622 



NA TURE 



[November 4, 1922 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers. 



November 5, 1800. Jesse Ramsden died. — Called 

 by Delambre " le plus grand de tous les artistes," 

 Ramsden, by the combination of great scientific 

 ability and practical skill, rose to be the leading 

 instrument maker of his day. Especially valuable 

 was his invention of a dividing machine completed in 

 1773 after ten years' work. He was born in Halifax, 

 Yorkshire, in 1735, worked first as a cloth worker, 

 and then learned the art of engraving from a London 

 optician. 



November 6, 1913. Sir William Henry Preece died. 

 — Born in Carnarvon in 1834, Preece, after passing 

 through King's College, London, joined the Electric 

 and International Telegraph Company and eventually 

 became one of the principal telegraph engineers in 

 the country. From 1892 to 1899 he was Engineer- 

 in -Chief and electrician to the Post Office, in which 

 situation he made some of the earliest experiments 

 in wireless signalling and gave valuable support to 

 Marconi. He was twice president of the Institution 

 of Electrical Engineers and was also president of the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers. 



November 8, 1807. Pierre Alexander Laurent 

 Forfait died. — A distinguished naval constructor 

 whose skill proved of the highest value to the French 

 nation, Forfait first gained a reputation by the 

 building of sailing-vessels for maintaining regular 

 communication between France and America. He 

 was the author of a treatise on the masting of ships 

 and wrote many papers for the Paris Academy of 

 Sciences and the " Encyclopedic Methodique." He 

 carried out important work at Antwerp and on the 

 Seine, and under Napoleon served in the Ministry of 

 Marine. 



November 8, 191 1. William Edward Ayrton died. — 

 The author of some 150 scientific papers, a prolific 

 inventor, and one of the pioneers of technical education 

 in London, Ayrton served in the Indian Telegraph 

 Service from 1868 to 1872, was professor of physics 

 and telegraphy at the Imperial Engineering College, 

 Tokio, and from 1884 held the chair of physics and 

 electrical engineering at the Central Technical 

 Institution, London. His researches extended to all 

 sides of modern electrical engineering, while among 

 the positions he filled were the presidencies of the 

 Physical Society and the Institution of Electrical 

 Engineers. 



November 11, 1906. John Devonshire Ellis died. — 

 Trained as an engineer at Birmingham by his father, 

 Ellis 111 1854 joined John Brown at the famous Atlas 

 Works at Sheffield, with which he remained con- 

 nected till his death. He was largely responsible for 

 the manufacture of the armour for our first ironclads, 

 the Black Prince and Warrior, and was an ardent 

 advocate of the Bessemer process of making steel. 

 He also introduced a method of welding a hard steel 

 face to a. wrought-iron backing for the armour of 

 ships. He succeeded Brown as head of the firm in 

 1870, and in 1889 received the Bessemer medal of the 

 Iron and Steel Institute. 



November n, 1893. Anthony Reckenzaun died. — 

 A pioneer of electric traction, Reckenzaun was born 

 at Gratz, Styria, in 1850, and, after being trained as 

 an engineer, worked in England and was engineer to 

 the Electric Power Company. In 1881 he made a 

 trial of an electric car, in 1882 built the launch 

 Electricity, and in September 13, 1886, with the Volta 

 crossed the Channel, the motive power being obtained 

 from electric cells. He also visited America and 

 applied his system of driving by electric batteries to 

 some cars at Philadelphia. E. C. S. 



NO. 2/6 6, VOL. I IO] 



Societies and Academies. 



London. 



Association of Economic Biologists, October 13. — 

 Prof. E. B. Poulton, president, in the chair. — E. J. 

 Butler : Virus diseases in plants. The first demon- 

 stration that disease can be caused by a filtrable virus 

 was by Iwanowski, in 1892, in mosaic disease of 

 tobacco. Mosaic is now known in nearly 100 species 

 of plants. Diseases like peach-yellows and others 

 characterised by phloem-necrosis are probably caused 

 by similar agents though the filtered juice is not 

 infective. All hitherto tested can be transmitted by 

 grafting, most of them by insects (the chief method 

 in Nature), and many by inoculating with sap. 

 Contact will not cause infection. Infection may be 

 hereditary in the insect transmitter and in the plant. 

 " Carriers " are known. The causal agents are 

 believed to be living organisms. Several investi- 

 gators have recently found large amoebiform cor- 

 puscles or smaller granules in infected cells. The 

 former have been compared with cytoryctes or 

 neuroryctes and the latter with Chlamydozoa but a 

 resemblance to Rickettsia is suggested. The causal 

 organisms appear to be obligate parasites. — J. A. 

 Arkwright : Virus diseases in animals and man. The 

 chief points of interest common to plant and animal 

 " virus diseases " are (1) the nature and properties of 

 the virus ; (2) the means of transmission, e.g. 

 " carriers " and insect vectors ; (3) measures for 

 prevention, e.g. breeding or selection, and isolation or 

 destruction ; (4) perhaps the concentration of the 

 virus in certain special tissue cells. About fifty 

 animal virus diseases have been described which may 

 be roughly classified as follows : (1) visible, not 

 filtrable, not cultivated, e.g. Rickettsia ; (2) probably 

 visible, filtrable, cultivated, e.g. pleuro-pneumonia of 

 cattle, poliomyelitis ; (3) filtrable, not cultivated, 

 some (?) visible in the tissues, e.g. foot and mouth 

 disease, vaccinia ; (4) filtrable, very resistant, e.g. 

 infectious anaemia of horses, fowl-pox. In general 

 properties most do not differ much from bacteria, 

 though some are very resistant to drying, glycerine, 

 and heat. The smallest clearly visible and the largest 

 filtrable particles are of the same order of size, i.e. 

 about 0-2 micron. Living organisms may con- 

 ceivably be much smaller than this. The differentia- 

 tion of colloidal particles of about 0-2 micron in size 

 by means of the microscope requires attention 

 especially to their arrangement and their range of 

 size and shape, rather than to the appearance of 

 individual particles. Theoretically it is possible that 

 an enzyme may be the cause of an infectious disease 

 on the analogy of Twort's lytic substance and the 

 bacteriophage of d'Herelle. 



Paris. 

 Academy of Sciences, October 2. — M. Albin Haller 

 in the chair. — H. Deslandres : The emission of X-rays, 

 ultra X-rays, and corpuscular rays by the celestial 

 bodies. A summary of previous results on radiations 

 of high frequency and great penetration given by the 

 sun and stars. These radiations form an extremely 

 minute proportion of the total radiation, but their 

 remarkable electrical properties give them an import- 

 ant role in the electrical phenomena of atmospheres. 

 Kohlhorster's experiment on the ionisation of gas in 

 a closed vessel at high altitudes (9000 metres) should 

 be repeated at several points on the earth, and 

 extended to the highest possible altitudes attainable 

 by captive balloons. The cost will be considerable, 

 and international co-operation is suggested as desir- 

 able. — A. Brachet : The properties of the germinal 



