William Hampson

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William Hampson

William Hampson (born March 14, 1854 in Bebington , Cheshire , † January 1, 1926 near London ) was a British inventor known for an air liquefaction process .

Hampson attended the Manchester Grammar School and studied from 1874 at the University of Oxford (Trinity College) classical philology with the master's artium in 1881. He then went to the Inner Temple in London to become a lawyer (he does not appear on any lawyers list) . He apparently taught himself his scientific knowledge by himself, as nothing is known about a corresponding training. In 1895 he appeared surprisingly in the scientific world with his invention.

Hampson was a consultant to Brin's Oxygen Company (from 1906 British Oxygen Company) in Westminster (London) , which developed his process for air liquefaction using the Joule-Thomson effect and countercurrent cooling (similar to the Linde Process ). That was the first patent for air liquefaction as the patent was from Carl von Linde on June 5th. However, the Linde patent was more complete (Hampson filed a full description in 1896) and Linde, who had worked on it for decades, had already demonstrated the method to colleagues (he also explicitly named the Joule-Thomson effect in contrast to Hampson, the described it, but did not mention its name). Hampson and Brin's Oxygen Company also supplied William Ramsay with liquefied gases that made his Nobel Prize-winning discoveries of noble gases possible, and Hampson worked with Ramsay. About his process he got into a priority dispute over the liquefaction of hydrogen with James Dewar with an exchange in the pages of Nature (1897, 1898). Dewar had worked on it for a long time, but the breakthrough came after Hampson's invention. In addition to the patent for air liquefaction, Hampson held others for the separation of liquefied gases. Linde received the patents in continental Europe and the USA and an agreement was reached with him in England when Brin's Oxygen acquired his patents and made him one of the directors (which he remained until the outbreak of the First World War).

In 1896 he was licensed as a pharmacist and in 1909 a licentiate in medicine from the Society of Apothecaries and practiced in London hospitals (such as the Queen's Hospital for Children) from 1910. He developed a crude form of an electrical pacemaker (indirectly through periodic stimulation of large body muscles) and improved X-ray tubes and was a leading member of the British X-ray Society.

He lectured on science in adult education at University College London, which resulted in two popular science books. According to Mansel Davies, they show originality and mastery of the natural sciences.

In 1907 he published his vision of an economy free of credit and debt (Modern Thraldom: A New Social Gospel, London 1907).

Fonts

  • Radium Explained, 1905
  • Paradoxes of Nature and of Science, 1906

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hampson, A method of reducing excessive frequency of the heart-beat by means of rhythmical muscle contractions provoked, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1912, pp. 119-123
personal data
SURNAME Hampson, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British inventor
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Bebington
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1926
Place of death London