November i8, 1922] 



NA TURE 



685 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers. 



November 19, 1883. Sir William Siemens died. — 

 One of four brothers who were all closely associated 

 with the application of science and the management 

 of great industrial concerns, Siemens was born in 

 Lenthe, Hanover, on April 4, 1S23. He settled in 

 England in 1844 and in 1859 became a naturalised 

 British citizen. His name is connected with the 

 introduction of the regenerative furnace for steel- 

 making and the enunciation of the principle of the 

 modern dynamo. He designed the cable ship Faraday, 

 and was president of various technical institutions. 



November 20, 1713. Thomas Tompion died. — The 

 father of English watch-making, Tompion began his 

 apprenticeship in London in 1664 and by 1675 had 

 gained a foremost place among his fellow mechani- 

 cians. He supplied the first clocks to the Greenwich 

 Observatory, and under Hooke's direction made one 

 of the first English watches with a balance spring. 

 His work made English watches the finest in the 

 world. He is buried in the nave of Westminster 

 Abbey, in the same grave as his famous pupil and 

 successor, George Graham. 



November 20, 1898. Sir John Fowler died. — A great 

 railway engineer, and jointly responsible with Baker 

 for the design of the Forth Bridge, Fowler's early 

 work was done in the Sheffield district, while he after- 

 wards became engineer to the Metropolitan Railway. 



November 21, 1555. Georg Agricola died. — Agricola 

 has been called the Bessemer of his age. He was 

 born in Saxony in 1494, studied medicine at Leipzig 

 and in Italy, and practised in Bohemia. Subse- 

 quently he abandoned his profession, became ab- 

 sorbed at Chemnitz in the study of metals and 

 mining, and was given a pension by the Duke of 

 Saxony. He collected specimens of ores, studied 

 their chemical characters, and described them accu- 

 rately. His work, " De re Metallica," is considered 

 the most important technical book of the sixteenth 

 century. 



November 21, 1863. Samuel Hall died. — A native 

 of Basford, Nottingham, Hall made a considerable 

 fortune by his invention of a method of gassing lace 

 and net. In 1836 he took out a patent for a surface 

 condenser for ships which embodied most of the 

 features of condensers as in general use to-day. 



November 23, 1902. Sir William Chandler Roberts- 

 Austen died. — The successor of Graham as chemist to 

 the Mint, Roberts- Austen did much valuable work on 

 the study of alloys, and was regarded as an authority 

 on all that appertains to coinage. He delivered many 

 important lectures, and in 1 899-1 900 served as Presi- 

 dent of the Iron and Steel Institute. 



November 24, 1916. Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim died. 

 — One of the greatest inventors of the nineteenth 

 century and a pioneer worker on the flying machine, 

 Maxim, like Edison and Swan, assisted to introduce 

 the electric light, and then, turning his attention to 

 the construction of an automatic gun, brought out 

 his Maxim gun, which ever since has played so im- 

 portant a part in all warfare. He was also the first 

 to combine nitroglycerine and true gun-cotton in 

 a smokeless powder. 



November 25, 1893. Johann Bauschinger. — A dis- 

 tinguished investigator of the strength of materials 

 and the founder of the International Association for 

 Testing Materials, Bauschinger was born in Nurem- 

 berg in 1834, and for twenty-five years was professor 

 of mechanics and graphic statics at the Technical 

 High School at Munich. E. C. S. 



Societies and Academies. 

 London. 



Royal Society, November 9. — Sir Charles Sherring- 

 ton, president, in the chair. — H. E. Armstrong : 

 Studies on enzyme action. XXIII. Homo- and 

 -lytic enzymes. — A. V. Hill and W. E. L. 

 Brown : The oxygen-dissociation curve of blood and 

 its thermodynamical basis. An attempt has been 

 made to test the validity of the hypotheses (i) that 

 the reaction of haemoglobin with oxygen is represented 

 by the equation (Hb)„ + n( ),F=(HbC> 2 )„, where Hb 

 represents the simplest possible molecule of haemo- 

 globin (containing one atom of iron), and 11 the average 

 degree of polymerisation of the molecule in the 

 presence of the salts in blood: and (ii) that the 

 dissociation curves of oxyhemoglobin under various 

 conditions can be deduced by simple application of 

 the Laws of Mass Action. The heat of reaction q 

 of one gm. mol. of haemoglobin (Hb)„, with oxygen 

 has been determined by the application of the van't 

 Hoff isochore to the effect of temperature on the 

 dissociation curve of blood, while the heat of reaction 

 O of one gm. mol. of oxygen with haemoglobin has 

 measured directly in a calorimeter. The value 

 of <7/Q is practically equal to 11 determined in other 

 ways, affording strong confirmation of hypothesis (1). 

 The apparent heat of reaction of oxygen with blood 

 may be very considerably reduced by the driving off 

 of carbon dioxide by the more acid oxyhemoglobin 

 formed. A direct measurement of the heat of 

 combination of carbon dioxide with blood confirms 

 the theory that carbon dioxide combines with blood 

 by taking base from the ionised haemoglobin salt to 

 form bicarbonate, leaving the non-ionised haemo- 

 globin acid. The heat of combination of carbon 

 monoxide with haemoglobin in blood is about 50 

 per cent, greater than that of oxygen : this proves 

 that temperature affects the equilibrium of oxygen 

 and carbon monoxide with blood. — H. Hartridge and 

 F. J. W. Roughton : The velocity with which carbon 

 mbnoxide displaces oxygen from its combination 

 with haemoglobin. Pt. I. When light falls on a 

 solution containing oxyhemoglobin and carbon 

 monoxide haemoglobin, the incoming light energy 

 changes the position of equilibrium, tending to 

 cause a reduction in the amount of the latter with 

 a corresponding increase of the former. In the dark 

 the original position of equilibrium is graduallv 

 recovered, the rate of return depending on the 

 velocity constants of the reactions. By determining 

 the percentage saturation of the haemoglobin with 

 carbon monoxide gas at intervals after the light 

 has been turned off, the velocity constants can be 

 calculated. This is done by causing the fluid to 

 flow through two glass tubes in series ; in the first 

 it is exposed to a powerful light, while in the second 

 it is kept in the dark, so that the original position of 

 equilibrium is gradually regained. The percentage 

 saturation with carbon monoxide gas of the solution 

 at different parts of the " dark " tube was determined 

 with the reversion spectroscope. At 15 C. the two 

 velocity constants had mean values of 0-0067 and 

 0-55 respectively. At 34-5° C. the value of K 2 was 

 2-66, which gives a temperature coefficient for this 

 velocity constant of 2-3 for a 10° C. rise of tempera- 

 ture, — approximately that given by many ordinary 

 chemical reactions. Pt. II. The method of measur- 

 ing the velocity of the reaction CO + O.Hb^COHb 

 + 2 consists in ascertaining, by means of an 

 electrically controlled stop-watch, the time taken 

 for the equilibrium to shift from an unstable position 

 to a stable one, the change being ascertained by 



NO. 2768, VOL. I IO] 



