Engineering

1449 quotes found

"The concepts of purposive behavior and teleology have long been associated with a mysterious, self-perfecting or goal-seeking capacity or final cause, usually of superhuman or super-natural origin. To move forward to the study of events, scientific thinking had to reject these beliefs in purpose and these concepts of teleological operations for a strictly mechanistic and deterministic view of nature. This mechanistic conception became firmly established with the demonstration that the universe was based on the operation of anonymous particles moving at random, in a disorderly fashion, giving rise, by their multiplicity, to order and regularity of a statistical nature, as in classical physics and gas laws. The unchallenged success of these concepts and methods in physics and astronomy, and later in chemistry, gave biology and physiology their major orientation. This approach to problems of organisms was reinforced by the analytical preoccupation of the Western European culture and languages. The basic assumptions of our traditions and the persistent implications of the language we use almost compel us to approach everything we study as composed of separate, discrete parts or factors which we must try to isolate and identify as potential causes. Hence, we derive our preoccupation with the study of the relation of two variables. We are witnessing today a search for new approaches, for new and more comprehensive concepts and for methods capable of dealing with the large wholes of organisms and personalities."

- Cybernetics

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"From the start, the cyborg was more than just another technical project; it was a kind of scientific and military daydream. The possibility of escaping its annoying bodily limitations led a generation that grew up on Superman and Captain America to throw the full weight of its grown-up R&D budget into achieving a real-life superpower. By the mid-1960s, cyborgs were big business, with millions of US Air Force dollars finding their way into projects to build exoskeletons, master-slave robot arms, biofeedback devices, and expert systems. For all the big bucks and high seriousness, the prevailing impression left by old cyborg technical papers is of a rather expensive kind of science fiction. Time and again, scientific reasoning melts into metaphysical speculation about evolution, human boundaries, and even the possibility of what Clynes and Kline call "a new and larger dimension for man's spirit." The cyborg was always as much a creature of scientific imagination as of scientific fact. It wasn't only the military that was captivated by the possibilities of the cyborg. The dream of improving human capabilities through selective breeding had long been a staple of the darker side of Western medical literature. Now there was the possibility of making better humans by augmenting them with artificial devices. Insulin drips had been used to regulate the metabolisms of diabetics since the 1920s. A heart-lung machine was used to control the blood circulation of an 18-year-old girl during an operation in 1953. A 43-year-old man received the first heart pacemaker implant in 1958. By the 1970s, the idea of an augmented human had entered the mainstream. Steve Austin, The Six Million Dollar Man, and his cohort Jaime Sommers, The Bionic Woman (with bionic limbs and a super-sensitive bionic ear), were popular heroes, their custom superpowers bought off the shelf like a digital watch. The cyborg had grown from a lecture-room fantasy into the stuff of prime-time TV."

- Cybernetics

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"Since the 1960s, Japan has produced a considerable number of cyborg narratives in manga and anime, particularly in works targeting male children and adolescents. From early manga examples such as Kazumasa Hirai and Hiro Kuwata's 8 Man and Shotaro Ishinomori's Cyborg 009, and their subsequent anime versions, the protagonist is commonly cyborged against their will or desires. This positions them as victims, regardless of how physically powerful they are. Their sense of inferiority and vulnerability usually underpins these narratives, either subtly or explicitly. The depiction of female cyborgs adds complexity to the positioning of cyborgs in manga and anime, especially in terms of gender. Female cyborgs may be equipped with remarkable physical strength, combined with voluptuous, eroticized bodies (for instance Major Motoko Kusanagi in Masamune Shirow's original manga and Mamoru Oshii's anime version of Ghost in the Shell); and these powerful female cyborgs are also frequently ascribed roles as protectors or supporters of incompetent and insecure male protagonists. Although some female cyborgs may possess characteristics that indicate a transgression of the conventional boundaries of gender, this transgression is often limited and undermined by other elements of their depiction. As Kumiko Sato points out in her essay "How Information Technology Has "Not, Changed Feminism and Japanism", "female cyborgs and androids have been domesticated and fetishized into maternal and sexual protectors of the male hero" and thus "their functions is usually reduced to either a maid or a goddess obediantly serving her beloved male master, the sole reason for her militant nature.""

- Cybernetics

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"The 19th and first half of the 20th century conceived of the world as chaos. Chaos was the oft-quoted blind play of atoms, which, in mechanistic and positivistic philosophy, appeared to represent ultimate reality, with life as an accidental product of physical processes, and mind as an epi-phenomenon. It was chaos when, in the current theory of evolution, the living world appeared as a product of chance, the outcome of random mutations and survival in the mill of natural selection. In the same sense, human personality, in the theories of behaviorism as well as of psychoanalysis, was considered a chance product of nature and nurture, of a mixture of genes and an accidental sequence of events from early childhood to maturity. Now we are looking for another basic outlook on the world -- the world as organization. Such a conception -- if it can be substantiated -- would indeed change the basic categories upon which scientific thought rests, and profoundly influence practical attitudes. This trend is marked by the emergence of a bundle of new disciplines such as cybernetics, information theory, general system theory, theories of games, of decisions, of queuing and others; in practical applications, systems analysis, systems engineering, operations research, etc. They are different in basic assumptions, mathematical techniques and aims, and they are often unsatisfactory and sometimes contradictory. They agree, however, in being concerned, in one way or another, with "systems," "wholes" or "organizations"; and in their totality, they herald a new approach."

- Operations research

0 likesEngineeringMathematicsManagementOrganizational theory
"That total war would ultimately be decided by material rather than moral factors was not lost on the Germans. 'The first essential condition for an army to be able to stand the strain of battle', wrote Rommel, 'is an adequate stock of weapons, petrol and ammunition. In fact, the battle is fought and decided by the quartermasters before the shooting begins. The bravest men can do nothing without guns, the guns nothing without plenty of ammunition; and neither guns nor ammunition are of much use in mobile warfare unless there are vehicles with sufficient petrol to haul them around.' By the final year of the war, an active US army division was consuming around 650 tons of supplies a day. Because a single army truck could carry just five tons, this posed a formidable logistical challenge. Indeed, as supply lines were stretched from 200 to 400 miles in the months after D-Day, deliveries to the advancing armies slumped from 19,000 tons a day to 7,000 tons - hence the slackening of the pace of the Allied advance in the second half of 1944 and one defect of Montgomery's grab for Arnhem. The last phase of the war revealed the importance (consistently underrated by both the Germans and the Japanese) of assigning ample numbers of men to the task of supply rather than combat. The ratio of combatants to non-combatants in the German army was two to one; but the equivalent American ratio in the European theatre was one to two. In the Pacific, the Japanese ratio was one to one; the Americans had eighteen non-combatants for every man at the front. As the war came to an end, the United States had nearly as many men under arms as the Soviet Union (around twelve million in each case) but only a minority of Americans were actually engaged in combat."

- Logistics

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"The arch is one of those brilliant innovations... Spanning... with horizontal beams is a losing game. ...By converting all the stress that fractures the middle of... stone beams—technically tension—into compression on stone piers larger... spaces could be spanned. ...But shift the pressure even slightly off center, and the pillar is likely to collapse. ...In their early incarnations, the limitations of both arch and dome was the ability of craftsmen to shape the stones carefully enough to create blocks precisely in the wedge shapes needed for a particular arch. Despite their mathematical sophistication in most other respects, the architects of antiquity lacked a proper geometric solution to the ideal form of the arch. (It was not until 1675 that the English polymath Robert Hooke described mathematically the shape of an arch loaded in pure compression, that is, with no tension, by showing how it describes an upside-down version of the catenary curve of a hanging chain.) As a result, the only way they could design an arch, and its component stones, was completely by eye, and... such tolerances commanded high prices. Rome overcame this drawback with typical ingenuity, first replacing stones and mortar... and expensive stonecutters with relatively cheap bricklayers. Even more ingeniously, some anonymous Roman builder found how to combine the mortar—in Latin pulvis puteoli—with lime, sand, and gravel to make the first concrete. ...The concrete domes of Rome were not surpassed until the age of steel."

- Catenary

0 likesArchitectureEngineeringMathematics
"Shells under compressive loading investigated under the assumption of perfect properties may be considered to be optimal structures. Their load carrying capacity is significantly larger compared to shells which show deviations in geometry, material behaviour, loading and boundary conditions. ...Unfortunately, comparatively little quantitative information exists about the initial imperfections in actual structures... One possibility to improve this situation is to perform systematic numerical simulations... Classical numerical concepts of the load carrying capacity of imperfect structures focus on the model of a perfect shell configuration and on the analytical estimation of unstable, postcritical equilibrium paths. This was first demonstrated by Koiter, whose postbuckling theory describes the nonlinear static load carrying behaviour of structures in the initial stages of buckling. ...[I]nitial unfavourable imperfections will lead to a reduction in load carrying capacity. This approach has certain restrictions as the results are evaluated by linearisation around the bifurcation point of the perfect shell. For the numerical simulation of the load carrying behaviour of imperfect shells it is commonly assumed that the initial geometric imperfections have the shape of the lowest bifurcation mode of the respective shell. ...In the cases of high imperfection sensitive shells [with] multi-mode-buckling... the lowest bifurcation mode is not always the ”worst” imperfection shape. Recently, a specific concept employing finite element procedures... directly evaluates the ”worst” imperfection shape and [is based upon] analysis of the imperfect shell space."

- Thin-shell structure

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"In an article in the Annales d'u Génie civil, March, 1879, on the “Resistance of Tubes subjected to an External Pressure,” by Théodore Belpaire, an attempt has been made to deduce a new formula for the collapsing strength of tubes. ...The writer ... considers the case of a tube with ends rigidly fixed, and supposes that under an external pressure it changes its form in such a manner that its generatrix becomes the arc of a circle, the centre of which lies on a perpendicular erected in the centre of the generatrix; and, neglecting, the elastic forces due to flexure or elongation of the fibres—which are very small as long as the curvature is slight—he investigates the shearing stresses; these attain their greatest value at the fixed ends. Calling S the greatest shearing stress, p the pressure in pounds per square inch, t the thickness of the tube in inches, L the length of the tube in inches, he deduces the following approximate formula for the external pressure which a given tube can bear with a degree of safety depending on the value attributed to S—viz.:p = \frac{2tS}{L}. { VI.}The writer deduces then a general value S from two experiments made by Fairbairn with elliptical tubes, because the uncertain and variable elements of strength due to the cylindrical form and to homogeneity of the material do not enter here. When the factor of safety in the foregoing equation is to be four, the value of S becomesS = 428,394 \frac{t}{D} - 7,111,550 (\frac{t}{D})^2;...With reference to those cases where the factor of safety exceeded four greatly, the writer claims that the high pressures necessary to produce collapse indicate merely the great increase of strength derived in the particular instances from the uncertain element of circular form."

- Thin-shell structure

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"Shell structures have been constructed since ancient times. The Pantheon in Rome and the in Istanbul are well-known examples. After the Roman times the traditions of domes continued up to the 17th century. Since then they seemed forgotten. Stimulated by the newly developed reinforced concrete and the demand to cover long-spans economically and column free the shell made a comeback in the early 20th century. and Ulrich Finsterwalder designed in 1925 the first thin concrete shell of the modern era, the Zeiss planetarium in Germany. The modern era of shell construction is recognised by the trend towards greater spans and thinner shells. Guided by well-known engineers as , Eduardo Torroja, Anton Tedesko, Nicolas Esquillan, and a blooming period of widespread shell construction took place between 1950 and 1970. Shell construction suddenly vanished at the end of the 1970s, mainly caused by the high costs [relative] to other structural systems. Moreover, inflexible usability and uncertainties in the structural behaviour of shells and difficulty of proper analysis methods did not help[,] neither did the stylistic identification with the 1950s and 1960s. Today the great era of thin shells is over, however, nowadays natural free-form shapes and blobs attract more and more attention. In addition, recent developments in concrete technology have led to ultra high performance fibre reinforced concrete with revolutionary performance in tension and compression. Eventually this may lead to a revival of the thin concrete shell."

- Thin-shell structure

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"Now what got me into shells... was a building in South America... and it absolutely enchanted me. It was in ... a baseball stadium... doubly curved... I saw this thing, and all I'd ever known... the buildings that were being built in those days were boxes, very uninspired things, and here I see this picture, this gorgeous shell... and it just enchanted me. I thought, "My God, what a beautiful structure, but how on earth does it stand up? How did the guy do it?" ..[T]hat is what really made me decide, "I've got to get the answer to this. How is this done?" [T]hat's what set me off on years and years of searching before I finally found a way to do it. ...[W]hen I finally did a building... I searched around into the theory of shells until I understood the theory... [T]hen I started looking for ways of solving these things, and I found out that they did not exist in the... architectural structural engineering profession... [F]ortunately at that time... we had here a very huge aerospace industry, and I had friends at Lockheed... I got in touch with a guy at Lockheed... and they had ways of solving very difficult problems because they were building the rockets... and so I found this way of doing it... [I]t was a very tedious, complex way of doing it, but you would get an actual, true answer... [I]t was done... the same way that it's done today with computers... But you could do it my way... You took two guys... I was one of them... they go through it step by step, and then [periodically]... compare the answer... to make sure that they don't go off. ...You could get an answer. You don't get it down to the forth of fifth decimal... The smallest I could get, chunks of the shell to work with, would be about [a theoretical] 2 feet square... Today, with a computer, you can get down to 2/10 of an inch... But it was such a tedious, horrible way of working that I never used the system again. By then I learned enough that I knew ways of short-cutting that were not as accurate... but that were close enough... [B]y this time I had developed a pretty good feel... and so I'd cut shells in pieces in my mind, put them back together again, and put them in equilibrium... From this, I finally found my way of doing things. ...As far as I know, nobody had ever done it that way... They'd done aerospace stuff this way... but there they'd put ten guys on it, not two. ...Several times I did things that I thought were the first, but I just said that "It's not universally used, or known..." or something like that. ...You're doing something that you're not really aware of yourself, which is, you're developing a very sophisticated, intuitive way of working with these things, where you can just... take them and you can say it doesn't look right... which was the way architecture was done all through the Middle Ages... in fact, in Antiquity... they didn't have engineers, all they had were architects."

- Thin-shell structure

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"The flexible chain, hanging under the action of applied force, will assume a certain shape, namely the catenary if the chain is subjected only to its own weight, or a if the load is uniformly distributed horizontally. Whatever the load, there will be a corresponding shape, and the structural action in all cases is the same; purely tensile forces are transmitted along the centre line of the chain. As Hooke saw in 1675 with his ut pendet continuum flexile, sic stabit contiguum rigidum inversum, ...a hanging chain may be inverted to give a satisfactory arch to carry the same loads, but working in compression rather than tension. The compressive arch, however, if of vanishingly small thickness, would be in unstable equilibrium, and stability is conferred in practice by making the arch ring of finite depth. Now if purely compressive forces, without bending, are to be transmitted from one portion of the arch to the next (as purely tensile forces are transmitted in the chain), then the arch centre line can accept only a single type of loading. Thus a parabolic arch can carry only a uniformly distributed horizontal load (although the magnitude of the load is arbitrary). It is the depth in a real arch which enables the arch to carry wider ranges of loading; a large number of different idealized centre-line arches can be contained within a given practical profile. ...[T]his must be so, or no mediaeval bridge would have survived its decentering."

- Arch

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"The arch is one of those brilliant innovations... Spanning... with horizontal beams is a losing game. ...By converting all the stress that fractures the middle of... stone beams—technically tension—into compression on stone piers larger... spaces could be spanned. ...But shift the pressure even slightly off center, and the pillar is likely to collapse. ...In their early incarnations, the limitations of both arch and dome was the ability of craftsmen to shape the stones carefully enough to create blocks precisely in the wedge shapes needed for a particular arch. Despite their mathematical sophistication in most other respects, the architects of antiquity lacked a proper geometric solution to the ideal form of the arch. (It was not until 1675 that the English polymath Robert Hooke described mathematically the shape of an arch loaded in pure compression, that is, with no tension, by showing how it describes an upside-down version of the catenary curve of a hanging chain.) As a result, the only way they could design an arch, and its component stones, was completely by eye, and... such tolerances commanded high prices. Rome overcame this drawback with typical ingenuity, first replacing stones and mortar... and expensive stonecutters with relatively cheap bricklayers. Even more ingeniously, some anonymous Roman builder found how to combine the mortar—in Latin pulvis puteoli—with lime, sand, and gravel to make the first concrete. ...The concrete domes of Rome were not surpassed until the age of steel."

- Arch

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"French architects and engineers in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries occupied themselves a good deal with roofs with curved ribs, and two systems of constructing the rib were worked out. In the most modern of them, that invented by Colonel Emy, the ribs were constructed of a series of thicknesses of bent timber, one on the back of another, and held together by bolts. In the older system that of Philibert de l'Orme, the ribs were also built up, but the pieces composing them are placed side by side, and either form a polygon approaching a semicircle or are cut to bring them to a curve.&bnsp;thumb|Bourse de commerce (dome of the Paris Corn Market)In fact, the ribs are very much such as... used for the great dome of the Paris Corn Market. There is, however, a great difference between a dome—the strongest of all forms—and one permitting the introduction of as many rings of ties as may be desired; and a roof over an ordinary oblong space, where no such binding together is admissible, and where straight rafters may have to be used, which loads the rib at certain points only. In the latter case, a good many precautions have, generally speaking, to be taken to prevent the rib from being unequally loaded, and so either spreading or losing its shape in some other way. The rib made of unbent timber, side by side, on De l'Orme's plan, is admitted to be stronger than the one made of bent timbers laid one on the back of the other; but both have been largely used, and good examples of both may be met with, even if we confine ourselves to English ones alone, and leave the French ones unnoticed. thumb|Chatsworth - Great Conservatory in the 19th centuryA very fine roof with ribs, one on which the load (though light) is borne without a rafter solely by the rib, is the one erected over the great conservatory built by His Grace the Duke of Devonshire, at Chatsworth. ...It consists of a wide and lofty central portion, with a kind of broad aisle at the sides, roofed at a lower level. The central roof here is of the section of a pointed arch and hipped at both ends, and is entirely covered with glass. It is carried by timber ribs, and the glazing is on the ridge and furrow principle. The low aisle referred to forms to some extent an abutment for the ribs, and the ridge-and-furrow glazing helps, no doubt, to fortify them, but still the greater part of the strength is derived from the ribs themselves."

- Arch

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"[A]long with the order, the architecture of Rome had inherited from the Etruscans the arch, despised and rejected by the Greeks... It was probably the child of the bricklayer, who has no other means of bridging an opening; at least we find it first in alluvial Mesopotamia, where the Chaldees, who had no stone to build with, raised their great pyramids and built their palaces of bricks, and where the Assyrian conquerors who appropriated their civilization and art, as the Romans did the Greek, adopted it from them and used it on a great scale. Born in the oriental brick-fields, it came to the Greeks with all the associations of ignoble material, profane uses, and hated sponsors. Every influence of religious association, conservatism, and respect for the Egyptian example, from which they had learned much, bound them to their trabeated style. Still more, the instinct for harmony of form which dominated both Egyptians and Greeks could but warn them that the use of the arch not only implied a change of their constructive system, but was at war with their whole architectural scheme of lines, proportions, and monumental effect. Even as late as the time of , after long subjection of Greece to Roman control, the arcaded conduit to the at Athens seems to show the persistent resistance of Greek workmen on their own soil to the very principle of the arch, for the arches are cut through solid slabs of stone instead of being built up in the fashion of the true arch."

- Arch

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"Three Lemmas which present no difficulty are given and demonstrated [by James Bernoulli]: I. Des Fibres de même matière et de même largeur, ou épaisseur, tirées ou pressées par la même force, s'étendent ou se compriment proportionellement à leurs longueurs. [Fibers of the same material and of the same width, or thickness, drawn or pressed by the same force, extend or compress proportionally to their lengths.] II. Des Fibres homogènes et de même longueur, mais de différentes largeurs ou épaisseurs, s'étendent ou se compriment également par des forces proportionelles à leurs largeurs. [Fibers homogeneous and of the same length, but of different widths or thicknesses, extend or are also compressed by forces proportional to their widths.] III. Des Fibres homogènes de même longueur et largeur, mais chargées de différens poids, ne s'étendent ni se compriment pas proportionellement à ces poids; mais l'extension ou la compression causée par le plus grand poids, est à l'extension ou à la compression causée par le plus petit, en moindre raison que ce poids—là n'est à celui—ci. [Homogeneous fibers of the same length and width, but charged with different weights, neither extend nor compress proportionally to these weights; but the extension or the compression caused by the greatest weight, is to the extension or to the compression caused by the smaller, in less reason...]"

- A History of the Theory of Elasticity and of the Strength of Materials

0 likesElasticity (physics)EngineeringHistory of physicsMaterials sciencePhysics books
"Sir Isaac Newton : Optics or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions and Colours of Light. 1717. ...The Query [XXXIst, termed 'Elective Attractions,'] commences by suggesting that the attractive powers of small particles of bodies may be capable of producing the great part of the phenomena of nature:—For it is well known that bodies act one upon another by the attractions of gravity, magnetism and electricity; and these instances shew the tenor and course of nature, and make it not improbable, but that there may be more attractive powers than these. For nature is very consonant and conformable to herself. ... The parts of all homogeneal hard bodies, which fully touch one another, stick together very strongly. And for explaining how this may be, some have invented hooked atoms, which is begging the question; and others tell us, that bodies are glued together by Rest: that is, by an occult quality, or rather by nothing: and others, that they stick together by conspiring motions, that is by relative Rest among themselves. I had rather infer from their cohesion, that their particles attract one another by some force, which in immediate contact is exceeding strong, at small distances performs the chemical operations above-mentioned, and reaches not far from the particles with any sensible effect."

- A History of the Theory of Elasticity and of the Strength of Materials

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"Riccati states la mia novella sentenza [my new sentence]... Every deformation is produced by forza viva and this force is proportional to the deformation produced. ...The forza viva spent in producing a deformation remains in the strained body in the form of forza morta; it is stored up in the compressed fibres. Riccati comes to this conclusion after asking whether the forza viva so applied could be destroyed? That... he denies, making use strangely enough of the argument from design, a metaphysical conception such as he has told us ought not to be introduced into physics!La Natura anderebbe successivamente languendo, e la materia diverrebbe col lungo girare de' secoli una massa pigra, ed informe fornita soltanto d' impenetrabilità, e d' inerzia, e spogliata passo passo di quella forza (conciossiachè in ogni tempo una notabil porzione se ne distrugge) la quale in quantità, ed in misura era stata dal sommo Facitore sin dall' origine delle cose ad essa addostata per ridurre il presente Universo ad un ben concertato Sistema. [Nature would then be languishing, and matter would become a lazy, unformed mass with the long passage of centuries, and only provided impenetrability, and inertia, and stripped step by step of that force (because at any time a notable portion destroys it) which in quantity, and to an extent had been from the supreme Authority since the origin of the things, subjected to, in order to reduce the present Universe to a well-organized System.]"

- A History of the Theory of Elasticity and of the Strength of Materials

0 likesElasticity (physics)EngineeringHistory of physicsMaterials sciencePhysics books
"[In an Oct. 20, 1742 letter, Daniel Bernoulli] suggests for Euler's consideration the case of a beam with clamped ends, but states that the only manner in which he has himself found a solution of this "idea generalissima elasticarum" is "per methodum isoperimetricorum." He assumes the "vis viva potentialis laminae elasticae insita" must be a minimum, and thus obtains a differential equation of the fourth order, which he has not solved, and so cannot yet shew that this "aequatio ordinaria elasticae" is general.Ew. reflectiren ein wenig darauf ob man nicht konne sine interventu vectis die curvaturam immediate ex principiis mechanicis deduciren. Sonsten exprimire ich die vim vivam potentialem laminae elasticae naturaliter rectae et incurvatae durch \int ds/R^2, sumendo elementum ds pro constante et indicando radium osculi per R. Da Niemand die methodum isoperimetricorum so weit perfectionniret als Sie, werden Sic dieses problema, quo requiritur ut \int ds/R^2 faciat minimum, gar leicht solviren. [Ew. reflect a little on whether one can not deduce the curvature of the bar directly from the principles of mechanics. In the first place I express the actual elastic laminar potential, naturally right and yet curving, by \int ds/R^2, summing the element ds per constant radius of curvature R. Since no one has perfected the isoperimetric method as much as You, So this problem, which requires that \int ds/R^2 be minimum, might be easily solved.]"

- A History of the Theory of Elasticity and of the Strength of Materials

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"RECOMMENDATION 6: Ferrocement in Disaster Relief. After fires, floods, droughts, and earthquakes... [t]ransportation is often disrupted... Supplies of bulky conventional building materials may be stranded outside the disaster area, whereas the basic ingredients of ferrocement may be available on the site or easily transported. The versatility of ferrocement also reduces logistical supply problems: wire mesh, cement, sand, and water can be substituted for the metal used for roofing, woods or plastic for shelters and clinics, asphalt for helipads, steel for bridges, and so on. Moreover, most ferrocement structures, though built for an emergency, will last long after the emergency is over. ...[F]errocement could be used at a disaster site for many purposes: Transport facilities, from simple boats to barges, docks, marinas, helipads, and simple floating bridges or short footbridges as well as road repairs. ...Food-storage facilities, quickly designed to local needs and quickly built, to preserve emergency food supplies. ...Emergency shelters such as, for example, the quonset type of roof, which is easy to erect and highly efficient. ..Public health facilities, such as latrines and clinics, built with ferrocement roofs and stucco-type walls of the same wire mesh and mortar. ...[C]adres of ferrocement workers could be trained in emergency applications and the supervision of local laborers at the disaster site."

- Ferrocement

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"“Right on the border of Burma and Thailand, there are landmines like you wouldn’t believe,” he says. These landmines leave many residents as amputees, residents who “would typically never see a prosthesis because of [the] fitting and time it would take.” Armed with Physionetics’ technology and good will, Johnson went to Burma and fitted two amputees with the printed arms. “We donated them,” he says. “All I had to do is go out there, show them how it was fit, and within an hour and a half, we had them on these two guys.” Stories like this are what drive Summit to continue his quest for a “self-use viral app for developing countries” that can create prosthetics. “There will simply never be enough prosthetists to meet their needs.” This isn’t his dream for the future; he thinks it’s a scientific possibility now. And he strongly disagrees that the materials 3-D printing can handle aren’t strong enough to work as limbs. He points out that, “the [human] bones that we have are not as strong as titanium,” a material used in many prosthetic limbs. “When you have great flexibility of geometry, as we do with 3-D printing, you can overcome what strength you don’t have,” Summit says. He says he’s found a way to overcome this strength barrier by creating a hollow prosthetic, then filling it with a lattice structure, similar to the construction of a bird’s bone. “Nature’s been doing this for a long time,” he says."

- Prosthesis

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"Stories of lives devastated by conflict or disease are all too common across low-income countries. Lack of an arm or leg can be tough anywhere, but for people in poorer parts of the planet, with so much less support and more rickety infrastructure, it is especially challenging. Some are victims of conflict, others were born with congenitall conditions. Many more are injured on roads, the casualty toll soaring in low-income nations even as it plummets in wealthier ones. Every minute, 20 people are seriously injured worldwide in road crashes. In Kenya, half the patients on surgical wards have road injuries. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates there are about 30 million people like Nhial and Lam who require prosthetic limbs, braces, or other mobility devices. These can be simple to make and inexpensive. As one veteran prosthetist told me, his specialism is among the most instantly gratifying areas of medicine. “A patient comes in on Monday on crutches that leave them unable to carry anything. By Wednesday they are walking on a new leg and on Friday they leave with their life transformed.” Yet more than eight in 10 of those people needing mobility devices do not have them. They take a lot of work and expertise to produce and fit, and the WHO says there is a shortage of 40,000 trained prosthetists in poorer countries. There is also the time and cost to patients, who may have to travel long distances for treatment that can take five days—to assess need, produce a prosthesis and fit it to the residual limb. The result is that unglamorous items such as braces and artificial limbs are among the most-needed devices to assist lives. Yet, as in so many other areas, technology may be hurtling to the rescue, this time in the shape of 3-D printing."

- Prosthesis

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"For a long time the history of prosthetics has been inextricably linked with the history of war, and thus of men. After World War II, when soldiers were returning from the battlefield, there was a collective anxiety about whether they’d be able to re-enter their families and workplaces. Many people wanted soldiers to come back, and for everything to go back to normal. But an amputation was a physical reminder that things were not the same. “Physicians, therapists, psychologists, and ordinary citizens alike often regarded veterans as men whose recent amputation was physical proof of emasculation or general incompetence, or else a kind of monstrous de-familiarization of the 'normal' male body,” writes the professor David Serlin in the book Artificial Parts, Practical Lives. Serlin describes the ways in which the media and the military talked about these soldiers, pushing for them to be seen as “normal” in the eyes of the public. In 1946, the comic Gasoline Alley featured a man named Bix whose prosthetic lets him be a “normal American guy.” The comic shows Bix stocking shelves, and features a very surprised boss who exclaims, “I didn’t expect he’d be perfectly normal”—before hiring the man on the spot. Professional photographs taken at Walter Reed Army hospital depicted men with prosthetic devices doing “normal” male activities like lighting a cigarette and reading the sports page, their prosthetic legs adorned with “tattoos” of pinup girls."

- Prosthesis

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"In a 2013 interview with The New York Times, De Oliveira Barata described her work on prosthetics as outside of engineering or medicine—the industries with which artificial limb-making are typically associated. “Making an alternative limb is like entering a child’s imagination and playing with their alter ego,” she said. “You’re trying to find the essence of the person.” She works with clients to figure out how they want to look. “It’s their choice of how to complete their body—whether that means having a realistic match or something from an unexplored imagination,” she told The Times. These sculptures aren’t accessible to everyone. Wright says she would love a custom leg, but it’s out of reach for her. “I’ve inquired about getting one,” she told me, “but it’s very ex-pensive! Crazy expensive.” Depending on what the limbs are made of, they can cost anywhere from $4,600 to $21,000. But even if not every amputee gets or wants a spike leg or a feathery suit of armor or even the curved cheetah leg, the fact that people see these alternative bodies out in the world seems to have helped push a cultural shift in how people think about normalcy. That is, at least, in Western nations. In many countries, the stigma against disability and amputation remains. In the United States, Mullins says that today’s kids don’t question her normalcy the way her peers once did, they don’t see her as disabled at all. “They see a rebuilt body as something powerful. If I’m walking around in carbon fiber or titanium or bionics, standing on a street corner, and some little kid is walking by, they presume power. They want to know if I can fly, how fast I can run.”"

- Prosthesis

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"The earliest known prosthesis, dating possibly as far back as 950 B.C., was discovered in Cairo on the mummified body of an ancient Egyptian noblewoman. The prosthesis is made largely of wood, molded and stained, its components bound together with leather thread. It is, as prostheses go, tiny. Because it is a toe. The prosthetic digit—the oldest little piggy in the world—is extraordinarily lifelike, its curved nail sunken into a similarly curved bed. Which is, in its way, remarkable. A toe! One that is several thousand years old! And it's not just a toe-sized peg—a little device that would have made mobility more manageable for someone who was, by reasons of birth or amputation, missing her big toe. The prosthesis is, as much as it possibly could be, humanoid: maximally lifelike and maximally toe-like. The "Cairo Toe," as it's been dubbed, is prosthetic and cosmetic at once—evidence not just of ancient manufacturing stepping in where biology was limited, but of manufacturing engaging in an ancient form of biomimcry. Compare the Cairo Toe to today's prostheses, many of which—especially those that dominate the public imagination—seem to be inspired less by "man," and more by the Bionic Man. The blades. The hooks. The exoskeletons. This week alone has brought news of a roboticized prosthetic hand that, possibly inspired by the workings of the claw crane, foregoes five fingers for three. It has brought news of a woman who created her own prosthetic leg ... out of LEGOs. Those stories come as part of a flood of coverage of the next generation of prostheses, in which technologies from adjacent fields—3D-printing, robotics, chemistry—are helping humans to transcend nature's narrow definition of humanity."

- Prosthesis

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"One of the earliest written references to prosthetics is found in a book published in France in 1579. That year, French surgeon Ambrose Pare (1510–1590) published his complete works, part of which described some of the artificial limbs he fitted on his amputees. As a military surgeon, Paré had re-moved many a soldier's shattered arm or leg, and he eventually began designing and building artificial limbs to help the men who had been maimed. Ambroise Paré was the official royal surgeon to four successive kings, and earned his position by practicing medicine on the battlefield, attempting to save, or at least treat, wounded soldiers. As a doctor, he was most disturbed by the reaction of some of the people whom he had saved. He found that some soldiers took their own lives rather than live without limbs, or with terrible wounds. To try to combat this problem, Paré began crafting artificial limbs. This was not new. There is evidence for the use of prostheses from the times of the ancient Egyptians. Prostheses were developed for function, cosmetic appearance and a psycho-spiritual sense of wholeness. Amputation was often feared more than death in some cultures. It was believed that it not only affected the amputee on earth, but also in the afterlife. The ablated limbs were buried and then disinterred and reburied at the time of the amputee’s death so the amputee could be whole for eternal life. One of the earliest examples comes from the 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt in the reign of Amenhotep II in the fifteenth century B.C. A mummy in the Cairo Museum has clearly had the great toe of the right foot amputated and replaced with a prosthesis manufactured from leather and wood. The first true rehabilitation aids that could be recognised as prostheses were made during the civilisations of Greece and Rome. During this period, prostheses for battle and hiding deformity were heavy, crude devices made of available materials—wood, metal and leather. Records of ancient prosthesis can be found all over the world."

- Prosthesis

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"In China, King-his Tse, invented in the 500 b. C. a flying magpie of wood and bam-boo, and a wooden horse able to jump. Around year 200 B.C., Philo of Byzantium, inventor of the repetitive catapult, constructed an aquatic robot. In 206 B.C., the first Han Emperor found the Chin Shih Hueng Ti's treasure. It included a mechanical toy orchestra that moved independently. In old Greece, Archytas of Tarento (referenced in [English]] as Archytas of Tarentum, and in some references in Spanish as Architas de Tarento), philosopher, mathematician and contemporary politician of Plato, considered the father of mechanical engineering and precursory of the robotics, in-vented the [w:Screw|screw]] and the pulley, among other many devices. The materials used for the construction of robots were wood (parts with form), iron (fixed structure, supports, hinges), copper (which is mouldable and allowed the construction of thinner parts), leather (cables, footwear) and fabrics. The first models used the application of direct force to make movements, facilitated with sets of pulleys, gears and handles. In this phase the robots were replicas of the human being that made a series of simple movements. The machines began assuming tasks of aid to the man and ended up repelling their conception of the world and animated beings. The mechanics affected the study of nature, spreading to the anatomy science; of which agreed models with that conception were elaborated, such as “De Humani Corporis Fabrica” (On the workings of the human body) from Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) who conceived the man as a complex mechanical structure."

- Prosthesis

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"For the first time, artificial limbs were being mass-produced in response to the enormous number of casualties in World War One. In the US, the Walter Reed Army Hospital produced a large number of artificial limbs for the returning veterans. This example is of a welding attachment and other tools integrated into the limbs for amputees to return to work after the war. It wasn’t all work, however. Also in the collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, USA, is an attachment for playing baseball. The Walter Reed Army Hospital is still a centre for artificial limb production in the US, 100 years later. The technology continued to develop after WW1. DW Dorrance invented the split hook artificial hand shortly before World War I. It became popular with labourers after the war who were able to return to work using the attachment because of its ability to grip and manipulate objects. It’s one of the few designs that have remained relatively unchanged over the past century. Dorrance demonstrated its multi-functionality in the 1930s by driving a car using the arm. In the UK, Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton, became a centre for manufacturing artificial limbs in the World War Two. It opened in 1939. In its first year, 10,987 war pensioners attended the centre, with an additional 16,251 limbs being sent by post. At the outbreak of war, the factory was expanded because of the realisation that 40,000 UK servicemen had lost limbs in WW1. However in WW2 there was around half the number of amputees. As Leon Gillis, QMH Consultant Surgeon from 1943-1967, observed, advances in surgical techniques, treatment of infections and the availability of blood transfusion after WW1 all reduced the need for amputation."

- Prosthesis

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"During World War II (1939 to 1945), improved shock management and antibiotics saved lives but resulted in 3475 upper limb amputees in the US (9). The huge demand for artificial limbs led to the creation of a US Committee on Prosthetics Research and Development in 1945 and the Canadian Association of Prosthetics and Orthotics in 1955. The thalidomide tragedy (1958 to 1962) resulted in the birth of many children with shortened limbs, further driving demand and investment for improved prosthetics. In 1948, the Bowden cable body-powered prosthesis was introduced, replacing bulky straps with a sleek, sturdy cable. Despite new materials and improved craftsmanship, today’s body-powered prostheses are essentially adaptations of the Bowden design. Durable, portable and relatively affordable, body-powered prostheses allow the user an impressive range of motion, speed and force in operating a terminal device – most commonly a two-pronged hook – by changing the tension in a cable via preserved shoulder and body movements. The ability to use both hands simultaneously, rather than requiring a healthy hand to control the prosthesis, permits the user to complete tasks more efficiently. Furthermore, by sensing cable tension, the amputee is able to predict and adjust the position of the prosthesis without visual feedback. Although prolonged wearing can be uncomfortable, complicated motor tasks are limited and appearance is not human-like, body-powered prostheses are widely used"

- Prosthesis

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"Outwards from London, Glasgow, Amsterdam and Hamburg there radiated the lines - shipping lines, railway lines, telegraph lines - that were the sinews of Western imperial power. Regular steamships connected the great commercial centres to every corner of the globe. They criss-crossed the oceans; they plied its great lakes; they chugged up and down its navigable rivers. At the ports where they loaded and unloaded their passengers and cargoes, there were railway stations, and from these emanated the second great network of the Victorian age: the iron rails, along which ran rhythmically, in accordance with scrupulously detailed timetables, a clunking cavalcade of steam trains. A third network, of copper and rubber rather than iron, enabled the rapid telegraphic communication of orders of all kinds: orders to be obeyed by imperial functionaries, orders to be filled by overseas merchants - even holy orders could use the telegraph to communicate with the thousands of missionaries earnestly disseminating West European creeds and ancillary beneficial knowledge to the heathen. These networks bound the world together as never before, seeming to 'annihilate distance' and thereby creating truly global markets for commodities, manufactures, labour and capital. In turn, it was these markets that peopled the prairies of the American Mid-West and the steppe of Siberia, grew rubber in Malaya and tea in Ceylon, bred sheep in Queensland and cattle in the pampas, dug diamonds from the pipes of Kimberley and gold from the rich seams of the Rand."

- Electrical telegraph

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"There is nothing of greater interest connected with the Durham furnace than the manufacture of iron stove plates and their artistic embellishments. ...[T]he manufacture of iron stoves, for heating of buildings, was begun at the furnace about 1741, when controlled by George Taylor, James Logan and James Morgan, father of General , iron master. These were called the "Adam and Eve" stoves from the figures, cast on them. ...In 1745, the furnace began casting the famous "Franklin Stove," or fire-place, and continued until it blew out, 1793. They were favorably received and with minor improvements, extensively manufactured. It was the first stove made that could be utilized for baking and cooking, having an extra door above the fuel door, a plate the whole length of the stove and a descending flue the same as the Prince Rupert stove, 1678, cast in England. It was improved, 1754, by a door on one side. This was known as the Philadelphia pattern, though smaller in size. The Franklin sold at £4. 6s, each at the furnace, and at Philadelphia £18 per ton, the price varying with the metal. About 1775, a stove pattern, artistically decorated with a bony skeleton inscribed on the center of the side plates, grasping a bone in one hand in the act of striking a man, near the end of the plate, while another figure on rear end of plate is standing in a frightened attitude looking on the unequal battle. Beneath the figures is the following inscription:HIR. FEIT. MIT. MIR. DER. BITER. TOTER. BRINCT. MICH.INTOTS. NO.A free translation of this Swedish-German is "Here (man) presumes to fight with me, bitter death, but he cannot overcome death.""

- Fireplace

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"2. Most of these old-fashioned chimneys in towns and cities have been, of late years, reduced to the second sort mentioned, by building jambs within them, narrowing the hearth, and making a low arch or breast. It is strange, methinks, that though chimneys have been so long in use, their construction should be so little understood till lately, that no workman pretended to make one which should always carry off all smoke, but a chimney-cloth was looked upon as essential to a chimney. This improvement, however, by small openings and low breasts, has been made in our days; and success in the first experiments has brought it into general use in cities, so that almost all new chimneys are now made of that sort, and much fewer bricks will make a stack of chimneys now than formerly. An improvement so lately made may give us room to believe, that still farther improvements may be found to remedy the inconveniences yet remaining. For these new chimneys, though they keep rooms generally free from smoke, and, the opening being contracted, will allow the [house] door to be shut, yet, the funnel still requiring a considerable quantity of air, it rushes in at every crevice so strongly, as to make a continual whistling or howling; and it is very uncomfortable, as well as dangerous, to sit against any such crevice. Many colds are caught from this cause only, it being safer to sit in the open street; for then the pores do all close together, and the air does not strike so sharply against any particular part of the body."

- Fireplace

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"4. The Holland iron stove, which has a flue proceeding from the top, and a small iron door opening into the room, comes next to be considered. Its conveniences are, that it makes a room all over warm; for, the chimney being wholly closed except the flue of the stove, very little air is required to supply that, and therefore not much rushes in at crevices, or at the door when it is opened. Little fuel serves, the heat being almost all saved; for it rays out almost equally from the four sides, the bottom, and the top, into the room , and presently warms the air around it, which, being rarefied, rises to the ceiling, and its place is supplied by the lower air of the room, which flows gradually towards the stove, and is there warmed, and rises in its turn, so that there is a continual circulation till all the air in the room is warmed. The air, too, is gradually changed, by the stove-door's being in the room, through which part of it is continually passing, and that makes these stoves wholesomer, or at least pleasanter than the German stoves... But... There is no sight of the fire... When the room is warm, people, not seeing the fire, are apt to forget supplying it with fuel... The change of air is not carried on quite quick enough; so that, if any smoke or ill smell happens in the room, it is a long time before it is discharged. For these reasons the Holland stove has not obtained much among the English (who love the sight of the fire) unless in some workshops..."

- Fireplace

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"Its advantages above the common fire-places are, 1. That your whole room is equally warmed, so that people need not crowd so close round the fire, but may sit near the window, and have the benefit of the light for reading, writing, needlework, &c. They may sit with comfort in any part of the room... 2. If you sit near the fire, you have not that cold draft of uncomfortable air nipping your back and heels, as when before common fires, by which many catch cold, being scorched before, and... froze behind. 3. If you sit against a crevice, there is not that sharp draft of cold air playing on you, as in rooms where there are fires in the common way; by which many catch cold, whence proceed coughs, catarrhs, tooth-aches, fevers, pleurisies, and many other diseases. 4. In case of sickness, they make most excellent nursing-rooms; as they constantly supply a sufficiency of fresh air, so warmed at the same time as to be no way inconvenient or dangerous. A small one does well in a chamber; and, the chimneys being fitted for it, it may be removed from one room to another, as occasion requires, and fixed in half an hour. The equal temper, too, and warmth of the air of the room, is thought to be particularly advantageous in some distempers... 5. In common chimneys, the strongest heat from the fire, which is upwards, goes directly up the chimney, and is lost; and there is such a strong draft into the chimney, that not only the upright heat, but also the back, sides, and downward heats are carried up the chimney by that draft of air; and the warmth given before the fire, by the rays that strike out towards the room, is continually driven back, crowded into the chimney, and carried up by the same draft of air. But here the upright heat strikes and heats the top plate, which warms the air above it, and that comes into the room. The heat likewise, which the fire communicates to the sides, back, bottom, and air-box, is all brought into the room; for you will find a constant current of warm air coming out of the chimney corner into the room. Hold a candle just under the mantel-piece, or breast of your chimney, and you will see the flame bent outwards; by laying a piece of smoking paper on the hearth, on either side, you may see how the current of air moves, and where it tends, for it will turn and carry the smoke with it. 6. Thus, as very little of the heat is lost, when this fire-place is used, much less wood will serve you, which is a considerable advantage where wood is dear. 7. When you burn candles near this fire-place, you will find that the flame burns quite upright, and does not blare and run the tallow down, by drawing towards the chimney, as against common fires. 8. This fire-place cures most smoky chimneys, and thereby preserves both the eyes and furniture. 9. It prevents the fouling of chimneys; much of the lint and dust that contributes to foul a chimney being, by the low arch, obliged to pass through the flame, where it is consumed. Then, less wood being burnt, there is less smoke made. Again, the shutter, or trap-bellows, soon blowing the wood into a flame, the same wood does not yield so much smoke as if burnt in a common chimney; for, as soon as flame begins, smoke in proportion ceases. 10. And, if a chimney should be foul, it is much less likely to take fire. If it should take fire, it is easily stifled and extinguished. 11. A fire may be very speedily made in this fire-place by the help of the shutter, or trap-bellows... 12. A fire may be soon extinguished by closing it with the shutter before, and turning the register behind, which will stifle it, and the brands will remain ready to rekindle. 13. The room being once warm, the warmth may be retained in it all night. 14. And lastly, the fire is so secured at night, that not one spark can fly out into the room to do damage."

- Fireplace

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"Dr. Franklin, in 1785, published "Observations on the Cause and Cure of Smoky Chimneys." He has very satisfactorily explained all the usual causes of this defect, and shown their remedies. To this pamphlet succeeded the "Essay" of Count Rumford, in 1796, whose improvements in the construction of fire-places have been very generally adopted. These two works together, form a valuable body of information. They are well known to the public, but it is not so generally known, that exactly a hundred years ago, viz. in the year 1715, Dr. Desagulier published his book, entitled "Fires Improved, being a new method of Building Chimneys, so as to prevent their smoking, &c." which is a translation of a still older work from the French of M. Gauger, which shows that the most, if not all, the principles pointed out by Count Rumford were understood, and are explained by M. Gauger. He also proposed seven different constructions of chimneys, in which there are hollow cavities made by iron plates in the back[,] jambs and hearth, through which plates the heat passing warms the air in those cavities, which is continually coming into the room fresh and warm. This construction had many obvious advantages; but the expense and difficulty attending it, at that early period, discouraged the propagation of the invention. In our own times, however, similar constructions have been brought forward as new, probably without the knowledge of what had been done so long before, and therefore with all the merit of invention."

- Fireplace

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"In 1678, Prince Rupert invented a fire-place, so contrived that the draught took a downward direction before entering the flue, as shown in Fig. 18, in which... x is a wall built at a distance of 10 inches from the back of the hearth recess, and carried up to the mantel, where it is terminated by the wall x, thus completely closing all communication between the flue and the room. An opening, a, is made in this wall, 10 inches high, and of the same width as the length of the grate, and its sill is 2 inches above the top rib of the grate. Fixed within the chimney is a plate of iron, i, placed perpendicularly, so as to divide it into two equal parts. To the upper edge of this plate is hinged an iron door, c, as long as the chimney is wide, and this door can be brought into the position c, or into that indicated by the dotted lines at e. The fuel grate stands on the hearth, and is placed nearly in a line with the wall of the room. At the back of the ash-pit is a brick that closes the aperture through which the soot is removed. When the fire is first lighted, the smoke door, c, is pushed back, and when the draught is once established, this door is drawn forward, and the smoke being thus prevented from flowing upwards, reverberates downwards, and passes the lower edge of the division plate, i, and rises between it and the back of the hearth into the chimney flue. In boisterous weather, or with such a fire-place, in an upper room, where the chimney is short, another iron door, r, is hung under the edge of the mantel, in front of the fire-place, and extending the whole width of the opening. Its breadth varies according to circumstances, but it is made so as to reach within 2 inches of the upper bar of the fire-grate, when hanging in the position shown by the dotted lines at s. This converts the fire into a furnace, and the room will, in such case, be "warmer than it would be with a fire four times the size made in a common cradell." When the smoke flows regularly through the aperture, a, this door is thrown back out of use, as at r. In some cases, the ordinary fire-board or fire-cloth was used instead of this door."

- Fireplace

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"The history of science may be described as the breaking down, and the crumbling away, of artificially constructed barriers. All the great men of science have been famous wall-breakers. ...It is worthy to remark that the central conception of the alchemists ...was the unity of natural phenomena. ...[T]heir arguments would be somewhat as follows—Plants grow from seeds ...animals become larger, stronger, and more complete ...the plant may well be called more perfect than the seed, and the full grown animal more perfect than the immature ...both plants and animals grow, come to their prime, and decay; and there are degrees of perfection in the animal and vegetable worlds. Now—we may suppose the argument of the alchemist... minerals and metals and all inanimate things should grow, and change, from less perfect to more perfect forms; as there are degrees of perfectness and dignity in among all living things, so... among all things; some metals disappear in acrid liquids, and... are... easily worn away, they are readily melted and burnt to ; but some other metals are not swallowed up by corrosive liquids, nor... worn away with ease, nor readily changed in fire; there are evidently noble and base metals, perfect and imperfect metals; and as the less perfect seed... produces the more perfect plant... rendered yet more perfect by cultivation, so the imperfect metals change slowly into... more perfect, and this... can be hastened by man's art and devices. ...[L]iving things are more perfect that inanimate things ...[M]uch more must changes from immature to mature forms be constantly proceeding from dead things like minerals and metals ...[I]t is probable that the plasticity of the minerals and metals will be greater ...hence ...it will be a comparatively easy thing to grow a noble metal like gold from ignoble metals like and copper, although it is impossible to change one kind of animal into another or one sort of plant into another ... A vague conception of the unity of nature... led to little accurate knowledge..; all that could be done was to perform a vast number of inaccurate and incomplete experiments, and to state the results in loose and slipshod language of the vague but sonorous hypothesis which prompted the experiments. And so although the hypothesis postulated the unity of nature there was no unity in the experimental results... collected to support the hypothesis. ...A man who sets out to discover what is must endeavour to put aside all his notions of what ought to be; it is only when he has gained a solid foundation of verified and accurate facts that he may venture to make a definite guess concerning the cause ...but unless he makes clearly stated guesses ...scientific hypotheses—he will remain a mere collector of half facts ..."

- Metal

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"RECOMMENDATION 6: Ferrocement in Disaster Relief. After fires, floods, droughts, and earthquakes... [t]ransportation is often disrupted... Supplies of bulky conventional building materials may be stranded outside the disaster area, whereas the basic ingredients of ferrocement may be available on the site or easily transported. The versatility of ferrocement also reduces logistical supply problems: wire mesh, cement, sand, and water can be substituted for the metal used for roofing, woods or plastic for shelters and clinics, asphalt for helipads, steel for bridges, and so on. Moreover, most ferrocement structures, though built for an emergency, will last long after the emergency is over. ...[F]errocement could be used at a disaster site for many purposes: Transport facilities, from simple boats to barges, docks, marinas, helipads, and simple floating bridges or short footbridges as well as road repairs. ...Food-storage facilities, quickly designed to local needs and quickly built, to preserve emergency food supplies. ...Emergency shelters such as, for example, the quonset type of roof, which is easy to erect and highly efficient. ..Public health facilities, such as latrines and clinics, built with ferrocement roofs and stucco-type walls of the same wire mesh and mortar. ...[C]adres of ferrocement workers could be trained in emergency applications and the supervision of local laborers at the disaster site."

- Metal

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"The groups from [wood distillation] are 1. s; formic to caproic, especially . Also, furoic, angelic, s, and valerolactone. For different woods, the total acid, calculated as acetic acid, varies between 4.3 and 6.8[%]... In vacuum distillation... formic acid may be... as high as 35[%] of the acetic acid, but in ordinary distillation at atmospheric pressure, it varies from 10-20[%] of the acetic acid. Only these two acids appear to be formed in appreciable amounts. 2. Alcohols; especially and , but also isoamyl and isobutyl alcohols, and buten-3-ol-2. The content is usually... 1.3-2[%]. 3. Esters; formed by interaction of the above acids and alcohols. 4. Ketones; ... and... its homologs... [plus] small quantities of , methyl cyclopentanone, and . The acetone is not a primary [distillation] product... but is formed secondarily from the acetic acid... homologs of acetone have a similar history. 5. Aldehydes; , , methylal and dimethyl acetal, valeric aldehyde, and methyl furfural. The pentosans are... the source of the furfural and other... homologs of furan... 6. Phenols and phenol methyl ethers [only about 1 percent of the wood distilled], mostly s of di- and tris. ...These substances come largely from the . 7. [< 0.2 percent of the total] , methyl amine, and methyl pyridine... 8. , , melene, etc. 9. es; the yields of , and vary with the maximum temperature of distillation, but at 350-400° the yields from s are about 8, 4 and 1.5[%], respectively. 10. Water; the yield... varies... 22.3-27.8[%]. 11. '. ...30-45[%] ...depending on the wood, and on the maximum temperature."

- Pyrolysis

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