43 6 



NA TURE 



[September 23, 1922 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers. 



September 24, 1852. John Barnes died. — From 

 1822 to 1835 Barnes was a partner with Joseph Miller, 

 the marine engineer, and as such assisted in intro- 

 ducing steam navigation on the Rhone and Saone. 

 He afterwards designed engines for vessels built by 

 Normand of Havre, among these being the Napoleon, 

 the first screw ship in the French Navy. At the time 

 of his death he was manager of works at La Ciotat 

 near Marseilles. 



September 24, 1908. Sir Samuel Canning died. — 

 Burn in Wiltshire in 1823, Canning, after some years 

 of railway engineering, joined the firm of Kiiper and 

 Co., cable makers, of Greenwich, in 1852, and from 

 that time onwards was intimately associated with 

 the development of submarine telegraphy. He took 

 part in the attempt to lay the Atlantic Cable in 1857 

 and 1858, and as chief engineer of the Telegraph 

 Construction and Maintenance Company he had 

 charge of the making and laying of the second and 

 third Atlantic cables of 1865 and 1866. He was 

 responsible for fitting out the Great Eastern and 

 originated much of the cable machinery. 



September 25, 1010. Edward Pritchard Martin died. 

 — President of the Iron and Steel Institute and 

 of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Martin 

 was a metallurgist who, while manager of the Blaen- 

 avon Iron Works, was the first to give facilities for 

 trying on a commercial scale the Thomas-Gilchrist 

 process of dephosphorisation in steel-making. Martin 

 was the son of a mining engineer of the Dowlais Iron 

 Works, and was himself manager of those works from 

 1882 to 1902. 



September 29, 1913. Rudolph Diesel died. — Diesel 

 was born in Paris of German parents on March 15, 

 1858. He attended school in Augsburg, and at an 

 early age became an assistant to Linde and directed 

 works in Paris where Linde's refrigerators were 

 constructed. Attacking the problem of making a 

 prime mover of higher efficiency than hitherto existed, 

 in 1893 he published " The Theory and Construction 

 of a Rational Heat Motor," and the same year built 

 his first experimental engine. After further trials 

 the manufacture of Diesel engines was taken up by 

 various firms, and to-day they are found in every part 

 of the world. Their superior economy has led to 

 their being fitted in ships ; the s.s. Toiler, driven by 

 two Diesel engines, crossed the Atlantic in 1911, 

 while to-day more than 1600 vessels of a total tonnage 

 of 1,500,000 tons are driven by internal combustion 

 engines mainly of the Diesel type. 



September 30, 1719. Bernard Renau d'Elicagaray 

 died. — The author of a treatise " Theorie de la 

 manoeuvre des vaisseaux," published in 1689, Renau 

 dElicagaray, as a naval officer, saw service afloat 

 and ashore, and at Brest introduced new methods 

 of shipbuilding. He took a leading part in the 

 development of the French Navy under Louis XIV. 



September 30,- 1772. James Brindley died. — A 

 native of Derbyshire, where he was born in 1716, 

 Brindley served an apprenticeship to a millwright, 

 and afterwards in business in Staffordshire for himself 

 gained a reputation for his ingenuity and skill. For 

 the Duke of Bridgewater he constructed the first 

 British canal, that from Worsley to Manchester. 

 This was completed in 1761, but before Brindley died 

 he had built 365 miles of canal, including the Grand 

 Trunk Canal from the Trent to the Mersey, thus 

 laying the foundation of the British system of inland 

 navigation. E. C. S. 



Societies and Academies. 



Paris. 



Academy of Sciences, August 21. — M. Emile Roux 

 in the chair. — Paul Viullemin : Disjunction and 

 combination of the characters of the parents in a 

 hybrid. Study of a hybrid of Aquilegia ccerulea and 

 A. chrysantha. — N. Lusin and W. Sierpinski : The 

 decomposition of the continued fraction. — H. Mineur : 

 A class of uniform transcendentals. — H. A. Perkins : 

 The resistance of thin electrified conducting layers. 

 Experimental study of the effect of an electrostatic 

 charge on the resistance of thin gold film. The film 

 formed one plate of a condenser, and no change in 

 the resistance could be measured with or without 

 an electrostatic charge of 2-7 C.G.S. electrostatic 

 units (800 volts). — F. W. Klingstedt : The ultra- 

 violet absorption spectra of the diphenols. A 

 quantitative study of the normal absorption spectra 

 of the dihydroxybenzenes, made with the Fabry and 

 Buisson micropiiotometer on photographs taken by 

 V. Henri's method. The meta- and ortho-derivatives 

 have spectra very like that of phenol, but the para- 

 compound has eight nearly equidistant bands instead 

 of the three of phenol. The spectra are modified by 

 certain solvents : with alcohol as'a solvent it is 

 impossible to recognise the characteristic differences 

 between the para-compound and ortho- and meta- 

 derivatives. Hexane is the best solvent. — H. Gault 

 and R. Guillemet : The chlorination of normal 

 butyl alcohol. The chief product was found to 

 be the dibutyl acetal of dichlorobutvraldehyde, 

 C 4 H 6 C1 2 (O . CH 2 . CH 2 . CH, . CH 3 ). This acetal is 

 not hydrolysed by aqueous potash, and only slightly 

 hydrolysed by hydrochloric acid or dilute sulphuric acid 

 at 150 under pressure. — G. Vavon and A. L. Berton : 

 The borneol obtained starting with the magnesium 

 compound of pinene chlorhydrate. — G. Murgoci : 

 The properties of the blue amphiboles. — Marcel 

 Mirande : The morphological origin of the internal 

 liber of the Nolanaces and the systematic position 

 of this family. The Nolanacea? have been placed as 

 allied with the Convolvulaceae or the Solanaceae : it 

 is shown that this family is well differentiated from 

 the Convolvulaceae, but may be classified with the 

 Solanacea?. — A. Guilliermond : Cytological observa- 

 tion on a Leptomitus and in particular on the mode 

 of formation and germination of the zoospores. — 

 Georges Bouvrain : The vascular evolution in Mer- 

 curialis. — W. J. Vernadsky : Nickel and cobalt in 

 the biosphere. The constant presence of nickel and 

 cobalt in living organisms has not been proved ; but 

 they have been found in all cases when specially 

 sought. They have been found in all the mosses 

 studied in the neighbourhood of Kiefl, and in nine 

 species of plants from the same district. Cobalt has 

 also been found in Echium vulgare from the Crimea, 

 and in the ashes of a domestic mouse. — Louis Boutan : 

 A fine culture pearl without nucleus. 



Official Publications Received. 



Education Committee for the County Borough of Brighton. Muni- 

 cipal Technical College. Richmond Terrace. Brighton. Day Courses, 

 Session 11122-23. Pp. 61. (Brighton.) 



The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain 

 and Ireland. Vol. 52. January to June, 1022. Pp. 149 + 13 plates. 

 (London : Royal Anthropological Institute.) las. net. 



Durham University Calendar for the Year 1922-23. Pp. 756. 

 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne.) 3s. 6d. net. 



Fortschritte der teehnischen Physik. Vortrage von del zweiten 

 Jahi'cst.-igung der Deutsche]] (iescllschaft fur teclmischc Physik in 

 Jena vmii l!>. bis 25. September 1021. Pp. iv. + lll. (Leipzig : J. A. 

 Barth.) 48 marks. 



NO. 2760, VOL. 1 IO] 



