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Beryl May DentMIEE ((1900-05-10)10 May 1900 – (1977-08-09)9 August 1977) was a British mathematical physicist, technical librarian, and a programmer of early analogue and digital computers to solve electrical engineering problems. She was born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of a schoolteacher. The family left Chippenham in 1901, after her father became head teacher of the then recently established Warminster County School. She graduated from the University of Bristol in 1923 with First Class Honours in applied mathematics. She was awarded the Ashworth Hallett scholarship by the University of Bristol and was accepted as a postgraduate student at Newnham College, Cambridge.
Dent returned to Bristol in 1925, after being appointed a researcher in the Physics Department at the University of Bristol, with her salary being paid by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. In 1927, John Lennard‑Jones was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics, a chair being created for him, with Dent becoming his research assistant in theoretical physics. Lennard‑Jones pioneered the theory of interatomic and intermolecular forces at Bristol and she became one of his first collaborators. Lennard‑Jones and Dent published six papers together from 1926 to 1928, that were the foundation of her master's thesis, dealing with the forces between atoms and ions. Later work has shown that the results they obtained had direct application to atomic force microscopy by predicting that non-contact imaging is possible only at small tip-sample separations.
In 1930, Dent joined Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company Ltd, Manchester, as a technical librarian for the scientific and technical staff of the research department. She became active in the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB) and was honorary secretary to the founding committee for the Lancashire and Cheshire branch of the association. She served on various ASLIB committees and made conference presentations detailing different aspects of the company's library and information service. She continued to publish scientific papers, contributing numerical methods for solving differential equations by the use of the differential analyser that was built for the University of Manchester and Douglas Hartree. She was the first to develop a detailed reduced major axis method for the best fit of a series of data points.
Later in her career she became leader of the computation section at Metropolitan-Vickers, and then a supervisor in the research department for the section that was investigating semiconducting materials. Dent joined the Women's Engineering Society and published papers on the application of digital computers to electrical design. She retired in 1960, with Isabel Hardwich, later a fellow and president of the Women's Engineering Society, replacing her as section leader for the women in the research department. In 1962, she moved with her mother and sister to Sompting, West Sussex, and died there in 1977.
Early life
The family lived at Boreham Road before moving in 1907 to 22 Portway, Chippenham.
Beryl May was born on (1900-05-10)10 May 1900, at Penley Villa, Park Lane, Chippenham, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of Eustace Edward Dent (1868–1954) and his wife, Agnes (1869–1967), née Thornley.[1] She was baptised at StPaul's, Chippenham, on 8 June 1900.[2]: 1 Agnes and Eustace had married at St Mary's Church, Goosnargh, near Preston, Lancashire, on 27July 1898.[3] Her mother, Agnes, was educated at the Harris Institute, Preston, passing examinations in science and art.[4] She was a teacher at Attercliffe School, in northeast Sheffield, before moving to Goosnargh School, near her hometown of Preston, where her elder brother and sister, John William and Mary Ann Thornley, were the head teachers.[5][6] In March 1894, she had applied for the headship at Fairfield School, Cockermouth, making the shortlist, but the board decided to appoint a local candidate.[7]
On 18March 1889, Eustace was appointed to a teaching assistant position at Portland Road School, in Calderdale, Halifax, after completing a teaching apprenticeship with the school board.[8][9] In the same year, Florence Emily Dent, Eustace's elder sister and Dent's aunt, was appointed head teacher at West Vale girls' school, Stainland Road, Greetland, moving from the Higher Board School at Halifax.[10] In August 1889, Eustace obtained a first class pass in mathematics from the Halifax Mechanics' Institute.[11][a] He then enrolled on a degree course at University College, Aberystwyth, in the Education Day Training College.[b] In January 1894, he was awarded a first by Aberystwyth, and a first in the external University of London examinations.[13][14][c] His first teaching post was at Coopers' Company Grammar School, Bow, London,[15] before moving to Chippenham, where he was a senior assistant teacher at the Chippenham County School. After five years at Chippenham, he left in October 1901 to become head teacher of the then recently established Warminster County School, that adjoined the Athenaeum Theatre in Warminster.[16][17][18][d] He was chair of the Warminster Urban District Council from 1920 to 1922,[e] and remained as head teacher of the County School until his retirement in August 1929.[22][21][f]
After moving from Chippenham, the Dent family lived at Boreham Road, Warminster, where houses were built in the early 19th century.[25][26][g] In April 1907, the family moved to 22 Portway, Warminster, situated a short distance from the County School and the Athenaeum.[20]: 264 [27] Eustace was a regular cast member of the Warminster Operatic Society at the Athenaeum and other venues. Dent and her younger sister, Florence Mary, would often appear with him on stage in such operettas as Snow White and the seven dwarfs and the Princess Ju‑Ju (The Golden Amulet), a Japanese operetta in three acts by Clementine Ward.[28][29][30] In Princess Ju‑Ju, she played La La, one of the three maidens attendant on the Princess Ju‑Ju, and sang the first act solo, She must be demure.[31][32] In act two of the same musical, she performed in the fan dance, Spirits of the Night.[29][32][h] She also acted in a scene from Tennyson'sPrincess at the County School's prize giving day on 16December 1913.[35][i]
Education
Warminster County School
Former Warminster County School, where Dent was educated and her father was head teacher.
Dent was educated at Warminster County School, where her father was head teacher. At school, she was close friends with her neighbour at Portway, Evelyn Mary Day, the eldest daughter of Henry George Day, a former butler to Colonel Charles Gathorne Gathorne‑Hardy, son of Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, 1st Earl of Cranbrook.[36][37][j] In August 1914, she passed the University of Oxford Junior Local Examination with first class honours, and on the strength of her examination result, she was awarded a scholarship by the County School. In 1915, she passed the senior examination with second class honours and a distinction in French, and subsequently, her scholarship was renewed.[38][39][40] She then joined the sixth form and won the school prize for French in December 1916.[41][k] In March 1918, she applied for a scholarship in mathematics from Somerville College, Oxford, one of the first two women's colleges in Oxford. She was highly commended but was not awarded a scholarship nor an exhibition.[42]
University of Bristol
Paul Dirac, Dent's fellow student on the honours course in mathematics at Bristol.In 1923, Dent was accepted as a postgraduate research student by Newnham College, Cambridge.
Dent was accepted on to the general Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree course at the University of Bristol and passed her intermediate degree examinations in June 1920.[l] For the following academic year, she took the honours course in mathematics at Bristol.[44] After spending the summer of 1921 at her parent's home in Warminster,[45] she returned for the start of the 1921 to 1922 academic year to find that Paul Dirac had joined the mathematics course.[46][m] Dent and Dirac were taught applied mathematics by Henry Ronald Hassé, the then head of the Mathematics Department, and pure mathematics by Peter Fraser. Both of them had come from Cambridge.[46] Fraser introduced them to mathematical rigour, projective geometry, and rigorous proofs in differential and integral calculus.[47][n] Dent studied four courses in pure mathematics:
There was a choice of specialisation in the final year; applied or pure mathematics. As the only official, registered fee-paying student, Dent had the right to choose, and she settled on applied mathematics for the final year. The department could offer only one set of lectures so Dirac also had to follow the same course.[49][o] Dent studied four courses in applied mathematics:
In June 1923, she graduated with Dirac, gaining a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in applied mathematics with First Class Honours.[50][46][p] On 7July 1923, she was awarded the Ashworth Hallett scholarship by the University of Bristol and was accepted as a postgraduate student at Newnham College, Cambridge.[49][51][52][q] Dent spent a year at Cambridge, leaving in 1924 without further academic qualification, prior to being appointed to a temporary position teaching science at Barnsley Girls' High School, Huddersfield Road, Barnsley.[52] Before 1948, Cambridge University denied women graduates a degree, although in the same year as Dent left Cambridge, Katharine Margaret Wilson was the first woman to be awarded a PhD at Cambridge.[54][r]
Career
University of Bristol Department of Physics
See § Publications for details of Dent's academic papers
H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, where Dent worked as a researcher.John Edward Lennard‑Jones, Dent's advisor and co-author at Bristol in the 1920s.
In 1925, Dent was appointed a researcher in the Physics Department at the University of Bristol, with her salary being paid by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, the forerunner of the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC).[56]: 107 [52][s] In 1924, the University of Bristol Council had set aside a portion of a bequest from Henry Herbert Wills for the Department of Physics where Arthur Mannering Tyndall was building up a staff for teaching and research in the H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory, Royal Fort House Gardens.[58][t] From August 1925, John Lennard‑Jones, Trinity College, Cambridge, was elected Reader in Mathematical Physics.[60][58] In March 1927, Lennard‑Jones was appointed Professor of Theoretical physics, a chair being created for him, with Dent becoming his research assistant in theoretical physics.[61][62]: 24 [63][u] Lennard‑Jones pioneered the theory of interatomic and intermolecular forces at Bristol and Dent became one of his first collaborators.[58][46]
Lennard‑Jones and Dent published six papers together from 1926 to 1928, dealing with the forces between atoms and ions, with the objective of calculating theoretically the properties of carbonate and nitrate crystals.[46][64] Dent's thesis for her master's degree, Some theoretical determinations of crystal structure, was the basis of the three papers that followed in 1927; with Lennard‑Jones, Crystal parameters, and with Lennard‑Jones and Sydney Chapman, Structure of carbonate crystals and Part II. Structure of carbonate crystals.[v] On 28June 1927, she was awarded a MSc degree for her thesis and research work.[65] In 1927, the physics laboratory at Bristol had a surplus of funds, and so it was decided that the funds would be used to provide more technical help.[w] Consequently, Dent was asked to combine her research duties with the post of part-time departmental librarian, the first appointment of librarian in the Department of Physics.[62]: 26 [1][x]
With her collaborator and advisor in Germany, Dent wrote one last paper before leaving the physics department at Bristol: The effect of boundary distortion on the surface energy of a crystal examined the effect of the polarisation of surface ions in decreasing the surface energy of alkali halides.[77] In December 1929, she resigned her position and it was accepted with regret by the Council of the University of Bristol.[78] She left Bristol for Stretford, Manchester, to become the technical librarian for the scientific and technical staff in the research department at Metropolitan-Vickers.[79]: 232 In 1930, Lennard‑Jones returned to Bristol, as Dean of the Faculty of Science, and introduced the new quantum theories to the Bristol group.[76][58][aa] Marjorie Josephine Littleton (1903–1974) was appointed as Dent's replacement on the 1February 1930. She was the daughter of a local Bristol councillor and a graduate of Girton College, Cambridge. She was later Sir Neville Mott's co-author and research assistant in the Physics Department.[81][82]: 517
Metropolitan-Vickers
Metropolitan-Vickers was a British heavy industrial firm, based at Trafford Park, Manchester. They were well known for industrial electrical equipment and generators, street lighting, electronics, steam turbines and diesel locomotives. They built the Metrovick 950, the first commercial transistorised computer.[83] In 1917, a Research and Education Department was established at the Trafford Park site, when the care of the library came within the remit of James George Pearce, a former engineer in the Transformer Department.[ab] He made the library the centre of a new technical intelligence section. In 1929, the technical intelligence section was substantially reorganised and expanded, and placed under the directorship of James Steele Park Paton.[79]: 193 [84] Dent joined the research department in January 1930 as one of only two women on the senior scientific and technical staff.[62]: 49 [79]: 193 Technical librarianship emerged as a new scientific career in interwar Britain and rapidly became one of the few types of professional industrial employment that was routinely open to both women and men.[85]: 301
By 1933, the Metropolitan-Vickers library had 3,000 engineering volumes and around the same number in pamphlets and patent specifications.[86] Besides covering electrical subjects, the library covered accountancy, employment questions, and subjects of interest to the sales department. It also issued a weekly bulletin, scrutinised patents, handled patents taken out by research staff, and exchanged information with associated companies.[87] From 1931 to 1936, Dent was honorary secretary to the founding committee for the Lancashire and Cheshire branch of the ASLIB.[88]: 204–205 In 1932, the branch had twenty six members and had organised four meetings, including one addressed by Sir Henry Tizard, the then President of ASLIB. After the war, it formed the basis for the Northern Branch of the association.[89]: 412 She was also a delegate at the fourteenth International Conference on Documentation and was invited to the Government's conference dinner on 22September 1938 at the Great Dining Hall of Christ Church, Oxford.[90][ac] She served on various ASLIB committees and made conference presentations detailing different aspects of the company's library and information service.[79]: 228 [91]
In the latter half of her career, Dent became the section leader for the women in the research department that were working on semiconducting materials.[79]: 233 She performed the Fourier analysis in Shorting and Field Corrections in Hall Measurements, that developed a method for correcting the measured Hall effect in semiconductors for inhomogeneities in the applied magnetic field.[97] In 1958, she carried out computer calculations for the mechanical engineering team at the Nuclear Power Group, Radbroke Hall. Their paper outlined a procedure for calculating the theoretical deflection (bending) of a circular grid of support girders for a graphite neutron moderator in a gas-cooled reactor.[98] A general expression was derived from the central deflection of the grid and the maximum bending moment on the central cross-beam for a range of grid diameters.[99]
Dent joined the Women's Engineering Society and published papers on the application of digital computers to electrical design.[100][101] With Brian Birtwistle, she wrote programs for the Manchester University Ferranti Mark 1, that demonstrated that high speed digital computers could provide considerable assistance to the electrical design engineer.[102] Birtwistle would later have an extensive career in the computer industry, working at, amongst others, Honeywell Information Systems and ADP Network Services.[103] She retired from Metropolitan-Vickers in May 1960, with Isabel Hardwich, later a fellow and president of the Women's Engineering Society, replacing her as section leader for the women in the research department.[104][105]: 243
Dent's funeral was held at StMary's and a memorial to her is located in the Hospitallers' Room there. Her ashes are interred at Worthing Crematorium.
Dent's father died on (1954-06-24)24 June 1954, at their shared home, 529 King's Road, Stretford, with the funeral service taking place at StMatthew's Church, Stretford.[106] Dent had close links to StMatthew's; from 1956 to 1962, she served as a school manager for StMatthew's Church of England Primary School at Poplar Road, Stretford.[52] In 1962, she and her elderly mother, Agnes, moved from Stretford to 1 Cokeham Road, Sompting, a village in the coastal Adur District of West Sussex, between Lancing and Worthing.[107][108] Agnes died on (1967-04-05)5 April 1967 and was cremated at the Downs Crematorium on 10 April 1967.[109][ae]
Dent died at her home in Sompting on 9 August 1977(1977-08-09) (aged 77).[112][113] She donated her body for medical examination, on the understanding that her remains would be returned for a funeral service at StMary's Church, Sompting, followed by cremation.[114] Her ashes were interred at Worthing Crematorium, in the Gardens of Rest, towards the Spring Glades, and her entry in the Book of Remembrance at the crematorium states:[115][116][af]
Beryl May Dent 1900 – A real Christian loved by all – 1977.
Dent never married, believing that getting married, and the subsequent pressures of family responsibilities, would be a "wastage" of a woman's training. However, she also believed that women leaving employment to get married would mean promotion opportunities for other women, and that married women would still be able to return to work in mid-life.[118] Her Christian faith is perhaps not surprising, given her father's work for the church in Warminster, and the era she grew up in, where religion pervaded social and political life.[119][120] However, it is notable that she remained a committed Christian while pursuing a scientific career. According to Steven Weinberg, science offers no support for belief in God, and that belief in God is unnecessary; a view shared by other scientists. However, Steve Ball, in an article that supports the science of prominent atheistic scientists, states that physics can actually fit well with biblical faith.[121][122]: 2 [ah]
Legacy
Atomic force microscopy
An atomic force microscope on the left with controlling computer on the right. Dent's work had direct application to the development of atomic force microscopy.
In 1928, Lennard‑Jones and Dent published two papers, Cohesion at a crystal surface and The change in lattice spacing at a crystal boundary, that for the first time, outlined a calculation of the potential of the electric field in a vacuum, produced by a thin sodium chloride crystal surface.[73][74] They gave an expression for the electric potential produced by a system of point charges in vacuum (although not a real cubic sodium chloride ionic lattice).[123]: 796–797 The expression for the potential in vacuum, , at the point r = {x, y, z}, near the cubic lattice of point ions with different signs, the charge , and the period a (a crystalline solid is distinguished by the fact that the atoms making up the crystal are arranged in a periodic fashion), can be represented in the form:[123]: 797
(1)
is the lateral vector that fixes the observation point coordinates in the sample plane.
s is the number of planes to be calculated inside the crystal; s set to zero would calculate the surface plane.
The expression sums the set of potential static charges for the surface and lower layers of the crystal. Lennard‑Jones and Dent showed that this expression forms a rapidly convergent Fourier series.[123]: 797 Harold Eugene Buckley, a crystallographic researcher at the University of Manchester until his death in 1959,[124]: 481 had suggested that the results obtained in Cohesion at a crystal surface, should be treated with caution. For example, the contraction a crystal plane would suffer under the conditions prescribed would not be the same as that of a similar plane with a solid mass of crystal behind it. Another difficulty arises because calculation of crystal surface field force fields are so great that simplifying assumptions have to be made to render them capable of a solution.[125] However, later work by Cleveland, Radmacher, and Hansma, in Atomic Scale Force Mapping with the Atomic Force Microscope, has shown that the Lennard‑Jones and Dent paper had direct application to atomic force microscopy by predicting that non-contact imaging is possible only at small tip-sample separations.[126]
Reduced major axis regression
Richard J. Smith has stated that Dent, in On observations of points connected by a linear relation, was the first to develop a reduced major axis (RMA) regressiom method for line fitting that built on the work of Adcock in A Problem in Least Squares and Kummell in Reduction of observation equations which contain more than one observed quantity.[92][93] The theoretical underpinnings of standard least squares regression analysis are based on the assumption that the independent variable (often labelled as x) is measured without error as a design variable. The dependent variable (labeled y) is modeled as having uncertainty or error. Both independent and dependent measurements may have multiple sources of error. Therefore, the underlying least squares regression assumptions can be violated. RMA regression is specifically formulated to handle errors in both the x and y variables.[127]: 1 If the estimate of the ratio of the error variance of y to the error variance of x is denoted by 𝜆, then the reduced major axis method assumes that 𝜆 can be approximated by the ratio of the total variances of y and x.[128] RMA minimizes both vertical and horizontal distances of the data points from the predicted line (by summing areas) rather than the least squares sum of squared vertical (y-axis) distances.[127]: 2
Linear regression attempts to model the relationship between two variables by fitting a linear equation (straight line) to observed data.
Inspection of (3) shows that as 𝜆 tends to zero, the positive root tends to equal to , and as 𝜆 tends to plus infinity, the root tends to equal to .[130] Dent had solved the maximum likelihood estimator in the case where the covariance matrix is not known, that is, when the variances in the x and y variables are unknown.[131]: 1049 Dent's maximum likelihood estimator is the geometric mean of and , equal to:[130]
, where is positive.
Dennis Lindley repeated Dent's analysis and stated that Dent's geometric mean estimator is not a consistent estimator for the likelihood function, [132]: 235–236, 241 and that the gradient of the estimate will have a bias, and this remains true even if the number of observations tends to infinity.[133]: 15 Kenneth Alva Norton, a former consulting engineer with the then National Bureau of Standards, responded to Lindley, stating Lindley's own methods and assumptions lead to a biased prediction.[134] Furthermore, Albert Madansky noted that Lindley took the wrong root for the quadratic in (2) for the case where is negative.[135]: 201–203 Subsequently, Theodore Anderson pointed out that the likelihood function has no maximum in this case, and therefore, there is no maximum likelihood estimator.[136]: 3
Although Dent's solution has its theoretical limitations, it is of practical importance, as it likely represents the best a priori estimate if nothing is known about the true error distribution in the model. It is generally much less reasonable to assume that all the error, or residual scatter, is attributable to one of the variables.[133]: 3 [128]
Electrical design using digital computers
In the 1950s, British electrical engineers would rarely use a digital computer, and if they did, it would be to solve some complicated equation outside the scope of analogue computers. To a certain extent, engineers were deterred by the difficulty and the time taken to program a particular problem. Furthermore, the varied and often unique problems that arise in electrical design practice, together with the degree of uncertainty of the numerical data of many problems, accentuated this tendency. On 10 April 1956, Dent and Brian Birtwistle presented their paper, The digital computer as an aid to the electrical design engineer, to the Convention on Digital Computer Techniques at the Institution of Electrical Engineers.[137] The paper was intended to show, by describing three relatively simple applications, that the digital computer could be a very useful aid to the electrical design engineer. The three example problems were:
The Manchester University Ferranti Mark 1 computer was used for the calculations in the three problems. Dent was allowed to use the University's library of subroutines, from which the following were taken and incorporated into the programs:[139]
Input of instructions.
Input of numerical data in decimal form.
Output of results in decimal digits and tabular form.
Their paper was one of the first to recognise that high speed digital computers could provide considerable assistance to the electrical design engineer by carrying out automatically the optimum design of products.[102] Considerable research had been devoted to determining a transformer's internal transient voltage distribution. Early attempts were hampered by computational limitations encountered when solving large numbers of coupled differential equations with analogue computers.[140] It was not until Dent, with Hartill and Miles, in A method of analysis of transformer impulse voltage distribution using a digital computer (1958), recognised the limitations of the analogue models and developed a digital computer model, and associated program, where non-uniformity in the transformer windings could be introduced and any input voltage applied.[141]
Test tube with a sample of brown-red Ferrous carbonate.Discusses the structure of the carbonate anionCO2− 3, a polyatomic ion, in iron(II) carbonateFeCO 3, or ferrous carbonate.[64]
The surface plane of a face-centred cubic lattice was derived by Lennard‑Jones and Dent and has been used extensively in physisorption studies. They simplified the calculation of the Lennard-Jones potential by noting that the ions under study were isoelectronic with inert gas atoms, and thus, there was no need to introduce additional empiricalL‑J parameters into the equation.
In rock-salt or sodium chloride (halite) structure, each of the two atom types forms a separate face-centred cubic lattice. Examples of compounds with this structure include sodium chloride itself, along with the other alkali halides, and divalent metal oxides, sulphides, selenides, and tellurides.[144]: 16 [145][146]: 682–683
Calculation of the surface energy of solids. Shows that for an ionic substrate a charged particle would be most strongly adsorbed, but that the electrostatic forces were very short range, and for greater distances, were smaller than the van der Waals' forces. A dipole would be adsorbed in the same manner as a charged particle but much less strongly.[73]
Shows that when alkali metal halide crystals are put under tension along their length, they suffer a lateral contraction of the order of 6 percent.[74]
The effect of polarisation of surface ions in decreasing surface energy of the alkali halide crystals is studied. It is shown that for a series of alkali halide crystals, it is the deformability of the surface ions which largely controls the distortion at the surface. In general, close-packing and wide inter-planar spacing tend to lower the free surface energy in crystals.[77][147]
The conference was held at the Wills Hall, University of Bristol.There were eight contributors to the subject "the preparation and production of information bulletins, house journals and reports", which was presented at the general session of the tenth annual conference of the ASLIB on the morning of the 23June 1933.[ai] James George Pearce, Dent's former technical director at Metropolitan-Vickers, was in the chair. Dent described the technical news bulletin and the house journal of Metropolitan-Vickers. The bulletins and journals contained references to current literature, abstracts, news of current interest, and select bibliographies. They were often duplicated owing to the prohibitive cost of printing: "Don't press the printers" was the advice of Dent.[148][149]
Dent was the first to describe and develop a detailed reduced major axis method for line fitting. The paper was sent to the Physical Society by Henry Ronald Hassé, Dent's former professor of applied mathematics at Bristol, on 10July 1934. The paper was refereed by Alexander Aitken, and at the time of publication, commented on by William Edwards Deming.[92][150]
Describes the information service developed during the last thirty years to meet the needs of the research department at the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company. In response to a request from the senior staff, a weekly "Industrial Digest" was produced from 1945. The digest contained about fifty brief abstracts on factory processes and workshop practice.[151]
The Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster) on Regent Street, where Dent and Fleming presented at the twenty first annual conference of ASLIB. On 14September 1946, Dent and Fleming presented at the twenty first annual conference of ASLIB in the Fyvie Hall at the Polytechnic, Regent Street. They stressed the importance of new knowledge and ideas in industry as a condition of progress, and that industry required rapid, accurate, and comprehensive information.[152]
The value of the digital computer as an aid to the electrical design engineer is discussed in the light of the authors' extensive use of the Ferranti Mark 1 computer.[aj] Three examples are described:[137]
A review of the paper below after it was published as an individual paper in December 1957 and republished in Part A, Power Engineering, Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. Hartill and Miles also worked at Metropolitan-Vickers.[154][al]
The paper presents a method of impulse voltage calculation in which non-uniformity in the transformer windings could be introduced and input voltage applied. The derivation of the transformer circuit is discussed, together with a digital computer program for the solution of the resulting differential equations.[141][140]
Publications detail
Dent
Birtwistle, Brian; — (April 1956). "The digital computer as an aid to the electrical design engineer". Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. Part B. Radio and Electronic Engineering. 103 (1S). London: 47–53. doi:10.1049/pi-b-1.1956.0008. ISSN2054-0434. Paper No. 2092 M. The paper was first received 30 January 1956, and in revised form, 5 March 1956. It was published in March 1956 and was read at the Convention on Digital-Computer Techniques on 10 April 1956.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
— (1 October 1929). "LV. The effect of boundary distortion on the surface energy of a crystal". Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 8 (51). London: 530–539. doi:10.1080/14786441008564909. ISSN1941-5982. Communicated by J. E. Lennard‑Jones.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
— (January 1933). "The technical news bulletin and house journal of the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company". Report of Proceedings of the 10th Conference of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux. 10. London: ASLIB: 56–58. OCLC652436848.
—; Hartill, Eric Raymond; Miles, James George (1 May 1958). "Analysis of transformer impulse voltages by digital computer". Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. 4 (41). London: 259–261. doi:10.1049/jiee-3.1958.0116. ISSN2054-0612.
—; Hartill, Eric Raymond; Miles, James George (October 1958) [First published December 1957]. "A method of analysis of transformer impulse voltage distribution using a digital computer". Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. Part A. Power Engineering. 105 (23). London: 445–459. doi:10.1049/pi-a.1958.0080. ISSN2054-040X.
—; Paton, James Steele Park (1946). "The library and information service of the Metropolitan-Vickers Co. Ltd". Manchester Review. Public Library Review Autumn. 4. Libraries Committee, City Council. Manchester: Manchester Public Libraries: 236–238. ISSN0025-2026. OCLC1014381852.
Fleming, Arthur; — (September 1946). Sanger, Margaret (ed.). "What the industrialist expects of an information service". Report of Proceedings of the 21st Conference of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux. 21. London: ASLIB: 47–56. OCLC652436848. Held at Fyrie Hall, the Polytechnic, London, 14–15 September 1946.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
Edwards, John Charles Manson; Gill, Samuel Sidney; Perkins, Stanley (December 1958). "A Method of Calculating the Deflection of the Graphite Support Grid for a Gas Cooled Reactor". Civil Engineering and Public Works Review. 53 (630). London: Lomax, Erskine & Company Ltd.: 1400–1402. ISSN0009-7861. OCLC220831595.
Gradwell, Cyril Frederick (1 July 1950). "Asymmetrical Bending of Tapered Disks: The Solution of a problem in disk bending occurring in connexion with gas turbines". Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology. 22 (7): 209–212. doi:10.1108/eb031926. ISSN0002-2667.
^His siblings took the mathematics examination at the same time.[11]
^See The Day Training College: a Victorian innovation in teacher training.[12]
^Aberystwyth originated as a college teaching external degrees of the University of London. See University of London Worldwide history of the external examination system.
^In 1897, the Government Education Inspectors insisted the Athenaeum must expand if it was to continue as a centre of learning. An initial plan to add a floor to the building was rejected in favour of adding a new adjoining building at a cost of £3,000. The new school also made use of the first floor classrooms in the Athenaeum.[19][20]: 263
^There is a portrait photograph of Eustace, as chair of the council, in the cafe area of the Civic Centre in Sambourne Road, Warminster.[21]
^The school closed at the end of the summer term 29July 1931, after the Wiltshire County Council Education Authority built a new secondary school for Warminster.[23] The building was used as the town library until 1958, and then by Warminster Youth Centre, but is now owned and managed by the Athenaeum Trust.[24]
^A Warminster town guide of 1924 described Boreham Road as a modern residential quarter of semi-detached villas, pretty gardens, with a tree lined footpath blending the rural with the urban.[26]
^Market Place in Warminster.At the end of the musical, the national anthem of Japan was sung, followed by the British national anthem, and the flags of the Allies were waved from the stage.[29] The Belgian flag was held by a young refugee, Alphonse Cambier, who, with three others, were attending the County School.[29]Germany had invaded Belgium on 4August 1914, forcing Belgians to flee, with the United Kingdom home to 250,000 Belgian refugees during World War I. Lord Bath placed his vacant houses in the district at their disposal. Amongst others, two large houses in Warminster were made available, one in the Market Place, and one in Silver Street.[33][34]
^Dent was a bridesmaid at Evelyn's wedding to Maurice Philip Young, a pharmacist, at the Minster Church of StDenys, Warminster, on 7June 1926. At the time of her marriage, Evelyn was an assistant mistress at the Central County School, Church Road, Bexleyheath. Dent wore printed silk, with a shaded hat to match, and pink pearls, the gift of the bridegroom. She was known to friends and family as May Dent.[36]
^Dent's sister, Florence Mary, won the same prize for the year below.[41]
^The University of Bristol was the first higher education institute in England to admit women on an equal basis to men.[43]
^The course of mathematics at Bristol University normally lasted three years, but because of Dirac's previous training, the Department of Mathematics had allowed him to join in the second year.[46]
^Dirac would later say that Peter Fraser was the best teacher he had ever had.[46]
^Her relations with Dirac were strictly formal; they seldom spoke to each other.[48]
^Dent's sister, Florence Mary, graduated at the same time with a Bachelor of Arts degree.[50]
^The scholarship was open to female graduates of a recognised college or university, and worth £45 at the time.[53]
^Wilson later became a successful writer and poet. Wilson's dissertation, Music and English Poetry, featured at The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge exhibition from October 2019.[54][55]
^Paul Dirac was also in receipt of a Research Council grant at this point with his research interests listed under Dent's entry in the Research Council's report for the year 1925 to 1926.[57]
^Tyndall became the "father" of the School of Physics. A lecturer and then professor who researched the mobility of ions in gases, Tyndall persuaded the Bristol industrialist Henry Herbert Wills to endow a purpose-built physics laboratory.[59]
^This was the first appointment of a professor of theoretical physics in the United Kingdom.[59]
^Sydney Chapman was Lennard‑Jones's PhD thesis advisor at Trinity College, Cambridge.[58]
^Despite the fact that the department had acquired a second professor and two research fellows.[62]: 26
^The library had been named after Maria Mercer, the last surviving daughter of John Mercer, a Lancashire weaver who taught himself sufficient chemistry to be elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1852.[56]: 3 Mercer was the inventor of the process of treating cotton known as mercerisation, and had amassed a considerable fortune. When Maria died, on 22February 1913 at Clayton-le-Moors, aged 93, her trustees offered "not less than £5,000" to the University of Bristol, towards the endowment of a Chair of Chemistry.[56]: 3
^May Christophera Staveley was her warden and tutor at Clifton Hill House. Dent returned to Bristol on 22December 1934 for Staveley's funeral.[67] Dent was a member of the Clifton Hill House Old Students Association.[68]
^In 1932, Lennard‑Jones was elected to the Plummer Chair of Theoretical Chemistry in the University of Cambridge: The first person to hold a Chair of Theoretical Chemistry anywhere in the world.[58]John Murrell has described Lennard‑Jones as "the father of British quantum chemistry".[80]
^Pearce was later a liaison engineer for European and American companies at Metropolitan-Vickers. He was also Director and Secretary of the British Cast Iron Research Association.[84]
^Along with Dent, Cyril Gradwell was one of the first programmers of the Ferranti Mark 1 computer. He wrote system software routines (for example Input G and Reciprocal G) that had advantages over the original versions written by Alan Turing. He wrote Mark I programs for Ferranti's guided missile work for the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough, and on cotton spinning applications for the British Cotton Industry Research Association's Shirley Institute at Didsbury.[96]
^Dent's sister, Florence Mary, also lived at the house until her death on 13 September 1986(1986-09-13) (aged 84).[110] The move to Sompting was likely made after Florence retired from working life on 22September 1961. She had been a secretary for the Withington Friendly Burial Collecting Society, Withington, and after its takeover in 1954, for Liverpool Victoria.[111]
^Dent is interred in row 11, plot 32, on a mowed lawn area, where the markers are in the form of small brass plaques set into the lawn, approximately 15 by 10 cm (6 by 4 in) in size. Dent's sister, Florence Mary, is also interred at the crematorium.[116]
^Similarly, Dent's mother, Agnes, is remembered on a brass plaque at the east end of the choir stall.[117]
^The conference was held at the Wills Hall, University of Bristol, with Dent returning to Bristol for the first time since 1929 after resigning her position in the Physics Department.[148]
^
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^"Deaths". The Guardian. 25 June 1954. p. 12. OCLC28108425. Retrieved 19 August 2020. DENT-On June 24, at 529 Kings Road, Stretford, EUSTACE EDWARD, aged 85 years the dearly loved husband of Agnes Dent. Service at StMatthew's Church on Tuesday, June 29, at 10 50 a.m., prior to committal at Manchester Crematorium at 11 20 a.m.
^BT Archives (September 1961). Manchester and Stoke-On-Trent Telephone Directory. British Phone Books 1880–1984 (Online database). Vol. 11. Stretford: BT Heritage. p. 207.
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BT Archives (May 1963). Brighton, Canterbury and Tunbridge Wells Telephone Directory. British Phone Books 1880–1984 (Online database). Vol. 4. Lancing: BT Heritage. p. 105.
^"Deaths". The Guardian. 7 April 1967. p. 2. Retrieved 17 July 2020. DENT-On April 5, peacefully, at home 1 Cokeham Road Sompting, Lancing, AGNES aged 97 years widow of Eustace Edward DENT and beloved mother of Beryl May and Florence Mary. Service at StMary's Church Sompting, on Monday, April 10, at 2:15 pm followed by cremation at the Downs Crematorium, Brighton.
^"No. 50671". The London Gazette. 1 October 1986. p. 12718.
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Lucas, Sue, ed. (1978). "Obituary". The Woman Engineer. Spring 1978 (page 64 in the volume). 12 (7). London: 4. ISSN0043-7298. Retrieved 15 July 2020. Miss Beryl May Dent ... who became associates of the Society in 1956.
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Gates and Moloney Solicitors (31 October 1975). Beryl May Dent (Will and testament). Edward Victor Kemp, Florence Mary Dent. Lancing: Probate Service. p. 1. 770511267B.
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Sussex Family History Group (May 2003). Sompting StMary Transcriptions. Sompting and Lancing Pastfinders. Brighton: Sussex Family History Group. p. 31. Church15 and Church37. Credit: Eileen Colwell, Secretary, Lancing & Sompting Pastfinders, who researched Dent's memorial.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
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The Park of Industry is a documentary produced by REELmcr that tells the story of Trafford Park, through a series of filmed interviews with ex-employees and residents.