|
Charles Fox (engineer, Born 1810)
Sir Charles Fox (11 March 1810 – 11 June 1874) was an English civil engineer and contractor. His work focused on railways, railway stations and bridges. Biography Born in Derby in 1810, he was the youngest of five sons of Dr Francis Fox. Initially trained to follow his father's career, he abandoned medical training at the age of 19 and became articled to John Ericsson of Liverpool, working with him and John Braithwaite on the '' Novelty'' locomotive, which he drove in the Rainhill trials on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. He acquired a taste for locomotive driving and was employed on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, being present at its opening. In 1830 Fox married Mary, second daughter of Joseph Brookhouse, by whom he had 3 sons and a daughter – two of them becoming the engineers Francis Fox and Charles Douglas Fox. Railways One of his earliest inventions, patented in 1832, was railway points, which superseded the sliding rail used up to that time. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derby
Derby ( ) is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby gained city status in 1977, the population size has increased by 5.1%, from around 248,800 in 2011 to 261,400 in 2021. Derby was settled by Romans, who established the town of Derventio, later captured by the Anglo-Saxons, and later still by the Vikings, who made their town of one of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw. Initially a market town, Derby grew rapidly in the industrial era. Home to Lombe's Mill, an early British factory, Derby has a claim to be one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution. It contains the southern part of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. With the arrival of the railways in the 19th century, Derby became a centre of the British rail industry. Derby is a centre for advanced transport manufactur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renfrew
Renfrew (; sco, Renfrew; gd, Rinn Friù) is a town west of Glasgow in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. It is the historic county town of Renfrewshire. Called the "Cradle of the Royal Stewarts" for its early link with Scotland's former royal house, Renfrew gained royal burgh status in 1397. As the county town, Renfrew once was a centre of local government for the surrounding area. Whilst the county remained known as "Renfrewshire", the focus of local government gradually shifted from Renfrew to its larger neighbour Paisley. Following the reorganisation of 1996, Renfrewshire was divided for local government purposes into three modern council areas: Renfrewshire, with considerably smaller boundaries than the old county, including Renfrew and with its administrative centre at Paisley; Inverclyde with its centre at Greenock, covering the western part of the county; and East Renfrewshire, with its centre at Giffnock. The boundaries of the historic County of Renfrew remain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smethwick
Smethwick () is an industrial town in Sandwell, West Midlands, England. It lies west of Birmingham city centre. Historically it was in Staffordshire. In 2019, the ward of Smethwick had an estimated population of 15,246, while the wider built-up area subdivision has a population of 53,653. History It was suggested that the name Smethwick meant "smiths' place of work", but a more recent interpretation has suggested the name means "the settlement on the smooth land". Smethwick was recorded in the Domesday Book as ''Smedeuuich'', the ''d'' in this spelling being the Anglo-Saxon letter eth. Until the end of the 18th century it was an outlying hamlet of the south Staffordshire village of Harborne. Harborne became part of the county borough of Birmingham and thus transferred from Staffordshire to Warwickshire in 1891, leaving Smethwick in the County of Staffordshire. The world's oldest working engine, the Smethwick Engine, made by Boulton & Watt, originally stood near Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in ''Principles of Biology'' (1864) after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book ''On the Origin of Species''. The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism. Riggenbach, Jeff (24 April 2011The Real William Graham Sumner, Mises Institute. Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolutionism, evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, literature, astronomy, biology, sociology, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain (often the Royal Institution, Ri or RI) is an organisation for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, including Henry Cavendish and its first president, George Finch. Its foundational principles were diffusing the knowledge of, and facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements, as well as enhancing the application of science to the common purposes of life (including through teaching, courses of philosophical lectures, and experiments). Much of the Institution's initial funding and the initial proposal for its founding were given by the Society for Bettering the Conditions and Improving the Comforts of the Poor, under the guidance of philanthropist Sir Thomas Bernard and American-born British scientist Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. Since its founding it has been based at 21 Albemarle Street ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skew Arch
A skew arch (also known as an oblique arch) is a method of construction that enables an arch bridge to span an obstacle at some angle other than a right angle. This results in the faces of the arch not being perpendicular to its abutments and its plan view being a parallelogram, rather than the rectangle that is the plan view of a regular, or "square" arch. In the case of a masonry skew arch, the construction requires precise stonecutting, as the cuts do not form right angles, but once the principles were fully understood in the early 19th century, it became considerably easier and cheaper to build a skew arch of brick. The problem of building skew arch masonry bridges was addressed by a number of early civil engineers and mathematicians, including Giovanni Barbara (1726), William Chapman (1787), Benjamin Outram (1798), Peter Nicholson (1828), George Stephenson (1830), Edward Sang (1835), Charles Fox (1836), George W. Buck (1839) and William Froude (''c.'' 1844). History ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Euston Railway Station
Euston railway station ( ; also known as London Euston) is a central London railway terminus in the London Borough of Camden, managed by Network Rail. It is the southern terminus of the West Coast Main Line, the UK's busiest inter-city railway. Euston is the eleventh-busiest station in Britain and the country's busiest inter-city passenger terminal, being the gateway from London to the West Midlands, North West England, North Wales and Scotland. Intercity express passenger services are operated by Avanti West Coast and overnight services to Scotland are provided by the Caledonian Sleeper. London Northwestern Railway and London Overground provide regional and commuter services. Trains run from Euston to the major cities of Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. It is also the mainline station for services to and through to for connecting ferries to Dublin. Local suburban services from Euston are run by London Overground via the Watford DC Line which runs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Camden Town
Camden Town (), often shortened to Camden, is a district of northwest London, England, north of Charing Cross. Historically in Middlesex, it is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Camden, and identified in the London Plan as one of 34 major centres in Greater London. Laid out as a residential district from 1791 and originally part of the manor of Kentish Town and the parish of St Pancras, Camden Town became an important location during the early development of the railways, which reinforced its position on the London canal network. The area's industrial economic base has been replaced by service industries such as retail, tourism and entertainment. The area now hosts street markets and music venues that are strongly associated with alternative culture. History Toponymy Camden Town is named after Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden. His earldom was styled after his estate, Camden Place near Chislehurst in Kent (now in the London Borough of Bromley), formerly o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London And Birmingham Railway
The London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom, in operation from 1833 to 1846, when it became part of the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR). The railway line which the company opened in 1838, between London and Birmingham, was the first intercity line to be built into London. It is now the southern section of the West Coast Main Line. The line was engineered by Robert Stephenson. It started at Euston Station in London, went north-west to Rugby, where it turned west to Coventry and on to Birmingham. It terminated at Curzon Street Station, which it shared with the Grand Junction Railway (GJR), whose adjacent platforms gave an interchange with full connectivity (with through carriages) between Liverpool, Manchester and London. History Early plans The railway engineer John Rennie proposed a railway line from London to Birmingham in 1823, and formed a company to build it by a route through Oxford and Banbury, a route later taken by t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Stephenson
Robert Stephenson Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS HFRSE FRSA Doctor of Civil Law, DCL (16 October 1803 – 12 October 1859) was an English civil engineer and designer of locomotives. The only son of George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways", he built on the achievements of his father. Robert has been called the greatest engineer of the 19th century. Life Robert was born in Willington Quay near Wallsend, Northumberland, the son of George Stephenson and his wife, Frances Henderson. The family moved to Killingworth, where Robert was taught at the local village school. Robert attended the middle-class Percy Street Academy in Newcastle and at the age of fifteen was apprenticed to the mining engineer Nicholas Wood. He left before he had completed his three years to help his father survey the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Robert spent six months at Edinburgh University before working for three years as a mining engineer in Colombia. When he returned his father was building t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denbigh Hall Bridge On The London And Birmingham Railway
Denbigh (; cy, Dinbych; ) is a market town and a community in Denbighshire, Wales. Formerly, the county town, the Welsh name translates to "Little Fortress"; a reference to its historic castle. Denbigh lies near the Clwydian Hills. History Denbigh Castle, together with its town walls, was built in 1282 by order of King Edward I. The Burgess Gate, whose twin towers adorn the symbol on Denbigh's civic seal, was once the main entrance into the town. The first borough charter was granted to Denbigh in 1290, when the town was still contained within the old town walls. It was the centre of the Marcher Lordship of Denbigh. The town was involved in the revolt of Madog ap Llywelyn in 1294–1295; the castle was captured in the autumn, and on 11 November 1294 a relieving force was defeated by the Welsh rebels. The town was recaptured by Edward I in December. Denbigh was also burnt in 1400 during the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr. During the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487), the town w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
