HANSI, a town of British India, in the Hissar district of the Punjab, on a branch of the Western Jumna canal, with a station on the Rewari-Ferozepore railway, 16 m. E. of Hissar. Pop. (1901) 16,523. Hansi is one of the most ancient towns in northern India, the former capital of the tract called Hariana. At the end of the 18th century it was the headquarters of the famous Irish adventurer George Thomas; from 1803 to 1857 it was a British cantonment, and it became the scene of a murderous outbreak during the Mutiny. A ruined fort overlooks the town, which is still surrounded by a high brick wall, with bastions and loop holes. It is a centre of local trade, with factories for ginning and pressing cotton.
HANSOM, JOSEPH ALOYSIUS (1803-1882), English architect and inventor, was born in York on the 26th of October 1803. Showing an aptitude for designing and construction, he was taken from his father’s joinery shop and apprenticed to an architect in York, and, by 1831, his designs for the Birmingham town hall were accepted and followed—to his financial undoing, as he had become bond for the builders. In 1834 he registered the design of a “Patent Safety Cab,” and subsequently sold the patent to a company for £10,000, which, however, owing to the company’s financial difficulties, was never paid. The hansom cab as improved by subsequent alterations, nevertheless, took and held the fancy of the public. There was no back seat for the driver in the original design, and there is little beside the suspended axle and large wheels in the modern hansom to recall the early ones. In 1834 Hansom founded the Builder newspaper, but was compelled to retire from this enterprise owing to insufficient capital. Between 1854 and 1879 he devoted himself to architecture, designing and erecting a great number of important buildings, private and public, including churches, schools and convents for the Roman Catholic church to which he belonged. Buildings from his designs are scattered all over the United Kingdom, and were even erected in Australia and South America. He died in London on the 29th of June 1882.
HANSON, SIR RICHARD DAVIES (1805-1876), chief justice of South Australia, was born in London on the 6th of December 1805. Admitted a solicitor in 1828, he practised for some time in London. In 1838 he went with Lord Durham to Canada as assistant-commissioner of inquiry into crown lands and immigration. In 1840, on the death of Lord Durham, whose private secretary he had been, he settled in Wellington, New Zealand. He there acted as crown prosecutor, but in 1846 removed to South Australia. In 1851 he was appointed advocate-general of that colony and took an active share in the passing of many important measures, such as the first Education Act, the District Councils Act of 1852, and the Act of 1856 which granted constitutional government to the colony. In 1856 and again from 1857 to 1860 he was attorney-general and leader of the government. In 1861 he was appointed chief justice of the supreme court of South Australia and was knighted in 1869. He died in Australia on the 4th of March 1876.
HANSTEEN, CHRISTOPHER (1784-1873), Norwegian astronomer and physicist, was born at Christiania, on the 26th of September 1784. From the cathedral school he went to the university at Copenhagen, where first law and afterwards mathematics formed his main study. In 1806 he taught mathematics in the gymnasium of Frederiksborg, Zeeland, and in the following year he began the inquiries in terrestrial magnetism with which his name is especially associated. He took in 1812 the prize of the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences for his reply to a question on the magnetic axes. Appointed lecturer in 1814, he was in 1816 raised to the chair of astronomy and applied mathematics in the university of Christiania. In 1819 he published a volume of researches on terrestrial magnetism, which was translated into German by P. T. Hanson, under the title of Untersuchungen über den Magnetismus der Erde, with a supplement containing Beobachtungen der Abweichung und Neigung der Magnetnadel and an atlas. By the rules there framed for the observation of magnetical phenomena Hansteen hoped to accumulate analyses for determining the number and position of the magnetic poles of the earth. In prosecution of his researches he travelled over Finland and the greater part of his own country; and in 1828-1830 he undertook, in company with G. A. Erman, and with the co-operation of Russia, a government mission to Western Siberia. A narrative of the expedition soon appeared (Reise-Erinnerungen aus Sibirien, 1854; Souvenirs d’un voyage en Sibérie, 1857); but the chief work was not issued till 1863 (Resultate magnetischer Beobachtungen, &c.). Shortly after the return of the mission, an observatory was erected in the park of Christiania (1833), and Hansteen was appointed director. On his representation a magnetic observatory was added in 1839. In 1835-1838 he published text-books on geometry and mechanics; and in 1842 he wrote his Disquisitiones de mutationibus quas patitur momentum acus magneticae, &c. He also contributed various papers to different scientific journals, especially the Magazin for Naturvidenskaberne, of which he became joint-editor in 1823. He superintended the trigonometrical and topographical survey of Norway, begun in 1837. In 1861 he retired from active work, but still pursued his studies, his Observations de l’inclination magnétique and Sur les variations séculaires du magnétisme appearing in 1865. He died at Christiania on the 11th of April 1873.
HANTHAWADDY, a district in the Pegu division of Lower Burma, the home district of Rangoon, from which the town was detached to make a separate district in 1880. It has an area of 3023 sq. m., with a population in 1901 of 484,811, showing an increase of 22% in the decade. Hanthawaddy and Henzada are the two most densely populated districts in the province. It consists of a vast plain stretching up from the sea between the To or China Bakir mouth of the Irrawaddy and the Pegu Yomas. Except the tract lying between the Pegu Yomas on the east and the Hlaing river, the country is intersected by numerous tidal creeks, many navigable by large boats and some by steamers. The headquarters of the district are in Rangoon, which is also the sub-divisional headquarters. The second sub-division has its headquarters at Insein, where there are large railway works. Cultivation is almost wholly confined to rice, but there are many vegetable and fruit gardens.