Armstrong
Armstrong names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Armstrong WILLIAM GEORGE, LORD
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
WILLIAM GEORGE, LORD, an English inventor, born in 1810 at Newcastle. He was articled to a solicitor, and became a partner in the firm. In 1840 he produced a much improved hydraulic engine, and in 1845 the hydraulic crane. In 1842 he brought to perfection an apparatus for producing electricity from steam. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1846; and shortly afterward commenced the Elswick Engine Works, Newcastle, producing hydraulic cranes, engines, accumulators, and bridges, but was soon to be famous for the production of ordnance. During the Crimean War, Armstrong was employed by the War Office to make explosive apparatus for blowing up the ships sunk at Sebastopol. This led him to devise the form of cannon which bears his name. The essential feature of the Armstrong gun, whether rifled or smooth bore, breech-loading or muzzle-loading, is that the barrel is built up of successive coils of wrought-iron, welded round a mandrel into a homogeneous mass of great tenacity, the breech being especially strengthened on similar principles. The actual results obtained by these guns, even of the earlier patterns, were almost incredible. An ordinary 32-pounder weighed 5,700 pounds. Armstrong's 32. pounder weighed 2,600 pounds. ds. The former required 10 pounds of powder as a charge; for the latter 5 pounds sufficed. The former would send a shot or shell 3,000 yards; the range of the latter exceeded 9,000 yards. Armstrong offered to the government all his inventions; and, till 1863, there existed a kind of partnership between the government and the Elswick firm, Armstrong being knighted in 1858, and appointed chiefengineer of rifled ordnance. Already a member of many scientific societies, he was in 1863 President of the British Association. Cambridge and Oxford conferred honorary degrees on Armstrong, who was raised to the peerage as Baron Armstrong in 1887. He died Dec. 27, 1900.
Armstrong SAMUEL CHAPMAN, an American educator
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SAMUEL CHAPMAN, an American educator, born in Hawaii in 1839, a son of Richard Armstrong , an American missionary to the Sandwich Islands. In 1860 he came to the United States; in 1862 was graduated at Williams College; and in June of the same year he organized a company for the 125th Regiment of New York Infantry , and with it was assigned to the Army of the Potomac. At Harper's Ferry he was captured and held prisoner for three months. After the close of the war he was mustered out of the volunteer service with the rank of brigadier-general . During his service he volunteered for the command of a regiment of colored troops , with whom he served two years. In 1866 he took up the work of the Freedman's Bureau and at first had the oversight of the colored people in 10 counties of Virginia. After two years in this work he founded a school which afterward became famous as the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. The United States Government began sending Indian youths there in 1878. General Armstrong was president of the Institute till his death, May 11, 1893.
Armstrong JOHN, an American author and soldier
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOHN, an American author and soldier, born at Carlisle, Pa., Nov. 25, 1758; served in the War of the Revolution on the staff of General Gates; was United States Minister to France, 1804-1810, afterward to Spain; and Secretary of War, 1813-1814 . Author of "Newburg Letters," begun in camp, 1783, anonymously, and intended to arouse Congress to redress army griev- He also wrote "Notices of the ances. War of 1812" (1836). He died at Red Hook, N. Y., April 1, 1843.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's wrote in 1921 that Lord Armstrong's Elswick works made him "famous for the production of ordnance"; the firm, by then Armstrong Whitworth, merged with its rival Vickers in 1927 to form Vickers-Armstrongs, and the vast Newcastle armaments complex has since shrunk to a fraction of its size. His Northumberland house, Cragside — an early home to be lit by hydroelectric power — passed to the National Trust in 1977 and is open to visitors. The school Samuel Chapman Armstrong founded in 1868 became Hampton University in 1984, a historically Black university whose best-known graduate, Booker T. Washington, went on to found Tuskegee; its programme for Native American students, which Collier's notes began in 1878, ended in 1923. John Armstrong's entry is silent on the point that still defines him: he was Secretary of War when the British burned Washington in August 1814, and resigned within weeks.
Written for this edition, 2026.