Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Brattain, Walter Houser, 1902–87, American physicist, b. Xiamen, China, Ph.D. Univ. of Minnesota, 1929. He was a researcher at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. from 1929 to 1967. He then taugh...

(Encyclopedia) Fleming, Walter Lynwood, 1874–1932, American historian, b. near Brundidge, Ala. He taught at West Virginia Univ. (1904–7) and at Louisiana State Univ. (1907–17) before becoming professor of hist...

(Encyclopedia) Smith, Walter Bedell, 1895–1961, U.S. general, b. Indianapolis, Ind. He enlisted (1910) in the Indiana National Guard, won a commission in the U.S. army (1918), and advanced to the rank of lieutenan...

(Encyclopedia) Steinmeier, Frank-Walter, 1956–, German politician. A member of the center-left Social Democratic party, he worked for the Lower Saxony chancellery when Gerhard Schröder was premier and served as S...

(Encyclopedia) Beaton, Sir Cecil Walter Hardy bēˈtən [key], 1904–80, English scenery and costume designer, photographer, writer, painter, and diarist. After designing his first stage show (1935), Beaton worked ...

(Encyclopedia) Stirling engine, an external combustion reciprocating engine having an enclosed working fluid that is alternately compressed and expanded to operate a piston, thus converting heat from a variety of so...

(Encyclopedia) Page, Walter Hines, 1855–1918, American journalist and diplomat, b. Cary, N.C. He became (1880) a reporter for the St. Joseph (Mo.) Gazette and wrote a series of articles on the problems of the Sout...

(Encyclopedia) Skeat, Walter William, 1835–1912, English scholar and philologist. Skeat took holy orders in 1860, but illness cut short his church career. At Cambridge he served as a lecturer in mathematics (1864�...

(Encyclopedia) Carter, Elliott Cook, Jr., 1908–2012, American composer, b. New York City. Carter is considered by many to be the most important late-20th-century American composer. Mentored early in life by Charle...

(Encyclopedia) flywheel, heavy metal wheel attached to a drive shaft, having most of its weight concentrated at the circumference. Such a wheel resists changes in speed and helps steady the rotation of the shaft whe...