Joseph Bramah
Joseph Bramah, born Stainborough Lane Farm, Barnsley Yorkshire, was an English inventor and locksmith. He is best known for having invented the hydraulic press. Along with William George Armstrong, he can be considered one of the two fathers of hydraulic engineering, he was the second son in the family of Joseph Bramma, a farmer, his wife, Mary Denton. He was educated at the local school in Silkstone and on leaving school he was apprenticed to a local carpenter. On completing his apprenticeship he moved to London. In 1783 he married Mary Lawton of Mapplewell, near Barnsley, the couple set up home in London, they subsequently had four sons. The couple lived first at 124 Piccadilly, but moved to Eaton Street, Pimlico. In London, Bramah worked for a Mr Allen, installing water closets which were designed to a patent obtained by Alexander Cumming in 1775, he found that the current model being installed in London houses had a tendency to freeze in cold weather. Although it was Allen who improved the design by replacing the usual slide valve with a hinged flap that sealed the bottom of the bowl, Bramah obtained the patent for it in 1778, began making toilets at a workshop in Denmark Street, St Giles.
The design was a production continued well into the 19th century. His original water closets are still working in Osborne House, Queen Victoria's home on the Isle of Wight. After attending some lectures on technical aspects of locks, Bramah designed a lock of his own, receiving a patent for it in 1784. In the same year he started the Bramah Locks company at 124 Piccadilly, today based in Fitzrovia and Romford, Essex; the locks produced by his company were famed for their resistance to lock picking and tampering, the company famously had a "Challenge Lock" displayed in the window of their London shop from 1790 mounted on a board containing the inscription: The artist who can make an instrument that will pick or open this lock shall receive 200 guineas the moment it is produced. The challenge stood for over 67 years until, at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the American locksmith Alfred Charles Hobbs was able to open the lock and, following some argument about the circumstances under which he had opened it, was awarded the prize.
Hobbs' attempt required some 51 hours, spread over 16 days. The Challenge Lock is in the Science Museum in London. An examination of the lock shows, it had 18 iron slides and 1 central spring. Bramah received a second patent for a lock design in 1798. Due to the precision requirements of his locks, Bramah spent much time developing machine tools to assist manufacturing processes, he relied on the expertise of Henry Maudslay whom he employed in his workshop from the age of 18. Between them they created a number of innovative machines that made the production of Bramah's locks more efficient, were applicable to other fields of manufacture. Just before Bramah died, his workshops employed Joseph Clement who among other things made several contributions in the field of lathe design. Bramah's most important invention was the hydraulic press; the hydraulic press depends on Pascal's principle, that pressure throughout a closed system is constant. The press had two pistons of different cross-sectional areas.
If a force was exerted on the smaller piston, this would be translated into a larger force on the larger piston. The difference in the two forces would be proportional to the difference in area of the two pistons. In effect the cylinders act in a similar way. Bramah was granted a patent for his hydraulic press in 1795. Bramah's hydraulic press still does today. At the time Bramah was bringing his concepts to fruition, the field of hydraulic engineering was an unknown science. Bramah and William George Armstrong were the two pioneers in the field; the hydraulic press is still known as the Bramah Press after its inventor. Bramah was a prolific inventor, though not all of his inventions were as important as his hydraulic press, they included: a beer engine, a planing machine, a paper-making machine, a machine for automatically printing bank notes with sequential serial numbers, a fountain pen. He patented the first extrusion process for making lead pipes and machinery for making gun stocks, his greatest contribution to engineering was his insistence on quality control.
He realised that for engines to succeed, they would have to be machined to a much better standard than was the practice. He taught Arthur Woolf to machine engines to a close tolerance; this enabled vastly increasing their output. Woolf became the leading Cornish steam engineer and his designs were adopted by all the engine designers of the day; the 15-HP engines of Watt and others of circa 1800 gave way to 450-HP engines by 1835. Bramah can be viewed as a founding father in industrial quality control. One of Bramah's last inventions was a hydrostatic press capable of uprooting trees; this was put to work at Holt Forest in Hampshire. While superintending this work Bramah caught a cold, he died at Holt Forest on 9 December 1814. He was buried in the churchyard of Paddington. In 2006 a pub in Barnsley town centre was opened named the Joseph Bramah in his memory. Bramah was a prolific inventor, obtained 18 patents for his designs between 1778 and 1812. 1778 Flushing toilet 21 August 1784 Bramah
The London Gazette
The London Gazette is one of the official journals of record of the British government, the most important among such official journals in the United Kingdom, in which certain statutory notices are required to be published. The London Gazette claims to be the oldest surviving English newspaper and the oldest continuously published newspaper in the UK, having been first published on 7 November 1665 as The Oxford Gazette; this claim is made by the Stamford Mercury and Berrow's Worcester Journal, because The Gazette is not a conventional newspaper offering general news coverage. It does not have a large circulation. Other official newspapers of the UK government are The Edinburgh Gazette and The Belfast Gazette, apart from reproducing certain materials of nationwide interest published in The London Gazette contain publications specific to Scotland and Northern Ireland, respectively. In turn, The London Gazette carries not only notices of UK-wide interest, but those relating to entities or people in England and Wales.
However, certain notices that are only of specific interest to Scotland or Northern Ireland are required to be published in The London Gazette. The London and Belfast Gazettes are published by TSO on behalf of Her Majesty's Stationery Office, they are subject to Crown copyright. The London Gazette is published each weekday, except for bank holidays. Notices for the following, among others, are published: Granting of royal assent to bills of the Parliament of the United Kingdom or of the Scottish Parliament The issuance of writs of election when a vacancy occurs in the House of Commons Appointments to certain public offices Commissions in the Armed Forces and subsequent promotion of officers Corporate and personal insolvency Granting of awards of honours and military medals Changes of names or of coats of arms Royal Proclamations and other DeclarationsHer Majesty's Stationery Office has digitised all issues of the Gazette, these are available online; the official Gazettes are published by The Stationery Office.
The content, apart from insolvency notices, is available in a number of machine-readable formats, including XML and XML/RDFa via Atom feed. The London Gazette was first published as The Oxford Gazette on 7 November 1665. Charles II and the Royal Court had moved to Oxford to escape the Great Plague of London, courtiers were unwilling to touch London newspapers for fear of contagion; the Gazette was "Published by Authority" by Henry Muddiman, its first publication is noted by Samuel Pepys in his diary. The King returned to London as the plague dissipated, the Gazette moved too, with the first issue of The London Gazette being published on 5 February 1666; the Gazette was not a newspaper in the modern sense: it was sent by post to subscribers, not printed for sale to the general public. Her Majesty's Stationery Office took over the publication of the Gazette in 1889. Publication of the Gazette was transferred to the private sector, under government supervision, in the 1990s, when HMSO was sold and renamed The Stationery Office.
In time of war, despatches from the various conflicts are published in The London Gazette. People referred to are said to have been mentioned in despatches; when members of the armed forces are promoted, these promotions are published here, the person is said to have been "gazetted". Being "gazetted" sometimes meant having official notice of one's bankruptcy published, as in the classic ten-line poem comparing the stolid tenant farmer of 1722 to the lavishly spending faux-genteel farmers of 1822: Notices of engagement and marriage were formerly published in the Gazette. Gazettes, modelled on The London Gazette, were issued for most British colonial possessions. History of British newspapers Iris Oifigiúil The Dublin Gazette – in Ireland London Gazette index Official Journal of the European Union List of government gazettes London and Belfast Gazettes official site Great Fire of London 1666 – Facsimile and transcript of London Gazette report
Old English
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a relative of French; this is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, as during this period the English language was influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles and Jutes; as the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, Latin, brought to Britain by Roman invasion. Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Mercian, Northumbrian and West Saxon.
It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop from Mercian. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century. Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English and difficult for Modern English speakers to understand without study. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German: nouns, adjectives and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms, word order is much freer; the oldest Old English inscriptions were written using a runic system, but from about the 9th century this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet. Englisc, which the term English is derived from, means'pertaining to the Angles'. In Old English, this word was derived from Angles.
During the 9th century, all invading Germanic tribes were referred to as Englisc. It has been hypothesised that the Angles acquired their name because their land on the coast of Jutland resembled a fishhook. Proto-Germanic *anguz had the meaning of'narrow', referring to the shallow waters near the coast; that word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₂enǵʰ- meaning'narrow'. Another theory is that the derivation of'narrow' is the more connection to angling, which itself stems from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning bend, angle; the semantic link is the fishing hook, curved or bent at an angle. In any case, the Angles may have been called such because they were a fishing people or were descended from such, therefore England would mean'land of the fishermen', English would be'the fishermen's language'. Old English was not static, its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion. While indicating that the establishment of dates is an arbitrary process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections, a synthetic language.
Around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, but those that survived are basic elements of Modern English vocabulary. Old English is a West Germanic language, it came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England. This included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, except in the areas of Scandinavian settlements where Old Norse was spoken. Celtic speech remained established in certain parts of England: Medieval Cornish was spoken all over Cornwall and in adjacent parts of Devon, while Cumbric survived to the 12th century in parts of Cumbria, Welsh may have been spoken on the English side of the Anglo-Welsh border. Norse was widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century.
The oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmon's Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a limited corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries, but the oldest coherent runic texts date to the 8th century; the Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 9th century. With the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms by Alfred the Great in the 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect. Alfred advocated education in English alongside Latin, had many works translated into the English language. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, but King Alfred the Great chiefly inspired the growth of prose. A literary standard, dating from the 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham. Th
Growler (jug)
A growler is a glass, plastic, or stainless steel jug used to transport draft beer in the United States, Australia and other countries. They are sold at breweries and brewpubs as a means to sell take-out craft beer. Beers are bottled in growlers for retail sale; the significant growth of craft breweries and the growing popularity of home brewing has led to an emerging market for the sale of collectible growlers. Some U. S. grocery stores, convenience stores and restaurants have growler filling stations. Growlers are a more similar concept. Growlers are made of glass and have either a screw-on cap or a hinged porcelain gasket cap, which can maintain freshness for a week or more. A properly sealed growler will hold carbonation indefinitely and store beer like any other sanitized bottle; some growler caps are equipped with valves to allow replacement of carbon dioxide lost while racking. The modern glass growler was first introduced by Charlie and Ernie Otto of Otto Brothers' Brewing Company in Wilson, Wyoming in 1989.
The two most popular colors for growlers are clear. Clear growlers are 25% to 35% cheaper per unit than their amber counterparts. Glass handles are the most common type of handle for growlers, although metal handles, with more ornate designs, can be found; some growlers do not have handles. S. fl oz. Growlers can be refilled for between $5 and $30 in the United States, their initial purchase can carry a significant deposit. While 64 U. S. fl oz is the most popular growler size, growlers are found in 32 U. S. fl oz, 128 U. S. fl oz, 1-liter, 2-liter sizes as well. The term dates from the late 19th century when fresh beer was carried from the local pub to one's home by means of a small galvanized pail, it is claimed the sound that the carbon dioxide made when it escaped from the lid as the beer sloshed around sounded like a growl. "Everybody Wins When You Buy a Growler". KCET. January 17, 2013. Retrieved March 2, 2016. Soroka, W, "Fundamentals of Packaging Technology", IoPP, 2002, ISBN 1-930268-25-4
Bottle
A bottle is a narrow-necked container made of an impermeable material in various shapes and sizes to store and transport liquids and whose mouth at the bottling line can be sealed with an internal stopper, an external bottle cap, a closure, or a conductive "inner seal" using induction sealing. Some of the earliest bottles appeared in China, Phoenicia and Rome. First attested in 14th century. From the English word bottle derives from Old French boteille, from vulgar Latin butticula, from late Latin buttis, a latinisation of the Greek βοῦττις; the glass bottle was an important development in the history of wine, when combined with a high-quality stopper such as a cork, it allowed long-term aging of wine. Glass has all the qualities required for long-term storage, it gave rise to "château bottling", the practice where an estate's wine is put in a bottle at the source, rather than by a merchant. Prior to this, wine would be sold by the barrel and put into bottles only at the merchant's shop, if at all.
This left a large and abused opportunity for fraud and adulteration, as the consumer had to trust the merchant as to the contents. It is thought that most wine consumed outside of wine-producing regions had been tampered with in some way. Not all merchants were careful to avoid oxidation or contamination while bottling, leading to large bottle variation. In the case of port, certain conscientious merchants' bottling of old ports fetch higher prices today. To avoid these problems, most fine wine is bottled at the place of production. There are many shapes of bottles used for wine; some of the known shapes: "Bordeaux": This bottle is straight sided with a curved "shoulder", useful for catching sediment and is the easiest to stack. Traditionally used in Bordeaux but now worldwide, this is the most common type. "Burgundy": Traditionally used in Burgundy, this has sides that taper down about 2/3 of the height to a short cylindrical section, does not have a shoulder. "Champagne": Traditionally used for Champagne, it is similar to a Burgundy bottle, but with a wider base and heavier due to the pressurization.
In 1872, British soft drink makers Hiram Codd of Camberwell, London and patented a bottle designed for carbonated drinks. The Codd-neck bottle was designed and manufactured to enclose a marble and a rubber washer/gasket in the neck; the bottles were filled upside down, pressure of the gas in the bottle forced the marble against the washer, sealing in the carbonation. The bottle was pinched into a special shape, as can be seen in the photo to the left, to provide a chamber into which the marble was pushed to open the bottle; this prevented the marble from blocking the neck. Soon after its introduction, the bottle became popular with the soft drink and brewing industries in Europe and Australasia, though some alcohol drinkers disdained the use of the bottle. One etymology of the term codswallop originates from beer sold in Codd bottles, though this is dismissed as a folk etymology; the bottles were produced for many decades, but declined in usage. Since children smashed the bottles to retrieve the marbles, they are scarce and have become collector items.
A cobalt-coloured Codd bottle today fetches hundreds of British pounds at auction. The Codd-neck design is still used for the Japanese soft drink Ramune and in the Indian drink called Banta; the plastic is strain oriented in the stretch blow molding manufacturing process. Plastic bottles are used to store liquids such as water, soft drinks, motor oil, cooking oil, shampoo and ink; the size ranges from small sample bottles to large carboys. The main advantage that plastic bottles have over glass is their superior resistance to breakage, in both production and transportation, as well as their low cost of production. An aluminium bottle is a bottle made of aluminium. In some countries, it is referred to as a "bottlecan", it is a bottle made of aluminium that holds beer, soft drinks and other liquids. A hot water bottle is a bottle filled with hot water used to provide warmth, it can be made from various materials, most rubber, but has been made from harder materials such as metal, earthenware, or wood.
Bottles are recycled according to the SPI recycling code for the material. Soroka, W, "Fundamentals of Packaging Technology", IoPP, 2002, ISBN 1-930268-25-4 Yam, K. L. "Encyclopedia of Packaging Technology", John Wiley & Sons, 2009, ISBN 978-0-470-08704-6
Watney Combe & Reid
Watney Combe & Reid was a leading brewery in London. At its peak in the 1930s it was a constituent of the FT 30 index of leading companies on the London Stock Exchange, it produced Watney's Red Barrel. The Watney family were the main partners in the Stag Brewery, for much of the 19th century. In 1837 James Watney became a partner in the brewery, followed by his sons James and Norman in 1856. On his death in 1884, the brewery became a private limited company. In 1889 James Watney & Co. acquired the Mortlake Brewery, owned by Charles James Philips and James Wigan since the 1840s. In 1898 the company merged with Combe Delafield and Co. and Reid and Co. and was subsequently known as Watney Combe and Reid. The amalgamated company was the largest brewer in London; the Combe brewery in Longacre and the Reid brewery in Clerkenwell closed immediately, production was concentrated on the Watney Stag Brewery in Pimlico. The company had an annual output of 1.8 million hectolitres. Watney Mann was formed in 1958 with the merger of Watney, Reid & Co.
Ltd with Mann, Crossman & Paulin Ltd. When the Stag Brewery in Victoria was demolished in 1959 the name was transferred to Mortlake Brewery; the business acquired other brewers, including Wilsons of Manchester, Phipps NBC of Northampton, Samuel Webster & Sons of Halifax and Ushers of Trowbridge, before being taken over by Grand Metropolitan, a hotels and catering group, in 1972 and closed in 1979. Watney's Red Barrel was a bitter which sold in the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, it was introduced in 1931 as an export keg beer that could travel for long distances by being made stable through filtering and pasteurising – as such it was the first keg beer. It was renamed "Red" in 1971. A 3.9% abv pale lager called Watney's Red Barrel was sold by the Sleeman Brewery until 1997 and a 6.0% beer with the same name is still brewed by Alken-Maes. In Monty Python's "Travel Agent Sketch", Eric Idle's character, Mr. Smoketoomuch, mentions Watney's Red Barrel many times in his rambling tirade about cheap holiday packages.
For many years, Watney's advertised with the strapline "What we want is Watney's". Access to Archives: Files held at the London Metropolitan Archives on Watney Come Reid and Co Ltd and Watney Mann Ltd Illustration of label of Combe Delafield & Co. Best London Porter
James Watney
James Watney was a brewer and landowner who resided at Haling Park and Beddington, Surrey. He was born to Daniel Watney of Mitcham and Mary Galpin, daughter of James Galpin of Mitcham, Surrey, he was the grandson of John Watney and great-grandson of Daniel Watney of Wimbledon, Surrey, an ale conner. The Watney family were the main partners in the Stag Brewery of Pimlico for much of the 19th century. In 1837, James Watney became a partner in the brewery with John Lettsom Elliot and Charles Lambert, as did his sons James and Norman in 1856; the brewery was known as Elliot, Watney & Co from about 1849. John L Elliot withdrew from the business in 1850, for 8 years remained a partner in name only, he retired in 1858 and the firm became known as James Watney & Co. James Watney kept the management entirely to himself until his death, at well over eighty years, in 1884. After his death in 1884, Watney & Co Ltd became a private limited company in 1885. In 1898, it acquired Messrs. Combe Delafield and Co. and Messrs. Reid and Co. and was thereafter known as Messrs.
Watney Combe & Reid. James Watney was Master of the Mercers' Company in 1846, but had few other interests outside business. James Watney contributed several thousands of pounds towards building a new church just as his father had done at Mitcham. On 15 October 1829, at St. Saviour's Church, James Watney married Rebecca Spurrell, elder daughter of the brewer and hop merchant James Spurrell, of Park Street, employed by Barclay & Perkins's Anchor Brewery, Southwark, they had nine children. All five daughters remained unmarried. Of the four sons, one died young, aged 8 in 1846; the other three were: James Watney of Beddington and Thorney House, Palace Gate, was Conservative MP for East Surrey from 1871–1885 and Master of the Mercers' Company in 1879. He played cricket for Surrey and Middlesex. Married Blanche Maria Georgiana Burrell in 1856. Norman Watney of Valance, Kent, was educated at Harrow, he was a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy Lieutenant for Kent, served as Master of the Mercers' Company in 1880.
He married Matilda Jane Robinson on 26 April 1866 at Lancashire. He was the father of missionary Constance Watney. Herbert Watney of Buckhold, Berkshire, was educated at Rugby and St. John's College, Cambridge, he was Senior Assistant Physician at St George's Hospital and Master of the Mercers' Company in 1915. He married Sarah Louisa Rainsford on 22 January 1872 at All Saints Church, Surrey; the east window in Emmanuel Church, Croydon was given by his son Norman in 1899 to the Glory of God and in loving memory of his parents James and Rebecca Watney. It was destroyed by enemy action in 1944 and replaced in 1954. One of his daughters called Rebecca, founded a mission chapel in Croydon and another at Horsell in Surrey after moving to nearby Woking in 1893; the Horsell chapel, opened in 1900, became Horsell Evangelical Church. He was uncle to John Watney, secretary to the Mercers Company for many years. Master of the Mercers' Company Watneys Red Barrel
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