Johannes Kirchmayer

Johannes Kirchmayer also known as John Kirchmayer (March 31, 1860 – November 29, 1930) was one of the leading woodcarvers in the United States, active primarily in the Boston area.
Kirchmayer was born in Oberammergau, Bavaria. After learning sculpture in Germany, he emigrated in 1880 to Boston and took up work mainly in church sculpture. He was a founding member of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts with his work featured in an 1887 exhibition. After 1898, in the employ of Boston furnituremaking and architectural woodworking firm Irving and Casson, he worked on the buildings of the noted American Gothic-revivalist Ralph Adams Cram.
Kirchmayer's notable work around Boston includes carvings in The Church of the Advent, Brimmer Street, Boston; All Saints' Church, Ashmont, Dorchester; the Second Church, Newton; and Unity Church in North Easton. He also designed the mantling of the Anderson Memorial Bridge over the Charles River.
His work outside the Boston area includes carvings in Christ Church Cathedral, Springfield, MA; the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, West 46th Street, New York City; St. Mary's Anglican Church, Windsor, Ontario; the Church of the Saviour, Syracuse, New York; and the James J. Hill House, St. Paul, Minnesota. At $1.00 an hour, he was the highest paid workman on the Hill House construction project. He is also responsible for the carvings at Christ Church Cranbrook and on one door carved images of the craftsmen who worked on the church, including himself.


SS Gasfire

SS "Gasfire" was a British steam collier of the Gas Light and Coke Company (GLCC). She was built in Sunderland in 1936, survived severe damage from being torpedoed in 1940 and was sunk by a mine in the North Sea in 1941.
Building and peacetime service.
In 1936 SP Austin & Son, Ltd at Sunderland on the River Wear built a pair of colliers for the GLCC, completing in May and her sister ship "Gasfire" in October. At more than each they were as large as many ocean-going cargo ships, but they were built for a North Sea coastal route, bringing coal from the Great Northern Coalfield of North East England to the GLCC's Beckton Gas Works on the River Thames.
"Gasfire" had six corrugated furnaces with a combined grate area of that heated two single-ended boilers with a combined heating surface of . These fed steam at 200 lbf/in2 to a three-cylinder triple expansion steam engine built by North East Marine Engineering Co of Newcastle upon Tyne. The engine was rated at 259 NHP and drove a single screw.
The GLCC contracted management of the two ships to Stephenson, Clarke and Associated Companies, which had managed all of the GLCC fleet since before the First World War.
Wartime service.
In the Second World War, "Kriegsmarine" E-boats and U-boats attacked British coastal shipping both by torpedo and by minelaying. Most coasters were slow ships built for economy, and thus easy targets. They were therefore organised into convoys, but at first these had few escorts and scant Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship armament. "Gasfire" sailed in FN and FS series convoys, which stood for "Forth North" and "Forth South". FN convoys assembled off Southend-on-Sea and sailed to Methil on the Firth of Forth; FS convoys did the reverse. From January to October 1940 "Gasfire" made up to three round trips a month between Beckton and the Tyne, leaving each FN convoy and joining each FS convoy off the Tyne Estuary.
Damaged and repaired.
On 17 October 1940 "Gasfire" left Southend with Convoy FN 11. E-boats tended to attack off the coast of East Anglia, in a stretch of sea that British seafarers nicknamed "E-boat Alley". That day north north east of Smith's Knoll off Great Yarmouth an E-boat flotilla consisting of "S-18", "S-24" and "S-27" attacked FN 11. "S-18" sank the coaster and "S-24" sank the French ship . A torpedo fired by "S-27" blew off "Gasfire"'s stern, disabling her and killing 11 crew, but she remained afloat. She was beached at Spurn Head at the mouth of the Humber, and then towed north to the River Wear. There her builder, SP Austin, lifted her out of the water on its pontoon, removed the damage and built a new stern onto her. The repair slightly increased each of her tonnages.
Final voyage and loss.
"Gasfire" returned to service on 3 May 1941. On 21 June she left Southend for the Tyne, sailing with Convoy EC 36 which would continue around Cape Wrath to Oban. Later that day, east of Southwold, she struck a mine and sank. All 26 crew were rescued.
A donkeyman ("i.e." crewman in charge of a donkey engine) from "Gasfire"'s crew, T.A. Umpleby, was awarded the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct and Lloyd's War Medal for Bravery at Sea.


William Unwin

William Cawthorne Unwin FRS (12 December 1838 – 17 March 1933) was a British civil and mechanical engineer. He is noted for his extensive work on hydraulics and engines as well as his close association with William Fairbairn. He is one of only a few men who have served as president of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Unwin served as an engineering advisor to the government during the First World War and was the first recipient of the Kelvin Gold Medal awarded by the Institution of Civil Engineers.
Biography.
William was born to the Reverend William Jordon Unwin and his wife, Eliza, at Coggeshall, Essex. He received an education from the City of London School and studied for a year at New College, St John's Wood, many of the universities being closed to him due to his congregational roots. Having finished his studies he began work for William Fairbairn as a clerk in February 1856. Initially he worked in the Fairbairn Engineering Company testing department carrying out and documenting various structural and material tests.
In 1862 he was appointed to be works manager of the Williamson Brothers engineering works in Kendal where he manufactured water turbines for use in industrial mills. He returned to Fairbairn's as manager of the engine department in 1856, studying in his spare time to gain a bachelor of science degree by 1861. In 1868 he lectured at the school of Marine Engineering and Naval Architecture in London and began a series of five courses on civil engineering for Royal Engineers officers at Brompton Barracks in Kent. Having finished his lectures at Brompton he was appointed to the chair of hydraulic and mechanical engineering at the Royal Indian Engineering College (Coopers Hill) in Surrey in 1872. He remained there for twelve years, also serving as dean of the college.
He published "Elements of Machine Design" in 1877, one of his most famous articles. He also wrote the hydraulics entry for the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1881, an article that was much in demand by engineers of the time and resulted in that part of the Encyclopaedia being much sought after. In 1885 he was appointed professor of civil and mechanical engineering to the City and Guilds College, becoming the first professor of engineering at the University of London when the college was incorporated in 1900, he retired from academic life in 1904. Upon his retirement, W. Ernest Dalby replaced him in the vacated professorial chair.
Between 1890 and 1893 Unwin served as secretary of the commission to install hydroelectric power generators at Niagara Falls for the Niagara Falls Power Company, a scheme which would result in over 75 megawatts of electricity being generated for the town of Buffalo. He was retained by the company as a consulting engineer for the construction phase of the project. In this period he also acted as a consultant on various hydraulic schemes, including projects for the Government of Western Australia, the New Jersey Water Company, Derwent Valley Water Board, the Birmingham reservoirs and Lake Vyrnwy in Powys.
Much of Unwin's work in the 1890s was the testing of engines and boilers initially for coal-fired steam systems but later on internal combustion engines. He also investigated the tensile strength of various alloys using the 100 ton testing equipment at the college. Between 1896 and 1900 he was a member of the Departmental Committee of the Board of Trade investigating the loss of strength in steel rails performing many experiments on behalf of the committee.
He was elected as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in November 1911 and served a one-year term. In 1913 he was made chairman of an Institution of Civil Engineers committee investigating the training of engineers, his professional development scheme remains an integral part of the training program. During the First World War Unwin volunteered his services to the government and served on the Gauge Committee of the Ministry of Munitions; the Metropolitan Munitions Committee and the Munitions Management Board. He served as Presidential Chair of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers between 1915 and 1916.
In 1921 he was the first recipient of the Kelvin Gold Medal. He was regarded by Sir Alexander Kennedy as one of the few professors with a full knowledge of the practical aspects of the profession. Late into his life he remained dedicated to the profession, attending a discussion on impact testing hosted by the Institution of Civil Engineers when he was 82. Unwin died, at his home in Kensington on 17 March 1933.
Honours.
1886 Fellow of the Royal Society

1886 Honorary Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects

1890 Honorary Member of the American Philosophical Society

1890 Honorary Member of the Franklin Institute

1892 President of the Engineering Section of the British Association

1894 Member of the Council of the Royal Society

1896 James Watt Memorial Lecture (topic chosen by Unwin: the life of Gustave-Adolphe Hirn)

1905 Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Edinburgh

Honorary Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers

Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers


Swaged socket

A swage terminal is a product used to terminate wire. A swaging machine is used to terminate the wire. The wire is passed into a deep hole in the swage terminal which is then pressed onto the terminal by applying force. This type of product is used in the architectural and marine industries. There are many companies globally who manufacture swage terminals including Sta-Lok


Hezekiah Bissell

 Hezekiah Bissell (February 27, 1835 - June 23, 1928) was a leading and well known nineteenth century American railroad engineer, civil engineer, and railroad maintenance of way manager for a number of railroads in the Northeastern United States, including the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, Eastern Railroad of Massachusetts, and the Boston & Maine.
Bissell was also part of the effort to build the Union Pacific railroad to Promontory Point, Utah in 1869. Bissell was present at the Golden spike ceremony on May 10, 1869, connecting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. Bissell was also in the Russell and Savage photographs of the same date
Early life and career.
Bissell was born on February 7, 1835, at East Windsor, Hartford County, Connecticut to John Bissell (1796-1872) and Elizabeth McKnight Thompson (1800-1887). He was a graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale College. Bissell first married Alice Hughes (1847-1905) in 1875 and they had three children, Paul Andrews Bissell (1876-1963), John Hughes Bissell (1878-1943) and William Norton Bissell (1878-1977). Alice died in 1905 and Bissell remarried in 1910 to Sigrid Johansen (1878-1918).
Civil War.
In April 1861, Bissell enlisted in the Union Army as part of the 1st Connecticut Infantry Regiment for ninety days. He re-enlisted in the 25th Connecticut Infantry Regiment in November 1861 as a first lieutenant Company "G" in and saw in Louisiana including the Siege of Port Hudson until it was mustered out of service in 1863.
Post bellum career.
Union Pacific Railway Company.
Bissell worked as a surveyor on the Union Pacific Railway from 1864–1869, under Ogden Edwards. In 1868 he supervised the construction of the Dale Creek Bridge in southeastern Wyoming, a challenging feat of engineering at that time. The bridge was the highest bridge along the Union Pacific built to cross the chasm between Sherman Summit in the Laramie Mountains west of Cheyenne and the Laramie Plains.
Bissell remained with the project until its completion at Promontory Point and the Golden Spike event on May 10, 1869.Bissell was also in the Russell and Savage photographs of the same date
In 1904, Bissell was elected a director of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Death and interment.
Bissell died on June 23, 1928, at Pasadena, Los Angeles County, California. He is interred at Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum, Altadena, Los Angeles County, California.


William Miller Christy

William Miller Christy (1778–1858) was an English Quaker hat and textile manufacturer, known also as a banker. He is credited with the invention of the penny receipt-stamp.
Life.
He was the second son of Miller Christy (1748–1820) and Ann Rist. The Christy family had a hat-making business at 35 Gracechurch Street, and Christy himself was apprenticed to a hatter.
The firm developed manufacturing interests in Bermondsey and Stockport, and Christy was a founder of the London Joint Stock Bank. In 1824 he was a founder of Christy, Lloyd & Co, the Stockport and East Cheshire Bank, with Isaac Lloyd and two other partners. The immediate challenge of the panic of 1825 was handled with the support of Hanbury & Co., the bank's London associates.
The bank was sold in 1829, and Christy acquired capital, with which he entered the cotton business, in Stockport and then Droylsden. The enterprise later made a major success of the Christy towel. In 1841 the Christy Bermondsey works was reputedly the largest manufacturer of hats in the world and had 500 employees; silk coverings for hats were made in Stockport, and the factory there had more workers. The business dropped off later in the century, as the beaver hat went out of style.
Family.
Miller married Ann Fell, and they had seven sons and three daughters. The second son was Henry Christy.


Pinecrest station

Pinecrest is a Transitway station in Ottawa, Ontario, that began service on September 6, 2009. The name is due to the station's proximity to Pinecrest Road. On June 9, 2006, Then-Ottawa Mayor Bob Chiarelli announced an extension of the West Transitway that include a 1.8 kilometre stretch of transitway from Bayshore station to Pinecrest Road including the new station and located near the road previously served as a regular stop for westbound buses such as route 101.
This is the first phase out of two that will see the West Transitway be connected to the Southwest Transitway. The first phase was expected to be completed by the end of 2006 but was completed in 2009 with work having started during the summer of 2007.
Service.
The following routes serve Pinecrest station as of October 6 2019:


Peter Hubert Desvignes

Peter Hubert Desvignes (Born April 29, 1804 in Constantinople, today Istanbul; died December 27, 1883 at Hither Green (today Lewisham), Kent, England) was a civil engineer, architect, and inventor.
Biography.
Beginning in 1823 he trained under William Atkinson at the Royal Academy in London. While a student he was awarded, by The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce, the Silver Isis Medal for his drawing of a Corinthian capital, as well as the Silver Palette prize for the drawing of a bust. In 1835 Desvignes took part in the architectural contest for the design of the Houses of Parliament. In 1836 he met (likely in London) ruling Prince Alois Josef II von und zu Liechtenstein; the following year he moved to Vienna to begin a long stint as architect for the prince. Until 1849 he oversaw the renovation and reconstruction of the Liechtenstein family seat in Austria, the baroque on Schenkenstrasse (today Bankgasse) in Vienna. Desvignes also provided drawings and plans for the Liechtenstein country estate Lednice (in German: Eisgrub) in Moravia, which was renovated and expanded during the same period; among other things, Desvignes was chiefly responsible for the appearance of the glass greenhouse (said to be the earliest cast-iron and glass greenhouse on the continent), which bears some resemblance to Joseph Paxton's greenhouse at the Duke of Devonshire's estate Chatsworth.
Since little is known about his early career in England—the lone documented commission is a stable for a merchant in Liverpool—the city palace of the Liechtenstein family, lavishly renovated and altered at great expense with new, over-the-top neo-rococo interiors and furnishings, is seen as Desvignes' major accomplishment and masterpiece. One of the most costly interior projects of the 19th century in Vienna, it is the earliest—and remains to this day the most important and outstanding—example of rococo-revival architecture in Vienna. Desvignes, working closely with mostly local craftsmen, was responsible for the planning and execution of the rooms and many of their furnishings. A two-story garden pavilion, connected by a bridge to the palace and formerly located on the no longer extant city ramparts is the only documented example of an executed building designed in its entirety by the architect. Over time, the renown of several of the craftsmen he employed for the Liechtenstein project outshone his own. His furniture designs were carried out by the firm of , which at the time had under contract. Thonet also created a series of intricate marquetry floors for the palace. Desvignes supported Thonet for two years and helped him establish himself in business.
Following his long stay in Vienna Desvignes returned to England in 1849 where, despite his many attempts, he was unable to build on the architectural success he had achieved in Vienna. As a young man in 1827 he had developed a so-called "Speiragraph", an early prototype for the spirograph; he evidently continued on with experiments and inventions, and on February 27, 1860 received British patent no. 537 for 28 monocular and stereoscopic variations of cylindrical stroboscopic devices (see zoetrope). He died at his home (the family owned both Hither Green Lodge and Wilderness House in Lewisham) and was buried in the family plot in the churchyard of St. Mary's Church, Lewisham. His collection of paintings was sold at auction on January 17 and April 2, 1885 at Christie, Mason & Woods in London.
Extant work.
—Stadtpalais Liechtenstein, Vienna; interiors and furnishings.

—Schloss Lednice, Moravia; glasshouse.

—A number of drawings for stage sets, strongly reminiscent of Piranesi, came on the market in London in the 1990s; "An elevation of a Design for an Entrance to a Nobleman's Villa" was sold on October 14, 1998 at Christie's in London.

—Furniture has appeared for sale at the Dorotheum, Vienna, including "An unusually large historicist table of round form" likely designed by him in the 2019 sale "Works of Art—Furniture, Sculptures, Glass, and Porcelain", lot 891.

—The "Catalogue of the Designs offered for the New Houses of Parliament now exhibiting in the National Gallery, 1836" includes a description of Desvignes' contest entry; House of Lords Record Office, London.

—Letters, invoices, and photographs in the archives of the ruling Prince of Liechtenstein, Vienna/Vaduz.

Literature.
—Colvin, Howard "A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects", Omnigraphics Inc., London 1995.

—Huey, Michael "Peter Hubert Desvignes und die Neo-Rokoko-Neugestaltung des Stadtpalais Liechtenstein 1837-1849", master's thesis, University of Vienna 1999.

—Kräftner, Johann "Das Stadtpalais der Liechtenstein. Geschichte und Restaurierung des fürstlichen Palais in der Wiener Bankgasse", Brandstätter, Vienna 2015.

—Ottilinger, Eva B. und Lieselotte Hanzl "Kaiserliche Interieurs. Die Wohnkultur des Wiener Hofes im 19. Jahrhundert", Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 1997.

—Witt-Dörring, Christian "Eine Art Offenbarung. Die Neugestaltung der Innenräume des Stadtpalastes Liechtenstein (1837-1848)" in "Parnass", Sonderheft 11/95 (Die Sammlungen des Fürsten von Liechtenstein), Vienna 1995, pp. 72-78.


William Pagan (railway engineer)

William Pagan (1849–1924) was a railway engineer in Queensland, Australia. He designed many railway bridges, some of which are now heritage-listed.
Early life.
William Pagan was born in Holestane, Dumfriesshire, Scotland on 27 July 1849, the son of Allan Cunningham Pagan and his wife Jane (née Shaw).
Railway career.
On 21 January 1882, Pagan was appointed as a District Engineer with the Queensland Railways Department. In 1889 he became the Principal Assistant to the Chief Engineer in Brisbane. He was appointed Chief Engineer in 1902 and then Deputy Commissioner in 1911. In 1915, he transferred to the Townsville division.
Later life.
Pagan retired in 1917 and moved to Southport, Queensland. There he served as an alderman on the Southport Town Council for 5 years.
He died on 9 September 1924 at Southport. He was buried at Southport Cemetery on 11 September 1924.


M-5 motorway (Pakistan)

The M5 (), also known as Multan-Sukkur Motorway, is a north–south motorway in Pakistan, which connects Multan with Sukkur. This motorway is 392 km long and six lanes wide and was built as a part of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
History.
Approval for the Multan-Sukkur Motorway (M-5) was granted in July 2014. In May 2016, the Pakistani government awarded the contract to build this section to China State Construction Engineering, with the completion date being August 2019.
Former Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif inaugurated the motorway on 6 May 2016. Actual ground work started in August 2016. The M5 Motorway project forms a cornerstone of the much-larger China–Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Cost and Financing.
The Sukkur - Multan Motorway (M-5) cost approximately $2.94 billion, with the bulk of financing financed by various Chinese state-owned banks.
90% of the project's cost was financed through concessionary loans on interest rates of 1.6% from China, while the remaining balance is financed by government of Pakistan.
Route.
Starting from Multan the six lane motorway passes through Jalalpur Pirwala, Ahmedpur East, Rahimyar Khan, Sadiqabad, Ubauro and Pano Aqil before it terminates at Sukkur. The project consists of 54 bridges including one major bridge on the river Sutlej. The motorway has 12 service areas, 10 rest areas, 11 interchanges, 10 flyovers, and 426 underpasses. The motorway was inaugurated on 5 November 2019.


Henry Burk

Henry Burk (September 26, 1850 – December 5, 1903) was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania and Philadelphia businessman.
Private life.
Henry Burk was born in Knittlingen, Württemberg, Germany, son of David and Charlotte Reinman Burk; Henry was the fourth child of eight. David, a shoemaker, made the decision to leave Germany because of unacceptable political views. The family emigrated to the United States in 1854 and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Henry attended school only a few years, but then began to work to help his family; he was reputed to have a natural engineering ability. He became a repairer of shoemaking machinery and subsequently engaged in supplying this machinery to the trade. He was engaged in the manufacture of leather and in 1887 invented the alum and sumac tawing process, which revolutionized the tanning industry. The company he founded with his two brothers Alfred E. Burk and Charles D. Burk, Burk Brothers and Company, is now listed as a Registered Historic Place. He also helped to establish a meat packing company in Philadelphia with the same brothers and two others, William and Louis; this company was known variously as Burk Meats and Louis Burk & Co. ("Burk's Franks" were known throughout the Delaware Valley well into the 1950s). He became president of the Manufacturers’ National Association in 1895. He travelled around the world for his leather business, from Europe—visiting his birthplace in 1894—to India.
Family.
Burk married Ellen Carney (1851–1914) on August 18, 1873, in Philadelphia; they had six children: Mary, Charles Henry, Henry Jr., Helen, Gertrude, and Charlotte. Burk was grandfather to character actor Henry Jones (1912–1999), and great-grandfather to actress Jocelyn Jones.
Congress.
Burk was elected in 1901 as a Republican to the 57th Congress and served from March 4, 1901, until his death in Philadelphia.
During the time that Burk served in Congress, the Boer War was raging in South Africa. Burk supported the Boers against the British. However, the United States sold the British preserved meat and hay, as well as mules and other supplies. Burk moved in the House that "mules, remounts, and other supplies be declared contraband", but by this time the war was practically over.


Rigid chain actuator

A rigid chain actuator, known variously as a linear chain actuator, push-pull chain actuator, electric chain actuator or column-forming chain actuator, is a specialized mechanical linear actuator used in window operating, push-pull material handling and lift applications. The actuator is a chain and pinion device that forms an articulated telescoping member to transmit traction and thrust. High-capacity rigid chain lifting columns (jacks) can move dynamic loads exceeding 10 tonnes (US 20,000 pounds) over more than 7 metres (20 feet) of travel.
Principle of operation.
Rigid chain actuators function as rack and pinion linear actuators that use articulated racks. Rigid chain actuators use limited-articulation chains, usually resembling a roller chain, that engage with pinions mounted on a drive shaft within a housing. The links of the actuating member, the “rigid chain”, are articulated in a manner that they deflect from a straight line to one side only. As the pinions spin, the links of the chain are rotated 90 degrees through the housing, which guides and locks the chain into a rigid linear form effective at resisting tension and compression (buckling). Because the actuating member can fold on itself, it can be stored relatively compactly in a storage magazine, either in an overlapping or coiled arrangement. Rigid chain actuators are generally driven by electric motors. Most rigid chains are manufactured from steel.
Use.
Modified roller chain has been used extensively in material handling equipment, but could only be used in push-pull applications when a continuous loop of chain was used (with the exception of chain encapsulated in a guide channel). The development of efficient rigid chain actuators broadened the use of chain actuation for industrial applications. Small scale rigid chain actuators are used as building hardware, incorporated into windows, door and hatches as motorized open/close mechanisms. Rigid chain actuators are also used as the lifting columns in performing arts facilities, incorporated in stage, orchestra and seating platform lift systems.
Increasingly rigid chain systems are being incorporated into scissor lift tables or platform lifts as the method of actuation, replacing hydraulic cylinders. They are also used for production line automation and die changing.
The autoloaders used in Soviet/Russian tanks such as the T-64, T-80, T-72 and T-90 use rigid chain systems to push the two-part ammunition (projectile and propellant) into the tank's gun.
Types.
The primary distinction between types of rigid chain actuator is whether the actuating member is formed from a single chain or from a pair of interlocking chains in a back-to-back arrangement, like a zipper. Interlocking chain actuators have the advantages over single-chain actuators of improved resistance to buckling and that the actuating member does not require lateral restraint at its leading end in order to resist a modicum of transverse loads on any edge of the member. For example, it may function as a relatively stable telescoping pole.
The design of the chain varies significantly depending on application and manufacturer. Variants have been designed to, among other things:
Development.
Rigid chain actuators were developed from “chain rammers” that used a single “ram chain” thrust from a magazine to load heavy-caliber ordnance into the breech of a cannon. Robert Matthews received a US patent for his “Mechanical Rammer” in 1901 which used a roller on the leading end of the chain to guide it and allow thrust without deflection. Developed more than a century ago, his rammer still bears a strong resemblance to many modern rigid chain actuators. In 1908 Oscar Knoch was awarded a US patent for his “Chain Rammer for Guns”. By orienting the folding side of the chain upward his ram chain acted as a self-supporting telescoping beam with negligible sag. Used in this manner the need for a separate guide was eliminated.
An early conception of chain used as a telescoping column instead a horizontal rammer was by Eldridge E. Long, who was awarded a US patent for his “Lifting Jack” in 1933, which he believed was “particularly adapted for use upon automobiles”. It used a double chain configuration, each chain linking solid bearing blocks that were stacked to resist compressive loads. In 1951, Yaichi Hayakawa was awarded a US patent for his “Interlocking Chain Stanchion” which eliminated bearing blocks by integrating the compressive path of force into the interlocking links of two roller-like chains. The zipper action of back-to-back interlocking chains provided guideless chain travel regardless of orientation and path of travel.
In 1941, prior to the double chain configuration, Karl Bender received a US patent for "Compression Resistant Chain" using three interlocking chains. In addition to the back-to-back arrangement of the typical interlocking chain actuator, a third chain was interlocked between the other two at a right angle. Perhaps due to their relative complexity, triple-chain actuators are not common.


John Roger Arnold


Johann Andreas Streicher

Johann Andreas Streicher (13 December 1761 in Stuttgart – 25 May 1833 in Vienna) was a German pianist, composer and piano maker. In 1793 he married Nannette Streicher (1769–1833), another piano maker and the daughter of Augsburg piano maker Johann Andreas Stein. In 1794 they moved to Vienna. From that time Streicher worked as a piano teacher and became increasingly known for his compositions. The Streicher piano-making business provided at least one fortepiano to Beethoven in his early years, of which the composer was fond, writing that it was "too good for me ... because it robs me of the freedom to produce my own tone".


Charles Peccatte

Charles Peccatte (14 October 1850 – 22 October 1918) was a French "Archetier" (bow maker). He was born in Mirecourt, the son of François Peccatte and the nephew of Dominique Peccatte.
He was trained by August Lenoble with whom he later had a partnership which lasted until 1881.
The early work includes very individual bows which can be described as of the Peccatte school but many of which have heads modelled somewhat after the early type of bow by François Tourte.
In the majority of cases Charles Peccatte signed his bows with his name in full, which is also common practice in his uncle and father’s work. He differed, however, by signing his bows on both sides of the stick. To sign the sticks in this manner is quite unusual in the history of French bow making. There is a possibility that he may have been trying to differentiate himself from his predecessors by doing so.
Charles had a unique way of carving heads. This always gives an incredible impression of strength in comparison to their tiny volume. Yet, the heads of his bows are strong, powerful, yet still complementary to the light, elegant style of that era. His working of the bow sticks left them more rigid, which made them very powerful.
Charles worked for Vuillaume, Voirin and Lenoble, before opening own establishment at Paris, 1908. After the death of his Mother, Charles, freed from his ties with Lenoble, moved into his new home and workshop on the Rue de Valois. Here he moved into a more contemporary style of bow making also using different brand stamp. "His meritorious bows have received consistent acknowledgement from soloists." (Universal Dictionary of Violin and Bow Makers). The chamfer on a Charles Peccatte tends to go a little higher into the throat (or the stick itself) on the audience side of the bow.
The reason for the success of the bows of the Peccatte family is their individuality. All the Peccattes emanated a very strong, robust personality. Charles was no exception, keeping certain family traditions alive, such as the ‘wide’ head model.
The bows Charles made for J.-B. Vuillaume, closely resemble those made by François Nicolas Voirin for Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume.
C. Peccatte won silver medals at the Antwerp and Paris Expositions Universelles in 1885 and 1889 respectively, and was established on his own at 8 rue de Valois, Paris, by 1885.
He is a teacher of Eugène Sartory


Lever arm shock absorber

Lever arm shock absorbers were the first form of hydraulic shock absorber or damper used for car suspension. They appeared in the 1930s and were most commonly used in the 1950s and 1960s, but were replaced by telescopic shock absorbers in the 1970s. One of the earliest patents for a hydraulic lever arm shock absorber was awarded in 1925 to Georges de Ram, who was already an established maker of friction disk shock absorbers.
Hydraulic shock absorbers, invented by Ralph Peo in 1930, appeared as a development to replace the previous friction disks. These had, at best, provided a constant damping force, no matter what the size or speed of the suspension movement. With a viscous device using hydraulic oil, the resistance force increased with speed, so providing better damping for larger suspension bumps.
Rotary vane.
The first hydraulic shock absorbers were of the "rotary vane pattern". These consisted of a cylindrical oil-filled body, bolted to the chassis. A lever arm was attached to the axle and inside the cylinder, this rotated a spindle carrying a vane or paddle. This vane had only a small hole in it, through which the hydraulic oil could pass. Resistance to flow through the hole provided the damping effect.
These were first developed by Maurice Houdaille around 1906, but remained largely ignored in favour of the simpler friction devices for some years.
This type was most common pre-war, although Ferrari continued to use the Houdaille vane-type for Formula One racing cars into the late 1950s.
Lever type.
A post-war development was the lever shock absorber. This had a large cast body containing a cylinder and pistons attached to a similar spindle and lever arm. Some used a pair of pistons for bump and rebound, others used a single double-acting piston. Some, such as the VW Beetle until 1949–1951, had only single-acting shock absorbers, with no rebound damping. Flow of hydraulic oil around the piston took place through valves mounted in the body. Separate valves were provided for each direction, giving the useful feature of a different resistance to bump and rebound. These valves were sometimes easily adjustable from outside the damper body.
Integral wishbones.
Many cars of this period began to use independent front suspension, often a double wishbone. The upper wishbone could conveniently also be used as the lever of the shock absorber, reducing the mass and bulk of the suspension, and also avoiding at least one ball joint. The spindle of the shock absorber now became the upper suspension pivot, usually double-ended.
One of the last mass-production sports cars to still use lever arm shock absorbers was the MG B. This had a lever arm shock absorber as the upper wishbone. A popular handling upgrade in later years was to fit telescopic shock absorbers instead. The lever arm wishbone was still retained, but now as a simple wishbone with no damping.
Obsolescence.
During the 1960s, the lever arm was replaced by the telescopic shock absorber. This was encouraged by better roads and motorways, increasing average speeds and driver expectations of handling. The telescopic shock absorber dissipated heat more effectively, owing to its larger working volume of fluid and also the better ratio of surface area to fluid volume.
About the only area where lever arm shock absorbers still are actively used is tank suspensions, where their compact size and unique geometry allow them to be easily integrated with the suspension's torsion bars, and the massive tank chassis acting as a one huge heatsink alleviates the heat dissipation problems. Some designs of this type of shock absorber lend themselves well to their modification as an active suspension actuators, and at least one modern main battle tank (Russian T-14 Armata) is said to have this type of suspension.


HMS Hebe (J24)

HMS "Hebe" was one of 21 s built for the Royal Navy in the 1930s. Commissioned in 1936, "Hebe" served during World War II, notably taking part in the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940 and then serving in the Mediterranean, carrying out minesweeping operations from Malta. After taking part in several landing operations, including Operations Harpoon and Torch, and the invasion of Pantelleria, "Hebe" was sunk by a mine off Bari in November 1943, with the loss of 37 of the vessel's crew.
Design and description.
The "Halcyon" class was designed as a replacement for the preceding Hunt class and varied in size and propulsion. "Hebe" displaced at standard load and at deep load. The ship had an overall length of , a beam of and a draught of . The ship's complement consisted of 80 officers and ratings.
She was powered by two Parsons geared steam turbines, each driving one shaft, using steam provided by two Admiralty three-drum boilers. The engines produced a total of and gave a maximum speed of . "Hebe" carried a maximum of of fuel oil that gave her a range of at .
"Hebe" was armed with two QF 4-inch (10.2 cm) anti-aircraft guns. She was also equipped with eight machine guns. Later in her career, the rear 4-inch gun mount was removed as were most of the .303 machine guns, while one quadruple mount for Vickers .50 machine guns was added as were up to four single or twin mounts for 20 mm Oerlikon antiaircraft guns. For anti-submarine escort, her minesweeping gear could be exchanged for around 40 depth charges.
Construction and career.
"Hebe" was built at the Devonport Dockyard, being laid down on laid down on 27 April 1936. She was launched on 28 October 1936 and she was commissioned in 1937. Her pennant number was N 24, later J 24. The ship served during the evacuation of Dunkirk, where she rescued 365 officers and men, and sent a gig to rescue Lord Gort on 29 May 1940. She later saw service in the Mediterranean Sea based at Malta as part of 14th/17th Minesweeper Flotilla. She participated in Operation Harpoon (where she was hit by a very long range 152 mm shell fired by the Italian cruiser ), Operation Torch, and the invasion of Pantelleria. She was sunk by a mine off Bari on 22 November 1943. Thirty-seven men from her complement were lost with the ship.


Douglas Oakervee

Douglas Edwin Oakervee FHKIE (born December 1940) is a British civil engineer who is a past chairman of both HS2 and Crossrail, and was the 139th president of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was awarded the CBE in the 2010 Birthday Honours for his contributions to civil engineering.
Early life and education.
He was born in 1940 in northwest London and attended Willesden Technical College.
Civil engineering projects.
In 1991, Oakervee was appointed as project director for the Hong Kong International Airport project, built on a man-made island in the South China Sea. Before that he was the chief tunnel engineer on the Hong Kong mass transit railway project. From 2012 to 2014 he was chairman of the company constructing the High Speed 2 (HS2) railway in England.
HS2 review.
In June 2019, Boris Johnson, then a candidate for the Conservative Party leadership, said he would ask Oakervee to lead a review of the plans for HS2. In August, with Johnson now Prime Minister, the review was announced and terms of reference were published by the Department for Transport. Work was completed in November but its report – known as the Oakervee Review – was not published until February 2020. The report concluded that the original rationale for HS2 was still valid as "there is a need for greater capacity (both more trains on tracks and more seats on trains and reliability on the GB rail network).
Irish Sea tunnel.
In October 2020, it was announced that Sir Peter Hendy would lead an independent review into the feasibility of various projects designed to improve the UK's infrastructure, among them a potential fixed link between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This could take the form of a bridge (referred to as the Irish Sea Bridge) or a tunnel, and investigation of a potential rail tunnel will be undertaken by Oakervee. He observed that the collapse of Flybe had reduced opportunities to fly into Northern Ireland.
References.


Carlos Cat

Carlos Alfredo Cat Vidal (July 2, 1930 - March 28, 2006) was a Uruguayan civil engineer and politician.
A member of the National Party, he served as Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare (1990-1991), President of BROU (1993-1995) and Minister of Housing, Territorial Planning and Environment (2000-2002).
He died in 2006, and is buried at the Central Cemetery of Montevideo.


William M. Goodrich

William Marcellus Goodrich (* 21 July 1777 in Templeton, Worcester County, Massachusetts; † 15 September 1833) was an organ builder in the United States.
Biography.
He was the son of Ebenezer and Beulah Goodridge. His father was a farmer. As a young man, William changed his family name to "Goodrich" and added the middle name "Marcellus". At the age of 21, he began working for Benjamin Crehore, a maker of musical instruments. He duplicated Maelzel's panharmonium and traveled the countryside with that to exhibit it. In 1809 he moved to East Cambridge and established a factory.
His brother Ebenezer Goodrich worked with him for a time, as did his brother-in-law, cabinet maker Thomas Appleton (1785-1872, not to be confused with writer and artist Thomas Appleton). His sister was artist Sarah Goodridge.
Work.
William M. Goodrich of Boston, Massachusetts, was an important American builder of a large number of notable pipe organs from its inception in 1805 until its closure in 1833. Goodrich had a major part in introducing free reeds.
"In June, 1811, Maelzel's Pan Harmonicon was brought to Boston, from Europe, and Mr. Goodrich was employed in putting it up, and in exhibiting it. In September, 1811, it was taken down, and removed to New-York, where it was put up for exhibition. In doing this, also, Mr. Goodrich was employed. It was afterwards removed to other cities;"
"* [...] Most of the dates, contained in this account of his life, were given by Mr. Goodrich to the writer, altogether from memory. It Is possible, therefore, that some portion of them may not be strictly persons, whose inclinations and pursuits corresponded with his own."


Rockfish Gap

Rockfish Gap is a wind gap located in the Blue Ridge Mountains between Charlottesville and Waynesboro, Virginia, United States, through Afton Mountain, which is frequently used to refer to the gap.
Joining the Shenandoah Valley to the Piedmont region of the state, it is the site of the mountain crossing of Interstate 64, U.S. Route 250, and the former Blue Ridge Railroad which later became part of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and is currently part of the CSX line. With an elevation of about , it is one of the lowest gaps between Manassas Gap and the James River. Rockfish Gap lies along a drainage divide between southeast-flowing streams that drain to the James River and northwest-flowing streams in the Shenandoah River system.
The scenic Skyline Drive, which runs north through Shenandoah National Park to Front Royal, and the Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs south to a point near Cherokee, North Carolina, each generally following the mountain ridgetops, meet a short distance north of Rockfish Gap (such that the roadway on the bridge over the gap is actually part of the Blue Ridge Parkway). The Appalachian Trail also passes through the gap.
Geology.
Rockfish Gap is underlain by greenstones of the Catoctin Formation, a late Neoproterozoic geologic unit exposed throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, Maryland, and southern Pennsylvania. Catoctin greenstones were originally erupted as basaltic lava flows 550 to 565 million years ago and later metamorphosed and deformed during the late Paleozoic Alleghenian orogeny (300 to 330 million years ago). Rockfish Gap lies astride a north-northwest trending fracture zone; some fractures are intruded by diabase dikes of Jurassic age. The broken bedrock along this fracture zone is more easily eroded than unfractured bedrock - likely the reason for the formation of the gap at this location.
History.
In the 18th century, early trails used by Native Americans were gradually expanded to accommodate the westward expansion of Virginia colonists. The Three Chopt or Three Notch'd Road had been established in the Colony of Virginia between Richmond and the Shenandoah Valley by the 1740s. Most likely, the road followed an ancient Monacan trail from the village of Orapax (east of Richmond) to the western Shenandoah Valley. This well-planned route required only one major river crossing, the Rivanna at Charlottesville, with inns or taverns spaced about 10 miles apart. By 1782, carriages could cross the Blue Ridge at Rockfish Gap.
In 1818, President of the United States James Monroe, former presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John Marshall joined 24 other dignitaries at a meeting held in the Mountain Top Tavern at Rockfish Gap. Under Jefferson's leadership, they selected nearby Charlottesville as the site of the new University of Virginia.
In 1854, the German landscape artist Edward Beyer, painted a landscape of Rockfish Gap and the Mountain House.
Railroad, highway crossings.
State Chief Engineer Claudius Crozet of the Virginia Board of Public Works oversaw construction of the railroad tunnel under Rockfish Gap in the 1850s as part of the state-owned Blue Ridge Railroad. This tunnel was later used by Confederate General Stonewall Jackson to move his foot cavalry during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign of the American Civil War. The original tunnel was replaced by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway with a new one on a slightly different alignment in the mid-20th century. The railroad is now owned by CSX Transportation and is operated under lease to Buckingham Branch Railroad, a Virginia-based short-line railroad. The old tunnel is still intact, and has been considered for possible re-use as a rail trail or bikeway. In November of 2020 the old tunnel and a short trail running through it were opened to the public.
In the early 20th century, a road which was designated U.S. Route 250 in 1935 was built across the gap. In 1972 and 1973, sections of the new Interstate 64 were completed across Afton Mountain at Rockfish Gap.
Fog, hazardous driving conditions.
Rockfish Gap has been the site of several large multiple vehicle collisions on Interstate 64 during fog conditions on Afton Mountain, which peaks at about 1,915 feet above sea level. In April 1992, there were 2 fatalities in a 60-car pileup. In late April 1998, another wreck involving 65 cars sent 40 people to area hospitals. Less than three weeks later, there was another 18-car crash. Fog was a factor in all three incidents.
Motorists approaching from lower elevations sometimes suddenly encounter a dense fog as they approach the summit of the gap. A lighting system within the pavement to help designate lanes automatically activated by fog sensors was installed by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to improve safety during such weather conditions.


Brent Wadden

Brent Wadden (born 1979, Nova Scotia, Canada) is a painter whose practice centers on fiber, specifically wool and yarn. His work has been compared to that of Sheila Hicks, Anni Albers, and Clyfford Still.
Life and work.
Wadden completed his B.F.A. at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2003, where he studied under the late conceptualist painter Gerald Ferguson.
Known for making abstract geometric weavings with unpredictable graphic lines that reject any predetermined systems, he hopes that they "create some amount of confusion in the viewer which would lead to a fascination with the process." Originally focusing his practice on colorful, tessellated paintings and drawings, in 2010, Wadden began working on a weaving loom. Influenced by the quilts of Gee's Bend, the artist has explained that he avoids thinking "about the boundaries and limitations of what art is or isn't," and often sources his materials, pre-used or second-hand, from Craigslist, eBay, and Kijiji. Imperfect angles, intentionally mismatched panels, varying fibers, and pilled fabric all point to the hand rather than machine labor in the works—he expands on this, commenting: "My work is about patterning, and rhythm, and always making a mistake at some point throughout it." This DIY aesthetic is also reflected in the fact that Wadden has never had formal training with textiles or on the loom. His woven paintings also draw on the histories of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, First Nation and Bauhaus textiles, folk art, and indigenous traditions of art-making (particularly those of his native Nova Scotia), as well as reference current political issues, such as his "Keystone XL rag rug".
The artist's first solo museum exhibition took place in 2018 at Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. His work has also been exhibited at Columbus College of Art and Design, the Rubell Family Collection, Saatchi Gallery, Peres Projects, and the Art Gallery of Alberta, Canada.


Judith Lowe

Judith Ann Lowe is the former deputy chair of the Construction Industry Training Board.
Honours.
She was appointed Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2015 Birthday Honours for services to the construction industry, particularly women in construction.


Spherical bearing

A spherical plain bearing is a bearing that permits angular rotation about a central point in two orthogonal directions (usually within a specified angular limit based on the bearing geometry). Typically these bearings support a rotating shaft in the bore of the inner ring that must move not only rotationally, but also at an angle.
Self-aligning spherical bearings were first used by James Nasmyth around 1840 to support line shaft bearings in mills and machine shops. For long shafts it was impossible to accurately align bearings, even if the shaft was perfectly straight. Nasmyth used brass bearing shells between hemispherical brass cups to align the bearings to self-align.
Construction.
Spherical bearings can be of a hydrostatic or mechanical construction. A spherical bearing by itself consists of an outer ring and an inner ring and a locking feature that makes the inner ring captive within the outer ring in the axial direction only. The outer surface of the inner ring and the inner surface of the outer ring are spherical and are collectively considered the raceway and they slide against each other, either with a lubricant, a maintenance-free (typically polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE) based liner, or they incorporate a rolling element such as a race of ball-bearings, allowing lower friction.
Application.
Spherical bearings are used in countless applications, wherever rotational motion must be allowed to change the alignment of its rotation axis. A good example is the drive axle bearings of a vehicle control arm (or A-arm) suspension. The mechanics of the suspension allow the axle to move up and down (and the wheel to turn in order to steer the vehicle), and the axle bearings must allow the rotational axis of the axle to change without binding. While in practice, spherical bearings are rarely used here, it is a simple concept that illustrates a possible application of a spherical bearing. In fact, spherical bearings are used in smaller sub-components of this type of suspension, for example certain types of constant-velocity joints.
Spherical bearings are used in car suspensions, engines, driveshafts, heavy machinery, sewing machines, robotics and many other applications.


Del Vecchio (guitar maker)

Casa Del Vecchio Ltda. is a traditional guitarmaking company headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil. Since its foundation by Angelo Del Vecchio in 1902, it has produced a wide range of acoustic stringed instruments instruments. In the 1930s, Del Vecchio began producing resonator guitars, resulting in their most famous model: the "Dinâmico," (their trade term for resophonic instruments).
Current range of products manufactured by Del Vecchio includes classical and resonator guitars, banjos, mandolins, cavaquinho, and viola caipiras.
Players.
One of the most famous players of the Del Vecchio Dinâmico resonator guitar was country musician Chet Atkins. Atkins was initially introduced to the instrument by the music of Nato Lima of Los Indios Tabajaras.
On his 1965 RCA Victor album "My Favorite Guitars", Chet Atkins refers to his Dinamico as his "Los Indios Tabajaras" guitar and says that "the lead guitarist...sent his [to Atkins] and got himself another like it in his native land, where they are readily available." Tracks on the album, where Atkins uses the Dynamico, are "Josephine" and "Moon of Manakoora".
Chet Atkins is credited with playing a Del Vecchio lead guitar on the tune "Turn Around" on Nanci Griffith's "Other Voices, Other Rooms". Earl Klugh, a protégé of Chet Atkins, received a Dinâmico from Atkins. Though he enjoyed the sound, he was unimpressed with the quality, eventually asking luthier Paul McGill to build him a refined version.


Lars Trygg

Lars Trygg, woodcarver, (29 May 1929 – 29 June 1999) was one of the recognized masters of 20th century wood carving, most famous for Scandinavian flat-plane style of woodcarving.
Early years.
Trygg was born in Sweden. He was one of three children of Carl Johan Trygg and Maria Axelina Andersson. Lars worked with his father carving wooden figures of various common people in the Scandinavian flat-plane style of woodcarving. He immigrated to Canada with his family in the late 1920s. Between Trygg his father and two brothers (Nils, and Carl Olaf), they carved over 10,000 figures. Many of his carvings were sold to tourists for approximately US$10.00. Adjusted for inflation what cost $10.00 in 1929 would cost $108.05 in 2005.
Return to Sweden.
Carl Johan Trygg and Carl Olof Trygg eventually returned to Sweden, where they continued their careers. Carl Johan died there 1954 and Carl Olaf, based on the dates on his carvings, was producing figures well into the 1980s. It is not clear whether Lars Trygg returned to Sweden or stayed in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The legacy.
Trygg family of woodcarvers.
Trygg family woodcarvings are still sought after today as collectibles. There are over 10,000 carved figures that were manufactured by the members of the Trygg family. Prices range from $50 to $500 depending upon the age, size, and condition of the piece.
Identifying Trygg woodcarvings.
Trygg woodcarvings can be identified by the signatures and dates on the bases.
Signatures commonly found are:
Most of the carvings are dated and include the location carved. For example, you may find a carving with "C.O. Trygg 1961 Sweden" meaning it was carved by Carl Olof Trygg in 1961 while he was living in Sweden.


Star Watch Case Company

The Star Watch Case Company was a manufacturing firm in Ludington, Michigan, from approximately 1905 until it went out of business in 1982. The company designed and manufactured watch cases for Hamilton, Longines, Gruen and Elgin among others who shipped their internal watch mechanisms to Star which would complete final assembly.
The company began making cases for pocket watches, adding wristwatches later. Star also manufactured small mechanical parts for military equipment during World War II.
Products.
The Star Watch Case Company designed, manufactured and assembled watch cases for a plethora of watchmakers. The movements (mechanisms), dials, hands, crystals (glass watch faces), and some of the crowns (buttons used to wind the watch) were made by other vendors and shipped to Star for final assembly. Star's watchmaker clients included Manistee Watch Company, Hamilton, Longines, Elgin, Gruen, Omega and Pulsar.
Until World War I the company manufactured pocket watch cases exclusively. They were available in solid gold, gold filled, sterling silver, rolled nickel-silver or brass. Styles included open face and hunting cases. After the war wristwatch cases were added to the product line.
Early history.
The immediate predecessor of the Star Watch Case Company was a watchmaker in Elgin, Illinois, that was founded in 1898 by Otto A. Starke, Fred Hermann and Alfred W. Church. In 1902 or 1903 a large fire destroyed the Illinois manufacturing facility. The company was well insured, so it was able to recover. There were 27 employees in the bustling business pre-fire. The company changed its name sometime between 1903 and 1905 to the Star Watch Case Company. and incorporated on February 7, 1905. Officers of the new Star Watch Case Company were Otto A. Starke, president; Fred Hermann, vice president; Warren Antoine Cartier, secretary; and Alfred W. Church, treasurer.
Later in 1905 the company moved to Ludington, Michigan. By 1913 it had about 150 employees, which grew to 400 by 1925. The company's (sometimes referred to as Star Watchcase Company) employment reached its peak during World War II at 550 employees. The primary factory building was built in 1905 on South Rath Avenue and was first expanded in 1910. North and south wings were added to the main building in 1920. In 1927, the company added still another enlargement wing for tool and die equipment and machinery. In 1943, the building was further enlarged with the addition of new office space bringing the overall size of the plant to three stories and 70,000 sq. ft.
Employees.
In 1906 in Ludington, the company's key hand engrave was Fritz Baumgartner, assisted by hand engravers Emil Allemann and Otto Starke.

Military.
Pocket watch cases were Star's major product until the United States entered the World War II. Then the factory was converted to making brass compass cases, small weapons components, and submarine parts. During the war, the company's reputation for making quality stainless steel military watch cases and cases for military compasses grew. Additionally, the company manufactured elements of military navigational aids. It also made components for the top secret Norden bombsight, used for accurate airborne bombing.
NASA.
Star Watch Case Company made cases for the Omega Speedmaster Professional, worn by Eugene A. Cernan on a trip to the moon. This watch is commonly referred to as the "Moonwatch." Other similar Star models were worn on various space missions.
Pantograph.
A Star employee, Andrew Hallberg, developed a proprietary pantograph which increased production speed by allowing up to 32 watch backs to be engraved simultaneously. The cutting-edge, mass-production technology was closely guarded from competitors, giving the company an advantage in accelerated watch case production. The concept of a pantograph was first mentioned by Hero of Alexandria almost 2000 years ago. It is a device that can copy and scale, in the instance of Star Watch Case, various engravings on the reverse side of a watch case using the mathematical properties of parallelograms. The Star Watch Case pantograph could engrave up to 32 watch cases at a time, much more efficiently than hand engraving. An actual pantograph used by the company is on display at the Time Museum in White Pine Village in Ludington. The machine was so successful that by 1930 hand engraving of pocket watches become obsolete.
Case grades.
The company used these raw materials for watch cases: gold, silver, nickel, brass, zinc and chrome-plated; most preferred were solid gold or gold-filled. A local Ludington bank held their gold supply (in bars), then the bars were transferred to the factory as needed for melting and manufacturing. The factory held around $200,000 worth of gold at any one time for watch cases of 10, 14, or 18 karats.
Designs and trade marks.
An early popular design was of the battleship USS Maine (ACR-1) bearing the well known slogan - "Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!". The company's trade mark is a five-pointed star and the double-headed eagle. Additional Star trade marks are below:
Demise.

In the 1950s, the beginning of the end of the company surfaced when the Elgin Watch Company decided that a single vendor should not supply more than a third of its needs. Star Watch Case Company was removed from Elgin's supplier list. Two decades later the company was all but out of business. In 1979 it was sold to Société Suisse pour l'Industrie Horlogère. By 1982 the Star Watch Case Company was defunct. All of the company's furnishings and machinery were soon sold. The building was demolished in 1995.


John Birch (luthier)

John Birch (1922 – 6 November 2000) was an English luthier mainly known for his electric guitars. His customers included Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, Brian May of Queen, Manny Charlton of Nazareth, Dave Hill and Jim Lea of Slade, Gerry Shephard of The Glitter Band, Roy Orbison and Nicky Panicci.
Early life and career.
John Birch was born in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom in 1922. He became involved in guitar building as a Royal Air Force officer based in the South Pacific Islands in World War II. Returning to England at the end of the war his interest musically was in collecting Hawaiian Records.
In 1963 he met Basil and Pat Henriques of the "Waikiki Islanders" group, a Hawaiian group formed by Pat's father Bill Cox and his brother Archie in 1937. Birch was, during the '60s, living at 33 Innage Road Northfield and working as a field service engineer for Ampex VTRs.
After a series of experiments with a few joint designs Basil Henriques and Birch (using Henriques' Fender 1000 pedal steel guitar as a testbed) came up with a new pickup design using multiple polepieces and a coil potted in baked epoxy resin. On subsequent BBC "Night Ride" broadcasts and later EMI Abbey Road recordings, the pickups on Basil's guitar proved to be a revolutionary design in both sustain and fidelity. EMI were so impressed with the stereo sound of Basil's guitar that they offered Basil and the Waikiki Islanders a 10-year contract on their Stereo Label "Studio Two Stereo".
At Basil's instigation, John quit his day job and started making pickups for the guitarists in the local Birmingham beat group scene. Much later on (in the late '80s) John was again to use a pedal steel guitar as a testbed, this time for a MIDI pickup system.
Biography.
After the war was over, he came back to Nottingham and started a business modifying existing guitars. Beginning in the 1960s, he mostly worked with Gibsons, an example of which is the white Gibson SG Junior Leslie West of Mountain gave to Tony Iommi (the guitar is currently owned by Greg Dorsett of Rock Stars Guitars). He eventually started building his own guitars. Later he moved his shop/factory to a large house at 106 New Road in Rubery, near Birmingham GB.
Birch started to advertise his parts, pickups, and guitar customization in a magazine called Beat International in the late 1960s. John Diggins saw one of these ads and showed one of his custom guitars to John Birch. Diggins was offered a job and became part of Birch's workshop. Arthur Baker came in as a production manager, breaking down the various jobs around the shop to create an assembly-line-like process. Birch was mainly in charge of electronics and pickup making while Diggins mostly took care of woodworking. There were many other employees through the years, though the roles stayed largely the same.
The very first guitars that were made completely in shop were SG- or Les-Paul-shaped, featured 24-fret fingerboards, and a black or white finish. At first, the fingerboards were Brazilian rosewood, but eventually the expensive and rare Brazilian Rosewood was replaced with more plentiful and cheap maple fingerboards.
The majority of the shop's guitars, like those of most small outfits meeting the demands of players during the British Invasion, were built quickly and on the cheap. John Diggins, however, was a master craftsman and always built top-notch instruments at the shop.
Customers.
Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath came to Birch's shop after having his ideas rejected by the major guitar manufacturers of the time, such as Gibson and Fender. Iommi was looking for someone to make him a guitar with a 24-fret fingerboard and high-power/low-noise pickups. Iommi's red Gibson SG Special received some modification in the form of a re-covered Gibson P-90 in the bridge position and John Birch's own Superflux in the neck position. This guitar is in the Times Square Hard Rock Cafe. In 1975, Birch built Iommi his black 24-fret, cross-inlay SG Special. This was the main guitar used on the albums "Technical Ecstasy", "Never Say Die", "Heaven and Hell", and "Mob Rules". This guitar is now in the Miami Hard Rock Cafe. Around the same time Birch's SG was built, John Diggins also built Iommi's Jaydee SG, which features a custom-wound pickup by Diggins in the bridge position and a standard Biflux in the neck position. The guitar also has peeled and cracked paint due to a rushed finish job. During the "Cross Purposes" tour, the guitar was left in a hot car on a date in Brazil, and the finish bubbled and cracked due to the heat. This guitar was first used for some overdubbing on "Heaven and Hell", but quickly became Iommi's main guitar. The Birch shop also built a guitar for Tony that featured the ability to remove and replace pickups. The pickups plugged through the back into slots which had quick connectors that allowed them to be pulled and replaced easily, and didn't require any soldering. This allowed for more tonal options than any standard guitar, no matter how complex its wiring. Geezer Butler also had some basses made by Birch, one of which can be seen in the music video for Black Sabbath's "Hard Road."
Manny Charlton of Nazareth used John Birch to customise a Gibson Flying-V guitar which he had purchased in Tucson, Arizona during 1976. John Birch added Di Marzio Super Distortion Humbuckers, an out-of-phase switch, Gibson TP-6 fine tuning tailpiece, a flash metal scratch plate and refinished it to a dark sunburst colour. This guitar appears on Nazareth's albums Playin' the Game (1976) and Expect No Mercy (1977) and can be heard on the recordings of "Kentucky Fried Blues", "Down Home Girl" and "Flying". It was used on many Nazareth tours in the late 1970s and was in Manny Charlton's possession until April 2015, when it was sold to a private collector. John Birch also customised another Gibson guitar that Manny Charlton used to favour in the 1970s. This was a Gibson Les Paul that started out life as a '50s Gold Top before Manny bought in the states around 75-76. John Birch sprayed this guitar black and fitted it with his own bridge design. He also fitted it with Alembic-designed hot-rod magnets in the pickups. Manny used this guitar for several years until in "a moment of insanity" according to himself: In the middle of the '80s whammy bar craze he had a Kahler Tremolo fitted to it, and "destroyed a wonderful guitar".
Another of Birch's famous customers was Brian May of Queen. Brian wanted a copy of his Red Special to use as a backup guitar, so he asked John to make him what would come to be referred to as the "Yellow Special." This is the guitar that was used on several videos from the album "News of the World" and the video for "We Will Rock You." May never liked the Yellow Special's sound or feel. The construction of the Birch guitar and his original Red Special are very different. May's Red Special is constructed of mahogany and oak with a frictionless roller bridge, whereas the Birch guitar used all-maple construction with an ebony fingerboard, as well as a non-roller bridge which meant tuning was unstable. At a concert during the Hot Space Tour in the early eighties, he broke a string on the Red Special. After using the Birch guitar for a few minutes, he became frustrated because the tuning stability on the guitar was very poor. He tossed it offstage out of frustration, but no-one was there to catch it. The guitar neck was completely separated from the body. Fortunately, all the pieces were saved, and the remains can be seen at Brian May's site (link at bottom). Until a few years ago, John Birch still offered a copy of the guitar featuring Dimarzio's Brian May pickups, but the model has been discontinued.
Roy Orbison also ordered a guitar from Birch. In 1975, Orbison's guitarist, Allen Panter was having problems with his Les Paul. Orbison was also having difficulty with his Ovation, and needed it to be repaired. Orbison was satisfied with the work done, and decided to have a custom guitar built. Orbison, Birch, and Birch employee John Diggins all had discussions on what Roy would like to have built. The Eagle guitar was born, and it can be seen at Jaydee's website (link at bottom) while the actual guitar hung on the wall at Birmingham Hard Rock Cafe until its closure in 2006.
Dave Hill of Slade has used John Birch guitars since the mid-seventies. Among the many modified Gibsons and John Birch originals Hill used throughout the 1970s and 1980s were a J1-style maple guitar featuring Hyperflux pickups and, of course, the famous Super Yob guitar, which is styled after a Sci-Fi ray gun. Hill has said he didn't really like using the Super Yob due to its neck-heavy nature, its poor sound, and terribly high action. Hill then had a copy built for him by Framus. Recently, the new John Birch company released a 50-guitar run of the new version that features LED lights in the neck inlays.
The Glitter Band's glitter-covered star-shaped guitar was built, according to Gerry Shephard, by John Birch in mid-1975 for the release of The Glitter Band's "Love in the Sun". He also repaired Shephard's old gold-coloured star guitar, which had been damaged at a show by some overzealous fans. The cost of the new guitar was £400. The guitar received more damage over the years, but was fully repaired in 1996 by Ray Cooper. The guitar was used mostly by Gerry Shephard, and retired with him in 2002. He built a reversed Stratocaster model with two JB pickups and hollow fret cavities for Ritchie Blackmore.
In 1972, Lance Fogg of UK cult band Complex came to John to revitalise his Rickenbacker 4001 bass. John replaced the bass pickup with one of his Hyperflux pickups, rewound the treble pickup, set up the action and completed the bass in a snow white finish. It remained a trademark of Complex through to 1979.
Birch also built the Rook guitar for Rook Music, which can be seen, along with Framus's copy of the Super Yob, in Tony Bacon's The Ultimate Guitar Book. The Rook guitar was designed to emulate a rook chesspiece, complete with a simulated brick texture made of cork and a front gate made of fretwire.
The last guitar that John Birch himself worked on was a replica of the Birch bass used by Jim Lea of Slade, owned by Stu Rutter.
Colin Gibb, from ‘Black Lace’ who had been a great lover of ‘custom’ guitars, and a great admirer of John Birch guitars (having borrowed one for the ‘Superman’ video) commissioned the company to build an 8-string bass, in 2001. The instrument was based on what Fender ‘may’ have produced, if they ever made an 8-string, in the 60s, Having a ‘hockey stick’ headstock (similar to the Fender electric 12-string), and chrome control plate (as on the bass V1) but being mainly designed around the Fender Precision Bass.
Nicky Panicci from the School Girls and Ben Harper has a number of one of a kind John birch customs including an interchangeable pickup model like Tony Iommi and the Rarest one off "Star Guitar" with 2 Multiflux pickup a 30 different sound switching capacity .
Guitars.
John Birch built many styles such as Flying Vs, SGs, J1s and J2s, Strats and Les Pauls. He even built Rickenbacker 4000-style basses and doublenecks. Also available was a teardrop-shaped guitar, much like the Vox teardrop guitar. Also available, of course, were custom shapes that could go as wild as the customer's imagination.
The guitars also had features that were uncommon for the time, but are now used by many guitar companies, such as 24-fret necks, neck-through construction, as well as his high-gain, low-noise pickups and stainless steel bridges. His truss rods went into a tube-like channel, and steel rods went down to the seventh fret for extra security from headstock breakage, though this made them somewhat neck-heavy. The guitars were also made of solid rock maple, which gave the guitars great sustain and durability.
Pickups.
Birch's guitar pickups had a unique construction compared to other pickups of the time. Most commercial pickups use Alnico or ceramic magnets, occasionally samarium-cobalt or even neodymium. Birch used cobalt steel magnets, oversized to make up for their relative weakness as compared to Alnico.
Birch also designed removable pickups to offer an even greater range of tonal options. This was designed in collaboration with Tony Iommi for studio use. John Diggins recalls that "The interchangeable pick-up idea came from Tony. The pick-up routs went all the way through the body, with copper contact points along one edge of the pick-up rout situated near the back of the instrument. The pick-ups were assembled on a plinth, pre-adjusted for height. The pick-up surrounds were fitted to the front of the instrument so that when the modules were slotted in from the back they engaged into the surround at the correct height. The pick-ups were held in place with spring-loaded clips that located into a vee-slot routed into the side of the pick-up cavity. When in place, the pick-up housing was flush with the back of the instrument. Contacts on the pick-ups were also spring-loaded and made contact with the adjacent copper points in the pick-up cavity." When asked Tony Iommi was asked if he still had the patent to the interchangeable pickup system he helped to develop, Iommi said, "I did years ago, but I probably lost it now. That was about 28 years ago. I had just done it for my own interest. If it was successful I knew people would rip it off."
Not many Birch-made interchangeable-pickup guitars are known to exist. The first ever made was for Tony Iommi, and is featured in the original John Birch catalog. Nicky Panicci of David Bowie and USA band S'cool Girls owns one as well.
Apart from the pickups, Birch applied a single-knob bass-cut/treble-cut tone control at all his instruments, equivalent to the controls at 1940/50 Epiphone Electar guitars and early 1950 Gretsch guitars with DeArmond Dynasonic pickups. This "JB-tone" control did not affect the frequency response when set to neutral, unlike the Gretsch and the Epiphone dual tone controls.
All standard guitars like the J1, J2 and SG models are switchable for mono, stereo and anti-phase-mono operation, wired to a stereo phono output connector. The guitars featured unique switching options, having up to seven control knobs for a single-neck guitar. With two Multiflux pickups, there are 22 switching options available, including stereo, in and out of phase, mono, and each pickup acting as a single unit.
End and rebirth of John Birch Guitars.
In the late 1970s, copies from Japan and Korea began to sell well in Britain and America. Some were very high-quality for a low price, such as Yamaha's SG2000. Since the average person could have just about any guitar style he could want, the small shop's sales had begun to drop by the early 1980s. Also changes in music trends from classic 70s rock to punk required a less demanding style of playing and demand for quality top end models dropped. John Birch decided to leave the Birmingham workshop and John Diggins set up on his own in 1977, taking Arthur Baker with him.
In 1993, John Carling approached John Birch with intentions to buy Birch's last remaining J1 which he did. John also offered to help John Birch to restart the guitar business as business manager and technician in Nottingham. John Birch accepted and they released new products, such as the Full Range pickups and the MIDI guitar controllers, new versions of the old pickups in standard humbucker size, and a range of guitars that used the most popular body styles of the 1970s and 1980s. It was in this period the new Magnum 2 pickup was developed; after many hours of testing they finally hit the right spot. It has turned out to be one of the finest pickups ever made and is used on the new range of John Birch Guitars.
John Birch died on November 6, 2000 at the age of 78. John Carling decided to continue with the company with the help of master guitar builder Laz Gajic.
New John Birch Company.
John Birch Guitars continues to make fine guitars under the direction of Birch's business partner, John Carling. Their new line includes J1s, J2s, Strats, Les Pauls, and SGs. They also make a new version of the SG Special based on the original as played by Tony Iommi, complete with cross inlays and Magnum 2 pickups. This guitar is available with several options on inlays, finish and a vibrato version as well. It has been a global success with customers around the world. There is a range of basses as well, in SG and Rickenbacker 4000 styles. The Eaton range of guitars was started after John Birch died and was designed, in John Carling's words, to "offer a wider range of products and retain the JB Professional line." There is also a metal-front Eaton range, much like Tony Zemaitis' guitars, that include Les Paul and Telecaster styles. These are now discontinued.
Several models are available with LED lights in the fingerboard inlays. The LED system as used in the SY2 and SG 2002 runs from fibre optic feeds from a single light source in the base of the neck.
In 2013 John Carling devised the next generation of guitar pickups: Hyperflux 3, Hyperflux 4 and Magnum 3. These new pickups now use CEM technology, (Cryogenically-Enhanced Magnets) to improve the dynamics and also at an affordable price, aimed at the aftermarket for customers fitting to generic guitars. A range of retro vintage and Holographic guitars were introduced in 2013 fitted with these new pickups.
Jaydee.
John Diggins also continues to make high-quality custom guitars, aided in the shop by his son. He continued to make guitars for Tony Iommi throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including two seven-string SGs. Diggins is also well known for his Supernatural basses as used by Mark King. He has a wide variety of styles, including his Iommi model SG, the Hooligan Superstrat, several jazz guitars, multi-string basses, as well as custom work to the customer's specifications.
Currently Diggins is making a new copy of Tony Iommi's "Old Boy," the original SG made for Iommi in the mid-seventies. This will be an exact copy for Iommi, including the P-90-sized humbuckers made by John Birch until the 1990s, when the new standard humbucker-sized line was released.


Donald Ziraldo

Donald J.P. Ziraldo is a Canadian winemaker and businessman, and a Member of the Order of Canada. He and his partner Karl J. Kaiser have often been cited as two of the most important figures in Canadian wine history. He and Kaiser have been credited with starting the first winery in Canada since Prohibition as founders of Inniskillin Winery in Niagara, Canada.
Inniskillin winery.
In the spring of 1974, Ziraldo was determined to start a winery after he and Karl Kaiser, an Austrian-born wine-maker who had immigrated to Canada a few years earlier, found the wines in Ontario to be "undrinkable". Ziraldo got permission to obtain a winery license from Major-General George Kitching, who was the chairman of the Liquor Licensing Board of Ontario. Along with Kaiser, they worked together for 30 years to establish Inniskillin and put Canadian wines, which were virtually unknown at the time, on the world wine map.
Their most well-known accomplishment was winning the coveted "Grand prix d'honneur" at Vinexpo, France in 1989 for the Inniskillin Vidal icewine. Ziraldo would be the man to create an internationally recognized Canadian wine category with Icewine. Today, Canada is one of the world's largest producers of Icewine and sells a significant quantity to the Asian markets, largely due to the efforts of Ziraldo's marketing over the past 30 years.
Varietal wines.
While tasting Ontario wines in the early 1970s, Ziraldo and Kaiser discovered very little wine existed in the premium market segment in Canada. Seeing the opportunity, they set out to produce premium varietal wines from premium grapes grown in the Niagara Peninsula. In order to succeed,they used Vitis vinifera grapes, the family of grapes used to produce the fine wines in the established wine regions of the world.
When sourcing these limited grapes became a challenge in the early 1970s, Ziraldo and Kaiser planted vinifera grapes which included Riesling, Chardonnay and Gamay and formed the quality base for Kaiser to work with. Kaiser and Ziraldo's first attempts to make Icewine failed miserably due to a flock of hungry starlings devouring the grapes. Afterwards, they would cover the grapes with netting and use bird bangers to keep the starlings away from the tempting frozen grapes on the vines.
Later years.
In 2006, after Inniskillin was sold to Constellation Brands, Ziraldo left Inniskillin and in the years to follow started his own brand of Icewine and Riesling table wines under his name, "Ziraldo". In 2011, Ziraldo was asked to manage a Port winery in the Douro Valley, Portugal, under the brand Senhora Do Convento.
Ziraldo is the author of several books, including "Icewine: Extreme Winemaking" and "Anatomy of a Winery".
Honours and awards.
In 1998, Ziraldo was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada, the highest tribute paid to its citizens, and he also received an honorary Doctorate of Laws (LL.D.) from Brock University. In 1999, the "National Post Magazine" chose Ziraldo as one of the top twenty-five Canadian CEOs of the century.
In 2008, Ziraldo was awarded the "Premio Masi" by his peers in Verona, Italy, and the "Folio D’oro" in Friuli, Italy in 2010. Ziraldo also received Canada's highest agricultural honour in 2013 when he was inducted into the Agriculture Hall of Fame.


Frederick Slessor

Frederick George Slessor (1831–1905) was a British railway engineer who worked in England, India, South Africa, and continental Europe.
Early life.
Slessor was born in 1831 in Sidmouth, Devon, England to Major General John Henry Slessor. He attended the Sherborne School and later trained as civil engineer as a pupil of M. W. Peniston M. Inst. C.E..
Career.
In December 1874, following nomination by Sir Charles Hutton Gregory, he was appointed by Cape Government Railways, first as Chief Officer of Surveys and Resident Engineer, and then as Chief Resident Engineer of the Eastern system. After 16 years' service at the Cape he retired on a
pension and returned to Britain.
Alicedale, a village in the Albany district, was named after his wife, Alice Slessor, who died in Queenstown, Eastern Cape, in September 1882.
Slessor died on 15 October 1905 in Somerset, England.
See also.
Guybon Atherstone
South African locomotive history


Knut Gunnarsson Helland

Knut Gunnarsson Helland (November 6, 1880–June 27, 1919) was a Norwegian American Hardanger fiddle maker.
Biography.
Knut Gunnarson Helland was from Bø, Norway. Helland worked in the traditional region of Telemark in the workshop of his father, Gunnar Olavsson Helland, until he emigrated to United States in 1901. In 1905, he started Helland Brothers workshop in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, with his brother Gunnar Gunnarsson Helland. Knut Helland died in 1919, three weeks after surgery for appendicitis. His brother, Gunnar continued the workshop alone until it was closed down in 1927.


Frank Kovanda

Frank Kovanda (September 14, 1904 – April 21, 1993) was an internationally known American maker of bows for stringed instruments (an archetier).
Born in Chicago, he began his profession there in 1921 while attending Harrison Technical High School, from which he graduated the next year; he learned from and worked for violin maker John Hornsteiner.
He was for many years associated with William Lewis and Son in Chicago (1924-1945), where he gained recognition for his outstanding ability as a maker of fine bows and their fittings. While in the employ of Lewis and Sons, he also repaired and restored the finest bows that came through the shop. He was hailed as a superb copyist by many including William Lewis and Joseph Roda. He moved to Los Angeles in 1946, where he opened his own shop, catering to the elite players of the Silver Screen. Frank Kovanda, enjoyed international fame as a master maker of violin, viola and 'cello bows par excellence. During his years at William Lewis & Sons in Chicago (1924-1945), Mr. Kovanda numbered among his patrons practically all of the world's great violinists, including such artists as Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, Emanuel Feuermann, Zino Francescatti, Raya Garbousova, Louis Kaufman, Fritz Kreisler, Yehudi Menuhin, Nathan Milstein, Gregor Piatigorsky, William Primrose, Joseph Schuster and Joseph Szigeti.
He produced superb copies of bows originally made by Francois Tourte, Dominique Peccatte, Nicolaus Kittel and other famous makers. He also reproduced bow frogs (the heel of the bow).
According to 1952 Lewis Collection catalog: Frank Kovanda c. 1938 bow mounted in gold/ebony, octagonal bow Lewis No.748, price $150 on par with Sartory, Dodd, Audinot, Thomassin.
"One of the great American makers of the mid-20 century. After working many years for Lewis & Sons, he moved to Los Angeles after WWII and established own shop there. Made several hundred bows. Was greatly influenced by the work of F.X. TOURTE. Branded "F.KOVANDA". Some bows were left unstamped (as they were reproductions)."- Gennady Filimonov


Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers

Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineer (RED HORSE) squadrons are the United States Air Force's heavy-construction units. Their combat engineering capabilities are similar to those of the U.S. Navy Seabees and U.S. Army heavy-construction organizations.
About.
In the Vietnam War, Air Force "Prime BEEF" ("PRIMary Base Engineer Emergency Force") teams filled a need for short-term construction capabilities. However, the Air Force needed a stable and longer-term heavy-repair capability. The response was to organize two, 400-man (12 officers and 388 airmen) heavy-repair squadrons. RED HORSE units activated in 1966 when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara asked the Air Force to develop its own combat construction team.
RED HORSE squadrons provide the Air Force with a highly mobile civil engineering response force to support contingency and special operations worldwide. Units are self-sufficient, 404-person mobile squadrons, capable of rapid response and independent operations in remote, high-threat environments worldwide. They provide heavy-repair capability and construction support when requirements exceed normal base civil engineer (Prime BEEF) capabilities and where U.S. Army engineer support is not readily available.
RED HORSE units possess weapons, vehicles/equipment and vehicle maintenance, food service, emergency management (CBRN passive defense and Counter-WMD operations), comptroller, contracting, supply and medical equipment and personnel.
RED HORSE's major wartime responsibility is to provide a highly mobile, rapidly deployable, civil engineering response force that is self-sufficient to perform heavy damage repair required for recovery of critical Air Force facilities and utility systems, and aircraft launch and recovery. In addition, it accomplishes engineer support for beddown of weapon systems required to initiate and sustain operations in an austere bare-base environment, including remote hostile locations, or locations in a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) -prone environment.
The primary RED HORSE tasking in peacetime is to train for contingency and wartime operations. It participates regularly in Joint Chiefs of Staff and major command exercises, military operations other than war, and civic action programs. RED HORSE performs training projects that assist base construction efforts while, at the same time, honing wartime skills. Air Force RED HORSE units possess special capabilities, such as water-well drilling, explosive demolition, aircraft arresting system installation, quarry operations, concrete mobile operations, material testing, expedient facility erection, and concrete and asphalt paving.
To support the "Open the Airbase" mission, RED HORSE added an Airborne capability in 2003. With this capability, RED HORSE can rapidly deliver small specialized teams and equipment packages by airdrop or air insertion to conduct expedient airfield repairs. Initially, the only RED HORSE unit to have air-inserted troops was the 823rd RED HORSE, in March 2003 at Baghdad International Airport, however, the 554th established an Airborne capability known as the 554th RHS Assault, Assessment, and Repair Operations (AARO, pronounced “arrow”) team to provide an Airborne-inserted rapid airfield seizure and repair capability for the Pacific theater.
Units.
There are four active-duty, 4 Air Force Reserve Command, and five Air National Guard RED HORSE squadrons:
The 1st Expeditionary RED HORSE Group (inactivated) was in the USCENTCOM area of responsibility (AOR). The 557th Expeditionary RED HORSE Squadron is now located in the USCENTCOM AOR, and is part of the 1st Expeditionary Civil Engineering Group that also consists of one Prime BEEF Squadrons and one RED HORSE Squadron.
Air Force Reserve:
Air National Guard:
The Air National Guard squadrons are split units with separate commanders. When mobilized (excluding the 219th and 254th), these units come together as one squadron.


Olav Gunnarsson Helland

Olav Gunnarsson Helland (25 August 1875 – 30 April 1946), was a Norwegian Hardanger fiddle maker from Bø in Telemark, Norway.
He was the eldest of Gunnar Olavsson Helland's five sons, four of whom became violin makers. He showed great talent even in his younger days and worked with his father for many years.
In 1896 he settled in Notodden, Telemark, as violin maker and continued the Helland tradition of winning prizes and medals for his work. Many consider him as the greatest of his kind in the twentieth century.


Fire Scale Mountain

Fire Scale Mountain is a mountain in the North Carolina High Country, near the community of Deep Gap. The majority of the mountain is within the Blue Ridge Parkway. Its elevation reaches .
Split along the Eastern Continental Divide, it generates feeder streams to both the South Fork New River (via Gap Creek) and Yadkin River (via Stony Fork). Ivy Point Ridge juts out southeasterly from the mountain, which is used by US 421 to transition from the Foothills to the Mountains. Deep Gap is a natural gap adjacent to the mountain; it provides both the name of the nearby community and the intersection of the Blue Ridge Parkway and US 421.


Macro BIM

Macro BIM (Building Information Model) is a building information model, assembled of higher level building elements, used for macro level analysis including visualization, spatial validation, cost modeling/estimating, phasing/sequencing, energy performance, and risk.
Macro models are intended to be built quickly, facilitating rapid analysis of multiple concepts or ideas prior to launching into a more detailed in depth study of a preferred concept using "Micro BIM" applications.
Macro BIM authoring applications often utilize parametric variables and properties as well as inferencing capabilities to quickly build enough relevant data to facilitate analysis.


Wuhandong railway station

Wuhandong railway station (), or Wuhan East railway station, is an under construction transport hub located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan which currently serves as a transfer station between Line 2 and Line 11 of the Wuhan Metro.
History.
Construction of the railway station started July 28, 2015 and was to be completed in 2018. In 2018 the opening date was pushed back to 2019 before being pushed back to July 2020. Currently, Wuhandong railway station is planned to open in 2021.
Wuhan Metro.
Wuhandong Railway Station (), is a transfer station on Line 2 and Line 11 of Wuhan Metro. It entered revenue service on October 1, 2018. It is located in Jiangxia District and it will serve Wuhandong Railway Station which is currently under construction.


Wet clutch


Lunsford's original recording of "Good Old Mountain Dew" was used as the first advertising theme for the newly created Mountain Dew soda. He sold the rights to the song for a train ticket home.
In 1964 Lunsford was the subject of a documentary film, shot with a 16mm hand held camera, by New York City filmmaker, David Hoffman.


Giovanni Croce

Giovanni Croce (; also Ioanne a Cruce Clodiensis, Zuanne Chiozotto; 1557 – 15 May 1609) was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance, of the Venetian School. He was particularly prominent as a madrigalist, one of the few among the Venetians other than Monteverdi and Andrea Gabrieli.
Life.
He was born in Chioggia, a fishing town on the Adriatic coast south of Venice, the same town as Gioseffo Zarlino, and he came to Venice early, becoming a member of the boy's choir at St. Mark's under Zarlino's direction by the time he was eight years old. Zarlino evidently found him in a choir in Chioggia Cathedral, and recruited him for St. Mark's. Croce may have been a parish priest at the church of Santa Maria Formosa, and he took holy orders in 1585; during this period he also served as a singer at St. Mark's. He evidently maintained some connection, probably as a director of music, with Santa Maria Formosa alongside his duties at St. Mark's.
After the death of Zarlino, he became assistant "maestro di cappella"; this was during the tenure of Baldassare Donato. When Donato died in 1603 Croce took over the principal job as "maestro di cappella" but the singing standards of the famous St. Mark's cathedral declined under his direction, most likely due more to his declining health than his lack of musicianship. He died in 1609; the position of "maestro di cappella" went to Giulio Cesare Martinengo until 1613, at which time Monteverdi took the job.
Music and influence.
Croce wrote less music in the grand polychoral style than Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, although he left a grand mass for four choirs, composed for Ferdinand of Austria (the future Emperor Ferdinand II) and several triple-choir Psalm settings (only one of which has survived), and as a result his music has not maintained the same fame to the present day; however he was renowned as a composer at the time, and had a large influence on music both in Italy and abroad. As a composer of sacred music he was mostly conservative, writing "cori spezzati" in the manner of Adrian Willaert, and parody masses more like the music composed by the members of the contemporary Roman School. However, later in his career he wrote some music in a forward-looking concertato style, which attempted to combine the innovations of Viadana with the grand Venetian polychoral manner. This posthumous collection, the "Sacre Cantilene Concertate" of 1610, is for 3, 5 or 6 solo voices, continuo and a 4-voice Ripieno which can be multiplied ad lib (presumably in different parts of the church). Most of Croce's sacred music is for double-choir: this includes three masses, two books of motets, and sets of music for Terce, Lauds and Vespers. Although most of his sacred music was written for the professional singers of St Mark's (including several pieces written for their participation in a freelance company of musicians under Croce's direction, who performed for the Scuole Grande of Venice) much of his music is technically simple: for that reason much of it, especially the secular music, has remained popular with amateurs. One collection, the motets for 4 voices of 1597, is clearly designed for less ambitious church choirs.
Croce is also credited with the first published continuo parts, many of his double-choir collections being issued either with a 'Basso per sonare nell'organo' or a 'Partidura' (or Spartidura) which indicated both choirs.
Stylistically, Croce was more influenced by Andrea Gabrieli than his nephew Giovanni, even though they were exact contemporaries; Croce preferred the emotional coolness, the Palestrinian clarity and the generally lighter character of Andrea's music. Croce was particularly important in the development of the canzonetta and the madrigal comedy, and wrote a large quantity of easily singable, popular, and often hilarious music. Some of his collections are satirical, for example setting to music ridiculous scenes at Venetian carnivals ("Mascarate piacevoli et ridicolose per il carnevale", 1590), some of which are in dialect.
Croce was one of the first composers to use the term capriccio, as a title for one of the canzonettas in his collection "Triaca musicale" ("musical cure for animal bites") of 1595. Both this and the "Mascarate piacevoli" collections were intended to be sung in costumes and masks at Venetian carnivals.
His canzonettas and madrigals were influential in the Netherlands and in England, where they were reprinted in the second book of "Musica transalpina" (1597), one of the collections which inaugurated the mania for madrigal composition there. Croce's music remained popular in England and Thomas Morley specifically singled him out as a master composer; indeed Croce may have been the biggest single influence on Morley. John Dowland visited him in Italy as well.