Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/648

* STEPHENSON. 554 STEBEO-CHEMISTRY. his influence felt in the purely mechanical and engineering difficulties to be overcome, but also in the conservative organization and prosecution of tlie railway enterprises of his time. Consult Smiles, Lives of the Engineers, vol. iii. (London, rev. ed., 1874). Kead in this connection articles on Locomotive and Eailways. STEPHENSON, Robert (1S03-59). A Brit- isli civil engineer. He was the sou of George Stephenson (q.v. ) and was born at VVallington Quaj', near Newcastle. He was educated at New- castle and received practical engineering experi- ence at the Killingworth Colliery and with hia father in railway surveying and the construction of locomotives, being, in the meanwhile, a student for six mouths at Edinburgh Uni- versity. After managing his father's loco- motive factory in Newcastle for a few months he went to Sovith America on account of ill health (1824) and engaged in mining. Com- ing back to England in 1827, he returned to the locomotive works and supervised the con- struction of the Rocket (see Locomotive), incorporating in its mechanism man3' original and serviceable ideas, and assisted his father in other work. In 1833 he became the engineer of the London and Birmingham Kailway. one of the first in which great engineering difficulties were encountered in the construction, but which was completed in 1838. The firm of Robert Stephen- son & Co. by this time had become the leading engine builders of the world and a standard type of locomotive was evolved which was subsequently enlarged and improved. Robert Stephenson was interested in every department of railway con- struction, and particularly in the design of bridges, where he achieved the highest reputa- tion. Among the bridges he designed were tho high-level bridge over the Tj'ne at Newcastle, the Victoria Bridge at Berwick, the famous Britan- nia Tubular Bridge across Menai Strait, the Con- way Bridge, and the Victoria Bridge over the Saint Lawrence. (See Bridge.) In 1847 Stephenson was elected to Parliament from Whit- by as a Conservative, and in 1856 became presi- dent of the Institution of Civil Engineers. See Smiles, Lives of the Engineers (London, rev. ed., 1874) : JeaiTerson and Pole, The Life of Robert Stephenson (ib., 1864). See Locomotive; Raii^ WAYS ; Steam Engine ; Bridge. STEP'NIAK' ( pseudonjnn of Kravtchinski) , Sergei jMikiiailovitch (1852-0.5). A Russian revolutionary exile and writer, born in Southern Russia. He graduated at the Saint Petersburg School of Artillery, and entered the Forestry Institute at Saint Petersburg. In 1872 he joined a Nihilist circle and engaged in spread- ing revolutionary ideas among the factory work- men in the capital. He was arrested in 1874 in the Government of Tver, but escaped, and hence- forth led the life of an outlaw. He engaged in conspiracies in Italy, took an active part at Geneva in the publication of The Commune, and smuggled into Russia a press and type for illegal publications in 1878. When the revolu- tionists resolved upon the death of General Mezcntseif, chief of the gendarmes, Stepniak, chosen by lot for the purpose, stabbed him on August 16, 1878. and somewhat later published Life for Life in justification of the act. During the years 187(1-83 he lived in Switzerland and Italy, where appeared his famous Underground Russia (1882). In 1884 Stepniak settled in Lon- don. In 1885 appeared his Russia Under the Tsara, followed by The Russian Storm Cloud (1880), Russian I'eusuntry, Career of a Nihilist (1889), The Little Cottage on the Volga, and King Stork and King Log (1895). He edited Free Russia (founded in 1890), the monthly organ of the English Society of Friends of Russian Freedom. He died in Loiulon. STEPPE (Russ. stepi, waste, heath, steppe). The name given to the undulating plains of Southeastern Europe and Northern Asia which correspond in general to the prairies and pampas of America, but are marked by some peculiarities due to their elevation and dry climate. The steppes are covered with grass in the rainy sea- son or early summer and afford pasturage to great herds of cattle, sheep, and horses, and are largely occupied, where not brought under culti- vation, by nomadic tribes of Tatars. See Grass- lands: Praibie. STERE (Fr. stere, from Gk. (rrepeds, stereos, solid). Another name for a cubic meter. The measure is much used for wood, especially fire- wood. See Metric System. STEREO-CHEMISTRY. A branch of chem- istry dealing with those cases of isomerism that cannot be explained by the doctrine of the link- ing of atoms, and explaining those cases on the assumption that the combining forces of an atom act in certain definite directions in space. Isomer- ism (i.e. the existence of compounds having the same qualitative and quantitative composition and the same molecular weight, yet differing more or less in their properties) and the doctrine of the linking of atoms (the structural theory) have been discussed in the article Cardon Compounds, which should be read in connection with the present sketch. Optical Isomerism. Most of the cases not explained by the doctrine of the linking of atoms are presented by compounds identical in all their chemical and plij-sical properties except the power of rotating the plane of polarized light. It is well known that this power is possessed by a number of crystalline substances in the solid state, and that every such sulistance can be ob- tained in two 'enantiomorphous' crystalline forms, rotating the plane of polarized light through equal angles but in opposite directions. But when melted or dissolved such substances usually lose that power completely — which shows that their optical property is peculiar, not to their nature, but to the particular crystalline form which they assume in the solid state. These are not the substances that stereo-chemistry has to deal with: such substances, inasmuch as they lose their difference of optical rotatory power with their crystalline form and are therefore identical in the liquid, gaseous, or dissolved state, cannot be considered as different chemical individuals, and hence cannot form the subject of a theory of chemical compounds. Cases of optical isomerism proper are presented by sub- stances retaining or acquiring their difference of optical rotatory power in the liquid, gaseous, or dissolved state. In 1874 Le Bel and Van 't Hoff discovered, in- dependently and almost simultaneously, that all optieallg active compounds, and only optically ac- tive compounds, coiitain one or more 'asym-