Whyte notation
The Whyte notation for classifying steam locomotives by wheel arrangement was devised by Frederick Methvan Whyte, and came into use in the early twentieth century following a December 1900 editorial in "American Engineer and Railroad Journal". The notation counts the number of leading wheels, then the number of driving wheels, and finally the number of trailing wheels, groups of numbers being separated by dashes. Other classification schemes, like UIC classification and the French, Turkish and Swiss systems for steam locomotives, count axles rather than wheels.
Christopher Whyte
Whyte was born in Glasgow (Scotland) in October 1952, educated there by Jesuits at St Aloysius College, and took the English studies tripos at Pembroke College, Cambridge between 1970 and 1973. He spent most of the next 12 years in Italy, teaching under Agostino Lombardo in the Department of English and American Studies at Rome's La Sapienza university from 1977 to 1985.