Harry Sinclair Lewis (/ˈluːɪs/; February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." His works are known for their insightful and critical views of American capitalism and materialism between the wars. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."
He has been honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a postage stamp in the Great Americans series.
Born February 7, 1885, in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Sinclair Lewis began reading books at a young age and kept a diary. He had two siblings, Fred (born 1875) and Claude (born 1878). His father, Edwin J. Lewis, was a physician and a stern disciplinarian who had difficulty relating to his sensitive, unathletic third son. Lewis's mother, Emma Kermott Lewis, died in 1891. The following year, Edwin Lewis married Isabel Warner, whose company young Lewis apparently enjoyed. Throughout his lonely boyhood, the ungainly Lewis—tall, extremely thin, stricken with acne and somewhat pop-eyed—had trouble gaining friends and pined after various local girls. At the age of 13 he unsuccessfully ran away from home, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish–American War.
Babbitt is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Babbitt is a 1934 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Sinclair Lewis directed by William Keighley and starring Aline MacMahon, Guy Kibbee and Claire Dodd. A staid small-town businessman gets ensnared in shady dealings.
Babbitt, also called Babbitt metal or bearing metal, is any of several alloys used for the bearing surface in a plain bearing.
The original Babbitt alloy was invented in 1839 by Isaac Babbitt in Taunton, Massachusetts, USA. He disclosed one of his alloy recipes but kept others as trade secrets. Other formulations were later developed. Like other terms whose eponymous origin is long since deemphasized (such as diesel engine or eustachian tube), the term babbitt metal is frequently styled in lowercase. It is preferred over the term "white metal", because the latter term may refer to various bearing alloys, lead- or tin-based alloys, or zinc die-casting metal.
Babbitt metal is most commonly used as a thin surface layer in a complex, multi-metal structure, but its original use was as a cast-in-place bulk bearing material. Babbitt metal is characterized by its resistance to galling. Babbitt metal is soft and easily damaged, which suggests that it might be unsuitable for a bearing surface. However, its structure is made up of small hard crystals dispersed in a softer metal, which makes it a metal matrix composite. As the bearing wears, the softer metal erodes somewhat, which creates paths for lubricant between the hard high spots that provide the actual bearing surface. When tin is used as the softer metal, friction causes the tin to melt and function as a lubricant, which protects the bearing from wear when other lubricants are absent.
Lewis was an American satellite which was to have been operated by NASA as part of the Small Satellite Technology Initiative. It carried two experimental Earth imaging instruments, and an ultraviolet astronomy payload. Due to a design flaw it failed within three days of reaching orbit, before it became operational.
Lewis was a 288 kilograms (635 lb) spacecraft, which was designed to operate for between one and three years. It was built by TRW under a contract which was signed on 11 July 1994. Its primary instruments were the Hyperspectral Imager, the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array and the Ultraviolet Cosmic Background experiment. A number of technology demonstration payloads were also flown.
Lewis was launched by a LMLV-1 (Athena I) rocket flying from Space Launch Complex 6 at the Vandenberg Air Force Base. The launch was originally scheduled to take place in September 1996, but it was delayed due to technical problems affecting the rocket. Launch finally occurred at 06:51:01 GMT on 23 August 1997, and Lewis was successfully placed into a parking orbit with an apogee of 134 kilometres (83 mi), a perigee of 124 kilometres (77 mi), and 97.5 degrees of inclination. Lewis was to have raised itself into a higher orbit, at an altitude of 523 kilometres (325 mi).
A lewis (sometimes called a lewisson) is one of a category of lifting devices used by stonemasons to lift large stones into place with a crane, chain block, or winch. It is inserted into a specially prepared hole, or seating, in the top of a stone, directly above its centre of mass. It works by applying principles of the lever and utilises the weight of the stone to act on the long lever-arms which in turn results in a very high reaction force and friction where the short lever-arms make contact with the stone inside the hole and thereby prevents slipping.
The name lewis may come from the Latin levo -avi, -atum meaning to levitate or lift, but the Oxford English Dictionary Online states, "the formation and the phonology are not easily explained on this hypothesis", preferring "origin obscure", and speculating that the term may derive from a personal name. The Romans used the lewis. The specially shaped hole that is shaped to fit the device is known as a lewis hole. Lewis holes in the uppermost masonry coursings are neatly repaired with matching indented plugs after the stone has been set in place.
Lewis (first name and dates unknown) was an English cricketer who was associated with Middlesex and made his first-class debut in 1830.