James Mark McGinnis BarrFull name as listed in (May 18, 1871December 15, 1950) was an electrical engineer,

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

, inventor, and

polymath A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific pro ...

known for proposing the standard notation for the

golden ratio In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities a and b with a > b > 0, where the Greek letter phi ( ...

. Born in America, but with English citizenship, Barr lived in both London and New York City at different times of his life. Though remembered primarily for his contributions to abstract mathematics, Barr put much of his efforts over the years into the design of machines, including calculating machines. He won a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle for an extremely accurate

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an in ...

machine.

Life

Barr was born in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, the son of Charles B. Barr and Ann M'Ginnis. He was educated in London, then worked for the

Westinghouse Electric Company Westinghouse Electric Company LLC is an American nuclear power company formed in 1999 from the nuclear power division of the original Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It offers nuclear products and services to utilities internationally, includi ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

from 1887 to 1890. He started there as a draughtsman before becoming a laboratory assistant, and later an erection engineer. For two years in the early 1890s, he worked in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

at the journal ''Electrical World'' as an assistant editor, at the same time studying chemistry at the

New York City College of Technology The New York City College of Technology (City Tech) is a public college in New York City. Founded in 1946, it is the City University of New York's college of technology. History City Tech was founded in 1946 as The New York State Institute of ...

, and by 1900, he had worked with both

Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla ( ; ,"Tesla"
''

Mihajlo Pupin Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin ( sr-Cyrl, Михајло Идворски Пупин, ; 4 October 1858Although Pupin's birth year is sometimes given as 1854 (and Serbia and Montenegro issued a postage stamp in 2004 to commemorate the 150th anniversary o ...

in New York. However, he was known among acquaintances for his low opinion of

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

. Returning to London in 1892, he studied physics and electrical engineering at the City and Guilds of London Technical College for three years. From 1896 to 1900, he worked for Linotype in England, and from 1900 to 1904, he worked as a technical advisor to Trevor Williams in London. Beginning in 1902, he was elected to the Small Screw Gauge Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The committee was set up to put into practice the system of

British Association screw threads British Association screw threads, or BA screw threads, are a set of small screw threads, the largest being 0BA at 6 mm diameter. They were, and to some extent still are, used for miniature instruments and modelling. They are unusual in that ...

, which had been settled on but not implemented in 1884. More broadly, it was tasked with considering "the whole question of standardisation of engineering materials, tools, and machinery". In January 1916, Barr was given charge of a school for machinists in London, intended to supply workers to a nearby factory for

machine gun A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) ar ...

s for the war effort; the school closed that June, as the factory was unable to take on the new workers at the expected rate. In the early 1920s, Barr was a frequent visitor to Alfred North Whitehead in Chelsea, London, but by 1924, he had moved back to New York.

Hamlin Garland Hannibal Hamlin Garland (September 14, 1860 – March 4, 1940) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, short story writer, Georgist, and psychical researcher. He is best known for his fiction involving hard-working Midwestern farmers. Biogra ...

writes that, "after thirty years in London", Barr returned to America "in order that his young sons might become citizens". Garland quotes Barr as saying that, for him, "to abandon America would be an act of treason". In 1924,

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

invited Whitehead to join its faculty, with the financial backing of

Henry Osborn Taylor Henry Osborn Taylor (December 5, 1856 – April 13, 1941) was an American historian and legal scholar. Career Taylor graduated from Harvard University in 1878 and, later, from Columbia Law School. He later received honorary degrees from Harvar ...

. Barr, a friend of both Whitehead and Taylor, served as an intermediary in the preparations for this move. Whitehead, in subsequent letters to his son

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...

in 1924 and 1925, writes of Barr's struggles to sell the design for one of his calculating machines to an unnamed large American company. In the 1925 letter, Whitehead writes that Barr's son Stephen was staying with him while Barr and his wife Mabel visited

Elyria, Ohio Elyria ( ) is a city in the Greater Cleveland metropolitan statistical area and the county seat of Lorain County, Ohio, Lorain County, Ohio, United States, located at the forks of the Black River (Ohio), Black River in Northeast Ohio 23 miles sou ...

, to oversee a test build of the device. However, by 1927, Barr and Whitehead had fallen out, Whitehead writing to North (amid much complaint about Barr's character) that he was "very doubtful whether he will keep his post at the business school here"; Barr was a "research assistant in finance" at Harvard Business School around this time. Barr joined the Century Association in 1925, and in his later life it "became practically his home". He died in

The Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

in 1950.

Contributions

Machining

At Linotype, Barr improved punch-cutting machines by substituting ball bearings for oil lubrication to achieve a more precise fit, and using

tractrix In geometry, a tractrix (; plural: tractrices) is the curve along which an object moves, under the influence of friction, when pulled on a horizontal plane by a line segment attached to a pulling point (the ''tractor'') that moves at a right ...

-shaped sleeves to distribute wear uniformly. In an 1896 publication in ''The Electrical Review'' on calculating the dimensions of a

ball race A ball is a round object (usually spherical, but can sometimes be ovoid) with several uses. It is used in ball games, where the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked or thrown by players. Balls can also be used f ...

, Barr credits the bicycle industry for stimulating development of the perfectly spherical steel balls needed in this application. The punch-cutters he worked on were, essentially,

pantograph A pantograph (, from their original use for copying writing) is a mechanical linkage connected in a manner based on parallelograms so that the movement of one pen, in tracing an image, produces identical movements in a second pen. If a line dr ...

s that could engrave copies of given shapes (the outlines of letters or characters) as three-dimensional objects at a much smaller scale (the punches used to shape each letter in hot metal typesetting). Between 1900 and 1902, with Linotype managers

Arthur Pollen Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen (13 September 1866 – 28 January 1937) was an English journalist, businessman, and commentator on naval affairs who devised a new computerised fire-control system for use on battleships prior to the First World W ...

and William Henry Lock, Barr also designed pantographs operating on a very different scale, calculating aim for

naval artillery Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare and then subsequently used for shore bombardment and anti-aircraft roles. The term generally refers to tube-launched projectile-firing weapons and exclude ...

based on the positions, headings, and speeds of the firing ship and its target.

Golden ratio

Barr was a friend of

William Schooling Sir William Schooling (16 December 1860 – 18 February 1936) was a British expert on insurance and statistics. He was named a CBE in the 1918 Birthday Honours and a KBE in 1920 for his work with the War Savings Committee. Schooling was the edit ...

, and worked with him in exploiting the properties of the golden ratio to develop arithmetic

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

s suitable for mechanical calculators. According to Theodore Andrea Cook, Barr gave the

the name of

phi Phi (; uppercase Φ, lowercase φ or ϕ; grc, ϕεῖ ''pheî'' ; Modern Greek: ''fi'' ) is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In Archaic and Classical Greek (c. 9th century BC to 4th century BC), it represented an aspirated voicele ...

(ϕ). Cook wrote that Barr chose ϕ by analogy to the use of for the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, and because it is the first Greek letter in the name of the ancient sculptor

Phidias Phidias or Pheidias (; grc, Φειδίας, ''Pheidias''; 480 – 430 BC) was a Greek sculptor, painter, and architect. His Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Phidias also designed the stat ...

. Although

Martin Gardner Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of Lew ...

later wrote that Phidias was chosen because he was "believed to have used the golden proportion frequently in his sculpture", Barr himself denied this, writing in his paper "Parameters of beauty" that he doubted Phidias used the golden ratio. Schooling communicated some of his discoveries with Barr to Cook after seeing an article by Cook about

phyllotaxis In botany, phyllotaxis () or phyllotaxy is the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem. Phyllotactic spirals form a distinctive class of patterns in nature. Leaf arrangement The basic arrangements of leaves on a stem are opposite and alterna ...

, the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem, which often approximates the golden ratio. Schooling published his work with Barr later, in 1915, employing the same notation. Barr also published a related work in ''

The Sketch ''The Sketch'' was a British illustrated weekly journal. It ran for 2,989 issues between 1 February 1893 and 17 June 1959. It was published by the Illustrated London News Company and was primarily a society magazine with regular features on ro ...

'' in around 1913, generalizing the Fibonacci numbers to higher-order recurrences.

Other inventions and discoveries

Around 1910, Barr built a lighting apparatus for painter William Nicholson, using filters and reflectors to mix different types of light to produce an "artificial reproduction of daylight". In 1914, as an expert in electricity, he took part in an investigation of

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws ...

phenomena involving Polish medium Stanisława Tomczyk by the

Society for Psychical Research The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to co ...

; however, the results were inconclusive. At some point prior to 1916, Barr was a participant in a business venture to make synthetic rubber from

turpentine Turpentine (which is also called spirit of turpentine, oil of turpentine, terebenthene, terebinthine and (colloquially) turps) is a fluid obtained by the distillation of resin harvested from living trees, mainly pines. Mainly used as a spec ...

by a bacterial process. However, after much effort in relocating the bacterium after exhausting the original supply (a barrel of vinegar from New Jersey), the process ended up being less cost-effective than

natural rubber Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Thailand, Malaysia, and ...

, and the business failed. With Edward George Boulenger of the London Zoo, he built a timer-operated electromechanical

rat trap A rat trap is a trap designed to catch rats. Designs are often larger variations on mousetraps. Types of traps Spring traps for large rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are character ...

. In preparation for a diving expedition to Haiti by

William Beebe Charles William Beebe ( ; July 29, 1877 – June 4, 1962) was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. He is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New York Zoological ...

and the

New York Zoological Society New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...

in early 1927, in which he participated as "physicist, master electrician, and philosopher", Barr helped develop an underwater telephone allowing divers to talk to a support boat, and a brass underwater housing for a motion picture camera.

Selected publications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barr, Mark Golden ratio 1871 births 1950 deaths Scientists from Pennsylvania American electrical engineers 19th-century American inventors 20th-century American inventors English electrical engineers English inventors Engineers from Pennsylvania