him Birch's suc- 

 cessor as keeper of Egyptian and 

 Assyrian antiquities in the British 

 Museum, 1885 r 91. Elected presi- 

 dent of the Society of Biblical 

 Archaeology, 1887, he translated for 

 its Transactions the Egyptian Book 

 of the Dead. He was knighted, 1896, 

 and died in London, Oct. 14, 1897. 



Renouvier, CHARLES BERNARD 

 (1815-1903). French philosopher. 

 Born at Montpellier, and educated 

 in Paris, he was mainly influenced 

 by Kant, of whose philosophy his 

 own is a modification. While deny- 

 ing the claim of metaphysics to be 

 considered a science, he opposed 

 the sensualistic materialism of the 

 positivist school. He was a repre- 

 sentative of French neo-criticism. 

 He died Sept. 1, 1903. 



Renown. British battle cruiser. 

 Launched at Go van in 1916, she 

 displaces 26,500 tons, is 750 ft. in 

 length, with 112,000 h.p., giving a 

 speed of 32 knots. She carries six 



H M.S. Renown. The vessel which carried the Prince 

 of Wales on his visits to Canada, Australia, and India 



Crlbb, Southsea 



15-in., seventeen 4-in., and two 

 3-in. guns. The Renown conveyed 

 the prince of Wales on his Canadian 

 tour in 1919, his Australasian tour 

 in 1920, and on his visit to India in 

 1921. See Fighting Top. 



Rensselaer. City of New York, 

 U.S.A., in Rensselaer co. It stands 

 on the Hudson river, opposite 



RENT 



Albany, and is served by the New 

 York Central and Hudson River, 

 and the Boston and Albany Rlys. 

 It is an important rly. centre, with 

 large workshops, freight yards, 

 etc., and has manufactures of 

 chains, lumber products, felt, and 

 dyes. Settled in 1631, it was, as 

 Greenbush, incorporated in 1815, 

 and became a city in 1897, its 

 name then being changed to 

 Rensselaer. Pop. 10,800. 



Rent (Lat. reddere, to pay). 

 Money or other payment made for 

 the use of land and also for the use 

 of houses and other buildings. The 

 economist regards rent as the 

 share of production that falls to 

 the lot of the owner of the land, as 

 opposed to wages and interest that 

 fall to the labourer and the capi- 

 talist respectively. 



According to the theory of rent 

 associated with the name of 

 Ricardo, the amount of rent is 

 fixed by an iron law. There is a 

 class of land on the margin of cul- 

 tivation, i.e. land which can only 

 produce sufficient to pay for the 

 labour and capital put into it. If 

 any rent is charged, this land will 

 fall out of cultivation. This serves 

 as the basic line for rent, which 

 rises or falls with the price obtained 

 for the produce. A rise in prices 

 will make it possible to cultivate 

 land hitherto lying idle ; a fall 

 will have the opposite effect. Rent, 

 therefore, is the surplus obtained 

 from land, the amount it produces 

 in excess of that produced by land 

 on the margin ; in other words , it 

 is the difference between the total 

 cost of the product and its value 

 in the market. It 

 is none the less 

 rent if paid to the 

 cultivator who is 

 the owner, and 

 the principle still 

 holds, even if cus- 

 tom does not al- 

 low the landlord 

 to exact the full 

 rent. An appli- 

 cation of the 

 same theory ac- 

 counts for the 

 high rent paid for 

 building land in 

 crowded centres, 

 the so-called 

 ground rent. It 

 is the amount at 

 which a man 

 values the worth to him of an ad- 

 vantageous positionoveronethathe 

 can obtain for practically nothing. 

 Ricardo's idea is probably un- 

 assailable as a theory, but the 

 intermixture of land and capital is 

 so close that rent tends to approxi- 

 mate more and more to interest on 

 money invested. There are, how- 



