My favourite technological American Hero is a name which I cannot remember
at present and I seldom have much success with Google.

It was in the age of early chemical engineering and the manufacture of
sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid was, in the Victorian age, and still is, the
foundation of chemical engineering. From the age of steam the progress of an
industrial country could not advance without great quantities of sulphuric
acid which was usable in the production of a vast range of other chemicals
from fertilisers, explosives, medicines, battery acids, dyes and eventually
micro-processor chips.

The person concerned was the usual ragged-trousers European who arrived
penniless at the shores of America before they took fingerprints. He had
some rudimentary chemical engineering experience obtained probably in France
or Germany where sulphuric acid was already being manufactured in small
quantities.

Manufacture was in small vats made with very pure thick lead. Lead is a
metal relatively impervious to attack from sulphuric acid. But pure lead was
a very expensive metal in those days. It probably still is.

To reduce the exorbitant manufacturing costs of sulphuric acid the person
had the brilliant idea of using ridiculously cheap timber vats painted with
ridiculously cheap coal tar. The whole USA chemical industry immediately
boomed, eventually overtaking Germany, and expanded into all fields making
the USA what it is at present - far and away the World's greatest and
richest industrial nation.

All based on dirt-cheap timber and coal tar. What a pity USA presidents
still have their brains lined with heavy lead, unable to walk and chew gum
at the same time.

Praps someone will remind me of the person's name.
----
Reg.

Why is an AM/FM radio receiver potentially more dangerous than laptop PCs,
gameboys, DVD players, and other electronic devices that are used quite
routinely on airplanes?

The other devices may have circuits that incidentally radiate a little noise
in the aircraft VHF band.
A broadcast FM receiver almost certainly has an oscillator running by
design, in the band.
Where it lands in the aircraft band, is determined by where it's tuned to.

"Reg Edwards" wrote

My favourite technological American Hero is a name which I cannot remember
at present and I seldom have much success with Google.

It was in the age of early chemical engineering and the manufacture of
sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid was, in the Victorian age, and still is,
the
foundation of chemical engineering. From the age of steam the progress of
an
industrial country could not advance without great quantities of sulphuric
acid which was usable in the production of a vast range of other chemicals
from fertilisers, explosives, medicines, battery acids, dyes and
eventually
micro-processor chips.

The person concerned was the usual ragged-trousers European who arrived
penniless at the shores of America before they took fingerprints. He had
some rudimentary chemical engineering experience obtained probably in
France
or Germany where sulphuric acid was already being manufactured in small
quantities.

Manufacture was in small vats made with very pure thick lead. Lead is a
metal relatively impervious to attack from sulphuric acid. But pure lead
was
a very expensive metal in those days. It probably still is.

To reduce the exorbitant manufacturing costs of sulphuric acid the person
had the brilliant idea of using ridiculously cheap timber vats painted
with
ridiculously cheap coal tar. The whole USA chemical industry immediately
boomed, eventually overtaking Germany, and expanded into all fields making
the USA what it is at present - far and away the World's greatest and
richest industrial nation.

All based on dirt-cheap timber and coal tar. What a pity USA presidents
still have their brains lined with heavy lead, unable to walk and chew gum
at the same time.

Praps someone will remind me of the person's name.
----
Reg.

You might enjoy this site, Reg:

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles10...trade-22.shtml

Cheers,

Jack
Va Bch

Reg, G4FGQ wrote:
"Wasn`t Franklin that lunatic who used to walk around hlying kites in
thunderstorms?"

Story is that Ben Franklin (see $100 bill for portrait) was looking
around his house searching for a metal key to use as an attraction for
lightning. (My neighbor says his kids have lost so many tools that his
back yard is struck repeatedly in thunderstorms.) Ben thought he had
mislaid a new key somewhere. When Ben asked his wife for it she told him
to "go fly a kite". So Franklin showed that charge in a cloud was the
same in nature as chsrge in a jar (an early capacitor).

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

"Jack Painter" wrote You might enjoy this site, Reg:

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles10...trade-22.shtml

================================

Jack, I enjoyed the whole site. Thanks for your introduction.

So the production of sulphuric acid began in the USA around the time of the
French Revolution and the guillotine. The very first enterprising production
engineer, John Harrison, who must have been aware of the most serious,
Earth-shaking, consequences of events in Paris, clearly had other more
useful, less destructive yet beneficial, things to think about.

I just love linking unrelated facts together.

But Harrison is not the name of the person on my mind who transformed the
USA chemical industry to one based on sulphuric acid, timber planks and coal
tar. I am under the impression he was of a later generation. Out of the
canal and barge-horse age and into the age of Watt's condensing steam
engine.

But what's in a name anyway?

I sometimes think that the relatively few engineers between 1790 and 1890
performed greater engineering feats than the many who followed them into the
present age of electronic and genetic engineering. They devoted the whole of
their lives to their work.

As for us poor souls, the best we can manage is haggling about imaginary SWR
and conjugate matches which were all sorted out 120 years back. But it's all
good fun.

Cheers, Reg.

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 18:41:40 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:

based on sulphuric acid, timber planks and coal tar

Hi Reggie,

I can see why you would have such trouble with Google in this regard.
The words tar and sulphuric acid would lead to a jillion pages about
creosote production and the words wood and sulphuric acid would lead
to a mega-jillion pages about paper production. I spent a lot of time
spilling H2SO4 on me while measuring the K and Kappa of paper.

Anyway, it seems that lead kiln towers (upwards to 5 stories tall)
were used in acid production well into the mid century:
http://www.ul.ie/~childsp/CinA/Issue...mClassics.html

Some odd facts:
In 1746, John Roebuck established the lead chamber process,

In 1831, the modern Contact Process was patented by Peregrine
Phillips, a British vinegar merchant

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

Reg, G4FGQ wrote:
"My favorite technological American Hero is a name which I cannot
remember at present and I seldom have much success with Google."

The very successful American producer of sulphuric acid shares a name
made famous by an English carpenter who won the prize offered for the
first chronometer or orher means accurate enough to determine one`s
position at sea. John Harrison was that carpenter. His inspired and
determined work is honored at the British National Maritime Museum at
Greenwich. The scientific community would not believe that the carpenter
clod had succeeded, Besides, the instrument didn`t look like a
chronometer. Ir looked more like a pocket watch. So, Harrison was only
able to collect his entire prize after an audience with the king who
agreed he had won. The hing declared: "By God, you shall have your
prize!"

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

Jack Painter wrote:
"Scientists have now shown that blunt-tipped air terminals are attached
by lightning significantly higher frequency than sharp rods are."

I would have expected that sharp-pointed rods would be struck more
often.

My CRC "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" starts its coverage of
"Electricity and Magneyism with a page on Spark Gap Voltages. In every
case for a given breakdown voltage, the gap must be substantially wider
when the electrodes are needle-points than when they are spheres. For
example: With a voltage across the electrodes of 5 KV, the gap space
between needle-points needed to prevent a spark is 0.42 cm. The gap
between 5-cm sphheres is 0.15 cm under the same conditions. Much closer
before sparking points obviously means sharp points engourage breakdown
of the air between the points, while spherical (blunt) spark-gap
electrodes discourage the spark.

It`s been said that if the chsrges dont pile op at the pointed end of a
conductor, it would not have an equipotential surface as is required by
the conductivity ("College Physics" by Franklin Miller, Jr.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

"Richard Harrison" wrote

Jack Painter wrote:
"Scientists have now shown that blunt-tipped air terminals are attached
by lightning significantly higher frequency than sharp rods are."

I would have expected that sharp-pointed rods would be struck more
often.

Hi Richard, yes, you and Ben Franklin agreed on that. Modeling examples you
cited below appear to be incorrect for lightning, similar to how modeling
for ocean waves cannot be done in a bathtub, and even a swimming pool does
not closely replicate the action of waves in a large body of water. The
experiments and the conclusions offered by the blunt-tip lightning rod tests
were peer reviewed, are repeatable, and are being further studied. Their
conclusions describe behavior that was not expected or explainable by
current modeling. However it is easy to rocket-trigger lightning and this is
being done on a daily basis, so a few thousand repeatable findings should
soon arrive at a more permanent conclusion. Whether or not that is
explainable in terms that classroom scientists can model remains to be seen.
An awful lot of engineers have accepted the findings already, and specify
blunt-tip rods on new construction. The same cannot be said about other
questionable and unrepeatable theory such as charge transfer systems and
lightning charge dissipators. Their popularity relies soley on the ability
of snake-oil salesman conning a confused public.

73,
Jack Painter
Virginia Beach, Virginia



My CRC "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" starts its coverage of
"Electricity and Magneyism with a page on Spark Gap Voltages. In every
case for a given breakdown voltage, the gap must be substantially wider
when the electrodes are needle-points than when they are spheres. For
example: With a voltage across the electrodes of 5 KV, the gap space
between needle-points needed to prevent a spark is 0.42 cm. The gap
between 5-cm sphheres is 0.15 cm under the same conditions. Much closer
before sparking points obviously means sharp points engourage breakdown
of the air between the points, while spherical (blunt) spark-gap
electrodes discourage the spark.

It`s been said that if the chsrges dont pile op at the pointed end of a
conductor, it would not have an equipotential surface as is required by
the conductivity ("College Physics" by Franklin Miller, Jr.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

We have to spend so much time during our own time
in education learning the achievements of past heroes, that
perhaps when our own time comes, we are intellectually
exhausted?

Also, "Necessity being the mother of invention" does not feature
when you can buy large quantities of hi-tech sophistication at
bargain-basement prices.

The spirit of enquiry dies.

We can do our bit in the world of Ham Radio by encouraging
our fellows to dabble in the innards of radios (rather than
by visiting the local emporium in order to buy a rice box
and then returning to the emporium when the "snap crackle
and pop" has gone out of it)

"Reg Edwards" wrote in message
...
I sometimes think that the relatively few engineers between 1790 and 1890
performed greater engineering feats than the many who followed them into
the
present age of electronic and genetic engineering. They devoted the whole
of
their lives to their work.