Accession No
6158
Brief Description
box of printed cards of Beazely’s curve tables, by Crosby Lockwood and Company, English, 1878
Origin
England; London
Maker
Beazeley, Alexander Crosby Lockwood and Company
Class
engineering
Earliest Date
1878
Latest Date
1878
Inscription Date
1878
Material
paper (card); cloth (cotton)
Dimensions
Length 82mm; width 45mm; height 30mm
Special Collection
Provenance
Purchased from Tesseract, Box 151, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 10706, on or before 15/08/2007.
Inscription
‘TABLES
OF
CURVES’ (front of box, on its lid)
‘BEAZELEY
CROSRY LOCKWOOD & CO ‘ (bottom part of box)
Description Notes
Box of 48 printed cards showing Beazeley’s curve tables, 1878.
Cards give ‘Tables of Tangential Angles and Multiples, for Setting out Curves from 5 to 200 Radius’, and were intended to be used in conjunction with the theodolite for laying out curves in the field.
First card appears as a book title page, with formulae on its reverse. Second and third cards are a preface, explaining why table on cards are more useful in the field than a book of tables, (since a card can be placed on top of the theodolite, leaving the hands free for signalling and setting the instrument), and giving brief instructions on how to use the tables.
The remaining 45 cards give the tables for radii 5, 6, 7, ..., 29, 30; then 35, 40, ..., 105, 110; and then 120, 130, ..., 190, 200, with 135 and 175 also added in.
Fair condition. Bottom panel of box is missing. Red cloth of the box is very faded, discoloured with ink and dirt, and is peeling unstuck as well as having loose threads at its edges.
References
Events
Description
When trains had been slower and wide-radius curves were employed, railroad surverying had not been under particularly strict pressure. Then, theoretical steps towards calculating the vertical components of curves (i.e. banking) were made in the 1830s, and these began to be applied in practice from 1845, when legislation and land costs began constraining the laying out of rail routes, so that tighter curves were neccessary.
Tables of tangential angles were used by engineers to set out curves with a theodolite according to Rankine’s system.
Beazeley saw these cards as a practical advance on books of curve tables, since a card could be laid on the theodolite, freeing up the hands for setting of the instrument and signalling.
Beazely, born in Brighton in 1830, was already helping John Wright with the setting out of the Portsmouth Direct Railway when he was still his pupil. He spent time an Assistant and then Executive Engineer in the Public Works department in New South Wales, supervising the construction of mostly lighthouses and bridges. Back in England in 1863, he became Resident Engineer of a branch of the Cardigan and Carmathen Railway. He was an authority on fog skills, edited and practically re-wrote Usill’s ‘Practical Surveying’, and was one of the earliest and most constant contributers to the Oxford English Dictionary, providing it with over 30,000 words.
15/08/2007
Created by: S Davis on 15/08/2007
FM:46621
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