Charles Inglis (1875–1952) was a British civil engineer who has been
described as the greatest teacher of engineering of his time. He was
educated at King's College, Cambridge, and then spent two years with the
engineering firm run by John Wolfe-Barry before returning to King's
College as a lecturer. Working with Professors James Alfred Ewing and
Bertram Hopkinson, he made several important studies into the effects of
vibration on structures and defects on the strength of plate steel.
Inglis served in the Royal Engineers during the First World War and
invented the Inglis Bridge, a reusable steel bridging system (example
pictured) – the precursor to the Bailey bridge of the Second World
War. In 1916 he was placed in charge of bridge design and supply at the
War Office and, with Giffard Le Quesne Martel, pioneered the use of
temporary bridges with tanks. He returned to Cambridge University after
the war as head of the Engineering Department, which became the largest
in the university and one of the best regarded engineering schools in
the world. Knighted in 1945, he spent his later years developing his
theories on the education of engineers and wrote a textbook on applied
mechanics.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Inglis_(engineer)>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
863:
Byzantine–Arab Wars: The Byzantine Empire decisively defeated
the Emirate of Melitene in the Battle of Lalakaon, beginning the era of
Byzantine ascendancy.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lalakaon>
1651:
English Parliamentarian forces under Oliver Cromwell won the
Battle of Worcester, the final battle of the Third English Civil War.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Worcester>
1783:
Great Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris,
formally ending the American Revolutionary War.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1783)>
1941:
The Holocaust: SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch first used
the pesticide Zyklon B to execute Soviet POWs en masse at Auschwitz;
eventually it was used to kill about 1.2 million people.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon_B>
1991:
A fire killed 25 people locked inside a burning chicken
processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, US.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet_chicken_processing_plant_fire>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
chirality:
The phenomenon, in chemistry, physics and mathematics, in which an
object differs from its mirror image.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chirality>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means
suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of
day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it. Yet evidently
the true object of education, now as ever, is to develop the
capabilities of the head and of the heart.
--Louis Sullivan
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Sullivan>