Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/120

 (written in prison); and 'Family Governors exhorted to Family Godliness.'

He died at Bridgwater, and was buried at St. Mary's on 9 Feb. 1668-9. His wife Elizabeth had died in 1664, and he seems to have married a second wife, who survived him A son, John, born in 1652, matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford (8 May 1669). Henry Norman, master of Longport grammar school from 1706 to 1730, may have been the minister's grandson.

 NORMAN, ROBERT (fl. 1590), mathematical instrument maker, was the author of ‘The Newe Attractive, containing a short discourse of the Magnes or Lodestone, and amongest other his vertues, of a newe discovered secret and subtill propertie concernyng the declinyng of the Needle touched therewith under the plaine of the Horizon,’ black letter, small 4to, 1581. This book was dedicated to William Borough [q. v.], then comptroller of the navy, to whose ‘encouragement, good counsel, accustomed courtesy, and friendly affection towards me, an unlearned mechanician,’ Norman attributes the working out of the subject. Borough added an appendix: ‘A Discovery of the Variation of the Compass,’ in the preface to which Norman is referred to as ‘the expert artificer;’ and a note at the end advertises that the instruments described ‘are made by Robert Norman, and may be had at his house in Radcliffe.’ The book was often reprinted, but the later editions want both the dedication and Borough's appendix. Norman also wrote ‘Safegarde of Saylers,’ 8vo, 1590 (1600 and later); a rutter, or sailing directions, translated from the Dutch. 

NORMAN,. [See, 1647–1721; , first , 1797–1863; , second , 1819–1890.]

NORMANDY, ALPHONSE RENÉ LE MIRE (1809–1864), chemist, was born at Rouen on 23 Oct. 1809, and was originally intended for the medical profession. He devoted himself, however, to chemistry, and on the completion of his medical course he went to Germany and studied under Gmelin. He took out a patent in 1839 (No. 8175) for indelible inks and dyes, and in 1841 he patented a method of hardening soap made from what are known as ‘soft goods’ by the addition of sulphate of soda (No. 9081); but for some years he was prevented from using the process by the excise, who regarded the addition of sulphate of soda as an adulteration. The restriction was at length removed, and the patent was prolonged by the privy council in 1855 for three years to compensate him for the difficulties which had been thrown in his way (cf. Mechanics' Mag. lxiii. 56). In these two patents he is described as ‘M.D., of Rouen,’ with a temporary residence in London; but he seems to have come to England permanently about 1843, taking up his residence at Dalston, and subsequently at 67 Judd Street, Brunswick Square, London, where he lived until 1860. His apparatus for distilling sea-water to obtain perfectly pure water for drinking is very largely used on board ship, and formed the subject of a patent granted in 1851 (No. 13714). Further patents were taken out for improvements in 1852 (No. 275), 1856 (No. 1252), 1857 (No. 3137), 1859 (No. 459), 1860 (No. 786), and in 1861 (No. 1553). The great merit of the invention consists in conducting the operation at a low temperature, and causing the condensed water to absorb a large quantity of atmospheric air, which renders it palatable. A medal was awarded to him for this apparatus at the exhibition of 1862 (cf. Reports of the Juries, vii. B, 31, 32). The manufacture of these stills became an important business, which is still carried on near the Victoria Docks by Normandy's Patent Marine Aerated Fresh Water Company.

For some years he had a considerable practice as a consulting and analytical chemist, and in 1855 and 1856 he gave some startling evidence before a committee of the House of Commons on the adulteration of food with reference to the use of alum in the manufacture of bread. He was elected a fellow of the Chemical Society on 20 May 1854. He died at Odin Lodge, Clapham Park, London, on 10 May 1864.

Normandy published in 1849 a translation of Rose's ‘Practical Treatise on Analytical Chemistry,’ and he wrote: 1. ‘Guide to the Alkali-metrical Chest,’ 1849. 2. ‘Introduction to Rose's Chemical Analysis,’ 1849. 3. ‘Handbook of Chemical Analysis,’ 1850, 2nd ed. by Noad in 1875. 4. ‘The Chemical Atlas,’ 1855 (a French translation appeared in 1857). 5. ‘The Dictionaries of the Chemical Atlas,’ 1857. He contributed a