new+york+tribune

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Railways and locomotives

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Stephenson's parents emigrated to the United States when he was 2 years old; he was educated in public schools in New York, where his parents had settled, and at a Wesleyan seminary. He became a clerk in a store at 16, but in 1828 he apprenticed himself to a coachbuilder, Andrew Wade, of Broome Street, New York. His apprenticeship lasted two years, during which time he learned mechanical drawing in the evenings and started to design vehicles. He was employed for a year on carriage repair work and in 1831 he opened his own coach repair business. Within a year he had built New York's first omnibus; this was bought by Abraham Brower, Stephenson's former employer, who started the city's first bus service. Brower immediately ordered a further three buses from Stephenson, and a further horse-drawn car was ordered by the New York \& Harlem Railroad. He built the car used at the opening of the railroad on 26 November 1832, the first street railway in the world. Orders followed for cars for many street railroads in other cities in the eastern States, and business prospered until the financial panic of 1837. Stephenson's factory was forced to close but he managed to pay off his creditors in the next six years and started in business again, building only omnibuses and coaches to become recognized as the world's foremost builder of streetcars. His first car had four flanged wheels, and a body of three compartments slung on leather straps from an unsprung chassis. He built horse-drawn cars, cable cars, electric and open cars; by 1891 his factory had 500 employees and was producing some twenty-five cars a week. His first patent had been dated 23 April 1833 and was followed by some ten others. During the Civil War, his factory was turned over to the manufacture of pontoons and gun carriages. He married Julia Tiemann in 1833; they had two sons and a daughter. He lived at New Rochelle, New York, from 1865 until his death.

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SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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He was the son of Robert Hoe, a printer who improved the cylinder press invented by David Napier. At the age of 15 he entered his father's business, taking full control of it three years later. Newspaper publishers demanded ever-increasing speeds of output from the printing press, and Hoe was one of those who realized that the speed was limited by the reciprocating action of the flat-bed machine. In 1846 he constructed a rotary press in which a central cylinder carried the type and flat sheets of paper were fed to smaller impression cylinders ranged around it. This kind of press, with four impression cylinders, was first used to print the Philadelphia Public Ledger in 1847, and was able to print 8,000 papers per hour. Such presses reigned supreme for newspaper printing in many countries for twenty-five years: in 1857, for example, The Times had a ten-feeder machine making 20,000 impressions per hour. Even so, the quest for speed, now limited by the single-sheet feed, continued. William Bullock (1813–67) introduced continuous roll or web feed for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1865, and the next year The Times followed suit with the web-fed Walter press. In 1871 Hoe devised a machine that combined all the advantages of the existing machines, producing a rotary, web, perfecting (printing on both sides of the paper at once) machine, first used in the office of the New York Tribune. Ten years later the Hoe Company devised a folding machine to fold the copies as they came off the press: the modern newspaper printing press had arrived. In addition to his contributions to the printing industry, Hoe was a good employer, arranging free evening classes and other welfare services for his apprentices.

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SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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Mergenthaler came from a family of teachers, but following a mechanical bent he was apprenticed to a clockmaker. Having served his time, Mergenthaler emigrated to the USA in 1872 to avoid military service. He immediately secured work in Washington, DC, in the scientific instrument shop of August Hahl, the son of his former master. He steadily acquired a reputation for skill and ingenuity, and in 1876, when Hahl transferred his business to Baltimore, Mergenthaler went too. Soon after, they were commissioned to remedy the defects in a model of a writing machine devised by James O.Clephane of Washington. It produced print by typewriting, which was then multiplied by lithography. Mergenthaler soon corrected the defects and Clephane ordered a full-size version. This was completed in 1877 but did not work satisfactorily. Nevertheless, Mergenthaler was moved to engage in the long battle to mechanize the typesetting stage of the printing process. Clephane suggested substituting stereotyping for lithography in his device, but in spite of their keen efforts Mergenthaler and Hahl were again unsuccessful and they abandoned the project. In spare moments Mergenthaler continued his search for a typesetting machine. Late in 1883 it occurred to him to stamp matrices into type bars and to cast type metal into them in the same machine. From this idea, the Linotype machine developed and was completed by July 1884. It worked well and a patent was granted on 26 August that year, and Clephane and his associates set up the National Typographic Company of West Virginia to manufacture it. The New York Tribune ordered twelve Linotypes, and on 3 July 1886 the first of these set part of that day's issue. During the previous year the company had passed into the hands of a group of newspaper owners; increasing differences with the Board led to Mergenthaler's resignation in 1888, but he nevertheless continued to improve the machine, patenting over fifty modifications. The Linotype, together with the Monotype of Tolbert Lanston, rapidly supplanted earlier typesetting methods, and by the 1920s it reigned supreme, the former being used more for newspapers, the latter for book work.

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SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing

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The son of a Congressman and mayor of New York, Wood was educated at Media Academy in Pennsylvania, specializing in scientific subjects. The death of his father in 1881 prevented his going on to college and he went to work at the Campbell Printing and Manufacturing Company, of which he became President in 1896. In the meantime, he had married the daughter of J.L.Brower, the previous head of the company. Later business consolidations brought into being the Wood Newspaper Machine Corporation.

Wood was responsible for a series of inventions that brought great benefit to the newspaperprinting processes. Most notable was the Autoplate, patented first in 1900 and finally in 1903. This enabled a whole page of newspaper type to be cast in metal at once, saving much time and effort in the forming of stereotypes; this invention earned him the Elliott Cresson gold medal of the Franklin Institute in 1909. Other inventions were the Autoreel, a high-speed press-feeder device, and the Autopaster, which automatically replaced a spent paper roll with a new one in a newspaper press, without the need to stop the press. Wood's improved presses and inventions increased the speed of newspaper production from 24,000 to 60,000 copies per hour, printed and folded.

He was also much interested in aviation and was an early member of the Aero Club of America, becoming its Vice-President for six years. He helped to found the magazine Flying and was its Editor from 1911 to 1919. He had predicted the part played by aircraft and submarines during the Second World War and was invited to join a panel of consulting inventors and engineers to assist the development of the US Navy. He was soon at odds with the authorities, however, and he resigned in 1915. After the war, he spent time in vigorous campaigning against immigration, America's entry into the League of Nations and on many other issues, in all of which he was highly controversial. Nevertheless, he retained his interest in the newspaper-machinery business, remaining President of his company until 1935 and Chairman of the Board thereafter. In 1934 he became Chairman of the NRA Code Authority of the newspaper-machine industry.

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SUBJECT AREA: Automotive engineering, Land transport

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He was the son of an Irish immigrant farmer, William Ford, and the oldest son to survive of Mary Litogot; his mother died in 1876 with the birth of her sixth child. He went to the village school, and at the age of 16 he was apprenticed to Flower brothers' machine shop and then at the Drydock \& Engineering Works in Detroit. In 1882 he left to return to the family farm and spent some time working with a 1 1/2 hp steam engine doing odd jobs for the farming community at $3 per day. He was then employed as a demonstrator for Westinghouse steam engines. He met Clara Jane Bryant at New Year 1885 and they were married on 11 April 1888. Their only child, Edsel Bryant Ford, was born on 6 November 1893.

At that time Henry worked on steam engine repairs for the Edison Illuminating Company, where he became Chief Engineer. He became one of a group working to develop a "horseless carriage" in 1896 and in June completed his first vehicle, a "quadri cycle" with a two-cylinder engine. It was built in a brick shed, which had to be partially demolished to get the carriage out.

Ford became involved in motor racing, at which he was more successful than he was in starting a car-manufacturing company. Several early ventures failed, until the Ford Motor Company of 1903. By October 1908 they had started with production of the Model T. The first, of which over 15 million were built up to the end of its production in May 1927, came out with bought-out steel stampings and a planetary gearbox, and had a one-piece four-cylinder block with a bolt-on head. This was one of the most successful models built by Ford or any other motor manufacturer in the life of the motor car.

Interchangeability of components was an important element in Ford's philosophy. Ford was a pioneer in the use of vanadium steel for engine components. He adopted the principles of Frederick Taylor, the pioneer of time-and-motion study, and installed the world's first moving assembly line for the production of magnetos, started in 1913. He installed blast furnaces at the factory to make his own steel, and he also promoted research and the cultivation of the soya bean, from which a plastic was derived.

In October 1913 he introduced the "Five Dollar Day", almost doubling the normal rate of pay. This was a profit-sharing scheme for his employees and contained an element of a reward for good behaviour. About this time he initiated work on an agricultural tractor, the "Fordson" made by a separate company, the directors of which were Henry and his son Edsel.

In 1915 he chartered the Oscar II, a "peace ship", and with fifty-five delegates sailed for Europe a week before Christmas, docking at Oslo. Their objective was to appeal to all European Heads of State to stop the war. He had hoped to persuade manufacturers to replace armaments with tractors in their production programmes. In the event, Ford took to his bed in the hotel with a chill, stayed there for five days and then sailed for New York and home. He did, however, continue to finance the peace activists who remained in Europe. Back in America, he stood for election to the US Senate but was defeated. He was probably the father of John Dahlinger, illegitimate son of Evangeline Dahlinger, a stenographer employed by the firm and on whom he lavished gifts of cars, clothes and properties. He became the owner of a weekly newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which became the medium for the expression of many of his more unorthodox ideas. He was involved in a lawsuit with the Chicago Tribune in 1919, during which he was cross-examined on his knowledge of American history: he is reputed to have said "History is bunk". What he actually said was, "History is bunk as it is taught in schools", a very different comment. The lawyers who thus made a fool of him would have been surprised if they could have foreseen the force and energy that their actions were to release. For years Ford employed a team of specialists to scour America and Europe for furniture, artefacts and relics of all kinds, illustrating various aspects of history. Starting with the Wayside Inn from South Sudbury, Massachusetts, buildings were bought, dismantled and moved, to be reconstructed in Greenfield Village, near Dearborn. The courthouse where Abraham Lincoln had practised law and the Ohio bicycle shop where the Wright brothers built their first primitive aeroplane were added to the farmhouse where the proprietor, Henry Ford, had been born. Replicas were made of Independence Hall, Congress Hall and the old City Hall in Philadelphia, and even a reconstruction of Edison's Menlo Park laboratory was installed. The Henry Ford museum was officially opened on 21 October 1929, on the fiftieth anniversary of Edison's invention of the incandescent bulb, but it continued to be a primary preoccupation of the great American car maker until his death.

Henry Ford was also responsible for a number of aeronautical developments at the Ford Airport at Dearborn. He introduced the first use of radio to guide a commercial aircraft, the first regular airmail service in the United States. He also manufactured the country's first all-metal multi-engined plane, the Ford Tri-Motor.

Edsel became President of the Ford Motor Company on his father's resignation from that position on 30 December 1918. Following the end of production in May 1927 of the Model T, the replacement Model A was not in production for another six months. During this period Henry Ford, though officially retired from the presidency of the company, repeatedly interfered and countermanded the orders of his son, ostensibly the man in charge. Edsel, who died of stomach cancer at his home at Grosse Point, Detroit, on 26 May 1943, was the father of Henry Ford II. Henry Ford died at his home, "Fair Lane", four years after his son's death.

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   Douglas L. Wheeler (A.B., Dartmouth College, M.A. and Ph.D., Boston University) is professor of history emeritus, University of New Hampshire, Durham. He taught history in that institution's Department of History from 1965 to 2002, and, from 1995 to 2002, he held a chair, the Prince Henry the Navigator Professorship. He has been a research associate, African Studies Center, Boston University and an affiliate, Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. He has also been a visiting professor at Boston University; University College, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe); and Morgan State College. He was also Richard Welch Fellow in Advanced Research on the History of Intelligence at the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University (1984-85). In the 1980s, he served as general secretary of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies (SSPHS) and was one of the founders of the International Conference Group on Portugal (1972-2002). He was founding editor of the Portuguese Studies Review, a semiannual academic journal. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of six other books on Portugal, Angola, and espionage history, including Republican Portugal: A Political History ( 1910-1926), A Ditadura Militar Portuguesa, 1926-1933, and (with Lawrence S. Graham), In Search of Modern Portugal: The Revolution and Its Consequences. Among the periodicals in which he has published articles are Foreign Affairs, USA Today Magazine, International Herald Tribune, and The Christian Science Monitor. In 1993, he was decorated by the Government of Portugal with the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator medal and in 2004, with the Order of Merit.

   Walter C. Opello Jr. (B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., University of Colorado, Boulder) is professor of political science, State University of New York, Oswego. Before joining the faculty at that institution, he was professor of political science, University of Mississippi, Oxford, from 1976 to 1987. Since the 1970s, he has carried out research in Portugal as a Fulbright Scholar (1981 and 1984) and as a Gulbenkian Foundation Scholar (1978 and 1980). In 1989, he was the director for research on Portugal's regions, carried out by the European Integrations and Regions Project under the auspices of the European Universities Institute, Florence, Italy. Professor Opello has published more than 50 journal articles, book chapters, books, and book reviews pertaining to Portugal's politics and government. His Portugal-related books are Portugal's Political Development: A Comparative Political Approach and Portugal: From Monarchy to Pluralist Democracy.