Science and invention in Birmingham
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Birmingham is the largest city in the West Midlands and it is also one of the principal industrial cities in England, with a very long history of industrial and scientific innovation.
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[edit] 18th century
1738: Lewis Paul and John Wyatt, of Birmingham, patented the Roller Spinning machine and the flyer-and-bobbin system, for drawing Wool to a more even thickness. Using two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds this was later to be used in the first Cotton spinning Mill during the Industrial Revolution.
1742: Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their new rolling machine powered by the humble Donkey, this was not profitable and soon closed.
1743: A factory was opened in Northampton, fifty spindles turned on five of Paul and Wyatt's machines proving more successful than their first Mill this operated until 1764.
1746: Sulphuric acid factory was set up at Steelhouse Lane to use the lead chamber process invented by its co-founder John Roebuck.
1748: Lewis Paul invented the hand driven carding machine. A coat of wire slips were placed around a card which was then wrapped around a cylinder. Lewis's invention was later developed and improved by Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton, although this came about under great suspicion after a fire at Daniel Bourn's factory in Leominster which specifically used Paul and Wyatt's spindles. Bourn produced a similar patent in the same year.
1757: Baskerville serif typeface is designed by John Baskerville (1706-1775) in Birmingham, England. Baskerville is classified as a transitional typeface, positioned between the old style typefaces of William Caslon, and the modern styles of Giambattista Bodoni and Firmin Didot.
1758: Paul and Wyatt improved their Roller Spinning machine and took out a second patent. Richard Arkwright later used this as the model for his water frame.
1762: Matthew Boulton opened the Soho Foundry engineering works, Handsworth; his partnership with Scottish engineer James Watt made the steam engine into the power plant of the Industrial Revolution. The term "horsepower" was coined by Watt. Watt also invented the letter copying machine, a forerunner of the photocopier.
1770: James Watt attached a screw propellor to a Steam Engine.
1785: William Withering published An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses, pioneering its use as a cardiac drug, Digitalis.
1785: William Murdoch invented the oscillating cylinder.
1802: the exterior of the Soho Foundry was lit with gas lighting by William Murdoch. Murdoch, its developer, worked for Matthew Boulton and James Watt at Soho.
[edit] 19th century
1828: Josiah Mason improved a cheap, efficient slip-in nib which could be added to a fountain pen.
1830: With the invention of a new machine, William Joseph Gillott, William Mitchell and James Stephen Perry devised a way to mass manufacture robust, cheap steel pen nibs.
1837: Custard powder was invented by pharmacist Alfred Bird.
George Elkington and Henry Elkington founded the English electroplating industry in the early 1800s. In 1840, they aided John Wright, who discovered that potassium cyanide was a suitable electrolyte for gold and silver electroplating.
Carl Wilhelm Siemens had several meetings with George Elkington, and made speeches on 'Science and Industry,' to the Birmingham and Midland Institute, he later set up a works in Birmingham and carried out experiments on metals and telegraphy.
Richard Bissell Prosser wrote 58 lives for the Dictionary of National Biography, and supplied much material for the New English Dictionary. Prosser also wrote Birmingham Inventors and Inventions, 1881 and was a pioneer of the study of technical history, his published biographies and manuscript records are an incomparable source for present-day researchers. He was heavily involved with the introduction of the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1852, and his 700-volume library, combined with that of Bennet Woodcroft formed the basis of the Patent Office Library.
Birmingham glassworks were among the early mass-producers of uranium glass. Manufacturers included Bacchus, Green & Green (later George Bacchus & Sons), Union Glassworks, in the 1840s, and Lloyd & Summerfield in the 1850s who were the first to use uranium in glass commercially.
1849: William Tranter took out the first of many patents for his improvements in manufacture of the firearm.
The first celluloid as a bulk material for forming objects was made in 1856 by Alexander Parkes. Many years later, and with the recognition of celluloid as a format for making photographic film, an American court declared Parkes as the true inventor of celluloid.
1862: the thermoplastic Parkesine was showcased at the Great International Exhibition in London. Invented by Alexander Parkes, this celluloid is credited by the London Science Museum to be "generally accepted as the first plastic". (This presumably refers to synthetic plastic formed into objects: it is predated by the 1848 collodion, a nitrocellulose-based solution that dried to a celluloid-like film but was useless for industrial purposes, as well as several natural plastics).
Birmingham had a great history of wire and cable manufacture, the industry later set various international standards for wire gauge. 1865: The steel wire, some 16,000 miles long, for sheathing the first successful Transatlantic telegraph cable was made by Webster and Horsfall, Birmingham. [1] [2]
1873: William Westley Richards gunmakers takes out its first of many patents relating to the firearm, for which gold medals and royal warrants, were awarded.
1876: William Bown patented a design for the wheels of roller skates which embodied his effort to keep the two bearing surfaces of an axle, fixed and moving, apart. Bown worked closely with Joseph Henry Hughes who drew up the patent for a ball or roller bearing race for bicycle and carriage wheels which includes all the elements of an adjustable system in 1877.
1880: Gamgee Tissue was invented by Joseph Sampson Gamgee, a surgical dressing which has a thick layer of absorbent cotton wool between two layers of absorbent gauze. It represents the first use of cotton wool in a medical context, and was a major advancement in the prevention of infection of surgical wounds. It is still the basis for many modern surgical dressings.
1883: surgeon and gynaecologist, Lawson Tait (pioneer of several surgical procedures), carried out the world's first successful operation on a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.
Sir Francis Galton, who formulated (and later coined the term for) eugenics as well as questionnaires and many important tools in statistics, was born in Birmingham. Galton avidly supported the theories of his cousin Charles Darwin, and also furthered the most important advances in fingerprinting.
1895: Frederick William Lanchester and his brother built the first petrol driven four-wheeled car in Britain. Lanchester also experimented with the wick carburetor, fuel injection, turbochargers and invented the accelerator pedal and the Pendulum Governor for controlling the speed of an engine. In 1893 he designed and built his first engine (a vertical single cylinder) which was fitted to the first British motorboat.
1891: the Dunlop Rubber Company co-founded by John Boyd Dunlop established its Birmingham factory Fort Dunlop, later to become the focus of Dunlop as one of the largest multinational manufacturers of automotive and aeronautical tyres.
1896: the first radiograph used to assist in surgery was taken in Birmingham by the British pioneer of medical X-Rays, Major John Hall-Edwards.
[edit] 20th century
1902: On April 7th of this year the Teasmade was patented by gunsmith Frank Clarke, he called it "An Apparatus Whereby a Cup of Tea or Coffee is Automatically Made" and it was later marketed as "A Clock That Makes Tea!", however, the original machine and all rights to it were purchased from Albert E Richardson, a clockmaker from Ashton-under-Lyne. Clarke later abandoned Tea making machines and made several important patents to the Air pistol.
1902: Frederick William Lanchester patented disc brakes.
1902: George Andrew Darby patented his electrical Heat detector and Smoke detector.
1903: Brummie, Francis William Aston won a scholarship to the University of Birmingham and it was in his studies of electronic discharge tubes there that he discovered the phenomenon now known as the Aston Dark Space. He later moved to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge where he used a method of electromagnetic focusing to invent the mass spectrograph, which rapidly allowed him to identify no fewer than 212 of the 287 naturally occurring isotopes. His work on isotopes also led to his formulation of the Whole Number Rule which was later used extensively in the development of nuclear energy. In 1922 he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of the mass spectrometer.
1905: a manually-powered domestic vacuum cleaner was invented by manufacturer Walter Griffiths of 72, Conybere Street, Highgate. It was originally patented as 'Griffiths' Improved Vacuum Apparatus for Removing Dust from Carpets'. Although an electric cleaner had been patented in 1901 by H. Cecil Booth, Griffiths' design was more similar to modern portable cleaners than Booth's cart-mounted device.
1921: the first British patent for windscreen wipers was registered by Mills Munitions.
1923: Arthur L. Large, invented the immersed heating resistor, a major advancement in the electric kettle (A safety valve was introduced by kettle maker Walter H. Bullpitt, also from Birmingham, in 1931.
1929: Brylcreem (made famous by the Teddy Boy) was invented in the city and later gave rise to other hair styling products.
1929: Foam rubber was invented by EA Murphy at the Dunlop Latex Development Laboratories, Fort Dunlop.
1932: Leonard Parsons was the first to use synthetic vitamin C as treatment for scurvy in children. [3]
1937: Professor Norman Haworth was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his pioneering work on carbohydrates and synthetic vitamin C.
1939: Dr Mary Evans and Dr Wilfred Gaisford began trials of the world's first antibiotic M&B (sulphapydrine) as treatment for lobar pneumonia.
Birmingham was the major British manufacturer of the phenolic plastic Bakelite.
The magnetron, the core component in the development of radar, and the first microwave power oscillators were developed at the University of Birmingham during World War II (the microwave oven owes its existence to these developments).
1940: The Frisch-Peierls memorandum was finalised by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls while both working at Birmingham University - the first document to set out a process by which an atomic explosion could be generated.
1940: Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand born British physicist and Nobel Laureate for his work on DNA structure, was educated at King Edward's School. He received his PhD for the study of phosphors at the University of Birmingham Physics Department, where he worked on radar display screens and uranium isotope separation before moving to the Manhattan Project.
Between 1947 and 1951 Professor Peter Medawar pioneered research on skin graft rejection at Birmingham University, this led to the discovery of a substance which aids nerves to reunite and the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1960 for his work during this time.
1950: in February, the first operation in England for 'hole-in-the-heart' (congenital atrial septal defect) was performed at Birmingham Children's Hospital.
1952: Professor Charlotte Anderson (Leonard Parsons Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health) was one of the team who proved that the glutens in wheat caused coeliac disease, from this gluten-free diets were introduced.
1950-1959: essential research and development on heart pacemakers and plastic heart valves was carried out by Leon Abrams at Birmingham University.
During the later half of the 20th century the first trials of the contraceptive pill outside the USA took place at Birmingham University and extensive research into advanced allergy vaccines and the synthesization of artificial blood took place.
Sir John Robert Vane, winner of a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1982 for his work on aspirin, was educated at King Edward's School and studied Chemistry at the University of Birmingham.
The city has become an internationally important centre for cancer research.
[edit] 21st century
Since the establishment of its Nanoscale Physics Research Laboratory, the University of Birmingham has become one of the significant UK research centres for nanotechnology.
[edit] References
- Edwardian Inventions, Rodney Dale & Joan Gray, Star Books, 1979, ISBN 0-352-30345-X
- Victorian and Edwardian Birmingham, B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1973, ISBN 0-7134-0128-1
