Famous people of science and engineering

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FAMOUS PEOPLE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Babbage, Charles (1792-1871), British mathemati­cian and inventor, who designed and built mechanical computing machines on principles that anticipated the modern electronic computer. Babbage was born in Teignmouth, Devon, and educated at the University of Cambridge. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816 and was active in the founding of the Analytical, the Royal Astronomical, and the Statistical Societies.

In the 1820s Babbage began developing his Difference Engine, a mechanical device that could perform simple mathematical calculations. Although Babbage started to build his machine, he was unable to complete it because of a lack of funding. In the 1830s Babbage began devel­oping his Analytical Engine, which was designed to carry out more complicated calculations, but this device was never built, too. Babbage's book, «Economy of Machines and Manufactures» (1832), initiated the field of study known today as operational research.

James Watt

James Watt was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer, known for his improvements of the steam engine.

Watt was born on January 19, 1736, in Greenock, Scotland. He worked as a mathematical-instrument maker from the age of 19 and soon became interested in improving the steam engine which was used at that time to pump out water from mines.

Watt determined the properties of steam, especially the relation of its density to its temperature and pres­sure, and designed a separate condensing chamber for the steam engine that prevented large losses of steam in the cylinder. Watt's first patent, in 1769, covered this device and other improvements on steam engine.

At that time. Watt was the partner of the inventor John Roebuck, who had financed his researches. In 1775, however. Roebuck's interest was taken over by the manu­facturer Matthew Boulton, owner of the Soho Engineer­ing Works at Birmingham, and he and Watt began the manufacture of steam engines. Watt continued his re­search and patented several other important inventions, including the rotary engine for driving various types of machinery; the double-action engine, in which steam is admitted alternately into both ends of the cylinder; and the steam indicator, which records the steam pressure in the engine. He retired from the firm in 1800 and there­after devoted himself entirely to research work.

The misconception that Watt was the actual inventor of the steam engine arose from the fundamental nature of his contributions to its development. The centrifugal or flyball governor, which he invented in 1788, and which automatically regulated the speed of an engine, is of par­ticular interest today. It embodies the feedback princi­ple of a servomechanism, linking output to input, which is the basic concept of automation. Thewatt, the unit of power, was named in his honour. Watt was also a well-known civil engineer. He invented, in 1767, an attach­ment that adapted telescopes for use in the measurement of distances. Watt died in Heathfield, near Birmingham, in August 1819.

James Prescott Joule, famous British physicist, was born in 1818 in Salford, England.

Joule was one of the most outstanding physicists of his time. He is best known for his research in electricity and thermodynamics. In the course of his investigations of the heat emitted in an electrical circuit, he formulated the law, now known as Joule's law of electric heating. This law states that the amount of heat produced each second in a conductor by electric current is proportional to the resistance of the conductor and to the square of the current. Joule experimentally verified the law of con­servation of energy in his study of the conversion of me­chanical energy into heat energy.

Joule determined the numerical relation between heat and mechanical energy, or the mechanical equivalent of heat, using many independent methods. The unit of en­ergy, called thejoule, is named after him. It is equal to 1 watt-second. Together with the physicist William Thomson (Baron Kelvin), Joule found that the tempera­ture of a gas falls when it expands without doing any work. This phenomenon, which became known as the Joule-Thomson effect, lies in the operation of modern refrigeration and air-conditioning systems

FAMOUS INVENTORS

Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a famous Swedish chem­ist and inventor. He was born in Stockholm in 1833. Af­ter receiving an education in St. Petersburg, Russia, and then in the United States, where he studied mechanical engineering, he returned to St. Petersburg to work with his father in Russia. They were developing mines, tor­pedoes, and other explosives.

In a family-owned factory in Heleneborg, Sweden, he developed a safe way to handle nitroglycerine, after a factory explosion in 1864 killed his younger brother and four other people. In 1867 Nobel achieved his goal: he produced what he called dynamite динамит. Не later produced one of the first smokeless powders (порох). At the time of his death he controlled factories for the manufacture of explosives (взрывчатое вещество) in many parts of the world. In his will he wanted that the major portion of his money left became a fund for yearly prizes in his name. The prizes were to be given for merits (заслуги) in physics, chemistry, medicine and physiol­ogy, literature, and world peace. A prize in economics has been awarded since 1969.

FAMOUS PEOPLE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

George Stephenson

George Stephenson was a British inventor and engi­neer. He is famous for building the first practical rail­way locomotive.

Stephenson was born in 1781 in Wylam, near New­castle upon Tyne, Northumberland. During his youth he worked as a fireman and later as an engineer in the coal mines of Newcastle. He invented one of the first miner's safety lamps independently of the British inventor Humphry Davy. Stephenson's early locomotives were used to carry loads in coal mines, and in 1823 he estab­lished a factory at Newcastle for their manufacture. In 1829 he designed a locomotive known as the Rocket, which could carry both loads and passengers at a greater speed than any locomotive constructed at that time. The success of the Rocket was the beginning of the construc­tion of locomotives and the laying of railway lines.

Robert Stephenson, the son of George Stephenson was a British civil engineer. He is mostly well-known known for the construction of several notable bridges.

He was born in 1803 in Willington Quay, near New­castle upon Tyne, and educated in Newcastle and at the University of Edinburgh. In 1829 he assisted his father in constructing a locomotive known as the Rocket, and four years later he was appointed construction engineer of the Birmingham and London Railway, completed in 1838. Stephenson built several famous bridges, includ­ing the Victoria Bridge in Northumberland, the Britan­nia Bridge in Wales, two bridges across the Nile in Damietta in Egypt and the Victoria Bridge in Montreal, Canada. Stephenson was a Member of Parliament from 1847 until his death in 1859.

«FAMOUS PEOPLE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING»

Sikorsky Igor Ivanovich was a well-known aircraft engineer and manufacturer.

Sikorsky was born in 1889 in Kiev, in the Ukraine, and got his education at the naval college in St. Peters­burg, and later in Kiev and Paris. He was the first to make experiments in helicopter design. In 1913 he designed, built, and flew the first successful aeroplane. Later he built military aircrafts for Russia and France.

In 1919 Sikorsky moved to the United States and later helped to organize an aircraft company that produced a series of multiengine flying boats for commercial serv­ice. Sikorsky became an American citizen in 1928. In the late 1930s he returned to developing helicopters and pro­duced the first successful helicopter in the west. Heli­copters designed by Sikorsky were used mostly by the US Army Air Forces during World War II. He died in 1972 at the age of 83.

Tupolev Andrey Nikolayevich, famous aircraft de­signer, was born in 1888. He graduated from the Moscow Higher Technical School, where he designed the first Russian wind tunnel. He helped to found the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute in 1918 and later worked as the head of its design bureau. During his career he directed the design of more than 100 military and com­mercial aircraft, including the TU-2 and TU-4 bombers used in the World War II. In 1955 he designed the TU-104, the first passenger jet airliner. His TU-144 su­personic jet liner began its commercial passenger flights in 1977.