The lattice leaf (Ouvirandra fenestralis) is a Madagascan water plant of the family Juncaginaceae. The leaves are of an open structure, about twenty centimetres long, rectangular and float just below the surface of the water. The flowers are borne in spikes on the surface. The roots of the plant are used as an article of food by the natives of Madagascar. Research Lattice Leaf
Stinkhorn or wood-witch (Phallus impudicus) is a British fungus of the family Phalloidaceae, of the order Gasteromycetes. It is at first about the size of a small egg, attached to the ground by a slender radicle. The egg contains a jelly, in which is the nucleus of the phallus. When the egg is ripe the skin breaks, and within a few hours the phallus rises. It consists of a lattice-work structure to allow quick development, most of which takes place in half-an-hour, and is surmounted by a cap covered with mucus, at first sweet smelling, but later becoming revolting. This mucus attracts flies which disseminate the fungus spores. Research Stinkhorn
Klaus Fuchs was a German physicist and Soviet spy (working for the NRU and later transferred to the NKGB with the codename 'Rest' which was later changed to 'Charles'). He was born in 1911 and died in 1988. During his studies at Kiel University, Klaus Fuchs joined the Communist party and in 1933 fled the Nazis to Britain. On the outbreak of the Second World War he was interned by the British as a German citizen, to be subsequently released and became a British citizen in 1942. In 1944 he went to the USA to work on the nuclear bombproject ('The Manhattan Project'), returning to Britain at the end of the war and becoming head of the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Station where he worked until his arrest in 1950 as a KGB spy. While at Harwell, he secretly passed on the secret lattice formulae for the stabilisation of plutonium to the British scientists developing nuclear power - something the Americans had refused to do - which he had obtained while at Los Alamos in the USA. This information enabled the British scientists to build their first electricity generating nuclear power stataion. Upon his release in 1959 he returned to Germany (then East Germany) and became an East German citizen. Research Klaus Fuchs
Plink86 Plus by PhoenixComputer Products is an overlay linker that brings modular programming to the PC. It lets you write a program as large and complex as necessary with no need to worry about whether it will fit within available memory. Plink86 Plus's automatic overlay-module technique allows programs to be divided into any number of tree-structured overlay areas, handles diskette changes, and segments the program for add-on packages. Plink86 Plus is a two-pass linkage editor that accepts any object file conforming to the Intel or Microsoft format and outputs executable program files. The first pass is for memory-segment addressing and the second creates the output file. Plink86 Plus works with Lattice C, Microsoft FORTRAN, Microsoft C 5.0, IBMFORTRAN (77), the IBM BASIC Compiler, the Turbo C compiler, and Clipper among other compilers. Research Plink86 Plus
A bridge, a structure of stone, brick, wood, iron or other material, affording a passage over a stream, valley, or the like. The earliest bridges were probably the trunks of trees. The simplest form of bridge is known as a clapper-bridge and consists of planks or slabs of stone which rest on piles of stones.
The arch seems to have been unknown amongst most of the nations of antiquity. Even the Greeks had not sufficient acquaintance with it to apply it to bridge building. The Romans were the first to employ the principle of the arch in this direction, and after the construction of such a work as the great arched sewer at Rome, the Cloaca Maxima, a bridge over the Tiber would be of comparatively easy execution. One of the finest examples of the Roman bridge was the bridge built by Augustus over the Nera at Narni, the vestiges of which still remain.
It consisted of four arches, the longest of 43 meters span. The most celebrated bridges of ancient Rome were not generally, however, distinguished by the extraordinary size of their arches, nor by the lightness of their piers, but by their excellence and durability. The span of their arches seldom exceeded 20 or 25 meters, and they were mostly semicircular, or nearly so.
The Romans built bridges wherever their conquests extended, and in Britain there are still a number of bridges dating from Roman times. One of the most ancient post-Roman bridges in England is the Gothictriangular bridge at Croyland, in Lincolnshire, said to have been built in 860, having three archways meeting in a common centre at their apex, and three roadways. The longest old bridge in England was that over the Trent at Burton, in Staffordshire, built in the twelfth century, of squared freestone, and pulled down in the 19th century. It consisted of thirty-six arches, and was 47 meters long.
Old London Bridge was commenced in 1176, and finished in 1209. It had houses on each side like a regular street until 1756-58. In 1831 it was altogether removed, the new bridge, which had been begun in 1824, having then been finished.
The art of bridge-building made no progress after the destruction of the Roman empire until the eighteenth century, when the French architects began to introduce improvements, and the constructions of Perronet (Nogent-sur-Seine; Neuilly; Louis XVI bridge at Paris) are masterpieces. Some of the stone bridges built in later times far surpass those of older times in width of span.
Stone bridges consist of an arch or series of arches, and in building them the properties of the arch, the nature of the materials, and many other matters have to be carefully considered. It has been found that in the construction of an arch the slipping of the stones upon one another is prevented by their mutual pressure and the friction of their surfaces; the use of cement is thus subordinate to the principle of construction in contributing to the strength and maintenance of the fabric. The masonry or rock which receives the lateral thrust of an arch is called the abutment, the perpendicular supports are the piers. The width of an arch is its span; the greatest span in any stone bridge is about 75 meters. A one-span bridge has, of course, no piers.
In constructing a bridge across a deep stream it is desirable to have the smallest possible number of points of support. Piers in the waterway are not only expensive to form, but obstruct the navigation of the river, and by the very extent of resisting surface they expose the structure to shocks and the wearing action of the water. In building an arch, a timber framework was used called the centre, or centering. The centering had to keep the stones or voussoirs in position until they were keyed in, that is, all fixed in their places by the insertion of the key-stone.
The first iron bridges were erected from about 1777 to 1790. The same general principles apply to the construction of iron as of stone bridges, but the greater cohesion and adaptability of the material give more liberty to the architect, and much greater width of span is possible. At first iron bridges were erected in the form of arches, and the material employed was cast-iron; but the arch has been generally superseded by the beam or girder, with its numerous modifications; and wrought-iron or steel was likewise found to be much better adapted for resisting a great tensile strain than cast-metal.
Numerous modifications exist of the beam or girder, as the lattice-girder, bow-string-girder, etc; but of these none is more interesting than the tubular or hollow-girder, first rendered famous from its employment by Robert Stephenson in the construction of the railway bridge across the Menai Strait, and connecting Anglesey with the mainland of North Wales. This is known as the Britannia Tubular Bridge. The tubes are of a rectangular form, and constructed of riveted plates of wrought-iron, with rows of rectangular tubes or cells for the floor and roof respectively. The bridge consists of two of these enormous tubes or hollow beams laid side by side, one for the up and the other for the down traffic of the railway, and extending each to about a quarter of a mile in length.
Other tubular bridges of interest are the Conway Bridge, over the river Conway, an erection identical in principle with the Britannia Bridge, but on a smaller scale; the Brotherton Bridge over the river Aire; the tubular railway bridge across the Damietta branch of the Nile, which has this peculiarity, that the roadway is carried above instead of through the tubes. The Victoria Bridge over the St Lawrence at Montreal, originally tubular, is no longer so, the upper portion having been reconstructed with an open track. It is nearly two miles in length, or about five and a half times as long as the bridge across the Menai Strait. A girderrailway bridge across the Firth of Tay at Dundee was opened in 1887, being the second built at the same place, after the first had given way in a great storm. It is 2 miles 73 yards long, has 85 spans, is 77 feet. high, and carries two lines of rails. The bridge over the Firth of Forth at Queensferry, was completed in 1889, and was the largest bridge built on the cantilever principle and was the first very notable example.
A cantilever is a structure the main feature of which is a projecting arm jutting out over the space to be spanned and supporting the roadway; and two cantilevers may be made to meet directly, or the space between may be bridged over by a girder connected with both. The cantilever principle has the advantage that it may be employed where there might be great difficulties in the way of a bridge otherwise constructed, since the projecting arm may be built out from either side of the river or other opening to be crossed, and at a great height if necessary. In some cases a bridge with an arch or arches of wrought iron or steel is preferred chiefly or solely because such a structure has a more handsome appearance than some other bridges.
American engineers have been very successful as builders of iron bridges, adopting various forms of girder, and constructing also some splendid bridges, with arches of great span, built up of wrought iron and steel.
Suspension-bridges, being entirely independent of central supports, do not interfere with the river, and may be erected where it is impracticable to build bridges of any other kind. The entire weight of a suspension-bridge rests upon the piers at either end, from which it is suspended, all the weight being below the points of support. Such bridges always swing a little, giving a vibratory movement which imparts a peculiar sensation to the passenger. The modes of constructing these bridges are various. The roadway is suspended either from chains or from wire-ropes, the ends of which require to be anchored, that is attached to the solid rock or masses of masonry or iron. One of the earlier of the great suspension-bridges is that constructed by Telford over the Menai Strait near the Britannia Tubular Bridge, finished in 1825. The cable-stayed bridge is a type of suspension bridge in which the supporting cables are connected directly to the bridge deck without the use of suspenders.
Though the oldest bridges on record were built of wood, like the Sublician Bridge at Rome, or that thrown by Caesar across the Rhine, it is only in certain places and for certain purposes that wood was much used after 1800. In the 19th century Germany was the school for wooden bridges. Perhaps the most celebrated of all wooden bridges was that which spanned the Rhine at Schaffhausen in Switzerland. This was 364 feet in length and 18 feet broad. It was designed and executed by Ulric Grttbenman, a village carpenter, in 1758, and was destroyed by the French in 1799. In the United States, where timber was still in common use in the 19th century, the Trenton Bridge over the Delaware, erected in 1804; the bridge over the Susquehannah, etc were examples of wooden bridges.
Trestle Bridges, or bridges the roadway of which is supported on wooden trestles or frames, formed of a series of beams and braces and often built up to a great height, were common in America until recently. Certain kinds of bridges are known as movable bridges. The bascule, balance, counterpoise or drawbridge - in which the roadway may be raised and lowered in one or two pieces, - is a common form; and there are also swing bridges (also known as pivot bridges) - opening horizontally to let shipping pass; bridges constructed so as to roll horizontally on wheels or otherwise; bridges in which the movable part, carrying the traffic, is suspended from a high iron framework or cables, under which shipping passes; these forming transporter bridges, as the bridge across the Mersey between Runcorn and Widnes, etc.
Pontoon or floating bridges are formed of pontoons or boats over which the roadway is laid, there being often the means of making an opening for shipping. A flying bridge is simply a kind of ferry. The Tower Bridge, London, crossing the Thames, is a unique structure, a combined suspension and bascule bridge, opening in the centre to admit ships, and originally having an elevated footway for passengers, with lifts and stairs in two towers.
The Bailey bridge is a temporary bridge made of prefabricated steel parts that can be rapidly assembled. It is named after its inventor, the Englishman Sir Donald Bailey who designed the Bailey bridge during the early-mid 20th century.
In architecture a girder is a main beam; a straight, horizontal beam to span an opening or carry weight, such as the ends of floor beams, etc. and hence, a framed or built-up member discharging the same office, technically called a compound girder.
Wooden girders were sometimes cut in two longitudinally and an iron plate inserted between the pieces, and the whole bolted together. This species of girder was called a sandwich-girder.
During the great engineering period of the Victorians, for bridges cast-iron girders were sometimes cast in lengths of 40 feet and upwards, but when the span to be crossed was much greater than 40 feet, recourse was had to wrought-iron, or to trussed, lattice, or box girders, and cast-iron was little used by the start of the 20th century.
A trussed-girder is a wooden girder strengthened with iron.
A lattice-girder is a girder consisting of two horizontal beams united by diagonal crossing bars, somewhat resembling wooden lattice-work.
A box-girder is a kind of girder resembling a large box, such as those employed in tubular bridges. There are also bowstring-girders, which are varieties of the lattice-girder, and consist of an arched beam, a horizontal tie resisting tension and holding together the ends of the arched rib, a series of vertical suspending bars by which the platform is hung from the arched rib, and a series of diagonal braces between the suspending bars.
The term girder is also applied in architecture to a small circular band around a column - like the steel band around an old wooden barrel (which is also called a girder). Research Girder
Abbreviations
Research Lattice Brown
