566 



NATURE 



[April 29, 1922 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers. 



April 27, 1885. Joseph d'Aguilar Samuda died. — 

 Entering into partnership with his brother Jacob, 

 Samuda built marine engines, laid down railways 

 worked on the atmospheric principle, and became an 

 eminent builder of iron steamships and armoured 

 men of war. In his works in the Isle of Dogs he 

 introduced labour-saving machinery, and with Reed, 

 Woolley, Scott Russell, and others he helped to found 

 the Institution of Naval Architects. , 



April 27, 1891. Loftus Perkins died. — Known for 

 his bold experiment of fitting the yacht Anthracite 

 with an engine supplied with steam at 500 lbs. pres- 

 sure, and for his invention of the " arktos " cold 

 chamber refrigerating apparatus, Perkins was the son 

 of the inventor Angier March Perkins, and the grand- 

 son of Jacob Perkins, who came to England from 

 America in 1827 and in 1828 constructed what was 

 probably the first triple compound steam engine. 



April 28, 1865. — Sir Samuel Cunard died. — The 

 founder in 1839 of the famous British and North 

 American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, Cunard 

 was a native of Nova Scotia. His first transatlantic 

 liners were built on the Clyde, while the first passage 

 was made in 1840 by the Britannia, a wooden vessel 

 of 1 154 tons and 740 horse power, which took 14 days 

 8 hours to cross. Iron steamers were introduced in 

 1855, and the paddle wheel abandoned for the screw 

 in the early 'sixties. 



April 28, 1914. Robert Kaye Gray died. — After 

 passing through University College, London, Gray 

 became an assistant to Charles Bright, subsequently 

 superintended the laying of many important sub- 

 marine cables for foreign governments, and became 

 the head of the Telegraph Works Company at Silver- 

 town. He assisted in founding the National Physical 

 Laboratory and served as President of the Institution 

 of Electrical Engineers. 



May I, 1895. John Newton died. — Graduating from 

 the United States Military Academy in 1842, Newton 

 was employed on engineering duties and saw active 

 service during the Civil War. He was afterwards 

 responsible for the improvement of New York harbour, 

 and during the removal of the notoriously dangerous 

 rocks at Hell Gate solved many new problems. 



May 2, 1857. Frederick Scott Archer died. — The 

 discoverer of the collodion process in photography, 

 Scott started life as a silversmith and then became 

 a sculptor. It was while trying to obtain pictures of 

 his work that he made his noteworthy discovery. 



May 3, 1888. Sir Charles Tilston Bright died. — A 

 most eminent telegraph engineer. Bright in 1847 at 

 the age of fifteen, through Cooke, entered the Electric 

 Telegraph Company, and in 1856 with Brett and Cyrus 

 Field initiated the movement for an Atlantic Sub- 

 marine Cable. Appointed engineer to the Atlantic 

 Cable Company he was on board the U.S.S. Niagara, 

 which jointly with H.M.S. Agamemnon laid the first 

 cable from Valentia to Newfoundland, and in 1858 

 he was knighted. Bright afterwards carried out im- 

 portant cable work in the Mediterranean, in the 

 Persian Gulf, and in the West Indies. One of the 

 original members of the Institution of Electrical 

 Engineers, he served as president of the society in 

 1886-87. 



May 3, 1909. Thomas Aldridge Weston died. — The 

 inventor of many things, Weston was known all the 

 world over for his differential pulley block and fitting 

 tackle, a simple contrivance of ' great usefulness. 

 Born in Birmingham in 1832 he was for a time 

 associated with the firm of Tangye, but his later years 

 were spent with the Brown Hoisting Machinery Com- 

 pany of Cleveland, Ohio. He died in New York. 



E. C. S. 



Societies and Academies. 



London. 



Optical Society, April 6. — Sir Frank Dyson, pre- 

 sident, in the chair. — H. H. Emsley and E. F. 

 Fincham ; Diffraction haloes in normal and glaucoma- 

 tous eyes. Every normal eye, under appropriate 

 conditions, sees diffraction rings or haloes encircling 

 bright sources of light. Similar haloes are seen by 

 eyes in certain abnormal pathological conditions, 

 particularly in the case of eyes suffering from 

 glaucoma. Tests are specified by means of which 

 the different phenomena in the two cases may be 

 identified. — E. W. Taylor : The effect of changes 

 of surface curvature at the focus of an astronomical 

 object glass. The balancing of the components of a 

 large object glass is difficult, and the effect at the 

 focus of a similar alteration of curvature at each of 

 the four surfaces is different. If the effect of an 

 alteration at each surface is known, the one most 

 suitable may be chosen, having regard to the nature 

 of the aberration to be overcome. 



Paris. 



Academy of Sciences, March 27. — M. Emile Bertin 

 in the chair. — The president announced the death of 

 M. Louis Ranvier, member of the section of Anatomy 

 and Zoology. — E. Goursat : A classical theory of 

 Cauchy. Comments on two recent communications 

 by M. Mittag-Leffler. — H. le Chatelier : The manu- 

 facture of soda with ammonia. A discussion by a 

 graphical method of the bearing of some experiments 

 of M. Toporescu (see below) on the ammonia soda 

 process. — C. Richet, Eudoxie Bachrach, and H. Cardot : 

 Studies on the lactic fermentation. Memory in micro- 

 organisms. Culture of the lactic bacillus is made 

 for one day in a medium containing traces of three 

 poisons (arsenate, cadmium, copper) and then seven 

 successive daily inoculations are cultivated on normal 

 media. The strain of organism thus produced is 

 sensitive to the action of each poison. The authors 

 conclude that when two cultures of micro-organisms 

 of the same species have lived, even for a short time, 

 in slightly different media, they are different from 

 each other. — C. Lallemand : The parabolic wage. The 

 system of wage payment described, which has been 

 tested in practice over a period of 34 years, is based on 

 a formula S =So -f^T^, where So is the minimum wage, 

 T the work done, S the actual wage paid, and k a 

 constant. It is in effect a compromise between pay- 

 ment by time and by results. It has been applied in 

 the " Service du Ni vehement general de la France " 

 since 1888, with the result that while the wage in- 

 creased in four years from 6-30 francs to 12-25 francs, 

 the cost per kilometre decreased from 40 to 33 francs. 

 — P. Montel : A theorem of algebra. — G. Giraud : 

 Non-linear partial differential equations of the second 

 order of elliptic type. — P. Levy : The role of the law 

 of Gauss in the theory of errors. — E. Cartan : Gen- 

 erafised conformal space and the optical universe. — 

 A. Planiol : Study of the friction losses in internal 

 combustion motors. Experiments were carried out 

 on a specially constructed 30 H.P. gas engine by 

 three methods differing in principle. The results 

 showed that the resisting couple of the motor due to 

 friction was a linear function of the mean pressure 

 shown by the indicator diagram. The constants 

 obtained were shown to apply to another (35 H.P.) 

 gas engine, and hence it is found possible to calculate 

 the field of an internal combustion engine without taking 

 indicator diagrams. — H. Roussilhe : The applications 



NO. 2739, VOL. 109] 



