Gribeauval
Lieutenant General Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval (1715 – 1789) was a French artillery officer and engineer who revolutionised the French artillery. These guns proved essential to French military victories during the Napoleonic Wars. Gribeauval is credited as the earliest known advocate for the interchangeability of gun parts. He is thus one of the principal influences […]
Augustus Siebe
Christian Augustus Siebe (1788 – 1872) known by his middle name Augustus, was a British engineer known for his contributions to diving equipment, and the company that carried his name: Siebe Gorman ‘Submarine Engineers’, founded by him and his son-in-law, William Augustus Gorman. Siebe won many medals at the Great Exhibition in 1851, and the […]
Robert Stevenson
Robert Stevenson, (8 June 1772 – 12 July 1850) was a Scottish civil engineer, and designer and builder of lighthouses. His works include the Bell Rock Lighthouse. In 1797, he was appointed engineer to the Northern Lighthouse Board. Stevenson served as the engineer to the Northern Lighthouse Board until 1842 – nearly fifty years. During […]
Andreas Christensen
The company Andreas Christensen started production of pianos in 1912 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They employed contemporary designers and architects to work on the ascetics of their pianos, including Poul Henningsen, Torben Christensen and A. Skjøt-Pedersen. Andreas Christensen had repeated collaboration with the architect and social critic Poul Henningsen, PH, leading to the production of a […]
W & T Avery Ltd, Birmingham
W & T Avery Ltd. was a British manufacturer of weighing machines. Established by William and Thomas Avery when they inherited a scale making business in 1813. They took the name W & T Avery in 1818. In 1891 the business became a limited company, in 1894 the shares were quoted on the London Stock […]
Barbier, Bénard et Turenne
Barbier, Benard, et Turenne (BBT) is a French company founded in 1862, specializing in the manufacture of spotlights, Fresnel lenses for lighthouses, and lighting systems. It was world’s leading producer of lighthouse beacons at the end of the 19th Century. The company was founded in 1862 by Frederic Barbier and Stanislas Fenestre as Barbier and […]
Chance Brothers
Chance Brothers and Co – Chance Brothers and Company was a glassworks originally based in Spon Lane, Smethwick, West Midlands, England. It was a leading glass manufacturer and a pioneer of British glassmaking technology. From 1851, Chance Brothers became a major lighthouse engineering company, producing optical components, machinery, and other equipment for lighthouses around the […]
DOLLOND of LONDON
Dollond and Company, optical and scientific instrument makers, started in 1750 by Peter Dollond in Hatton Garden, London. In 1758 Dollond obtained a patent on a compound lens for refracting telescopes which was free of both chromatic and spherical aberration. He communicated his results to the Royal Society. The lenses were described as achromatic. 1761 […]
Ferdinand von Zeppelin
Count Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin – A Zeppelin was a type of rigid airship named after Ferdinand von Zeppelin who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin’s ideas were first formulated in 1874 and developed in detail in 1893. They were patented in Germany in 1895 and […]
Augustin-Jean Fresnel
Augustin-Jean Fresnel was a French engineer and physicist who contributed significantly to the establishment of the theory of wave optics. Fresnel studied the behaviour of light both theoretically and experimentally. He is best known as the inventor of the Fresnel lens, first adopted in lighthouses while he was a French commissioner of lighthouses, and found […]