scholarly journals Robert Le Rossignol, 1884–1976: Engineer of the ‘Haber’ process

Author(s):  
Deri Sheppard

In March 1908, the BASF at Ludwigshafen provided financial support to Fritz Haber in his attempt to synthesize ammonia from the elements. The process that now famously bears his name was demonstrated to BASF in July 1909. However, its engineer was Haber's private assistant, Robert Le Rossignol, a young British chemist from the Channel Islands with whom Haber made a generous financial arrangement regarding subsequent royalties. Le Rossignol left Haber in August 1909 as BASF began the industrialization of their process, taking a consultancy at the Osram works in Berlin. He was interned briefly during World War I before being released to resume his occupation. His position eventually led to His Majesty's Government formulating a national policy regarding released British internees in Germany. After the war Le Rossignol spent his professional life at the GEC laboratories in the UK, first making fundamental contributions to the development of high-power radio transmitting valves, then later developing smaller valves used as mobile power sources in the airborne radars of World War II. Through his share of Haber's royalties, Le Rossignol became wealthy. In retirement, he and his wife gave their money away to charitable causes.

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 324
Author(s):  
Zheming Zhang

<p>With the continuous development and evolution of the United States, especially the economic center shift after World War II, the United States become the economic hegemon instead of the UK and thus it seized the economic initiative of the world. After the World War I, the European countries gradually withdraw from the gold standard. In order to stabilize the world economy development and the international economic order, the United States prepared to build the economic system related with its own interests so as to force the UK to return to the gold standard. The game between the United States and the UK shows the significance of economic initiative. Among them, the outcome of the two countries in the fight of the financial system also demonstrates a significant change in the world economic system.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 165 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-127
Author(s):  
Joanna Harvey

Psychologists first became prominent within the Armed Forces largely as a result of their contributions to military systems, operations and personnel during the First and Second World Wars. In the early years of the 20th century, as psychology was becoming a profession in its own right, its association with the military arose within the emerging concept of ‘shellshock’ during World War I and supporting selection activities in World War II. There are approximately 25 occupational psychologists currently employed within the Ministry of Defence (MoD), operating across all branches of the MoD, within the department of the Chief of Defence Personnel, the UK Defence Academy and a small number at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. The aim of this paper is to discuss the history and current application of occupational psychology within the UK MoD.


Author(s):  
Sara Torregrosa-Hetland ◽  
Oriol Sabaté

Abstract This paper studies the impact of inflation on income taxes in Sweden, the UK, and the United States during the world wars. As tax reforms were rising top marginal rates and reducing exemption thresholds, extraordinary levels of inflation eroded the real value of exemptions, brackets, and deductions. The micro-simulation of actual and alternative scenarios shows that inflation made the tax less progressive, particularly in Sweden during World War I and the UK during World War II. Nevertheless, its redistributive effect increased due to the related growth in tax revenue. Inflation contributed to transform a “class tax’’ into a “mass tax”.


Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig

This chapter considers the United Kingdom’s rivalry with Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. After nearly two centuries of ascendancy, the UK was challenged by an autocratic Germany growing in the heart of Europe. The two clashed in World War I, and the United Kingdom emerged victorious and with its largest-ever territorial expanse, expanding its empire into the Middle East. World War II took a harder toll on the UK, but, again, with the help of its navy, its financial power, and its democratic allies—and in no small part to the heedless decision-making of its autocratic rival—it once again prevailed.


Author(s):  
Jeremy Green

This chapter examines Anglo-American development from the nineteenth century to World War II. It focuses on the “great reversal” in power that occurred as US development caught up to and closed the gap with the UK, after which leadership of the international monetary order came to depend increasingly upon their cooperative efforts, a process encapsulated by the ill-fated attempt to resuscitate the gold standard after World War I. The chapter emphasizes the nascent but insufficient foundations of Anglo-American financial integration as a central factor in the failure of the interwar gold standard. Anglo-American cooperation was ultimately undermined by the lack of US willingness and capacity to play a greater leadership role and respect its duties and obligations under the gold standard system, leading to the collapse of the gold standard and the increasing rivalry and protectionism of the 1930s. The failure of Anglo-American management of the international monetary system in the interwar years had a formative impact upon the priorities instituted at Bretton Woods during the 1940s.


2018 ◽  
Vol 165 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-70
Author(s):  
Jamie Hacker Hughes ◽  
M McCauley ◽  
L Wilson

Military psychology is a specialist discipline within applied psychology. It entails the application of psychological science to military operations, systems and personnel. The specialty was formally founded during World War I in the UK and the USA, and it was integral to many early concepts and interventions for psychological and neuropsychological trauma. It also established a fundamental basis for the psychological assessment and selection of military personnel. During and after World War II, military psychology continued to make significant contributions to aviation psychology, cognitive testing, rehabilitation psychology and many models of psychotherapy. Military psychology now consists of several subspecialties, including clinical, research and occupational psychology, with the latter often referred to in the USA as industrial/organisational psychology. This article will provide an overview of the origins, history and current composition of military psychology in the UK, with select international illustrations also being offered.


1991 ◽  
Vol 15 (9) ◽  
pp. 568-570
Author(s):  
M. R. Eastwood

In my medical year there was a student who had been in the RAF in World War II. After the war he worked for Beaverbrook and the Express newspapers and went on to become a publisher. He studied medicine, while a publisher, and then came the crunch. To be a publisher or a doctor? On the first day of house jobs he inadvertently drove his Jaguar into the consultant's reserved parking spot, which caused no amusement. To add to his disquiet he found that his salary of £35 per month, after income tax, and then surtax on top, only paid for his pipe tobacco and refreshments. The rest of us were less egregious and embarked upon life with even less fiscal fun. A bottle of Woodpecker Cider on Saturday night was nirvana. Was this really the reward for all that education? (Most specialists had at least 28 years of formal education: from starting at age four to leaving postgraduate school.) Like many before me, particularly Edinburgh graduates, I crossed the high seas, at the age of 32. My naval forebears would have been surprised that it took so long, especially my father, who went to sea at 14 in World War I. There were many surprises, not least of which was that of money. In a career sojourn, from the UK to Australia and finally Canada, over 18 months, there was a tenfold increase in income.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
JANETTE RUTTERFORD ◽  
DIMITRIS P. SOTIROPOULOS

The role of the small shareholder has been largely ignored in the literature, which has tended to concentrate on controlling shareholders and family ownership. Yet, focus on the importance of small shareholders can capture significant aspects of financial development. Pre-1970 debates and policy conflicts linked to stock exchange development concentrated on shareholder democracy and diffusion as key indicators. This article explores the so-called democratization of investment and the factors behind it through the lens of trends in estimates of the UK and U.S. shareholding populations between 1895 and 1970. It covers three key periods: before World War I, before and after the stock market crash of 1929, and post-World War II. It identifies three periods in the United States when shareholder numbers were paramount: in the boom years of the 1920s, as part of the inquest into the 1929 crash, and post-World War II in an attempt to boost stock market activity. In the United Kingdom, although some concern was expressed during the 1920s and 1930s at the passive nature of small investors, who held diversified portfolios with small amounts in each holding, it was the fear of nationalization after World War II that led to more in-depth shareholder estimates.


Author(s):  
C. Claire Thomson

This chapter traces the early history of state-sponsored informational filmmaking in Denmark, emphasising its organisation as a ‘cooperative’ of organisations and government agencies. After an account of the establishment and early development of the agency Dansk Kulturfilm in the 1930s, the chapter considers two of its earliest productions, both process films documenting the manufacture of bricks and meat products. The broader context of documentary in Denmark is fleshed out with an account of the production and reception of Poul Henningsen’s seminal film Danmark (1935), and the international context is accounted for with an overview of the development of state-supported filmmaking in the UK, Italy and Germany. Developments in the funding and output of Dansk Kulturfilm up to World War II are outlined, followed by an account of the impact of the German Occupation of Denmark on domestic informational film. The establishment of the Danish Government Film Committee or Ministeriernes Filmudvalg kick-started aprofessionalisation of state-sponsored filmmaking, and two wartime public information films are briefly analysed as examples of its early output. The chapter concludes with an account of the relations between the Danish Resistance and an emerging generation of documentarists.


Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex examines how the American military has used cinema and related visual, sonic, and mobile technologies to further its varied aims. The essays in this book address the way cinema was put to work for purposes of training, orientation, record keeping, internal and external communication, propaganda, research and development, tactical analysis, surveillance, physical and mental health, recreation, and morale. The contributors examine the technologies and types of films that were produced and used in collaboration among the military, film industry, and technology manufacturers. The essays also explore the goals of the American state, which deployed the military and its unique modes of filmmaking, film exhibition, and film viewing to various ends. Together, the essays reveal the military’s deep investment in cinema, which began around World War I, expanded during World War II, continued during the Cold War (including wars in Korea and Vietnam), and still continues in the ongoing War on Terror.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document