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NA TV RE 



[November i i, 1922 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers. 



November 12, 1902. William Henry Barlow died. — 

 Appointed principal engineer of the Midland Railway 

 in 1844, when thirty-two years of age, Barlow laid 

 out the line from London to Bedford and was re- 

 sponsible for St. Pancras Station. He was also 

 concerned with the Clifton Suspension Bridge, the 

 second Tay Bridge, and the Forth Bridge. He was 

 widely known for his scientific investigations of 

 arches and beams, and in 1868 was made one of the 

 committee appointed to investigate the applicability 

 of steel to structures. He was a vice-president of 

 the Royal Society, and in 1879-80 president of the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers. 



November 13, 1903. Josiah Vavasseur died. — 

 One of the chief ordnance engineers of last centurv, 

 Vavasseur invented in 1866 the copper rotating ring 

 or band for projectiles of breech-loading guns, and 

 subsequently did important work on the construction 

 of built-up steel guns and on hydraulic mountings. 

 In the Vavasseur mounting of 1S77, the recoil was 

 for the first time scientifically controlled by hydraulic 

 buffers having a uniform resistance. The London 

 Ordnance Works which he founded was in 1883 

 merged in those of Armstrong's at Elswick. 



November 14, 1830. Henry Bell died. — The fore- 

 most pioneer of the steamboat in Europe, Bell, who 

 was born at Torphichen, Linlithgowshire, on April 7, 

 1767, was apprenticed as a stone mason but after- 

 wards became a shipwright and builder. In 1808 he 

 became proprietor of a hotel and baths at Helens- 

 burgh on the Clyde and in 181 1 ordered the Comet. 

 In August 1 81 2 this little craft began running 

 between Glasgow and Greenock, and from this dates 

 the beginning of steam navigation in Europe. The 

 vessel was wrecked in 1820, but the engine was salved 

 and is preserved in the Science Museum at South 

 Kensington. 



November 14, 1905. Robert Whitehead died. — 

 The inventor of the automobile torpedo, Whitehead 

 made his first torpedo in 1866 while holding a position 

 in an engineering works at Fiume. Taken up first 

 in 1868 by the Austrian Navy, experiments were 

 carried out at Sheerness in 1870 and soon afterwards 

 the torpedo was adopted by the British and other 

 Governments. 



November 15, 1839. William Murdock died. — 

 Known principally for his discovery of lighting by 

 coal gas and as the originator of a great industry, 

 which in Great Britain alone consumes some 22,000,000 

 tons of coal per annum, Murdock was for many 

 years the right-hand man of Boulton and Watt. He 

 was first employed by them in 1 777, and was sent 

 to Cornwall to erect steam engines. In his house at 

 Redruth in 1784 he experimented with a small 

 locomotive and in 1792 lighted his house by gas. 

 He was also a pioneer in the transmission of power 

 by compressed air. 



November 16, 191 1. Engelbert Arnold died. — A 

 notable contributor to the literature of electrical 

 engineering, Arnold, after studying at Zurich, engaged 

 in practical work in Russia. For a short time he was 

 engineer to the Oerlikon works in Switzerland and 

 from 1894 to 191 1 held a chair at the Institute of 

 Technology at Karlsruhe. 



November 18, 1814. William Jessop died. — Trained 

 as a civil engineer under Smeaton, Jessop was em- 

 ployed on some of the English canals, completed 

 the West India Docks and constructed a railway 111 

 Surrey which was the first opened to the public m 

 the South of England. E. C. S. 



Societies and Academies. 



London. 



Royal Society, November 2. — Sir Charles Sherring- 

 ton, president, in the chair. — Lord Rayleigh : Polarisa- 

 tion of the light scattered by mercury vapour near 

 the resonance periodicity. White light scattered at 

 right angles by dense mercury vapour is to a first 

 approximation completely polarised. Ultra-violet 

 radiation of the mercury spectrum line X2536, when 

 examined immediately it enters mercury vapour in 

 an exhausted vessel at room temperature, gives a 

 scattered radiation which is slightly though de- 

 finitelv polarised. This polarisation has been ob- 

 served to increase as the beam is filtered by penetra- 

 tion of a considerable depth of vapour. After 

 penetration of 27-5 cm. of vapour the weaker 

 polarised image had 60 per cent, only of the intensity 

 of the stronger one, instead of 90 per cent, as at 

 first. The radiation removed by the filtration 

 appears to lie within a spectral range of about 1/100 

 Angstrom. — G. P. Thomson : The scattering of 

 hydrogen positive rays and the existence of a 

 powerful field of force in the hydrogen molecule. 

 At a pressure of less than 1/100 mm., hvdrogen 

 positive rays of 10,000 volts mean energy suffer 

 considerable small-angle scattering in a distance of 

 15 cm. This scattering is 10-20 times greater than 

 would be expected on theoretical grounds. There 

 must, therefore, be a field of force in the hydrogen 

 molecule at distances of the order of io -8 from a 

 nucleus which is much stronger than would be 

 expected from the inverse square law. A subsidiary 

 experiment throws great doubt on Glimme and 

 Koenigsberger's " Stossstrahlen." — H. D. Smyth : 

 A new method for studying ionizing potentials. 

 Positive ray analysis is used to study the ions pro- 

 duced in a gas or vapour by the impact of slow- 

 speed electrons of known energy. This requires 

 that the density of gas be considerable where the 

 energy of the impacting electrons is known, and as 

 small as possible where the energy conditions are 

 not known. In the case of mercurv such a localisa- 

 tion of vapour density was obtained by using a 

 unidirectional molecular stream similar to that 

 employed in a mercury diffusion pump. Ions were 

 produced by electrons from a hot filament, and after 

 acceleration by a large electric field were analysed 

 by a magnetic field. In this way the values of mje 

 were determined approximately. The experiments 

 on mercury indicate the formation of doubly charged 

 ions at 19 ±2 volts. The series relations of the 

 enhanced spectrum of mercury are not known, but 

 analogy with zinc and cadmium suggests an estimate 

 in agreement with the above value. The conclusion 

 is that the double ions formed at this voltage are 

 the result of two impacts. Experiments at higher 

 voltages indicate formation by single impacts. Mure 

 highly charged ions were present in such small 

 quantities as to make their identification uncertain 

 even at voltages as high as five hundred. It was 

 also impossible to identify a singly charged diatomic 

 molecule. — I. Backhurst : Variation of the intensity 

 of reflected X-radiation with the temperature of the 

 crystal. General agreement only is found with the 

 theories of C. G. Darwin and P. Debye. Aluminium : 

 Very marked decrease in intensity was observed 

 with rise of temperature, and fair agreement with 

 P. Debye's theory obtained for the (100) and (222) 

 spectra. Carborundum : A special furnace was 

 constructed for temperatures up to 960° C. and no 

 deterioration of the crystal was observed. The 

 decrease in intensity with rise of temperature was 



NO. 2767, VOL. I IO] 



