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1 Dictionary of American Biography
Общая лексика: Словарь биографий выдающихся американцевУниверсальный англо-русский словарь > Dictionary of American Biography
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2 Dictionary of American Biography
Abbreviation: DABУниверсальный русско-английский словарь > Dictionary of American Biography
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3 Singer, Isaac Merritt
[br]b. 27 October 1811 Pittstown, New York, USAd. 23 July 1875 Torquay, Devonshire, England[br]American inventor of a sewing machine, and pioneer of mass production.[br]The son of a millwright, Singer was employed as an unskilled labourer at the age of 12, but later gained wide experience as a travelling machinist. He also found employment as an actor. On 16 May 1839, while living at Lockport, Illinois, he obtained his first patent for a rock-drilling machine, but he soon squandered the money he made. Then in 1849, while at Pittsburgh, he secured a patent for a wood-and metal-carving machine that he had begun five years previously; however, a boiler explosion in the factory destroyed his machine and left him penniless.Near the end of 1850 Singer was engaged to redesign the Lerow \& Blodgett sewing machine at the Boston shop of Orson C.Phelps, where the machine was being repaired. He built an improved version in eleven days that was sufficiently different for him to patent on 12 August 1851. He formed a partnership with Phelps and G.B. Zieber and they began to market the invention. Singer soon purchased Phelps's interest, although Phelps continued to manufacture the machines. Then Edward Clark acquired a one-third interest and with Singer bought out Zieber. These two, with dark's flair for promotion and marketing, began to create a company which eventually would become the largest manufacturer of sewing machines exported worldwide, with subsidiary factories in England.However, first Singer had to defend his patent, which was challenged by an earlier Boston inventor, Elias Howe. Although after a long lawsuit Singer had to pay royalties, it was the Singer machine which eventually captured the market because it could do continuous stitching. In 1856 the Great Sewing Machine Combination, the first important pooling arrangement in American history, was formed to share the various patents so that machines could be built without infringements and manufacture could be expanded without fear of litigation. Singer contributed his monopoly on the needle-bar cam with his 1851 patent. He secured twenty additional patents, so that his original straight-needle vertical design for lock-stitching eventually included such refinements as a continuous wheel-feed, yielding presser-foot, and improved cam for moving the needle-bar. A new model, introduced in 1856, was the first to be intended solely for use in the home.Initially Phelps made all the machines for Singer. Then a works was established in New York where the parts were assembled by skilled workers through filing and fitting. Each machine was therefore a "one-off" but Singer machines were always advertised as the best on the market and sold at correspondingly high prices. Gradually, more specialized machine tools were acquired, but it was not until long after Singer had retired to Europe in 1863 that Clark made the change to mass production. Sales of machines numbered 810 in 1853 and 21,000 ten years later.[br]Bibliography12 August 1851, US patent no. 8,294 (sewing machine)Further ReadingBiographies and obituaries have appeared in Appleton's Cyclopedia of America, Vol. V; Dictionary of American Biography, Vol XVII; New York Times 25 July 1875; Scientific American (1875) 33; and National Cyclopaedia of American Biography.D.A.Hounshell, 1984, From the American System to Mass Production 1800–1932. TheDevelopment of Manufacturing Technology in the United States, Baltimore (provides a thorough account of the development of the Singer sewing machine, the competition it faced from other manufacturers and production methods).RLH -
4 Skinner, Halcyon
[br]b. 6 March 1824 Mantua, Ohio, USAd. 28 November 1900 USA[br]American inventor of a machine for making Royal Axminster and other carpets.[br]Halcyon was the son of Joseph and Susan Skinner. When he was 8 years old, his parents moved to Stockbridge in Massachusetts, where he obtained education locally and worked on farms. In 1838 his father moved to West Farms, New York, where Halcyon helped his father make violins and guitars for seven years. He then worked as a general carpenter for eight years until he was hired in 1849 by Alexander Smith, a carpet manufacturer. Skinner designed and constructed a hand loom that could weave figured instead of striped carpets, and by 1851 Smith had one hundred of these at work. Skinner was retained by Smith for forty years as a mechanical expert and adviser.Weaving carpets by power started in the 1850s on enormous and complex machines. Axminster carpets had traditionally been produced in a similar way to those made by hand in Persia, with the tufts of woollen yarn being knotted around vertical warp threads. To mechanize this process proved very difficult, but Skinner patented a loom in 1856 to weave Axminster carpets although, it was not working successfully until 1860. Then in 1864 he developed a loom for weaving ingrain carpets, and c. 1870 he altered some imported English looms for weaving tapestry carpets to double their output.His most important invention was conceived in 1876 and patented on 16 January 1877. This was the Moquette or Royal Axminster loom, which marked yet another important step forward and enabled the use of an unlimited number of colours in carpet designs. This type of loom became known as the Spool Axminster because of the endless chain of spools carrying lengths of coloured yarns, wound in a predetermined order, from which short pieces could be cut and inserted as the tufts. It put Smith's company, Alexander Smith \& Sons, Yonkers, New York, in the lead among American carpet manufacturers. This type of loom was introduced to Britain in 1878 by Tomkinson \& Adam and spread rapidly. Skinner virtually retired in 1889 but continued to live in Yonkers.[br]Further ReadingBiography, American Machinist 23.Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XVII.G.Robinson, 1966, Carpets, London (for the history and techniques of carpet weaving).A.Barlow, 1878, The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power, London (includes a section on pile weaving which covers some types of carpets).RLH -
5 Winans, Ross
[br]b. 17 October 1796 Sussex County, New Jersey, USAd. 11 April 1877 Baltimore, Maryland, USA[br]American inventor and locomotive builder.[br]Winans arrived in Baltimore in 1828 to sell horses to the Baltimore \& Ohio Railroad (B \& O), which was then under construction. To reduce friction in rail vehicles, he devised a system of axles which ran in oil-baths, with outside bearings. He demonstrated a hand-driven wagon with this system at the Rainhill Trials; the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway bought some wagons fitted with the system, but found them on test to be inferior to wagons with grease axle boxes. Back in Baltimore, Winans assisted Peter Cooper in building Tom Thumb. He took charge of the B \& O shops c.1834; he is said to have built the first eight-wheeled passenger coach and to have been the first to mount such a coach on two four-wheeled trucks or bogies. The arrangement soon became standard American practice, and, with partners, he built over 100 locomotives for the B \& O. In 1847 he pioneered the use of anthracite as locomotive fuel, and from 1848 he built his "Camel" locomotives with the driver's cab above the boiler.[br]Further ReadingJ.H.White Jr, 1979, A History of the American Locomotive-Its Development: 1830–1880, New York: Dover Publications Inc.P.Ransome-Wallis (ed.), 1959, The Concise Encyclopaedia of World Railway Locomotives, London: Hutchinson, p. 503 (biography).Dictionary of American Biography.H.Booth, 1980, Henry Booth, Ilfracombe: Arthur H.Stockwell, pp. 75 and 91–2 (for the Liverpool \& Manchester wagons).See also: Stephenson, GeorgePJGR -
6 Allen, Horatio
[br]b. 10 May 1802 Schenectady, New York, USAd. 1 January 1890 South Orange, New Jersey, USA[br]American engineer, pioneer of steam locomotives.[br]Allen was the Resident Engineer for construction of the Delaware \& Hudson Canal and in 1828 was instructed by J.B. Jervis to visit England to purchase locomotives for the canal's rail extension. He drove the locomotive Stourbridge Lion, built by J.U. Rastrick, on its first trial on 9 August 1829, but weak track prevented its regular use.Allen was present at the Rainhill Trials on the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway in October 1829. So was E.L.Miller, one of the promoters of the South Carolina Canal \& Rail Road Company, to which Allen was appointed Chief Engineer that autumn. Allen was influential in introducing locomotives to this railway, and the West Point Foundry built a locomotive for it to his design; it was the first locomotive built in the USA for sale. This locomotive, which bore some resemblance to Novelty, built for Rainhill by John Braithwaite and John Ericsson, was named Best Friend of Charleston. On Christmas Day 1830 it hauled the first scheduled steam train to run in America, carrying 141 passengers.In 1832 the West Point Foundry built four double-ended, articulated 2–2–0+0–2–2 locomotives to Horatio Allen's design for the South Carolina railroad. From each end of a central firebox extended two boiler barrels side by side with common smokeboxes and chimneys; wheels were mounted on swivelling sub-frames, one at each end, beneath these boilers. Allen's principal object was to produce a powerful locomotive with a light axle loading.Allen subsequently became a partner in Stillman, Allen \& Co. of New York, builders of marine engines, and in 1843 was President of the Erie Railroad.[br]Further ReadingJ.Marshall, 1978, A Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.Dictionary of American Biography.R.E.Carlson, 1969, The Liverpool \& Manchester Railway Project 1821–1831, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.J.F.Stover, 1961, American Railroads, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.J.H.White Jr, 1994, "Old debts and new visions", in Common Roots—Separate Branches, London: Science Museum, 79–82.PJGR -
7 Baldwin, Matthias William
[br]b. 10 November 1795 Elizabethtown, New Jersey, USAd. 7 September 1866 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA[br]American builder of steam locomotives, founder of Baldwin Locomotive Works.[br]After apprenticeship as a jeweller, Baldwin set up a machinery manufacturing business, and built stationary steam engines and, in 1832, his first locomotive, Old Ironsides, for the then-new Philadelphia, Germantown \& Norristown Railroad. Old Ironsides achieved only 1 mph (1.6 km/h) on trial, but after experimentation reached 28 mph (45 km/h). Over the next ten years Baldwin built many stationary engines and ten more locomotives, and subsequently built locomotives exclusively.He steadily introduced detail improvements in locomotive design; standardized components by means of templates and gauges from 1838 onwards; introduced the cylinder cast integrally with half of the smokebox saddle in 1858; and in 1862 imported steel tyres, which had first been manufactured in Germany by Krupp of Essen in 1851, and began the practice in the USA of shrinking them on to locomotive wheels. At the time of Matthias Baldwin's death, the Baldwin Locomotive Works had built some 1,500 locomotives: it went on to become the largest locomotive building firm to develop from a single foundation, and by the time it built its last steam locomotive, in 1955, had produced about 75,000 in total.[br]Further ReadingJ.H.White Jr, 1979, A History of the American Locomotive—Its Development 1830–1880, New York: Dover Publications Inc.J.Marshall, 1978, A Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers, Newton Abbot: David \& Charles.Dictionary of American Biography.PJGRBiographical history of technology > Baldwin, Matthias William
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8 Reynolds, Edwin
[br]b. 1831 Mansfield, Connecticut, USAd. 1909 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA[br]American contributor to the development of the Corliss valve steam engine, including the "Manhattan" layout.[br]Edwin Reynolds grew up at a time when formal engineering education in America was almost unavailable, but through his genius and his experience working under such masters as G.H. Corliss and William Wright, he developed into one of the best mechanical engineers in the country. When he was Plant Superintendent for the Corliss Steam Engine Company, he built the giant Corliss valve steam engine displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition. In July 1877 he left the Corliss Steam Engine Company to join Edward Allis at his Reliance Works, although he was offered a lower salary. In 1861 Allis had moved his business to the Menomonee Valley, where he had the largest foundry in the area. Immediately on his arrival with Allis, Reynolds began desig-ning and building the "Reliance-Corliss" engine, which becamea symbol of simplicity, economy and reliability. By early 1878 the new engine was so successful that the firm had a six-month backlog of orders. In 1888 he built the first triple-expansion waterworks-pumping engine in the United States for the city of Milwaukee, and in the same year he patented a new design of blowing engine for blast furnaces. He followed this in March 1892 with the first steam engine sets coupled directly to electric generators when Allis-Chalmers contracted to build two Corliss cross-compound engines for the Narragansett Light Company of Providence, Rhode Island. In 1893, one of the impressive attractions at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago was the 3,000 hp (2,200 kW) quadruple-expansion Reynolds-Corliss engine designed by Reynolds, who continued to make significant improvements and gained worldwide recognition of his outstanding achievements in engine building.Reynolds was asked to go to New York in 1898 for consultation about some high-horsepower engines for the Manhattan transport system. There, 225 railway locomotives were to be replaced by electric trains, which would be supplied from one generating station producing 60,000 hp (45,000 kW). Reynolds sketched out his ideas for 10,000 hp (7,500 kW) engines while on the train. Because space was limited, he suggested a four-cylinder design with two horizontal-high-pressure cylinders and two vertical, low-pressure ones. One cylinder of each type was placed on each side of the flywheel generator, which with cranks at 135° gave an exceptionally smooth-running compact engine known as the "Manhattan". A further nine similar engines that were superheated and generated three-phase current were supplied in 1902 to the New York Interborough Rapid Transit Company. These were the largest reciprocating steam engines built for use on land, and a few smaller ones with a similar layout were installed in British textile mills.[br]Further ReadingConcise Dictionary of American Biography, 1964, New York: C.Scribner's Sons (contains a brief biography).R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (provides a brief account of the Manhattan engines) Part of the information for this biography is derived from a typescript in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: T.H.Fehring, "Technological contributions of Milwaukee's Menomonee Valley industries".RLH -
9 Slater, Samuel
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. 9 June 1768 Belper, Derbyshire, Englandd. 21 April 1835 USA[br]Anglo-American manufacturer who established the first American mill to use Arkwright's spinning system.[br]Samuel's father, William, was a respected independent farmer who died when his son was aged 14; the young Slater was apprenticed to his father's friend, Jedediah Strutt for six and a half years at the beginning of 1783. He showed mathematical ability and quickly acquainted himself thoroughly with cotton-spinning machinery made by Arkwright, Hargreaves and Crompton. After completing his apprenticeship, he remained for a time with the Strutts to act as Supervisor for a new mill.At that time it was forbidden to export any textile machinery or even drawings or data from England. The emigration of textile workers was forbidden too, but in September 1789 Slater left for the United States in disguise, having committed the details of the construction of the cotton-spinning machinery to memory. He reached New York and was employed by the New York Manufacturing Company.In January 1790 he met Moses Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, and on 5 April 1790 he signed a contract to construct Arkwright's spinning machinery for Almy \& Brown. It took Slater more than a year to get the machinery operational because of the lack of skilled mechanics and tools, but by 1793 the mill was running under the name of Almy, Brown \& Slater. In October 1791 Slater had married Hannah Wilkinson, and in 1798 he set up his own mill in partnership with his father-in-law, Orziel Wilkinson. This mill was built in Pawtucket, near the first mill, but other mills soon followed in Smithville, Rhode Island, and elsewhere. Slater was the Incorporator, and for the first fifteen years was also President of the Manufacturer's Bank in Pawtucket. It was in his business role and as New England's first industrial capitalist that Slater made his most important contributions to the emergence of the American textile industry.[br]Further ReadingG.S.White, 1836, Memoirs of Samuel Philadelphia (theearliestaccountofhislife). Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XVII. Scientific American 63. P.E.Rivard, 1974, Samuel Slater, Father of American Manufactures, Slater Mill. D.J.Jeremy, 1981, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution. The Diffusion of TextileTechnologies Between Britain and America, 1790–1830s, Oxford (covers Slater's activities in the USA very fully).RLH -
10 Rowland, Thomas Fitch
SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology[br]b. 15 March 1831 New Haven, Connecticut, USAd. 13 December 1907 New York City, USA[br]American engineer and manufacturer, inventor of off-shore drilling.[br]The son of a grist miller, Rowland worked in various jobs until 1859 when he established his own business for the construction of wooden and iron steamships and for structural iron works, in Greenpoint, Long Island, New York. In 1860 he founded the Continental Works and during the American Civil War he started manufacturing gun carriages and mortar beds. He fitted out many vessels for the navy, and as a contractor for John Ericsson he built heavily armoured war vessels.He continued shipbuilding, but later diversified his business. He devoted great attention to the design of gas-works, constructing innovative storage facilities all over the United States, and he was concerned with the improvement of welding iron and steel plates and other processes in the steel industry. In the late 1860s he also began the manufacture of steam-engines and boilers for use in the new but expanding oil industry. In 1869 he took out a patent for a fixed platform for drilling for oil off-shore up to a depth of 15 m (49 ft). With this idea, just ten years after Edwin Drake's success in on-shore oil drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania, Rowland pioneered the technology of off-shore drilling for petroleum in which the United States later became the leading nation.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsAmerican Society of Civil Engineers: Director 1871–3, Vice-President 1886–7, Honorary Member 1899.Further Reading"Thomas Fitch Rowland", Dictionary of American Biography.1909, "Memoir", Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 62:547–9.WK -
11 Cooper, Peter
[br]b. 12 February 1791 New York, USAd. 4 April 1883 New York, USA[br]American entrepreneur and steam locomotive pioneer.[br]Cooper had minimal formal education, but following a childhood spent helping his small-businessman father, he had by his early twenties become a prosperous glue maker. In 1828, with partners, he set up an ironworks at Baltimore. The Baltimore \& Ohio Railroad, intended for horse haulage, was under construction and, to confound those sceptical of the powers of steam, Cooper built a steam locomotive, with vertical boiler and single vertical cylinder, that was so small that it was called Tom Thumb. Nevertheless, when on test in 1830, it proved a match for horse power and became one of the first locomotives to run on an American railway. Cooper did not, however, personally take this line of development further; rather, he built up a vast industrial empire and later in life became a noted philanthropist.[br]Further ReadingJ.F.Stover, 1961, American Railroads, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Dictionary of American Biography.PJGR -
12 Duryea, Charles Edgar
[br]b. 15 December 1861 Cawton, Ohio, USAd. 28 September 1938 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA[br]American inventor and pioneer cur maker.[br]He began his career in the bicycle trade, in which he invented a number of devices. He launched his own business in Peoria, Illinois, and later moved to Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1891 he had designed a motor-driven carriage and a gas engine and, with his brother, J.Frank Duryea, he built the first successful American car, which was demonstrated in Springfield in September, 1893. An improved version, largely designed by Frank Duryea, won several races both at home and abroad in 1895–6. The Duryea Motor Wagon Company made the first sale of an American-made automobile in 1896. Charles later organized the Duryea Power Company, manufacturing a three-cylinder car until 1914, the brothers parting company in 1898. Frank developed the Stevens-Duryea between 1903 and 1914.[br]Further ReadingDictionary of American Biography, Vol. XI (Suppl. 2), New York: Charles Scribner.IMcN -
13 Drake, Edwin Laurentine
SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology[br]b. 29 March 1819 Greenville, New York, USAd. 8 November 1880 Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA[br]American pioneer oil driller.[br]He worked on his father's farm, was a clerk in a hotel and a store, and then became an express agent at a railway company in Springfield, Massachusetts, c.1845. After he had been working as a railway conductor in New Haven, Connecticut, for eight years, he resigned because of ill health. Owning some stocks in a Pennsylvania rock-oil company, which gathered oil from ground-level seepages mainly for medicinal use, he was engaged by this company and moved to Titusville, Pennsylvania, at the age of almost 40. After studying salt-well drilling by cable tool, which was still percussive, he became enthusiastic about the idea of using the same method to drill for oil, especially after researches in chemistry had revealed this new sort of fossil energy some years before.As a manager of the Seneca Oil Company, which referred to him as "Colonel" in letters of introduction simply to impress people with such titles, Drake began drilling in 1858, almost at the same time as pole-tool drilling for oil was started in Germany. His main contribution to the technology was the use of an iron pipe driven through the quicksand and the bedrock to prevent the bore-hole from filling. After nineteen months he struck oil at a depth of 21 m (69 ft) in August 1859. This was the first time that petroleum was struck at its source and the first proof of the presence of oil reservoirs within the earth's surface. Drake inaugurated the search for and the exploitation of the deep oil resources of the world and he initiated the science of petroleum engineering which became established at the beginning of the twentieth century.Drake failed to patent his drilling method; he was content being an oil commission merchant and Justice of the Peace in Titusville, which like other places in Pennsylvania became a boom town. Four years later he went to New York, where he lost all his money in oil speculations. He became very ill again and lived in poverty in Vermont and New Jersey until 1873, when he moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he was pensioned by the state of Pennsylvania. The city of Titusville erected a monument to him and founded the Drake Museum.[br]Further ReadingDictionary of American Biography, Vol. III, pp. 427–8.Ida M.Tarbell, 1904, "The birth of industry", History of the Standard Oil Company, Vol. I, New York (gives a lively description of the booming years in Pennsylvania caused by Drake's successful drilling).H.F.Williamson and A.R.Daum, 1959, The American Petroleum Industry. The Age of Illumination, Evans ton, Ill.WKBiographical history of technology > Drake, Edwin Laurentine
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14 Gaskill, Harvey Freeman
SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering[br]b. 19 January 1845 Royalton, New York, USAd. 1 April 1889 Lockport, New York, USA[br]American mechanical engineer, inventor of the water-pumping engine with flywheel and reciprocating pumps.[br]Gaskill's father was a farmer near New York, where the son attended the local schools until he was 16 years old. At the age of 13 he already showed his mechanical aptitude by inventing a revolving hayrake, which was not exploited because the family had no money. His parents moved to Lockport, New York, where Harvey became a student at Lockport Union School and then the Poughkeepsie Commercial College, from which he graduated in 1866. After a period in his uncle's law office, he entered the firm of Penfield, Martin \& Gaskill to manufacture a patent clock. Then he was involved in a planing mill and a sash-and-blind manufactory. He devised a clothes spinner and a horse hayrake, but he did not manufacture them. In 1873 he became a draughtsman in the Holly Manufacturing Company in Lockport, which made pumping machinery for waterworks. He was promoted first to Engineer and then to Superintendent of the company in 1877. In 1885 he became a member of the Board of Directors and Vice-President. But for his untimely death, he might have become President. He was also a director of several other manufacturing concerns, public utilities and banks. In 1882 he produced a pump driven by a Woolf compound engine, which was the first time that rotary power with a crank and flywheel had been applied in waterworks. His design was more compact, more economical and lower in cost than previous types and gave the Holly Company a considerable advantage for a time over their main rivals, the Worthington Pump \& Machinery Company. These steam pumps became very popular in the United States and the type was also adopted in Britain.[br]Further ReadingAs well as obituaries appearing in many American engineering journals on Gaskill's death, there is an entry in the Dictionary of American Biography, 1931, Vol. VII, New York, C.Scribner's Sons.RLHBiographical history of technology > Gaskill, Harvey Freeman
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15 Pullman, George Mortimer
[br]b. 3 March 1831 Brocton, New York, USAd. 19 October 1897 Chicago, Illinois, USA[br]American inventor of the Pullman car.[br]Pullman was initially a cabinet-maker in Albion, New York, and then became a road-works contractor in Chicago. Observing a need for improved sleeping accommodation on trains, he arranged in 1858 with the Chicago \& Alton Railroad to convert two of their coaches into sleeping cars by incorporating upper berths hinged to the sides of the car. These and a third car entered service in 1859 and were popular with passengers, but other railways were reluctant to adopt them.Pullman moved to the Colorado mining area and kept a general store, but in 1863 he returned to Chicago. With Ben Field he spent a year building the car Pioneer, which not only incorporated the folding upper berths but also had seats arranged to convert into lower berths. When Pioneer entered service, the travelling public was enthusiastic: Pullman and Field built more cars, and an increasing number of railways arranged to operate them under contract. In 1867 Pullman and Field organized the Pullman Palace Car Company, which grew to have five car-building plants. Pullman introduced a combined sleeping/restaurant car in 1867 and the dining car in 1868.In 1872 James Allport, General Manager of the Midland Railway in Britain, toured the USA and was impressed by Pullman cars. He arranged with Pullman for the American company to ship a series of Pullman cars to Britain in parts for Midland to assemble at its works at Derby. The first, a sleeping car, was completed early in 1874 and entered service on the Midland Railway. Several others followed the same year, including the first Pullman Parlor Car, a luxury coach for day rather than overnight use, to enter service in Europe. Pullman formed the Pullman Palace Car Company (Europe), and although the Midland Railway purchased the Pullman cars running on its system a few years later, Pullman cars were used on many other railways in Britain (notably the London Brighton \& South Coast Railway) and on the continent of Europe. In 1881 the Pullman Parlor Car Globe, running in Britain, became the first vehicle to be illuminated by electric light.[br]Bibliography1864. jointly with Field, US patent no. 42,182 (upper berth).1865, jointly with Field, US patent no. 49,992 (the seat convertible into a lower berth).Further ReadingC.Hamilton Ellis, 1965, Railway Carriages in the British Isles, London: George Allen \& Unwin, Ch. 6 (describes the introduction of Pullman cars to Europe).PJGRBiographical history of technology > Pullman, George Mortimer
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16 Sickels, Frederick Ellsworth
[br]b. 20 September 1819 Gloucester County, New Jersey, USAd. 8 March 1895 Kansas City, Missouri, USA[br]American inventor of a steam-inlet cut-off valve mechanism for engines and steam steering apparatus for ships.[br]Sickels was educated in New York City, where his father was a practising physician. As he showed mechanical aptitude, at the age of 16 he joined the Harlem Railroad as a rod man, and a year later became a machinist in the Allaire Works in New York, studying physics and mechanics in his spare time. He perfected his cut-off mechanism for drop valves in 1841 and patented it the following year. The liberating mechanism allowed the valve to fall quickly onto its seat and so eliminated "wire-drawing" of the steam, and Sickels arranged a dashpot to prevent the valve hitting the seat violently. Through further improvements patented in 1843 and 1845, he gained a considerable fortune, but he subsequently lost it through fighting patent infringements because his valve gear was copied extensively.In 1846 he turned his attention to using a steam engine to assist the steering in ships. He filed a patent application in 1849 and completed a machine in 1854, but he could not find any ship owner willing to try it until 1858, when it was fitted to the August. A patent was granted in 1860, but as no American ship owners showed interest Sickels went to England, where he obtained three British patents; once again, however, he found no interest. He returned to the United States in 1867 and continued his fruitless efforts until he was financially ruined. He patented improved compound engines in 1875 and also contributed improvements in sinking pneumatic piles. He turned to civil engineering and engaged in railway and bridge construction in the west. In about 1890 he was made Consulting Engineer to the National Water Works Company of New York and in 1891 became Chief Engineer of its operations at Kansas City.[br]Further ReadingDictionary of American Biography, 1935, Vol. XVII, New York: C.Scribner's Sons. C.T.Porter, 1908, Engineering Reminiscences, reprinted 1985, Bradley, Ill.: Lindsay Publications (comments on his cut-off valve gear).H.G.Conway, 1955–6, "Some notes on the origins of mechanical servo systems", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 29 (comments on his steam steering apparatus).RLHBiographical history of technology > Sickels, Frederick Ellsworth
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17 Train, George Francis
[br]b. 24 March 1829 Boston, Massachusetts, USA d. 1904[br]American entrepreneur who introduced tramways to the streets of London.[br]He was the son of a merchant, Oliver Train, who had settled in New Orleans, Louisiana. His mother and sister died in a yellow fever epidemic and he was sent to live on his grandmother's farm at Waltham, Massachusetts, where he went to the district school. He left in 1843 and was apprenticed in a grocery store in nearby Cambridge, where, one day, a relative named Enoch Train called to see him. George Train left and went to join his relative's shipping office across the river in Boston; Enoch Train, among other enterprises, ran a packet line to Liverpool and, in 1850, sent George to England to manage his Liverpool office. Three years later, George Train went to Melbourne, Australia, and established his own shipping firm; he is said to have earned £95,000 in his first year there. In 1855 he left Australia to travel in Europe and the Levant where he made many contacts. In the late 1850s and early 1860s he was in England seeking capital for American railroads and promoting the construction of street railways or trams in Liverpool, London and Staffordshire. In 1862 he was back in Boston, where he was put in jail for disturbing a public meeting; in 1870, he achieved momentary fame for travelling around the world in eighty days.[br]Further ReadingD.Malone (ed.), 1932–3, Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 5, New York: Charles Scribner.IMcN -
18 Arnold, Aza
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. 4 October 1788 Smithfield, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USAd. 1865 Washington, DC, USA[br]American textile machinist who applied the differential motion to roving frames, solving the problem of winding on the delicate cotton rovings.[br]He was the son of Benjamin and Isabel Arnold, but his mother died when he was 2 years old and after his father's second marriage he was largely left to look after himself. After attending the village school he learnt the trade of a carpenter, and following this he became a machinist. He entered the employment of Samuel Slater, but left after a few years to engage in the unsuccessful manufacture of woollen blankets. He became involved in an engineering shop, where he devised a machine for taking wool off a carding machine and making it into endless slivers or rovings for spinning. He then became associated with a cotton-spinning mill, which led to his most important invention. The carded cotton sliver had to be reduced in thickness before it could be spun on the final machines such as the mule or the waterframe. The roving, as the mass of cotton fibres was called at this stage, was thin and very delicate because it could not be twisted to give strength, as this would not allow it to be drawn out again during the next stage. In order to wind the roving on to bobbins, the speed of the bobbin had to be just right but the diameter of the bobbin increased as it was filled. Obtaining the correct reduction in speed as the circumference increased was partially solved by the use of double-coned pulleys, but the driving belt was liable to slip owing to the power that had to be transmitted.The final solution to the problem came with the introduction of the differential drive with bevel gears or a sun-and-planet motion. Arnold had invented this compound motion in 1818 but did not think of applying it to the roving frame until 1820. It combined the direct-gearing drive from the main shaft of the machine with that from the cone-drum drive so that the latter only provided the difference between flyer and bobbin speeds, which meant that most of the transmission power was taken away from the belt. The patent for this invention was issued to Arnold on 23 January 1823 and was soon copied in Britain by Henry Houldsworth, although J.Green of Mansfield may have originated it independendy in the same year. Arnold's patent was widely infringed in America and he sued the Proprietors of the Locks and Canals, machine makers for the Lowell manufacturers, for $30,000, eventually receiving $3,500 compensation. Arnold had his own machine shop but he gave it up in 1838 and moved the Philadelphia, where he operated the Mulhausen Print Works. Around 1850 he went to Washington, DC, and became a patent attorney, remaining as such until his death. On 24 June 1856 he was granted patent for a self-setting and self-raking saw for sawing machines.[br]Bibliography28 June 1856, US patent no. 15,163 (self-setting and self-raking saw for sawing machines).Further ReadingDictionary of American Biography, Vol. 1.W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (a description of the principles of the differential gear applied to the roving frame).D.J.Jeremy, 1981, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution. The Diffusion of Textile Technologies Between Britain and America, 1790–1830, Oxford (a discussion of the introduction and spread of Arnold's gear).RLH -
19 Bell, Alexander Graham
SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications[br]b. 3 March 1847 Edinburgh, Scotlandd. 3 August 1922 Beinn Bhreagh, Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada[br]Scottish/American inventor of the telephone.[br]Bell's grandfather was a professor of elocution in London and his father an authority on the physiology of the voice and on elocution; Bell was to follow in their footsteps. He was educated in Edinburgh, leaving school at 13. In 1863 he went to Elgin, Morayshire, as a pupil teacher in elocution, with a year's break to study at Edinburgh University; it was in 1865, while still in Elgin, that he first conceived the idea of the electrical transmission of speech. He went as a master to Somersetshire College, Bath (now in Avon), and in 1867 he moved to London to assist his father, who had taken up the grandfather's work in elocution. In the same year, he matriculated at London University, studying anatomy and physiology, and also began teaching the deaf. He continued to pursue the studies that were to lead to the invention of the telephone. At this time he read Helmholtz's The Sensations of Tone, an important work on the theory of sound that was to exert a considerable influence on him.In 1870 he accompanied his parents when they emigrated to Canada. His work for the deaf gained fame in both Canada and the USA, and in 1873 he was apponted professor of vocal physiology and the mechanics of speech at Boston University, Massachusetts. There, he continued to work on his theory that sound wave vibrations could be converted into a fluctuating electric current, be sent along a wire and then be converted back into sound waves by means of a receiver. He approached the problem from the background of the theory of sound and voice production rather than from that of electrical science, and by 1875 he had succeeded in constructing a rough model. On 7 March 1876 Bell spoke the famous command to his assistant, "Mr Watson, come here, I want you": this was the first time a human voice had been transmitted along a wire. Only three days earlier, Bell's first patent for the telephone had been granted. Almost simultaneously, but quite independently, Elisha Gray had achieved a similar result. After a period of litigation, the US Supreme Court awarded Bell priority, although Gray's device was technically superior.In 1877, three years after becoming a naturalized US citizen, Bell married the deaf daughter of his first backer. In August of that year, they travelled to Europe to combine a honeymoon with promotion of the telephone. Bell's patent was possibly the most valuable ever issued, for it gave birth to what later became the world's largest private service organization, the Bell Telephone Company.Bell had other scientific and technological interests: he made improvements in telegraphy and in Edison's gramophone, and he also developed a keen interest in aeronautics, working on Curtiss's flying machine. Bell founded the celebrated periodical Science.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsLegion of Honour; Hughes Medal, Royal Society, 1913.Further ReadingObituary, 7 August 1922, The Times. Dictionary of American Biography.R.Burlingame, 1964, Out of Silence into Sound, London: Macmillan.LRD -
20 Corliss, George Henry
SUBJECT AREA: Steam and internal combustion engines[br]b. 2 June 1817 Easton, Washington City, New York, USAd. 21 February 1888 USA[br]American inventor of a cut-off mechanism linked to the governor which revolutionized the operation of steam engines.[br]Corliss's father was a physician and surgeon. The son was educated at Greenwich, New York, but while he showed an aptitude for mathematics and mechanics he first of all became a storekeeper and then clerk, bookkeeper, salesperson and official measurer and inspector of the cloth produced at W.Mowbray \& Son. He went to the Castleton Academy, Vermont, for three years and at the age of 21 returned to a store of his own in Greenwich. Complaints about stitching in the boots he sold led him to patent a sewing machine. He approached Fairbanks, Bancroft \& Co., Providence, Rhode Island, machine and steam engine builders, about producing his machine, but they agreed to take him on as a draughtsman providing he abandoned it. Corliss moved to Providence with his family and soon revolutionized the design and construction of steam engines. Although he started working out ideas for his engine in 1846 and completed one in 1848 for the Providence Dyeing, Bleaching and Calendering Company, it was not until March 1849 that he obtained a patent. By that time he had joined John Barstow and E.J.Nightingale to form a new company, Corliss Nightingale \& Co., to build his design of steam-engines. He used paired valves, two inlet and two exhaust, placed on opposite sides of the cylinder, which gave good thermal properties in the flow of steam. His wrist-plate operating mechanism gave quick opening and his trip mechanism allowed the governor to regulate the closure of the inlet valve, giving maximum expansion for any load. It has been claimed that Corliss should rank equally with James Watt in the development of the steam-engine. The new company bought land in Providence for a factory which was completed in 1856 when the Corliss Engine Company was incorporated. Corliss directed the business activities as well as technical improvements. He took out further patents modifying his valve gear in 1851, 1852, 1859, 1867, 1875, 1880. The business grew until well over 1,000 workers were employed. The cylindrical oscillating valve normally associated with the Corliss engine did not make its appearance until 1850 and was included in the 1859 patent. The impressive beam engine designed for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition by E. Reynolds was the product of Corliss's works. Corliss also patented gear-cutting machines, boilers, condensing apparatus and a pumping engine for waterworks. While having little interest in politics, he represented North Providence in the General Assembly of Rhode Island between 1868 and 1870.[br]Further ReadingMany obituaries appeared in engineering journals at the time of his death. Dictionary of American Biography, 1930, Vol. IV, New York: C.Scribner's Sons. R.L.Hills, 1989, Power from Steam. A History of the Stationary Steam Engine, Cambridge University Press (explains Corliss's development of his valve gear).J.L.Wood, 1980–1, "The introduction of the Corliss engine to Britain", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 52 (provides an account of the introduction of his valve gear to Britain).W.H.Uhland, 1879, Corliss Engines and Allied Steam-motors, London: E. \& F.N.Spon.RLH
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