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JAMES HENRY GREATHEAD (1844–1896)

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Originally appearing in Volume V12, Page 399 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JAMES HENRY GREATHEAD (1844–1896)  ,
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British engineer, was born at Grahamstown, Cape Colony, on the 6th of August 1844 . He migrated to England in 1859, and in 1864 was a pupil of P . W . Barlow, from whom he became acquainted with the shield
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system of tunnelling with which his name is especially associated . Barlow, indeed, had a strong belief in the shield, and was the author of a scheme for facilitating the
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traffic of
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London by the construction of underground
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railways
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running in cast-iron tubes constructed by its aid . To show what the method could do, it was resolved to make a subway under the
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Thames near the Tower, but the troubles encountered by
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Sir M . I . Brunel in the Thames Tunnel, where also a shield was employed, made engineers hesitate to undertake the subway, even though it was of very much smaller dimensions (6 ft . 7 in . 1
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Great Falls was a
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pioneer among the cities of the state in the development of a park system . When the city was first settled its site was a " barren tract of sand, thinly covered with
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buffalo-grass and patches of sage brush." The first settler, Paris Gibson, of Minneapolis, began the planting of trees, which, though not indigenous, grew well . The city's sidewalks are bordered by strips of
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lawn, in which there is a row of trees, and the city maintains a large nursery where trees are grown for this purpose .

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general state law (1901) placing the parking of cities on a sound
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financial basis is due very largely to the impulse furnished by Great Falls . See an article, " Great Falls, the Pioneer Park City of
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Montana," by C . H . Forbes-
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Lindsay, in the Craftsman for November 1908 .
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internal diameter) than the tunnel . At this juncture Greathead came forward and offered to take up the contract; and he successfully carried it through in 1869 without finding any necessity to resort to the use of compressed air, which Barlow in 1867 had suggested might be employed in
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water-bearing strata . After this he began to practise on his own account, and mainly divided his time between railway construction and taking out
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patents for improvements in his shield, and for other inventions such as the " Ejector " fire-hydrant . Early in the 'eighties he began to
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work in conjunction with a
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company whose aim was to introduce into London from
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America the Hallidie system of cable traction, and in 1884 an act of Parliament was obtained authorizing what is now the City & South London Railway-a tube-railway to be worked by cables . This was begun in 1886, and the tunnels were driven by means of the Greathead shield, compressed air being used at those points where water-bearing gravel was encountered . During the progress of the
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works electrical traction became so far
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developed as to be
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superior to cables; the idea of using the latter was therefore abandoned, and when the railway was opened in 1890 it was as an electrical one . Greathead was engaged in two-other important under-ground lines in London-the
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Waterloo & City and the Central London . He lived to see the tunnels of the former completed under the Thames, but the latter was scarcely begun at the time of his
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death, which happened at
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Streatham, in the south of London, on the 21st of
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October 1896 .

End of Article: JAMES HENRY GREATHEAD (1844–1896)
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