Guest, James John

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

[br]

b. 24 July 1866 Handsworth, Birmingham, England

d. 11 June 1956 Virginia Water, Surrey, England

[br]

English mechanical engineer, engineering teacher and researcher.

[br]

James John Guest was educated at Marlborough in 1880–4 and at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating as fifth wrangler in 1888. He received practical training in several workshops and spent two years in postgraduate work at the Engineering Department of Cambridge University. After working as a draughtsman in the machine-tool, hydraulic and crane departments of Tangyes Ltd at Birmingham, he was appointed in 1896 Assistant Professor of Engineering at McGill University in Canada. After a short time he moved to the Polytechnic Institute at Worcester, Massachusetts, where he was for three years Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Head of the Engineering Department. In 1899 he returned to Britain and set up as a consulting engineer in Birmingham, being a partner in James J.Guest \& Co. For the next fifteen years he combined this work with research on grinding phenomena. He also developed a theory of grinding which he first published in a paper at the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1914 and elaborated in a paper to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and in his book Grinding Machinery (1915). During the First World War, in 1916–17, he was in charge of inspection in the Staffordshire and Shropshire Area, Ministry of Munitions. In 1917 he returned to teaching as Reader in Graphics and Structural Engineering at University College London. His final appointment was about 1923 as Professor of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Artillery College, Woolwich, which later became the Military College of Science.

He carried out research on the strength of materials and contributed many articles on the subject to the technical press. He originated Guest's Law for a criterion of failure of materials under combined stresses, first published in 1900. He was a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1900–6 and from 1919 and contributed to their proceedings in many discussions and two major papers.

[br]

Bibliography

Of many publications by Guest, the most important are: 1900, "Ductile materials under combined stress", Proceedings of the Physical Society 17:202.

1915, Grinding Machinery, London.

1915, "Theory of grinding, with reference to the selection of speeds in plain and internal work", Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 89:543.

1917. "Torsional hysteresis of mild steel", Proceedings of the Royal Society A93:313.

1918. with F.C.Lea, "Curved beams", Proceedings of the Royal Society A95:1. 1930, "Effects of rapidly acting stress", Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical

Engineers 119:1,273.

RTS