TEXT A. JAMES WATT

TEXT B. ALFRED BERNHARD NOBEL

TEXT C. BABBAGE, CHARLES

TEXT D. JAMES PRESCOTT JOULE

TEXT E. GEORGE STEPHENSON

TEXT A. 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. The watt, 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.

TEXT B. ALFRED BERNHARD NOBEL

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.

TEXT C. BABBAGE, CHARLES

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.