762 



NA TURE 



[June 10, 1922 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers. 



June 10, 1850, James Smith died. — Educated at 

 Glasgow University, Smith was placed in charge of 

 his uncle's cotton - works at Deanston, Perthshire, 

 where he introduced many improvements in manu- 

 facture and agriculture. He invented a reaping 

 machine, improved the self-acting mule, built bridges 

 and waterwheels, in 1813 lighted his factory by gas 

 and introduced the sub-soil plough and the deep 

 draining of soils. 



June II, 1843. Alexander Forsyth died. — The 

 inventor of the percussion lock, Forsyth was born in 

 1769, graduated at King's College, Aberdeen, and 

 from 1 79 1 till his death was minister of his native 

 place of Belhelvie. Devoting his spare time to 

 chemistry and mechanics, in 1805 he brought out the 

 percussion lock, which, though experimented with in 

 the Tower of London, was not taken up by the 

 Government. Forsyth refused an offer of 20,000/. 

 from Napoleon for the secret. 



June 13, 1847. David Mushet died. — A pioneer 

 among modern metallurgists, Mushet began experi- 

 menting in the manufacture of iron and steel in 1793 

 while employed at the Clyde Iron Works. Dismissed 

 through jealousy, he erected the Calder Iron Works, 

 and while so engaged, in 1800 patented a process of 

 making steel direct from iron in bars, and in 1801 

 made the discovery of the value of the black-band 

 ironstone, which previously had been regarded as 

 worthless. 



June 14, 1768. James Short died.-^In his day 

 without a rival as a constructor of reflecting tele- 

 scopes. Short was the first to give specula' a true 

 parabolic form. Born and educated at Edinburgh, 

 where he learned mathematics from Maclaurin, he 

 was summoned to London to give mathematical 

 lessons to one of the royal family. He afterwards 

 set up as an instrument maker in London. 



June 14, 1874. Sir Charles Fox died. — Articled 

 first to a doctor. Fox abandoned medicine for engineer- 

 ing, worked for Ericsson and Robert Stephenson, and 

 became a partner in the firm of Fox, Henderson and 

 Co., the first firm systematically to manufacture 

 railway plant. Fox designed the buildings for the 

 Great Exhibition of 1851, made the first narrow- 

 gauge line in India, built the Berlin waterworks, and 

 was connected with many railway enterprises. 



June 15, 1905. James Mansergh died. — One of the 

 greatest water-supply and sewerage engineers, Man- 

 sergh was responsible for works in some 60 or 70 

 towns at home and abroad. Among his most notable 

 works were the Elan and Claerwen reservoirs in 

 Wales, constructed for the Birmingham Corporation 

 and opened by King Edward VII., July 21, 1904. 

 In 1900 he served as President of the Institution of 

 Civil Engineers. 



June 15, 1915. Sir Nathaniel Barnaby died. — 



Barnaby came of a family of shipwrights, and was 

 born at Chatham in 1829, the year the first British 

 steam war-vessel was built. He was trained in the 

 Royal Dockyard, and in 1870 succeeded Reed as 

 Chief Constructor of the Navy, a post he held till 

 1885, when he was succeeded by White. To him were 

 due many advances in the design and construction of 

 warships ; he introduced the use of steel, and during 

 his regime sixty-six sea-going fighting ships of more 

 than 2000 tons were built. The torpedo and torpedo 

 boat came into use during his period of office, but 

 he opposed the idea prevalent then, and periodically 

 urged that the torpedo rendered the battleship 

 obsolete. E. C. S. 



NO. 2745, VOL. 109] 



Societies and Academies. 

 London. 



Royal Society, May 25. — Sir Charles Sherrington, 

 president, in the chair.-— C. H. Lees : The thermal 

 stresses in solid and in hollow circular cylinders 

 concentrically heated. The method of calculation 

 is similar to that used in dealing with spheres. Two 

 cases of practical importance are worked out — that 

 of a furnace with the temperature throughout the 

 wall steady, and that of a pillar supporting the floor 

 above a room in which a fire occurs. Curves are 

 given for the thermal stresses produced. — B. F. J. 

 Schonland : On the scattering of /3 - particles. — 

 N. K. Adam : The properties and molecular structure 

 of thin films. Pt. II. Condensed films. Pt. HI. 

 Expanded films. Saturated and unsaturated fatty 

 acids of the long straight chain series, and their de- 

 rivatives, including esters, substituted ureas, an 

 alcohol, amide, and nitrite have been studied. Below 

 a certain temperature determined by the conditions, 

 the molecules appeared to be closely packed or 

 " condensed." Above this temperature greater areas 

 on the surface were occupied, such films being called 

 " expanded films." Two general types of condensed 

 film were found : one in which the hydrocarbon 

 chains are close packed, while in the other probably 

 only the polar groups touch. In the temperature 

 interval (about 25° C.) between fully condensed 

 and fully expanded states, pressure-area curves 

 resemble isothermals of a vapour near critical 

 temperature. Probably expanded films resemble 

 vapours in two dimensions. Increase in length of 

 hydrocarbon chains raises the temperature of ex- ■ 

 pansion regularly. The lateral attraction which 

 tends to keep the molecules close packed therefore 

 depends on the length of these chains. Probably the 

 greater attraction between longer chains diminishes 

 the area of the expanded films. The area actually 

 filled by molecules both of saturated and unsaturated 

 acids is probably nearly the same in expanded and 

 in condensed films ; therefore it is unlikely that the 

 unsaturated linkage in oleic acid approaches the 

 water closely, as was previously thought. — E. Wilson : 

 On the susceptibility of feebly magnetic bodies as 

 affected by compression. Rock specimens were 

 examined and the compressive stress was necessarily 

 limited to about 1200 kgm. per sq. cm. Some feebly 

 magnetic alloys have also been tested. All the 

 specimens are in the form of short bars about 4 cm. 

 in length, with a cross-section either i cm. square 

 or I cm. in diameter, and the compressive stress has 

 been appUed in the direction of the length of the bar. 

 The susceptibility has been measured (a) in the 

 direction of the stress and (6) at right-angles to it. — 

 S. F. Grace : Free motion of a sphere in a rotating 

 liquid parallel to the axis of rotation. The motion 

 is a small disturbance from one of uniform rotation, 

 Hke a rigid body due to a projection, parallel to the 

 axis of rotation, of a sphere of density equal to that 

 of the hquid and originally at rest relative to it. 

 The path of the centre of the sphere is a straight fine, 

 and the motion is symmetrical about it. The 

 sphere oscillates about a point with amplitudes 

 which diminish rapidly, being less than 0-02 of the 

 velocity of projection, after one revolution of the 

 Uquid. The velocity of the hquid in this line is 

 oscillatory. The disturbance over the plane through 

 the centre of the sphere perpendicular to the axis is 

 oscillatory, and confined to the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of the sphere. The components of verticity 

 contain terms proportional to the time, so that the 

 assumptions of small motion are ultimately violated. 



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