1.
Ghent
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Ghent is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province and it is a port and university city. With 240,191 inhabitants in the beginning of 2009, Ghent is Belgiums second largest municipality by number of inhabitants, the current mayor of Ghent, Daniël Termont, leads a coalition of the Socialistische Partij Anders, Groen and Open VLD. The ten-day-long Ghent Festival is held every year and attended by about 1–1.5 million visitors, archaeological evidence shows human presence in the region of the confluence of Scheldt and Leie going back as far as the Stone Age and the Iron Age. Most historians believe that the name for Ghent, Ganda, is derived from the Celtic word ganda which means confluence. Other sources connect its name with a deity named Gontia. There are no records of the Roman period, but archaeological research confirms that the region of Ghent was further inhabited. When the Franks invaded the Roman territories from the end of the 4th century and well into the 5th century, they brought their language with them and Celtic, around 650, Saint Amand founded two abbeys in Ghent, St. Peters and Saint Bavos Abbey. The city grew from several nuclei, the abbeys and a commercial centre, around 800, Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, appointed Einhard, the biographer of Charlemagne, as abbot of both abbeys. In 851 and 879, the city was attacked and plundered twice by the Vikings. Within the protection of the County of Flanders, the city recovered and flourished from the 11th century, by the 13th century, Ghent was the biggest city in Europe north of the Alps after Paris, it was bigger than Cologne or Moscow. Within the city walls lived up to 65,000 people, the belfry and the towers of the Saint Bavo Cathedral and Saint Nicholas Church are just a few examples of the skyline of the period. The rivers flowed in an area where land was periodically flooded. These rich grass meersen were ideally suited for herding sheep, the wool of which was used for making cloth, during the Middle Ages Ghent was the leading city for cloth. The wool industry, originally established at Bruges, created the first European industrialized zone in Ghent in the High Middle Ages, the mercantile zone was so highly developed that wool had to be imported from Scotland and England. This was one of the reasons for Flanders good relationship with Scotland and England, Ghent was the birthplace of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Trade with England suffered significantly during the Hundred Years War, the city recovered in the 15th century, when Flanders was united with neighbouring provinces under the Dukes of Burgundy. High taxes led to a rebellion and eventually the Battle of Gavere in 1453, around this time the centre of political and social importance in the Low Countries started to shift from Flanders to Brabant, although Ghent continued to play an important role
2.
Bruges
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Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium, in the northwest of the country. The area of the whole city amounts to more than 13,840 hectares, including 1,075 hectares off the coast, the historic city centre is a prominent World Heritage Site of UNESCO. It is oval and about 430 hectares in size, the citys total population is 117,073, of whom around 20,000 live in the city centre. The metropolitan area, including the commuter zone, covers an area of 616 km2 and has a total of 255,844 inhabitants as of 1 January 2008. Along with a few other canal-based northern cities, such as Amsterdam and Stockholm, Bruges has a significant economic importance thanks to its port and was once one of the worlds chief commercial cities. Bruges is well known as the seat of the College of Europe, the name probably derives from the Old Dutch for bridge, brugga. Also compare Middle Dutch brucge, brugge, and modern Dutch bruggehoofd, the form brugghe would be a southern Dutch variant. The Dutch word and the English bridge both derive from Proto-Germanic *brugjō-, Bruges was a location of coastal settlement during prehistory. This Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement is unrelated to medieval city development, in the Bruges area, the first fortifications were built after Julius Caesars conquest of the Menapii in the first century BC, to protect the coastal area against pirates. The Franks took over the region from the Gallo-Romans around the 4th century. The Viking incursions of the century prompted Count Baldwin I of Flanders to reinforce the Roman fortifications, trade soon resumed with England. Bruges received its city charter on 27 July 1128, and new walls and canals were built, in 1089 Bruges became the capital of the County of Flanders. Since about 1050, gradual silting had caused the city to lose its access to the sea. A storm in 1134, however, re-established this access, through the creation of a channel at the Zwin. The new sea arm stretched all the way to Damme, a city became the commercial outpost for Bruges. Bruges had a location at the crossroads of the northern Hanseatic League trade. They developed, or borrowed from Italy, new forms of merchant capitalism, whereby several merchants would share the risks and profits and they employed new forms of economic exchange, including bills of exchange and letters of credit. The city eagerly welcomed foreign traders, most notably the Portuguese traders selling pepper and other spices, the citys entrepreneurs reached out to make economic colonies of England and Scotlands wool-producing districts
3.
Track (rail transport)
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The track on a railway or railroad, also known as the permanent way, is the structure consisting of the rails, fasteners, railroad ties and ballast, plus the underlying subgrade. It enables trains to move by providing a surface for their wheels to roll upon. For clarity it is referred to as railway track or railroad track. Tracks where electric trains or electric trams run are equipped with a system such as an overhead electrical power line or an additional electrified rail. The term permanent way also refers to the track in addition to structures such as fences etc. Most railroads with heavy traffic use continuously welded rails supported by sleepers attached via baseplates that spread the load, a plastic or rubber pad is usually placed between the rail and the tieplate where concrete sleepers are used. The rail is held down to the sleeper with resilient fastenings. For much of the 20th century, rail track used softwood timber sleepers and jointed rails, jointed rails were used at first because contemporary technology did not offer any alternative. The joints also needed to be lubricated, and wear at the mating surfaces needed to be rectified by shimming. For this reason jointed track is not financially appropriate for heavily operated railroads, timber sleepers are of many available timbers, and are often treated with creosote, copper-chrome-arsenic, or other wood preservative. Pre-stressed concrete sleepers are used where timber is scarce and where tonnage or speeds are high. Steel is used in some applications, the track ballast is customarily crushed stone, and the purpose of this is to support the sleepers and allow some adjustment of their position, while allowing free drainage. A disadvantage of traditional track structures is the demand for maintenance, particularly surfacing and lining to restore the desired track geometry. Weakness of the subgrade and drainage deficiencies also lead to maintenance costs. This can be overcome by using ballastless track, in its simplest form this consists of a continuous slab of concrete with the rails supported directly on its upper surface. There are a number of systems, and variations include a continuous reinforced concrete slab. Many permutations of design have been put forward, however, ballastless track has a high initial cost, and in the case of existing railroads the upgrade to such requires closure of the route for a long period. Its whole-life cost can be lower because of the reduction in maintenance, some rubber-tyred metros use ballastless tracks
4.
Cant (road/rail)
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The cant of a railway track or camber of a road is the rate of change in elevation between the two rails or edges. On railways, cant helps a train steer around a curve, keeping the wheel flanges from touching the rails, minimising friction and wear. However, it may be necessary to select a value at design time. Generally the aim is for trains to run without flange contact, allowance has to be made for the different speeds of trains. Slower trains will tend to make contact with the inner rail on curves, while faster trains will tend to ride outwards. Either contact causes wear and tear and may lead to derailment, many high-speed lines do not permit slower freight trains, particularly with heavier axle loads. In some cases, the impact is reduced by the use of flange lubrication, ideally, the track should have sleepers at a closer spacing and a greater depth of ballast to accommodate the increased forces exerted in the curve. At the ends of a curve, the amount of cant cannot change from zero to its maximum immediately and it must change gradually in a track transition curve. The length of the transition depends on the maximum allowable speed—the higher the speed, the greater length is required. For the United States standard maximum unbalanced superelevation of 75 mm, for high-speed railways in Europe, maximum cant is 180 mm. Track unbalanced superelevation in the United States is restricted to 75 mm, though 102 mm is permissible by waiver. The maximum value for European railways varies by country, some of which have curves with over 280 mm of unbalanced superelevation to permit high-speed transportation, the highest values are only for tilting trains, because it would be too uncomfortable for passengers. This follows simply from a balance weight, centrifugal force and normal force. In the approximation it is assumed that the cant is small compared to the gauge of the track. In a formula this becomes v m a x ≈ r g w = g d w with d =1 / r the curvature of the track, in the United States, maximum speed is subject to specific rules. In Australia, ARTC is increasing speed around curves sharper than an 800-metre radius by replacing wooden sleepers with concrete ones so that the cant can be increased, the rails themselves are now usually canted inwards by about 10 to 5 per cent. In 1925 about 15 of 36 major American railways had adopted this practice, in civil engineering, cant is often referred to as cross slope or camber. It helps rainwater drain from the road surface, along straight or gently curved sections, the middle of the road is normally higher than the edges. This is called normal crown and helps shed rainwater off the sides of the road, on more severe bends, the outside edge of the curve is raised, or superelevated, to help vehicles around the curve
5.
History of rail transport
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Including systems with man or horse power, and tracks or guides made of stone or wood, the history of rail transport dates back as far as the ancient Greeks. Wagonways were relatively common in Europe from about 1500 through 1800, mechanised rail transport systems first appeared in England in the 1820s. These systems, which use of the steam locomotive, were critical to the Industrial Revolution. They have remained the form of long distance land transportation for many bulk materials such as coal, ore, grains, stone and sand. Reduction in friction was one of the reasons for the success of railroads compared to wagons. This was demonstrated on an iron plate-covered wooden tramway in 1805 at Croydon in England, “A good horse on an ordinary turnpike road can draw two thousand pounds, or one ton. A party of gentlemen were invited to look upon the experiment, twelve wagons were loaded with stones, till each wagon weighed three tons, and the wagons were fastened together. A horse was then attached, which drew the wagons with ease, six miles in two hours, having stopped four times, in order to show he had the power of starting, as well as drawing his great load. ”Wheeled vehicles pulled by men and animals ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element, preventing the wagons from leaving the intended route. The Diolkos was in use for over 650 years, until at least the 1st century AD, the first horse-drawn wagonways also appeared in ancient Greece, with others to be found on Malta and various parts of the Roman Empire, using cut-stone tracks. They fell into disuse as the Roman Empire collapsed, in 1515, Cardinal Matthäus Lang wrote a description of the Reisszug, a funicular railway at the Hohensalzburg Castle in Austria. The line originally used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope, the line still exists, albeit in updated form, and is possibly the oldest wagonway still to operate. Wagonways are thought to have developed in Germany in the 1550s to facilitate the transport of ore tubs to and from mines, such an operation was illustrated in 1556 by Georgius Agricola. This used Hund carts with unflanged wheels running on wooden planks, such a transport system was used by German miners at Caldbeck, Cumbria, England, perhaps from the 1560s. An alternative explanation derives it from the Magyar hintó - a carriage, there are possible references to their use in central Europe in the 15th century. The first true railway is now suggested to have been a railway made at Broseley in Shropshire. This carried coal for James Clifford from his mines down to the river Severn to be loaded onto barges, though the first documentary record of this is later, its construction probably preceded the Wollaton Wagonway, completed in 1604, hitherto regarded as the earliest British installation. This ran from Strelley to Wollaton near Nottingham, another early wagonway is noted onwards. Huntingdon Beaumont, who was concerned with mining at Strelley, also laid down broad wooden rails near Newcastle upon Tyne, by the 18th century, such wagonways and tramways existed in a number of areas
6.
Leonhard Euler
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He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy, Euler was one of the most eminent mathematicians of the 18th century, and is held to be one of the greatest in history. He is also considered to be the most prolific mathematician of all time. His collected works fill 60 to 80 quarto volumes, more than anybody in the field and he spent most of his adult life in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, then the capital of Prussia. A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace expresses Eulers influence on mathematics, Read Euler, read Euler, Leonhard Euler was born on 15 April 1707, in Basel, Switzerland to Paul III Euler, a pastor of the Reformed Church, and Marguerite née Brucker, a pastors daughter. He had two sisters, Anna Maria and Maria Magdalena, and a younger brother Johann Heinrich. Soon after the birth of Leonhard, the Eulers moved from Basel to the town of Riehen, Paul Euler was a friend of the Bernoulli family, Johann Bernoulli was then regarded as Europes foremost mathematician, and would eventually be the most important influence on young Leonhard. Eulers formal education started in Basel, where he was sent to live with his maternal grandmother. In 1720, aged thirteen, he enrolled at the University of Basel, during that time, he was receiving Saturday afternoon lessons from Johann Bernoulli, who quickly discovered his new pupils incredible talent for mathematics. In 1726, Euler completed a dissertation on the propagation of sound with the title De Sono, at that time, he was unsuccessfully attempting to obtain a position at the University of Basel. In 1727, he first entered the Paris Academy Prize Problem competition, Pierre Bouguer, who became known as the father of naval architecture, won and Euler took second place. Euler later won this annual prize twelve times, around this time Johann Bernoullis two sons, Daniel and Nicolaus, were working at the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. In November 1726 Euler eagerly accepted the offer, but delayed making the trip to Saint Petersburg while he applied for a physics professorship at the University of Basel. Euler arrived in Saint Petersburg on 17 May 1727 and he was promoted from his junior post in the medical department of the academy to a position in the mathematics department. He lodged with Daniel Bernoulli with whom he worked in close collaboration. Euler mastered Russian and settled life in Saint Petersburg. He also took on a job as a medic in the Russian Navy. The Academy at Saint Petersburg, established by Peter the Great, was intended to improve education in Russia, as a result, it was made especially attractive to foreign scholars like Euler
