?:U563CRLSSI fr fc y< i JLk U^'j_k_ "T> r , , I ' -~-imsrn , - S ' i Irxi^:=^xiTiM?r^Vt h..?. t' r.' 1?I-1 Vail *-tv ?i aa pa .p>^'?. fr ^ ik ;uJohn A. Paxton map of Philadelphia, 1811 See page iii for detail map of circled area. Photo courtes) of American Philosophical Society Library ?I -r?I 1 i 1 I?1 1?I ?i r* 3 n1 ?r"?1 1 r~~i '?1* 3 <*?1 -1 ir? j* ?A-;i-i - J rjOtti So -S ted SE 1 J?SL, % A ?s 0$ SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONUNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 238WASHINGTON, D.C.1965 Publications of the United States National Museum The scholarl) and scientific publications of the United States National Museuminclude two series. Proceedings of the United States National Museum and United StatesNational Museum Bulletin.In these series the Museum publishes original articles and monographs dealingwith the collections and work of its constituent Museums?the Museum of NaturalHistory and the Museum of History and Technology?setting forth newly acquiredfacts in the fields of Anthropology, Biology, History, Geology, and Technology.Copies of each publication are distributed to libraries, to cultural and technicalorganizations, and to specialists and others interested in the different subjects.The Proceedings, begun in 1878, are intended for the publication, in separateform, of shorter papers from the Museum of Natural History. These are gatheredin volumes, octavo in size, with the publication date of each paper recorded in thetable of contents of the volume.In the Bulletin series, the first of which was issued in 1875, appear lunger, sepa- rate publications consisting of monographs (occasionally in several parts) and vol-umes in which are collected works on related subjects. Bulletins are either octavo or quarto in size, depending on the needs of the presentation. Since 1902 papers relating to the botanical collections of the Museum of Natural Histor\ have beenpublished in the Bulletin series under the sub-series Contributions from Ike United StatesNational Herbarium . Since 1959, in Bulletins titled "Contributions from the Museumof History and Technology." have been gathered shorter papers relating to thecollections and research of that Museum.This work, brought to completion while the author was curator of engineeringin the Museum of History and Technology, forms number 238 of the Bulletin series.Frank A. Tayli irDirector, United Slides National Museum United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1965 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing OfficeWashington, D.C., 20|02 ? Price $2.50 (cloth) yM^LTD QJL in * ' ^^^C"^:^""--? MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY Early Engineering;Reminiscences (1815-40)of George Escol Sellers Ed i ted byEugene S. Ferguson SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, D.C.1965 Contents PagePreface xiGeorge Escol Sellers xivPart I: Early Philadelphia Mechanics i i . Fire Engines and Leather Hose 22. Jacob Perkins in Philadelphia 123. Old Blind Hawkins 264. An Adventure in Learning 205. John White's Press-Screw Manufactory 316. The Philadelphia of Oliver Evans 367. Sellers and Pennock Fire Engine Works 438. Isaiah Lukens and Joseph Saxton 529. The United States Mints 6110. Redheffer's Perpetual Motion Machine 7gPart II: On Papermaking in the LInited States and England .... 87 1 1 . Nathan Sellers and Wire Working 8912. A Visit to the Mills of the Brandywine 9613. Papermaking by Hand and Machine 10214. A Visit to England. I. Maudslay and Brunei 10815. A Visit to England. II. Donkin's Bermondsey Works 11616. A Visit to England. III. I botson's Pulp Dresser 12717. A Visit to England. IV. Perkins's Adelaide Gallery 13118. An American Counterfeiter 135Part III: Internal Improvements 14319. Stage Line to Washington 14420. Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad 14721. The Portage Railroad 15322. Cardington Locomotive Works 16023. John Brandt, Master Mechanic 16624. The Sellers Locomotive 1 7225. Phineas Davis and the Arabian 18026. Seth Boyden's Locomotives 18527. George Escol Sellers Takes Leave of His Friends 190Appendix 193Sources of Sellers' Text 193Amnican Machinist Articles 1 94Index igr, vii IllustrationsFigure PageGeorge Escol Sellers (i 808-1 899) Frontispiece iv 1 Coleman Sellers (1 781-1834) xiv2 Sophonisba Angusciola Peale Sellers ( 1 786-1859) xv3 High Street, Philadelphia, looking west xvi4 Patrick Lyon, craftsman, at age 24 in 1 799 35 "Pat Lyon at the Forge," by John Neagle, 1829 56 Philadelphia-type hre engines of about 1800 77 Patrick Lyon's fire engine Diligent, 1820 98 "Hydraulion" fire engine and hose, about 1825 109 Jacob Perkins (1 766-1849) 1310 Asa Spencer's scroll lathe, with geometric chuck, 1820 14 1 1 Engraving showing scroll work and siderographic duplication of 1 7 figures. 1 2 Merrick & Agnew fire engine, about 1830 1913 Rowntree fire engine, about 1830 2314 Perkins triangular-valve ship pump 2515 231 High Street, the "Market Street Store" of Nathan Sellers .... 2816 Screw press, 1822 3317 John White's screw cutting lathe, about 1817 3518 Oliver Evans (1 755-1819) 3719 Pumping engine of Philadelphia Water Works, about 1801 3920 B. H. Latrobe's drawing of Center Square building, 1799 4121 Center Square Water Works, Philadelphia, 1807 4222 Great wheel lathe and pole lathe 4523 Samuel Morey's turpentine engine, 1826 4724 Isaiah Lukens (1 779-1846) 5325 Lukens's lithontriptor, 1825 5526 Maudslay's lathe and slide-tool, about 1807 5627 Tyler's lathe, 1828 5728 Slide-rest as built by Sellers about 1820 5829 Baldwin and Mason slide-rest, 1827 5g30 The second U.S. Mint, Philadelphia 6131 Coining press, U.S. Mint, about 1800 6332 Coining press, enlarged view 6433 Arcade Building, Philadelphia 6534 Steam engine designed by Franklin Peale 6735 First steam coining press, U.S. Mint, 1836 68,6936 Medal coined on the steam coining press, March 23, 1836 7137 Pressing and milling room of the U.S. Mint, Philadelphia 7238 Coin milling machine, designed by Franklin Peale 7339 Main steam engine at the U.S. Mint, Philadelphia 75 viii 40 Mint balance built by Joseph Saxton, about 1835 7841 Redheffer's perpetual motion machine 8142 Nathan Sellers (175 1 -1 830) 8943 Wire draw-bench, about 1830 9144 Dickinson cylinder paper machine, 181 7 9745 Handmade-paper mill 10346 Paper mold and deckel 10447 Paper-drying loft 10548 Screw press for paper 10649 Packet ship Hibernia 10950 Broadside of Thames tunnel, 1827 11351 Bryan Donkin ( 1 768-1855) r 1752 Fourdrinier paper machine, about 1850 11953 Sellers pulp dresser, 1832 12054 John Dickinson (1 782-1869) 12355 Saxton's locomotive differential pulley 13256 Perkins's cone-joint 13357 Saxton's magnetoelectric machine 13458 Map of Pennsylvania, showing system of canals and railroads 14559 Details of "Clarence" rail and roadbed 14960 Details of roadbed of Phi'adelphia and Columbia Railroad 15161 Belmont inclined plane on Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad ... 15562 Grade crossing on Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad 15663 Roadbed of abandoned portage railroad 15764 Sectional iron canal boats, 1839 15865 Baldwin locomotive, 1834 16166 Baldwin's half-crank 16267 English locomotive, John Bull, 1831 16368 Advertisement of Moses Starr & Son, boilermakers 16569 Device for "Increasing the adhesion of the Wheels of Locomotives" ... 17370 Thomas Rogers (1 792-1 856) 17471 Side support for Sellers locomotive 17472 Matthias W. Baldwin (1 795-1 866) 17573 Baldwin's locomotive wheel 17774 Baldwin's conical steam joint 17875 Advertisement of Coleman Sellers & Sons, locomotive builders 1 7976 Baltimore & Ohio locomotive Arabian 18177 Phineas Davis's steam-operated blower fan for locomotives 18378 Baldwin's stationary steam engine, 1829 18679 Leather splitting machine, 1809 18780 SethBoyden (1788-1870) 18881 Locomotive Orange, 1837, built by Seth Boyden 18982 Stephen Harriman Long (1784- 1864) 19183 Joseph Saxton (1799-1873) 192 IX Preface This book describes the development of machines and mechanical skillsin the United States during the first half of the 19th century. It illuminates a facet of our technological heritage that is little known despite its essential importanceto our understanding of the emergence of the United States as an industrial nation.Here the reader will meet many of the craftsmen and engineers who devised anddeveloped the machines and techniques that made possible the growth of an indus-trial complex. He will find many fresh details of surprisingly sophisticated toolsand skills that existed during an age that he has been taught was mechanically uncouth.Before one can understand why progress occurred as it did, it is necessary toknow what actually happened, who did what, and why. This is the kind of infor-mation that is presented in the pages that follow. Written with rare precision, per- ception, detachment, and good humor, these reminiscences have freshness and vigor that commend them to every interested reader.The author, born in 1808 in Philadelphia, a block and a half from IndependenceHall, was from early boyhood a constant visitor in and an alert observer of themany mechanical shops that were scattered about that part of the city. He knew,and tells us about, many of the leading mechanicians of the generation that spannedthe administrations of Jefferson and Jackson. In these pages, the names of Phila-delphians and sojourners in the shops of Philadelphia, as well as the names of otherAmericans whose paths crossed that of the author, take on qualities of flesh and blood.Ranging farther afield as he grew older, the author made a visit to Englandin 1832 that enabled him to hold a mirror to the state of the mechanic arts inAmerica, as he observed with a critical but kindly eye some of the great mechanicians of the Old World.Most ol the narrative included here appeared in a scries of articles in theAmerican Machinist between 1884 and 1893, which until now has been effectivelyburied in the stacks of the relatively lew libraries that have preserved early volumesof this magazine. It was tracked down through an offhand reference that Sellersmade in 1895 to his "valedictory," written "several years ago." A few additionalepisodes have been culled from two unpublished volumes in the Peale-Sellers Col.lection of the American Philosophical Society Library. It is quite remarkable that the reminiscences of an old man Sellers was 75w lien he wrote the first article?of events that occurred more than 50 years earliershould stand up so well under careful testing of his factual statements against thosecontemporary with the events described. The reader will quickly note that Sellers had an uncommonly good memory; but occasional comments by the author showthat he had also bales and boxes of papers, drawings, and artifacts of an active life-time to refer to. Limited only by his failing eyesight, he used his reference mate- rials with skill and candor. Even when his details can be disputed, which is seldom,his broader strokes paint a likeness that lets us see a real person where there wouldbe otherwise only a name.The reader can hardly fail to find new insights, previously unrecognized relationships amongst people and events, and occasionally?as when ebullientJacob Perkins or sagacious Bryan Donkin step out of the page to confront the reader ? sheer delight. I have selected for publication those parts of the story that are pertinent to thehistory of technology, believing that they will be useful as source materials in themany studies that ought to be made of the technical history of this period. The articles describe events that the author had direct knowledge of. Second-handnarrative or historical summary are retained only when they contain informationnot otherwise available, or when editorial interpolation would do violence to theauthor's narrative. Family history, of which a great deal exists in the unpublishedvolumes mentioned above, has been left for biographers of the several prominentmembers of the Sellers and Peale families.These reminiscences were written over a period of nearly 15 years, and for alltheir essential charm and freshness they were sometimes rambling and repetitious;no detectable plan or order was followed in their preparation. Therefore, the arti- cles, and occasionally passages within an article, have been rearranged to give veryroughly a chronological sequence.Editing within each article has been held to a minimum, and changes and omissionshave been noted in the text. Marks of elision have not been used generally to openand close passages from the typescript volumes in the American Philosophical So- ciety Library because the typescript is made up of a series of letters that really hasneither beginning nor ending.Because the work is presented as source material, 1 have tried to preserve its meaningby not tampering with the author's style. I have spelled out abbreviations, correctedthe spellings of names, and increased the number of paragraphs greatly, because theauthor paid little attention to such things. Grammatical changes, which have beenmade only when necessary, have been bracketed.Footnotes that appear more bibliographic than interpretive are intended to sug-gest further studies. I have assumed the risk of annoying some readers by tediousannotation in the hope that others will make use of the information and will help to fill in some of the larger gaps in our knowledge of this field and this period. I have been helped in every stage of the work by many individuals who havegenerously supplied encouragement, information, or pictorial materials, as theoccasion demanded.My first thanks are to Jo, my wife, who has submitted with patience and under-standing to the tyranny of a work-in-progress in our home. Two former colleagueshave been particularly helpful: Robert P. Multhauf encouraged me to undertakethis work; John H. White put his extensive detailed knowledge and records of earlyrailroads at my disposal, and he gave freely of his time in reading the manuscript,in discussing points not clear to me, and in locating materials for my use. Charles Coleman Sellers, biographer of Charles Willson Peale and author ofthe monumental, definitive Portraits and Miniatures of Charles Willson Pi alt, hasanswered my many questions and has graciously opened doors whose existence Iwas unaware of. It was Charles Coleman Sellers' father, Horace Wells Sellers ( 1 857-1 933), who encouraged his uncle George Escol Sellers to expand his reminis-censes, and he assiduously collected, arranged, and transcribed the numerous papersthat his uncle wrote.John H. Powell, catalyst extraordinary of historical studies, furnished a summaryof his work on Patrick Lyon that greatly expanded my knowledge of this colorful,competent mechanician. The kind assistance of Mrs. Gertrude D. Hess and MurphyD. Smith made my several visits to the American Philosophical Society Library bothprofitable and pleasant. Norman B. Wilkinson, John W. Maxson, Jr., and James L.Anderson have all responded with helpful answers to my unbidden queries.My special thanks go to George Giguere, who drew the frontispiece portrait ofthe author. Mrs. Catherine Scott's patient work of typing, retyping, collating, andcomparing the manuscript has helped to insure a faithful rendering of the author's narrative.While I thank all of those who have lent aid and encouragement, I take sole responsibility for opinions, conclusions, and mistakes. Eugene S. FergusonAmes, IowaSeptember 28, 1^64 XIII Figure i.?Coleman Sellers (1781-1834),father of George Escol Sellers. Portrait byCharles Willson Peale, 181 1. Photo courtesyof Charles Coleman Sellers and Frick ArtReference Library. George Escol Sellers George Escol Sellers was born in Philadelphia on November 26, 1808, the secondson of Coleman Sellers (1 781-1834) and Sophonisba Angusciola Peale Sellers(1786-1859).One of his grandfathers was Nathan Sellers, widely known in the United Statesand in England as a fine craftsman in the exacting art of making wire paper molds.Paper molds and machinery and, later, the actual making of paper were to engagemuch of George Escol's energy throughout his life. Coleman, his father, becameinvolved in the building of fire engines, and this, with the general machine works thatgrew out of his various enterprises, provided training for George Escol over the wholespectrum of the mechanic arts.His other grandfather was the renowned Philadelphia portrait painter andmuseum builder Charles Willson Peale. The boy's mother, like her brothers Rem-brandt and Rubens and Titian, was named for an artist?in her case a femaleItalian portrait painter of the 16th century. George Escol was at home in themuseum, as he was in the workshop. When lectures were held in the Peale Museum,the boy often assisted in preparing and cleaning up the apparatus used for demon-strations. He was, in fact, at home wherever there was something interesting to be Figure 2.?Sophonisba Angusciola PealeSellers (1 786?1859). mother of George EscolSellers. Portrait by her father, Charles VVillsonPeale, 1 8 1 1 . The child is George Escol Sellers'syounger sister. Elizabeth Coleman Sellers, whowas born in 1810. Photo courtesy of CharlesColeman Sellers and Frick Art ReferenceLibrary. learned. He was accurately characterized by Jacob Perkins as "the boy who askedquestions and would have an explanation of everything." 1His formal schooling started with his attendance at the "ABC" school of Mrs.Saul, who held forth in a seeond-story room on Chestnut Street at Seventh, about twoblocks from his home. He recalled this "giantess with a terrific turban on her head" as having "not a particle of kindness within her skin and her greatest delight seemedto be in torturing the kids entrusted to her care." 2 Until he was 15 or 16 years old,he had various schoolmasters, remembering with particular gratitude and affectionhis term with Joseph Roberts, who taught in the Friends' School on Fifth Street andwhose fourth-day afternoon lectures were open to all whom his students cared toinvite. In Roberts's classroom, George Escol sat at the same table with Solomon andWilliam Milnor Roberts, both to become civil engineers associated with the Penn-sylvania Portage Railway, and with John Dahlgren, of naval ordnance fame. It wasin the fourth-day lectures that Sellers met John C. Trautwine, whose civil engineeringhandbook was one of the earliest and most durable works of its kind.3 Sellers attended a private class in mechanical drawing held by William Mason, machinist and instru-ment maker; and he drew with John Haviland, architect. 4 His practical training 1 Peale-Sellers Papers, George E. Sellers memoirs (MSS, American Philosophical Society Library),book 4, pp. 13-14. Hereinafter referred to as Memoirs.2 Memoirs, book 4, p. 24.3 Memoirs, book 4, pp. 27-30. 1 Memoirs, book 8, p. q. Figure 3.?High Street, Philadelphia, looking west. The "Market Street Store" of Nathan Sellers was similar to thebuilding in the right foreground. From Charles W. Janson,Stranger in America (London, 1807). Library of Congressphotograph. began at home in his father's shop. Although he was bound to no particular master as an apprentice, he became certainly a competent machinist, profiting from associa-tion as a boy with such fine craftsmen as Isaiah Lukens, William Mason, his uncleFranklin Peale, and the itinerant German aristocrat known only as Henri Mogeme.Like most other engineers of his generation, the only advanced training that Sellersobtained was in the field or from such books as he was able to command.George Escol Sellers was born less than a decade after the great federal period ofPhiladelphia's history, when President Washington lived across Market Street fromNathan Sellers's store and paper mold manufactory between Fifth and Sixth Streets,when Secretary of State Timothy Pickering lived next door, and when such lumi- naries as David Ritten house were of "the set that congregated about the stove ofwinter nights in the Market Street store." 5 He could recall personally the merchant 5 Memoirs, book 1, p. 7!!; book 7, p. 6. xvi banker Stephen Girard, however, and he told of Girard's hurrying into his grand-father's store one morning to volunteer financial help for Nathan Sellers, withoutendorsers, when an erroneous report of his failure got abroad. 6Nathan Sellers moved about 1817 to a new home in Upper Darby Township,which he called Millbank; and Coleman's family, including George Escol, movedinto the Market Street store. In 1828, an association by Coleman with John Brandt,of Lancaster, Pennsylvania?who had devised a particularly good machine for form-ing and setting the teeth in textile cards and card clothing?led to the building ofshops that were named Cardington, near Millbank on the Marshall Road.The Cardington shops grew rapidly. In addition to cards and carding machinery,Coleman Sellers and his sons George Escol and Charles (two years older than George)built a line of papermaking machinery.In 1832, when he was nearly 24, George Escol spent several months in Englandto observe and learn whatever he could of papermaking machinery.Shortly after returning from England, Sellers was married, in 1833, to Rachel B.Parrish. A house at Cardington was enlarged for their use, and during the severalyears that they spent in Cardington two daughters and two sons were born into theirhousehold.After the death of Coleman, in 1834, the sons engaged in general machine work,building, among other things, two locomotives for the state railroad of Pennsylvaniaand steam engines and other machinery for the branch mints then being establishedin North Carolina and Georgia. In the depression that followed the panic of 1837,the enterprise failed and the Philadelphia chapters of George Escol Sellers's life wereeffectively closed.With his elder brother Charles, George Escol then established in Cincinnati aplant to make lead pipe in continuous lengths from fluid lead. While he remainedin Cincinnati, George Escol sold his interest in the lead pipe plant, organized theGlobe Rolling Mills and Wire Works, and designed and promoted a grade climbinglocomotive 7 that he preferred not to enlarge upon in his recollections.In 1849, u'hile they were in Cincinnati, George Escol and Rachel adopted LouisaStockton Peale, the orphaned daughter of Edmond Peale, one of George Escol'smany cousins. A last daughter, born to Rachel in 1852, survived only two months.During the ensuing eight years their second son and both daughters died, all threeof them around 20 years of age. In the fall of i860 Rachel died, leaving her husbandwith but one surviving son and an adopted daughter.During and after the Civil War, Sellers spent several years in southern Illinoison the banks of the Ohio River, engaged in an abortive scheme to use the pithvswamp canes as paper stock, and pursuing as an avocation the study of Indianmounds in the vicinity of his home. The results of his speculations and experiments 6 Memoirs, book 1, p. 42.7 Obituary in American Machinist (March 30. 1899), vol. 22, pp. 250-251. See also GeorgeEscol Sellers, Improvements in Locomotive Engines and Railways (Cincinnati, 1849) and Observationson Rail Roads, in the Western and Southern Stales, and of the Introduction of the Pioneer System, for TheirConstruction (Cincinnati, 1850). John H. White, curator of land transportation, SmithsonianInstitution, will have a chapter on the Sellers grade-climbing locomotive in his forthcoming work onCincinnati locomotive builders. XVll upon the flaking of stone for arrowheads and other instruments were summarizedin a publication of the Smithsonian Institution. 8Upon his retirement from business, George Escol Sellers, his sister Anna, and hisadopted daughter Lui took a house on Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga. Therehe wrote the series for American Machinist; kept up a correspondence with brothers,nephews, and cousins in order to straighten out obscure points and to reinforcehis own memory; and wrote hundreds of unpublished pages of reminiscences con-cerning the very numerous Sellers and Peale clans.Fascinated by his own memory, George Escol frequently speculated upon themechanics of a brain's ability to store seemingly unlimited quantities of information.His prodigious memory was a source of wonder even within his own family. To one of his relatives he wrote : 9 I remember many little things when I was not over 2 years old. Once atMillbank Aunt Nancy was questioning me and telling me of little things whenMother asked, "What is the earliest thing you do remember?" "I can't go back of the great snowstorm of Nov. 26th, 1808."Mother sat a moment thinking when she exclaimed, "Why Escol that wasyour birthday." "Yes Mother I did not think it safe to go back of that." Sister Anna, writing in 1893 to one of the Peales, called attention to brotherEscol's article on the early U.S. Mint. "It reads like a story," she wrote. "Mybrother is an old man to write such long articles," she continued, "but he does it tobring in some money?this time to pay for painting his house outside?or to helptowards it ... . Escol is in his 85 year he does much carpenter work, and garden-ing yet is very lame in both knees?and gets very tired." 10There was more to Escol's writing than the money it brought in. It was hisway of communing with the past and with posterity, leaving narratives and notes,in ink and in pencil, "from which some facts may be picked out after I have joinedthe majority."" In 1898 he was keeping a diary, noting daily occurrences, visitors,weather, and the like. He missed not a day throughout the fall, and half way-through December. Each allotted space was filled with his easy scrawl up to hisentry for Sunday, December 18. He died two weeks later, on January 1, 1899. 8 "Observations on Stone-Chipping," Annual Report of the Board oj Regents oj the Smithsonian III' stitution . . . 1885 (Washington, 1886), pt. 1, pp. 871-891.9 Memoirs, undated letter at end of book 2.10 Anna Sellers to Albert C. Peale, May 10, 1893 (MSS, Mills collection, American PhilosophicalSociety Library). 11 Memoirs, book 5, p. 22. XV1I1 THE FAMILY OF GEORGE ESCOL* SELLERS A PARTIAL GENEALOGY Sources: Charles Coleman Sellers, Charles Willson Peal,\ 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1947), and the following items in the Peale-Sellers papers in the American Philosophical Society Library: Charles Sellers genealogy of the Sellers family (no date, about 1826) ; George E. Sellers memorandum concerning his family (no date); and George E. Sellers memoirs, 2 vols., typescript. John Sellers (1728-?)-m. 1749Ann Gibson -Nathan (1 751 ? 1830)-m. 1779Elizabeth Coleman ? Samuel (1753-?) ?Coleman (1 781-1834)-m. 1805Sophonisba Peale(1 786-1859) ? Nathan (?-?) -David (1 757?1 813) -John (1762-?) -George (1768-?) -Samuel (?-?) -James (?-?) -David (?-?) -Charles (1806- 1898)m. 1829 ?GEORGE ESCOL -(Nov. 26, 1808-Jan. 1, 1899)m. Mar. 6, 1833Rachel B. Parrish(?-Sept. 14, i860) ? Elizabeth Coleman(1810-?)m. Nov. 27, 1832Alfred Harrold ? Harvey Lewis (1813-1892)[dentist] ? Anna (1 824-1 908?) ' Coleman (182 7-1 907)[prominent engi-neer] Frederick Harrold(Feb. 26, 1 834?after 1900) Eleanor Parrish(Nov. 23, 1835- '855) Lucy (Apr. 3, 1837-Sept. 21, i860) Charles Henry(Aug. 26. 1838-1858) Anna Frances (May12, 1852-July 26,1852) ? [adopted]Louisa StocktonPeale, daughterof Edmond Peale,about 1849 *Eshcol is a Biblical name. In Genesis (14: 13) appears an Amorite of that name; in Numbers ( 13:23) Eshcol is the name ofa valley, whence came the grapes of Eshcol.Mark Twain, in his Life on the Mississippi ( 1883: chapt. 47), tells of his having used Eschol [sic] Sellers in one of his book-name that he could not imagine ("without stimulants") as belonging to a real person. Shortly thereafter he met Escol. who suedhim for libel; whereupon Mark Twain suppressed "an edition of ten million" copies of the book. XIX Parti Early Philadelphia Mechanics Philadelphia's role in the formation of the United States during and for a numberof years after the Revolutionary War is generally well known. The ContinentalCongresses, sitting in 1775 and 1776, rallied the Colonies to a common cause, whichwas eloquently stated in the Declaration of Independence. After the war, theConstitutional Convention successfully wrought the document that gave the new-nation direction and unity. Philadelphia was capital of the United States from1790 to 1800, while the new federal city of Washington was being readied as the seat of government.From the beginning of the Revolution until the final physical transfer of thenational government to Washington in 1800, the great and near-great Americansof the age went about their business in that part of Philadelphia where George EscolSellers was to grow up. The life in the city was carefully, often vividly, docu-mented because these statesmen and political architects were there.The picture of Philadelphia after 1800 is much less distinct, however. The city's part in the rapid development of the tools and skills that enabled the UnitedStates, within less than a generation, to end its dependence upon England forintricate or heavy machine work has been generally overlooked. Only the meresthandful of observers were sufficiently aware of the importance of or had enoughinterest in technological pursuits to make a record of the mechanicians and theirhaunts; and those who wrote of the burgeoning industrial complex were generallyso occupied with production machines, such as looms, and end products, such as steam engines, that little of their attention could be spared for the machine toolsand techniques upon which depended the ability to produce the end products.It is to the task of capturing a record of this most elusive aspect of the city's culturethat George Escol Sellers has so successfully addressed himself. I2 12 The student of any aspect of early Philadelphia history should know of "Historic Philadelphiafrom the Founding until the Early Nineteenth Century," Transactions of the American PhilosophicalSociety (1953), vol. 43, pt. i, which contains 27 original papers and a carefully constructed mapby Grant M. Simon showing historic buildings and sites. Each paper is detailed and specific.The collection provides a good survey, although it slights technological developments. 1. Fire Enginesand Leather Hose In the 18-volume American edition of Brewster'sEdinburgh Encyclopaedia, published in 1832 inPhiladelphia, three plates were added to the.400-odd engraved plates of the original work.One of these added plates exhibited the "Hydraul-ion," as the Sellers and Pennock lire engine was called, and the riveted leather hose whose de-velopment is described in this chapter. Theplate is reproduced here as figure 8.Volunteer fire companies, divided by theirfunction into "engine" companies and "hose"companies, were exceedingly numerous whenGeorge Escol Sellers was a boy. Rivalry amongstthe various companies, always keen, became attimes so intense that the business of extinguishinga fire was subordinated to the business of prevent-ing another engine company from getting thefirst stream on the fire.Patrick Lyon (1 769-1 829). " a very able mecha- nician who is known today mainly because of artist John Xeagle's vivid life-size painting ofPat at his forge, had been building fire enginesand hose carriages since 1794, 14 many yearsbefore the Sellers family became involved in theirmanufacture. Upon returning in 181 8 from asojourn abroad, Pat stated flatly and character-istically, in an advertisement, that his engines(built for cash only) were "far superior to anyimported or made here." lsRiveted "hose, or leather tubes" and rivetedleather mail bags were patented by Abraham L.Pennock and James Sellers on July 6, 1 81 8. 16The firm of Sellers and Pennock, probably formedabout the time of the patents, included GeorgeEscol's father Goleman, Coleman's cousins Jamesand Samuel, and Abraham Pennock. i; Theauthor's later adventures in the Sellers andPennock shops are recounted in chapter 7. 13 Coming to Philadelphia in 1793. after serving an appren-ticeship in London, Pat Lyon was at 24 an honest, blunt-spoken man who prospered almost immediately as a skillfulcraftsman. Before his misfortunes of 1708 he employed fouror five journeymen mechanics. In 1 798 he was imprisonedand cruelly persecuted for a bank robbery that he was innocent of. Suspected because he had made the doors of the bank'scash vault, he was thrown into the Walnut Street jail in Sep-tember, where he remained for nearly three months, even afterthe actual thief had been caught, the money had been returned,and the culprit had disclaimed Pat Lyon as an accomplice.Seven years later, in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, hewon his suit for false arrest and malicious defamation of char-acter against the mayor of Philadelphia and the bank officers.The verdict brought forth spontaneous cheers from a crowdedcourtroom. For events leading to and resulting from his in-carceration, see Patrick Lyon, The Narrative of Patrick Lyon(Philadelphia: 1799); Robbery of the Bank 0/ Pennsylvania iniyg8; and The Trial in the Supreme Court oj the State 0/ Pennsyl-vania (Philadelphia: 1808) reported from notes by ThomasLloyd. i J J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History ofPhiladelphia, 1609-1884, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: 1884), vol. 3.p. 1907. 15 Aurora (Philadelphia), July 2, 1818. "'' U.S. Patent Office, List oj" Patents for Inventions . . . IJQO-184J (Washington, 1847), pp. 223, 298. Both patents wereissued on the same day. No specification or restored drawings(restored after Patent Office fire of 1836) exist for these patentsin the National Archives, where early patent records are pre-served. However, litigation over the patents reached the U.S.Supreme Court. According to George Escol Sellers, the caseestablished an important point regarding disclosure in patentlaw (American Machinist, July 3, 1886, vol. g, p. 3). For sevenreferences to records of litigation, see Shepard's Federal ReporterCitations [Shepard's Digest], 1938, vol. 1, p. 2 3 r 9 fT. For anamusing sidelight on the "exorbitantly high" price charged byPennock and Sellers for riveted hose, see Message from the Pres-ident of the United States . . . Concerning the Purchase of FireEngines, Dec. 13, 1820 (S. Doc. 20, 1 6th Cong., 2d sess.). 17 American Machinist (July 3, 1886), vol. 9, p. 3. At the time of these inventions [of riveted leatherhose and riveted leather mail bags] I was a boy ofabout nine years of age, but like most boys of thatperiod of life, I took great delight in running after "the machine" on every alarm of fire, and not un-frequently, at fires, dropping into line to pass theleather fire buckets, of course on the return line ofempty ones.To the present generation, who have become ac-customed to our city fire departments with theirsteam fire engines drawn by horse power to the fires,accompanied by throughly trained and organizedmen that scientifically attack and conquer conflagra-tions, it may be interesting to take a retrospectiveglance at the organization and the performance ofprivate volunteer associations, supported by thepublic spirit and zeal of their members, with buttrifling pecuniary assistance from the public crib.For it is to these organizations with their greatemulation and rivalry, and to the intelligent andingenious men belonging to them, that the inventionand introduction of riveted leather hose is due. Itis the most important improvement of the times inthe mode of extinguishing fires.At the time I am writing of, Philadelphia had takenthe lead of all other cities in America, and I might safely say of Europe, in improved fire apparatus. Theold fashioned English Newsham side lever engineswere still in use in New York. In Philadelphia theyhad given place to the more powerful end leverengines on which the men could more directly andeffectively apply their force. The general plan of twosingle acting cylinders, with a center air vessel on theNewsham plan, had not been changed, except byincrease in size, the end lever arrangements withtheir folding arms admitting of an increased numberof men to man the engine.This change in construction was mainly due toPatrick Lyon, a workman of extraordinary skill for Figure 4.?Patrick Lyon, craftsman, at age24 in 1799. This portrait is the frontispiece inLyon's The Narrative of Patrick Lyon, who sufferedthree months' severe imprisonment in PhiladelphiaGaol; on merely a vague suspicion 0/ being concei nedin the robbery of the Bank of Pennsylvania with hisremarks thereon (Philadelphia. 1799). Libraryof Congress photograph. the time. . . . The general plan of the long end lever,with the folding arms or handles, was originally sug-gested by Mr. Adam Eckfeldt, a sound, practicalmechanic, and almost a life long chief coiner of theU.S. Mint. At that time he was a member of one ofthe volunteer fire companies? I think of the Diligent,but of that I am not certain? but it was for that com-pany that Lyon built his first engine of that class. 18It was substantially the same type of engine as after-wards built by Merrick & Agnew, until the time theywere superseded by the steam fire engine. "" Eckfeldt was president of the Good Will Fire Company.The 1820 engine?which probably was not the first that Lyonbuilt for the Diligent Fire Company, south side of Market,near 8th Street?is credited as Lyon's "masterpiece." (Scharfand Westcott, cited in note 14 above, vol. ;. pp. 1894, 1907,1911.) Pat Lyon had at his shop a little cubby-hole of an office, warmed by an old wood burning ten platestove, around which he and his men would congregateof evenings to crack jokes, smoke their pipes anddrink their grog. On a shelf in this office was aworking model of folding levers with the long, woodenhand handles hinged to studs on crossbars betweenthe side levers, that in an instant could be thrownopen, grasped and firmly retained in clasps. Theyhad additional out-riggers that on emergency couldbe attached, increasing the physical force by sometwenty or twenty-four men. Pat never tired of work-ing and exhibiting this model and expatiating on thegreat value of the arrangement, always attributing itto his friend Adam Eckfeldt.The fire engine and hose companies were generallyseparate companies, but worked together. That is,hose companies, although professing to furnish waterto the first engine on the ground, managed that theirfavorite one should be so considered. This often ledto severe and sometimes bloody contests. Amongthese volunteer companies there were distinctivesocial grades. For instance, the Philadelphia Engineand the Philadelphia Hose Companies, having theirhouses next to each other, were worthy of the Quakerelement. They were rich companies, and indulgedin the finest kind of apparatus regardless of cost.Their great oilcloth coats and capes, and broad-brimmed japanned hats, were a peculiar and dis-tinctive uniform. The Resolution Hose Company, anear neighbor, was mostly of the French element ? sons, junior partners, and clerks of the large Frenchimporting firms. 19 All their equipments were the pinkof perfection. The Phoenix Hose was another of thearistocratic companies, and had many of the youngergeneration of Quakers in its organization. TheDiligent, the Assistant and others of the city propercompanies were composed of solid men of the city.The position of foreman of the companies washighly prized, as was also that of pipe men to theengine companies. Two of them on the gallery of theengine would direct the pipe to throw the stream ofwater onto the roof or through doors and windows ofburning buildings?much of it to be dissipated invapor without reaching the burning mass, and doingbut little effectively towards extinguishing the fire.The companies in the Liberties, or outside of the city, as then incorporated, had not the wealth tolavish on fine apparatus and show but what they lacked in wealth they made up with vim and zealrarely equalled and never excelled. This produceda rivalry that frequently led to rather serious results.Franklin Peale, at that time the manager of thePhiladelphia Museum, 20 that had its home in the oldState House or Independence Hall, arranged asystem of bell signals to indicate the direction of afire from the State House?one stroke on the greatbell, repeated at intervals, for north; two strokes withregular intervals, for the south; and so on for thecardinal points and intermediates. 21 On an alarm offire being carried to the State House, the great bellwould call out the entire fire organizations. Thencame the great rush, the madding races, the ringingof the bells on the engine and hose carriages, thebellowing "Fire" through speaking trumpets thatevery fireman was armed with; it was pandemoniumbroken loose.The heavy fire engines or hose carriages, with theiri,ogo or 1,200 feet of hose, were like a feather's weightto the string of men and boys who manned their longdrag ropes. It was the fouling of the engines orcarriages in these furious races?contests for possessionof the nearest fire-plug or hydrant?that led to themost disastrous conflicts, in which costly apparatuswas damaged, hose spanners and speaking trumpetsplaying a conspicuous part, as many a scalp woundcould testify.Philip Garrett, a prominent watchmaker andjeweler, 2 * a member of the Society of Friends, wasthe foreman of the Philadelphia Fire Engine Com-pany. He was in his element when fighting fires. I well remember that he was admitted by every oneto be the par excellence of city firemen.Often as a boy have I listened with great interest toconversations between him and my father as to themost effective mode of extinguishing fires. Onepoint they were certainly agreed on; that was that by-water the fuel or combustible matter and not the " Confirmed in Scharf and Westcott, vol. 3, p. ii 20 Franklin Peale was employed in the museum from 1822 to1833 (Charles Coleman Sellers, Charles Willsnn Peale, 2 vols.,Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, 1947, vol. 2,PP- 345. 382)-21 The bell signals for fire are given in "Regulations of theState House Bell in case of Fire," Desilvir's Philadelphia Direc-tory . . . for i8?g.22 Later, but at least as early as 1832, builder of steam engines,small lathes, etc., and from 1835 to his retirement in 1840 part-ner of Garrett, Eastwick, and Harrison, locomotive builders(Scharf and Westcott, cited in note 14 above, vol. 3, p. 2258;Joseph Harrison, Jr., The Iron Worker and King Solomon, witha Memoir and an Appendix, 2d ed., Philadelphia, 1869, p. 119). Figure 5.? Pat Lyon at the Forge," by John Neagle, ,829This life-size painting, owned by The Pennsylvania Academyol tine Arts, is the artist's copy of his original painting of 1826Photo courtesy of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts flame must be attacked. My father was never anactive member of any fire company, though hisname stood on the rolls of several as an honorarymember. I think these were companies he hadbuilt engines for.Simple as the question is, as it now appears to us, ofapplying the water through a hose directly to theburning fuel, it was at that time the great stumbling-block. Hose companies suffered so much from theripping of seams, or bursting of hose as it was called,when subjected to the force and pressure of the fireengine pumps that they refused to allow it to be usedin that way. This led to the invention of what formany years was known as the '?Hydraulion," a com-bination fire engine and hose carriage in one, andwas designed by my father, 23 the Philadelphia HoseCompany being the first to adopt it, and the'Thoenix"the next to follow. A large number of a smaller classof these were built for country towns and smaller cities, Richmond, Ya., Washington, D.C., andProvidence, R.I.. taking the largest class.The water supply of Philadelphia, in case of fires,was very deficient, the main supply being from thesmall reservoir 24 in the dome of the pump house inCentre Square (the present site of the new publicbuildings of Philadelphia). It was conducted throughbored wooden logs of such small capacity that incase of fire citizens having hydrants were requestednot to use them. Every block where the systemextended was provided with a fire plug or hydrant,so poorly constructed that notwithstanding strawwrapping and wooden curbs they were apt to befrozen, and useless in cold spells; besides these fireplugs each square had a small wooden cistern sunkunder the pavement, with a wooden hand pump forpublic use. These cisterns were kept full by a hollow 23 According to Scharf and Westcott (vol. 3, p. 1896),the Hydraulion was built in 1814 by James Sellers. The Journal of the Franklin Institute (May 1827), vol. 3, pp. 286-287, creditsWilliam P. Morris, member of Philadelphia Hose, for theidea and James Sellers for the design of the Hydraulion.24 According to Latrobe, 7,500 gallons, which in 1803 suppliednormal city demand for only 25 minutes, but which could be refilled in 6 minutes ("Manuscript Communications to A.P.S.,Mechanics. Machinery, etc., no. 25, B. H. Latrobe Report onSteam Engines in U.S., read May 27, 1803," in AmericanPhilosophical Society Library). Latrobe's report was pub-lished in Transactions oj the American Philosophical Sociel) (1809), vol. 6, pp. 89-98, but this passage was struck out before themanuscript reached the printer. A capacity of 22,500 gallonswas given in Report H'i.W.Ti. >..,/* / ..///.-. /.;//.-,? Mm fl /HlH-it., />. ..,/. < HUaitln U|>|?M,M.ti./A. fig. I. /?>,,. 2. Figure io.?Asa Spencer's "engine lathe for engraving oval or geometricalfigures upon metal or other surfaces." "Fig. i ," elevation of swinging head- stock, pivoted at c, c, with "oval chuck formed as usual" at right end; "Fig. 2,"end view, with oval chuck removed (the adjustable cam S and follower ? attached to arm t?are shown only in this view) ; "Fig. 3," rear end view. Toolcarriage is not shown. From London Journal of Arts and Sciences (1820), ser. 1, vol. 1. The steel plates were annealed in contact withoxide of iron in close retorts until soft enough to beengraved with the ease of copper plates, then theywere recarbonized and hardened. I was too young at the time to fully understand the philosophy of theoperation, but not too young to watch with greatinterest Mr. Perkins' manipulation. The care he tookto have the water rapidly pass over his plates to carry off the heat forcibly impressed me.He had small steel cylinders that he used in trans-ferring the engravings. His mode of handling thesein hardening them was very interesting to me. Heheated them in what he called mufflers closely packedin with carbon which was made of wood charcoal,and about an equal portion of a coal made of leatherscraps that he burned in crucibles. I have a clear recollection of what he called his muffler furnace and also of the mufflers themselves as I have carried themto him from Miller's pottery on Filbert Street to ourshop. They were tubes flattened on one side Qmade of fire brick clay and about V, inch thick.They were long enough to reach from side to side ofhis furnace over a charcoal fire made on a grate, charcoal being added from time to time so that thefire surrounded the mufflers.It was a long heating process and to my boyishquestion of why he did not heat them in the openfire, his reply was that they would be ruined by scaleif the air was not entirely excluded, and to thequestion as to why he was so long about it and socareful in watching the fire, he said it was necessary as a part of the hardening process. I do not think the wood and leather coal dust were all he used in packing his cylinders in the mufflers,but I collected the leather scraps for him and whenburned pounded them together with the wood coalin a great iron mortar. When Perkins was satisfiedhis cylinders were in condition for their cold bath,if from any cause they refused to be pushed from themuffler he never hesitated to break the muffle, seizethe cylinder with heated tongs and plunge it into agushing stream from a hydrant.The hardening of steel by a quick running streamof water or by jets was a frequent subject of discussionbetween Father, Perkins, and visitors to the shops, towhich I have listened with great interest and atten-tion. Among the most frequent visitors that Iu remember taking an interest in the subject wereIsaiah Lukens, Rufus Tyler and his partner Mason,Matthias Baldwin, Dr. Thomas P. Jones, Dr. Mease.but most frequently old Prof. Robert Patterson whoat that time was director of the U.S. Mint and AdamEckfeldt the chief coiner, who were almost daily visitors. 32 .... It was the result of these early demonstra-tions 33 that so fixed on my mind the importance olquickly moving water or strong jets to rapidly carry off the heat that all of my after practice was basedon it in some form or other. It was a common prac-tice with Lukens and Mason and Tyler. I have adistinct recollection of seeing Lukens harden a pair of small steel rolls he had made for Charles VVillsonPeale to roll the gold plates for the artificial teethhe was then making. These rolls were less than 3inches in diameter and about 4 inches on the face.He heated them with a charcoal fire in a mufflefurnace, he placed them in V bearings under ahydrant jet and with one hand he regulated the jetand the other rotated the roll. [4] While Perkins was engaged in the banknote en-graving business in Philadelphia, he exhibited to myfather drawings of his single-chamber fire-engine,with combined plunger and piston, the plungerfilling just one-half the area or space of the chamber. 34 32 Baldwin, Jones, Mease, and Patterson (father and son) arcnoticed in Dictionary of American Biography. William Mason,engraver in brass, etc. (1820) and philosophical instrumentmaker and engineer (1825), formed a partnership with MatthiasBaldwin in 1825; they made book binder*s tools and calicoprinting cylinders (Scharf and Westcott, cited in note 14above, vol. 3, p. 2255). Rufus Tyler, machinist (1825), waspartner of Mason through April 1827. Mason and Tylerwere die sinkers and makers of "machines in general, par-ticularly where great accuracy and excellence of workmanshipare required; such as Rose-engines; Sliding-rests; fine Turning-lathes; Lever, Screw, and Drop-presses; calico engravingmachines; machines for engraving and stamping Bank note dies,&c, &c." {Journal oj the Franklin Institute, 1827, vol. 3, adver-tisement by firm of Mason and Tyler on back cover of eachissue through April 1827; starting in May 1827, the advertise-ments appear under the name of Tyler only.) Lukens andEckfeldt appear again in later chapters.33 The omitted passage (1500 words) just preceding thisnote described Perkins's demonstration of the varying effectsof water in small and large quantities upon a very hot surface ? say 1200 F. This was by way of preparation for a demon-stration of Blind Hawkins's high pressure steam generator,mentioned in the next chapter. As the piston rises, the water, flowing in, fills theentire space of the chamber below it. On beingdepressed, the lower valve closing, all the waterpasses through valves in the piston, and, as theplunger fills just half the space, one-half the wateris ejected from the nozzle, equal amounts beingejected on both rising and descending strokes. Inits simplicity of construction, as arranged by Mr.Perkins, lay all its merits. He estimated that itcould be constructed at a cost of fully 25 percent lessthan the common double-chamber engine. Theplunger, the chamber, the surrounding cylinderthat carried the water from its escape holes in the topof the chamber to the bottom of the surrounding airvessel, and the air vessel itself, were all to be made ofdrawn copper tubes or cylinders, and clamped betweenbrass bottom and headplates by outside bolts, thesame elongated bolts securing it to the bottom of thewooden engine-box or tub; he also showed the planof a machine he had devised, and fully tested, fordrawing, or rather forcing, these copper tubes orcylinders through dies.At that time, owing to the smallness of the mains ? in fact, all the street pipes were disproportionate tothe number of hydrants?the city was very inade-quately supplied with water. Good housewives, atnight, when the hydrants would run, filled their tubsand buckets for the next day's supply. Almost everysquare had its street cistern and pump, around which,of evenings, hosts of men, women, and children wouldcollect, waiting their turn to fill their buckets orgarden watering-pots (Philadelphia was always acity of grass plats and small gardens); and Mr. Per-kins argued that a cheap garden engine, that couldbe run to these cistern pumps like a wheel barrow,would have rapid sale. He planned an oval uprighttub on two wheels, with wheelbarrow handles andlegs, with one of his small single-chamber pumps init. To build these and small village fire engines, myfather joined him under the firm name of Perkins &Sellers. They located their works at the head ofSt. James', a little court or street that ran east fromSeventh above Market Street. This was the germ 34 No records exist in the National Archives of Perkins'sfire engine patents of August 6, 1812, and March 23, 1813,listed in L'.S. Patent Office, List of Patents . . . 1790-1847,pp. 221, 224. However, a description and cut are in JohnNicholson, The Operative Mechanic and British Machinist, 2dAmerican cd. from 3d London ed. (Philadelphia: 1 83 1 ),vol. 1, p. 284. 15 from which sprang more important works. I will, en passant, state that on my father's retirement hisplace was taken by Dr. Thomas P. Jones, who after-ward became Commissioner of Patents, if I recollect right, succeeding Col. Thornton. [5] The gateway from the Mulberry Court yard intothe yard of the fire engine shops was still free to usboys and we made use of it nearly as often as whenFather was there. As a boy I was on most intimateterms with Dr. Jones for about that time he frequentlytook the place of my Uncle Rubens Peale in the popu-lar experimental lectures he was delivering in Peak'sMuseum in the State House. On these occasions Iwas always called on as Dr. Jones's assistant. Iturned the crank handle of the electrical machine,handed him magic lantern slides, washed chemicalglasses, bottles, and such like. [6] The business for a short time was conducted underthe name of Perkins & Jones, when Perkins decidedon going to England. Samuel V. Merrick, at thattime a dry goods merchant, bought his interest, aswell as that of Dr. Jones, and associated with him aMr. Agnew, under the firm name of Merrick &Agnew, so long and well known as successful fireengine builders. 35It was in these shops, during Mr. Perkins's connec-tion with them, that I learned the peculiar traits ofthis remarkable man. and which I can no betterexemplify than by relating some incidents that thereinoccurred ....Perkins's original idea, as carried out, was to builda large number of these garden engines before offeringthem for sale. For this purpose, shops for carpenters,wheelwrights, blacksmiths, finishing, and setting upwere started, and as the engines were finished theywere stored away, and when first offered the noveltyas playthings for the boys caused a rapid sale for ashort time; but it was a case where "The best laid schemes o' mice an' menGang aft a-gley."For, while these engines were building, the cityauthorities were relaying their water mains and pipes 35 As noted in Bathe and Bathe (cited in note 26 above),pp. 69, 75, the partnership passed from Perkins and Jones toPerkins and Bacon. This is the only reference I have found tothis version of the origin of the Merrick and Agnew firm.However, the notice of Samuel V. Merrick in Dictionary ofAmerican Biography gives the date of his partnership with Agnewas 1820. with cast iron of full capacity, and a screw nozzle tothe hydrant and a garden hose became the successful rival of the Perkins' garden engine, and a large por-tion of the stock on hand had to find a slow sale insuburban villages or country seats.The Perkins machine for drawing the copper tubeswas simple, crude and ingenious. For the smallengines their length did not exceed 12 inches, thediameter varying 2 inches to 10 inches. The sheetcopper was shaped and brazed in the usual way; itwas then slid on a mandrel, which, for the small sizeswas solid, for the large hollow, with one end closedfor the plunger to press against. The enlarged collarfor the tube to be pushed by was less in diameter thanthe die, so that it could pass through it.The press was a simple toggle joint. The leaf of thetoggle next to the plunger or push end was elongatedbeyond the center joint as a hand lever. By thislever one man could raise the center joint and workthe toggle sufficiently to give a thrust that wouldforce the tubes of 3 inches or less in diameter throughthe die about 1 inch at each rise and fall of his pumphandle lever; but on larger sizes the toggle requiredto be worked at a less acute angle, and it took twomen to force the 10-inch tubes through the die fromY4 to % inches at each stroke. As the handle wasraised and the plunger drawn back, a suspendedwedge would by its own gravity fall and fill the space,ready for the next thrust. These wedges were of a size that when they had fallen their length they wouldoccupy a space of about 5 inches. They were thenraised and blocks dropped in, and so on until the pipewas passed through the die, and came out beautifullysmooth and planished.There was a frequent visitor to the shops who wouldstand for hours watching this operation, often repeat-ing aloud, "The power of the toggle is amazing; if wecould only apply it to the ship's capstan it would begrand." This man was Commodore Murray, thenin charge of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. He wasfond of mechanics, though not grounded in firstprinciples; would be and fancied himself an inventor.Before relating what grew out of his watching theoperation of the toggle, I cannot better show Perkins'quickness and some of his peculiarities than by re-lating what I witnessed with Murray's latest inven-tion, his ship pump. He talked a great deal verymysteriously of it, never explaining, but always prom-ising to bring one he was then having made at theNavy Yard, as soon as perfected, and exhibit its greateffectiveness.16 Figure i I .?Engraving produced from siderographically prepared plate.The scroll work was done on a Spencer lathe. The original designs andmedallions were first transferred to soft steel rolls. These rolls, after hardening,were used to impress the final plate, also of steel, which was then hardenedfor final use. The ability of the siderographic roll to impress the same designseveral times in the final plate is here demonstrated. From London Journal oj Arts and Sciences (1820), ser. i, vol. 1. 17 The day at last came that the Commodore withhis pump on a dray made his appearance. It provedto be a flapper piston, working in about a ){ sectionof a cylinder; he called it his wing piston. This hada valve on it with one below, as in the common liftingpump. This flapper or piston, was worked by ahandle on the end of its axis, that came out of thechamber through a stuffing-box; in fact, it was asingle acting section of the old Rowntree fire-engine.The misfortune of the Commodore was the lack ofpublished records accessible to him, and no doubt theinvention was original with him. He could not haveknown that he had been anticipated.The pump was put in the cistern, and the Com-modore himself worked it, expatiating largely on thevolume of water delivered, the flapper being large inproportion to the suction and ejection pipes, and the lift of water not over four feet, consequently the pumpworked lightly. Perkins bustled around in his quickway, often taking hold of the handle and working it,repeating, "It works well, Commodore; it is a capitalthing."Had he stopped there the Commodore would havegone away delighted, but Perkins, like some othergreat men, always had a story ready for illustrationon every occasion, and was often his own hero.This time he could not keep it in; he began: "Plank,good plank, a side 01 two of leather, plenty of spikes, nails and rivets, and you always have at commandpumps, safety pumps. Why, once I was going fromto on a heavily laden schooner, in a storm.She sprung a leak; the water gained on the pumps; it was evident she could not float over an hour.Water-logged as we were it would take several hoursto make the nearest port with favorable winds. Itook the matter in hand. All I had to work withwas a couple of planks 1% inches thick, 9 or 10 incheswide, and one plank 12 inches wide, all over 9 or 10feet long. I set the carpenter to ripping the 12-inchplank into two. While he was doing this and spikingthem together into a 6-inch square spout and squaringthem to a length, I was making a bottom board to nail on the lower end. I made a hole through itscenter 3 inches square, put on it a leather flapper,hinged wooden valve weighted with a bent bar oflead nailed on it. I cut the blade off a sculling oar,and to the lower end of its handle I nailed a conicalleather bucket, made out of a couple of boot tops.The bucket was square, to keep it from crushingdown with the weight of the water. I had strapsfrom its top nailed to the oar handle through its upper end. I bored holes at right angles, drovethrough them a couple of deck broom-handles sothat four men at a time could take hold. I cut asquare hole in the deck, sounded the depth of thehole, nailed a strip on the side of my ex tempore pumpto rest on the bottom, secured the top with nails tothe deck, and caulked around it with oakum. Therewas over 5 feet of water in my pump, so the bucketwas deep in it. Four men seized the handles andlifted each lift about 2 feet; they averaged fully 50lifts per minute, each lift spewing on the deck a col-umn of water 6 inches square by 2 feet, which ranoff through the scupper holes. We rapidly gainedon the leak, and made port, saving the vessel andcargo."While Perkins was telling this in his quick, enthusi- astic manner, he became more and more excited, andconcluded by turning to Murray and saying: "I willbet you an oyster supper for a dozen that I can my- self make in less than half an hour a pump that willwith one man throw more water than that pump ofyours does."The Commodore very good humoredly said hewould take the bet, and insisted on an immediatetrial. Perkins went into the office, and in a fewminutes returned, coat off, and an old boot in hishand, and said he was ready. (I presume he hadbeen looking up materials and placing them handy.)The company of lookers on, who by that time hadincreased to a dozen or more, adjourned to the shop,many with watch in hand. Perkins gave the signalwhen ready to start. His first operation was withhis pocket knife, to cut a section of about 6 inches offthe top of the boot leg, then another of about 3 inches.These he threw into a bucket of water, while his eyewandered as if hunting materials; then rapidly turningover some strips of inch boards standing in the coiner,he selected four of them, two of them 3 inches wide,no two of the same length. He was but a few minutesnailing them into a 3-inch square spout, and sawing off its ends square, closing the lower end with a block,through which he bored a 2-inch hole. He doubledthe strip of leather for valve fan and hinge (wooden valve), weighted it by boring a hole through it andputting in a %-inch bolt that lay on the carpenter'sbench. Then to a sweeping-brush handle he crimpedin and wired his boot-leg section, roughly squaring itsupper end with hammer, tacked with copper tacks,clinching their sustaining straps from the handle.While this was doing the cock was open and thecistern was filling with water. The pump was put 18 Jffrrirl- Jt-^m-u'.A/iiA'ers. -D B Figure 12.?Merrick & Agnew fire engine, showing verticalpump arrangement and folding handles at the lever-ends, afterPatrick Lyon's designs. In "Fig. 2" the surge tank (f) islocated between the two pump cylinders. "Fig. 4" shows theflanged swivel joints mentioned by Sellers. A single-boltvariation of this joint is shown in figure 8 (p. 10). From JohnNicholson, The Operative Mechanic and British Machinist, 2dAmerican ed. from 3d London ed., 2 vols (Philadelphia, 1831), vol. 1, opposite p. 284. 19 in at such an angle as to bring the upper end outsideof the low curb; the crudely-made boot-leg bucketwas some two or three feet under water.It was just twenty-four minutes after Perkins stuckhis knife into the old boot-leg that he had the waterpouring over his legs and feet from his extemporizedpump. The Commodore declined going into testof quantity pumped, acknowledged himself beaten,said the supper should be at Rubican's; that Perkinsshould name the time and invite the guests.Out of little things do great ones grow is true, andit is always interesting to trace their course. Amongthe lookers on at this trial were two of father's friends,who happened in, Josiah White and Erskine Hazard,who at that time were engaged in their effort to floatanthracite coal down the Lehigh and Delaware insmall barges. Mr. White was so well pleased withthe plan of these box pumps with leather buckets,that he adopted them for their barges, from whichthey found their way to the fiat boats of the Susque-hanna, and finally to the Ohio river, and the Missis-sippi and its tributaries, and now there is not a coalbarge or shell that descends the Ohio with its millionsof tons of coal, or a flat boat carrying millions worthof produce from all the tributaries of the might)' "Father of Waters" that has not two or more of thesesimple box pumps, worked by spring poles and manpower, and on which the safety of its cargo depends,and the leather buckets, or suckers as they are tech-nically called in the West, are to be found readymade for sale in all the supply stores on the rivers.It is just that Perkins should have the full credit of theinvention, for small as it appeared at first, it hasproved of great utility and vast importance. 36Up to this point the Commodore had taken hisdefeat good humoredly, remarking "that the UnitedStates can have any number of my safety pumps on all their vessels, but they cannot find a Jacob Perkinsfor every man of war." This was the kind of flatterythat Perkins liked and never forgot, and he referredto this when I saw him in London in 1832.As the Commodore was having his pump placedon a dray to return it to the Navy Yard, a coupleof men came up the court; one remarked to the other, 36 This pump, patented on March 23, 181 3, two years beforePerkins came to Philadelphia, was adopted by several U.S.naval vessels before and during 1816. The plan was alsosubmitted to the Royal Society of Arts in London on January10, 1820. (Bathe and Bathe, cited in note 26 above, pp.49-50, 189-190.) "That is the biggest beer pump I ever saw; it is awhopper."The Commodore hearing this asked the man whathe meant; if he thought it would answer to pumpbeer from one vat into another. The man, who wasforeman of a brewery near by, replied that he meantjust what he had said, and if the gentleman wouldwait a few minutes he would show him. He left andsoon returned, carrying an English wing beer pump,such as had been used in England time out of mindfor pumping beer from the barrel into the glassesor mugs.This was too much for the Commodore; to thinkthat his great pump that he had spent so much thoughtand labor on, should have been in common use forprobably more than a century for such an ignoblepurpose, and that he should not have known it.Father tried to satisfy him that his credit for the in-vention was as great as if he had not been antici-pated, as he did not know of it; that the inventionhad so long stood the test of use should encouragehim; that with him invention was not a necessity buta pleasure, and that he should persevere, but advisedhim when any new idea occurred to him to use everyendeavor to learn what had been done in the samedirection. [7] I do not know anything of the oyster supper, as Iwas too young to be of the party, but I do knowthat it was a long time before the Commodore againcame to the shops.One morning I found him sitting in the office, bothMr. Perkins and father being absent. He was play-ing with a two-foot rule. He held one end on thetable, the middle joint being up. He was sliding theother end back and forth, watching the rise and fallof the toggle. I told him father and Mr. Perkinswould soon be in; he said he would wait. He thenasked me to observe that, at the angle he held the rule, that when he moved the end he held in his righthand one inch, the middle joint would rise over twoinches, but when he lowered the middle joint a pushof yt inch would raise it the two inches, but it tooka much greater force. He said he had by trial foundthe angle to place it at, to raise it the distance re-quired with the greatest ease. I could not under-stand what he was driving at.When Mr. Perkins came in he told him that he hadperfected the application of the toggle joint to thecapstan, and that it worked to perfection; that he hada carriage waiting to take Mr. Perkins and my father20 to the navy yard to show them the operation of whathe considered his greatest achievement; that this timehe was certain he had not been anticipated. I wastaken along with them.In the second story of a frame carpenter shop wasan old horizontal capstan; on each end a strongratchet wheel; the capstan rested on a couple of longbeams, into which its journals were let about halftheir diameter. These beams formed the foundationfor his contrivance, which consisted of two long-leaved toggles, from the center joint of which hunghooked pawls to operate on the ratchet wheels. Oneend of the toggles was securely hinged to the beams,the other to a movable guided plunger; these wereconnected by pitmans to crank arms of a rockshaftthat extended from one beam to the other. Thisshaft was provided with sockets to receive handspikes,one of the crank arms being above, the other belowthe shaft. There was an arrangement to extend thisshaft entirely across the deck of the vessel and givean increased number of sockets and handspikes, bywhich this shaft was rocked, and as it rocked by itscrank arms and pitmans alternately pressed againstthe ends of the toggles, which, by the rising andfalling of their center joints by the hooked pawls,continuously rotated the capstan.As soon as Mr. Perkins' eye took in the arrangementhe said: "'Commodore, you are taking hold of thewrong end of the lever." "No," replied the Commodore: "you see whatimmense leverage I have with my handspikes andthe short arms of my rockshaft; I work at short stroketo the best possible advantage of my men, and thatwonderful multiplier of power, the toggle joint, givesme so long a lift." "But," said Mr. Perkins, "you are taking hold of it in the wrong place. You had better throw it awayand attach your pawls directly to your rockshaftarms." "What !" asked Murray, "give up all the advantageof the toggle that I have seen prove its great power inforcing your copper tubes through the dies?" Fathertook the Commodore aside, and kindlv, with rule andpencil, endeavored to make him understand theprinciples of the toggle joint leverage, and so let himdown as gently as possible.While this was doing, Perkins was busy attaching arope to the raised center of the capstan, it being whatis called a double one, the center being larger indiameter than the end ratchets. This rope he passedthrough an opening in the floor under the capstan into the carpenter shop below. He gave this to twomen, with directions to hold it steady, and not allowthe capstan to turn if only the power of one manwas applied above. He arranged signals as to whenthey were to throw their entire weight on.Murray seemed to understand father's explanation^,and he looked very much crestfallen, but, turning tothe capstan and taking hold of a handspike, he said: "You see how easily I turn it." But it would notturn. He threw more and more weight on the lever,finally resting his chest on it. When Perkins gavehis signal the Commodore was lifted from his feet,struggled for an instant, lost his balance and fell,sitting on the floor as the lever flew up. as completelyhors de combat as ever was a naval officer. It was apitiful sight that I have always thought of as a crueltrick; but il has served me many a good turn byrelating it to would-be inventors that have come tome with marvelous works, to impress on them thenecessity of making themselves acquainted with firstprinciples. I will give an instance showing the quick working ofPerkins' active brain. There was a certain Professor,full of mechanical notions, who was in the habit ofcoining to the shop to be helped out when indifficulty.One day father saw him coming, and said to Per-kins, "Here comes Doctor, brim full; I will leavehim to you."The Doctor explained his difficulty. Perkins said, "Pooh! pooh! that is nothing: do it so." and herapidly sketched a plan. "That is the very thing. I wonder I did not thinkof it," said the Doctor, and off he started. Butbefore he had closed the door Perkins called. "Comeback. Doctor, and I will show you a better plan."This time the Doctor was delighted, and againstarted, sketch in hand, but had not got out of theyard before he was again recalled to be shown a stillbetter plan. But this was not the end. for Perkinsfollowed him to the gate, calling after him: "Doctor,if you don't find that to work right, come back,and I will show you a d?d sight better plan thaneither, which I have this moment thought of."Perkins' favorite expression on the conclusion ofany argument was, "Well, we shall see; time proves all things."One of his peculiar traits was, that if any new ideawas started, or new thing suggested, that at the timehe did not fully comprehend, he would work it intoshape and then show it to the suggester as an entirely21 new thought, not as one perfected by him, but of hisown creation. I will relate an instance.After the failure to make a business of the gardenengines, a class of engines called "village engines"were built. These carried a suction hose, to bethrown into cistern, creek, or pond, as the casemight be. He had returned from delivering one ofthese engines, and in the evening came to father'shouse. He complained of having had great troublefrom leaks in the leather suction hose. My fatherproposed substituting folding metallic pipes, andsketched a swivel ground joint, with a single boltclamping the parts together. He proposed three orfour folds, just as is shown in the plate facing page284 in the second American edition of "Nicholson'sOperative Mechanic," [see fig. 12, p. 19] with theexception that that is shown with the screw flange toclamp the joint. It is also illustrated with the singleclamping bolt as one of Nasmyth's inventions in hisautobiography. 37 Father's sketch was complete in all its parts.As Perkins was leaving, according to his commoncustom, he gathered up all scraps of paper from thetable and thrust them into his universal receptacle ? the crown of his rather broad-brimmed plug hat.The next morning he came hurriedly into father's office, saying: "Coleman, I have worked out mysuggestion of last evening." "What was that?" asked father. "Why, have you forgotten already? Folding cop-per pipes, instead of our leather suction pipes thathave given us so much trouble." He dove into hishat, turning out a lot of sketches; and taking up theone father had made, he explained how simple itwas; a single bolt to clamp the joint together. I saw by father's smile that he was more amusedthan annoyed, but I could not help remarking, "Thatis the drawing father made last evening." "Is it?" said Perkins; "Why, bless me, can I havemade a mistake?" He then rummaged over the con-tents of his hat, and produced a sketch with the jointmade with clamp ring and bolts, evidently his ownwork. "Coleman, when last evening I proposedfolding metallic pipes, you certainly did make thissketch, but it don't look like your work. In the night I thought of using a single bolt, and it is stronglyimpressed upon my mind that I got up and sketchedit, but I have had so much on my mind lately, that at 37 James Nasmytk, Engineer, An Autobiography, Samuel Smiles, edit. (London: 1883), p. 426. In justice to Nasmyth, heclaimed as novel only the packing ring of the joint. times I don't know what I am at; but we will say nomore about this." He crammed the papers into hishat and was off.This was not a solitary case. I know many morelike it, yet still believe he was honest and sincere; buton the subject of originating he was not far frombeing a monomaniac.When father became connected with him he wasengaged in other business, and it was agreed thatPerkins was to conduct the engine building, fatheronly acting advisory and giving such time and atten-tion as he could spare. I will now relate what led to his retiring and trans-ferring his interest to Dr. Thomas P. Jones. PatrickLyon had brought out his greatest fire engine? I think it was called the "Diligent"?with doublecylinders, if I recollect right, of 9 inches diameter and11 or 12 inches stroke, with folding levers and out- riggers, and it could be manned with about 60 men.Perkins had seen this engine on its trial, and wasseized with the idea that he could excel it.Father was opposed to that kind of rivalry. He hadalways taken great interest in the independent volun-teer fire companies, whose engines Pat Lyon, withhard knocks, had done more to improve than anyother man. Any one visiting the PennsylvaniaAcademy of Fine Arts can see almost the living PatLyon in Neagle's great picture, as he stands with barearms and leather apron in the glowing light from thefire on his forge. Father urged that this uneducatedworkman, having with his own hands, skill, andenergy accomplished so much, should rather behelped than competed with. Mr. Perkins remarkedthat would put an end to all improvements.The matter was supposed to be dropped, but it wasnot long before it was again opened by Mr. Perkinsin a rather singular manner. His ever-active mindhad been dwelling much on it. He began by sayingthat at the trial of Lyon's engine he had observedwhen the engine was only about two-thirds manned,the stream of water from the nozzle wet the groundto a greater distance than when fully manned. Thishe attributed only in part to the increased velocity ofthe water meeting the resistance of the air, separatingit into spray. But he had noticed with the increasedvelocity the crackling noise as the water escaped fromthe nozzle also increased. He was satisfied that itwas caused by expansion of compressed air taken upby the water in its great commotion in the air vessel.To prove this, he had put a bent glass tube from topto bottom of the air vessel of one of his garden engines, 22 2TS.p.-28l 279.p.28/ in which he could see by the rising of the water howrapidly the air was taken up, and he was surprised to see how soon all the air was exhausted, and the streambecame irregular and jerky on the moment of thereturn of the strokes. He said he had a way ofremedying this. He would throw away the air vesseland put in its place an open-top cylinder, with pistonand rod and crosshead, with rods extending from itto a series of springs under the engine box.Father asked, why not put a floating piston in acylindrical air vessel to separate the air from thewater, and still use the air above it for the spring tomaintain a steady stream?He said he had thought of that, but the pistonwould be out of sight, and always out of order: theleather cup packing would become dry, the waterwould pass it, and the spring soon be lost. He saidhe proposed using a q inch plunger, with a cylinderdouble its area, and give from 16 to 18 inches stroke;then, with the same number of strokes per minute, hewould throw 50 per cent more water than Lyon's "Diligent."Father asked him how he proposed to arrangelevers to man them to give so great a length of stroke.His reply was: "Bless you, I don't intend to uselevers at all. I have been blamed enough for usingLyon's or rather Adam Eckfeldt's. folding leverson my village engines. I shall dispense with themaltogether, and in doing so with a great weight."He then went on, saying: "Imagine a bell crank with a pendulum arm and a shorter arm at right anglesthat takes hold of the pitman that is attached inside 281 Figure 13.?Rowntree fire engine. Sideand end views are above. The lower figureshows a transverse section through theoscillating-vane or wing pump. From JohnNicholson, The Operative Mechanic and BritishMachinist (cited in legend for fig. 12), vol. 1,opposite p. 282. to the lower end of the plunger; to the pendulum armropes that could be manned with any number of men."He only gave this as an illustration, for he did notintend directly to take hold of the pendulum, but oneach side of its axis he would have a cylinder or drum,whose radius should be equal to its length; on thesedrums he would coil ropes having wooden cross-handles about three feet apart, so that the rope would23 be manned with two men at each handle. Whensufficient rope was let out, the drums would beclamped to the pendulum arm, the ropes running out, one at each end of the engine, and from the bot-tom of the drums alternate pulls would swing thependulum and operate the pump. In places wherethere was not sufficient room to run out these longropes, a single-tree attached to it, with ropes at eachend, would give three ropes, with six rows of men toman them.On being asked how he expected to take from thecrowd men and boys who would make the alternatepulls in harmony, he replied: That was easy. In thefirst place the members of the company would betrained; besides that, he proposed to have a stand ora seat, alongside of the gallery on which the menstand to manage the branch pipe, for a foreman,leader or conductor in sight of all the men manningthe ropes; this leader would wave a conspicuousbaton, and at the same time have a ringing call, likethe boatswain's call to the men when hauling a line,that would soon bring the alternate pulls in har-mony ....My father, who had not the most distant idea thatPerkins was in earnest, laughed, and said he hadexpended much ingenuity, and he would like toknow how he expected to hold his engine with allhis pulling and tugging?Perkins replied: That is provided for by radialbars from each axle, with shoes or scotch blocks thatwould be dropped, wedging under and securing allthe wheels; bfsides this, he should have an extendingsteel-pointed rod from each corner of the engineagainst the ground.On father bantering him on the waste of thought onsuch a picture, Mr. Perkins very triumphantly drewfrom his hat a contract signed between Perkins &Sellers and a newly organized fire company, in whichP. & S. agreed to build, within a certain time, a fireengine that would throw more water than the new "Diligent," and so much farther as to completely wetthe ground where, on competitive trial, the Diligent'slast drop should fall; and on these conditions beingcomplied with the company were to take the engine,paying a certain price.This put a serious face on the matter, and decidedfather to retire, which he had a right to do at theexpiration of a year, or sooner, on finding an acceptableperson to take his place. Dr. Jones was such, but hecould not take hold before the expiration of the year,and before that time the great engine was completed. Its high-arched gallery and uncouth shape had,among the boys, got it the nickname of the "hunch-back," that soon settled to the "Perkins Dromedary."When everything was ready for the trial, Perkins,baton in hand, mounted his perch. The ropes weredrawn taut, and the signal given; a few slow pullsfollowed the motion of the baton, when the pressureof the escaping water at the nozzle began to be felt.The fun grew fast and furious; the men and boys,shouting, tugged at the ropes; the engine reared andjumped about; the men at the branch pipe fell ontheir knees, grasping the sides of the gallery; Perkinsshouted and screamed to the men to stop; but he wasneither heard nor heeded. In less time than it takesto tell it he was thrown from his perch and badlybruised; but he was a man of indomitable will andperseverance, and would never acknowledge defeat.He said that on that day week he would have anothertrial; that by that time everything would work right.He had already conceived the changes he wouldmake. He would attach a square pole a little longerthan the engine body at its center to the lower endof his bell crank pendulum. He would make arrange-ments to carry on the engine eight poles, each twelvefeet long; these he would connect by socket and key,four at each end of the engine; these, with his cross-handles, he could man with ioo men. Each pole wasprovided with a pair of spreading steel-pointed sup-porting legs, jointed to the pole, the motion to be like a standing rower. By this arrangement the menwould be compelled to work in concert, the same aswith common levers. The advantage over the ropeswould be that every man could exert some power topush as well as pull.The changes were made; the day of trial came; agreat crowd collected to witness it; a few swings of thepoles and pendulum and a solid stream of water camefrom the nozzle, looking like a stick of black glass,without any of the ordinary crackling noise, and theground was thoroughly wet fully 20 feet beyond anyprevious record from the same size nozzle.Perkins was almost beside himself; urged the menwho partook of his enthusiasm, and they thrust andpulled with all their power, lengthening their stroke until the engine jumped its chocks and was jerked backand forth so furiously that the two men at the branchpipe lost their hold, which, by the force of the streamand bend of the goose neck, went flying around,deluging with water the crowd of lookers on.In the excitement of the men at the pole one end of it was jerked up, and with it the rocking supporting24 Figure 14.?Perkins's triangular-valve ship pump. Lowerfigures show various views of the plunger. From AbrahamRees, edit., The Cyclopaedia, American ed. (Philadclpia,1822), plates vol. 3, "Hydraulics." legs, one of which, steel-pointed, as they went downpierced through a boy's foot, pinning it to the ground.This mishap had more effect on Mr. Perkins than atotal failure of his engine would have had, for he wasa kind, tender-hearted man. The boy was a novitiate,who swung the censer in one of the Roman Catholicchapels, and who, years after, when a priest inCincinnati, spoke to me feelingly of Mr. Perkins' great kindness and attention to him while laid upwith the wound that had lamed him for life.The "Dromedary" was run under a shed and neverbrought out again. It was finally dismantled, aregular air vessel replacing its spring piston. It was sold as a stationary mill engine to a cotton factory,to be worked by water-power. [8] 25 3. Old Blind Hawkins The ideas concerning high pressure steam thatJacob Perkins spent several years of his life inEngland trying to promote probably originatedwith the blind man who is the subject of thisshort chapter. Perkins hinted as much when hementioned in his 1822 British patent for a steamgenerator "communications made to me by acertain foreigner residing abroad . . . ." 3S Thisis not to say that Perkins made direct use of Hawkins's scheme. Perkins, like a Fourth-of-July sparkler, needed only to be lit, and thatwas what Joseph Hawkins did. While in Phila-delphia, Perkins knew also Oliver Evans, a highpressure steam advocate, and talked with himfrequently; 39 but Evans's use of steam in his en-gines represented a courageous departure from,not (as in Perkins's case) an abandonment of, themain stream of steam engine development. During the entire time that Mr. Perkins wasconnected with these shops there was an almost daily visitor; sometimes he would come feeling his waywith a cane, at others led by a boy. He would sitfor hours apparently conscious of all that was goingon around. Among the workmen he was known asOld Blind Hawkins, although under fifty years of age.His blindness, stoop and long iron-gray hair gavehim the appearance of a much older man.He usually carried with him one or two small vol-umes, which he offered and from the sale of whichhe derived his main support. From these we learned all we knew of him; his name was Joseph Hawkins,born in Kingsbury, Washington County, New York,in the year 1772, and when about twenty-one yearsof age he sailed from Charleston, S.C., as super-cargoof the Charleston, a Guinea trader of 400 tons burden. 40He sailed December 1st, 1793, and had a prosperous 38 British patent 4732, December 10, 1822. There is no sur-viving record in the National Archives of Joseph Hawkins'sU.S. patent of June 14, 181 6. It is listed in U.S. PatentOffice, List of Patents . . . 1790-1847, p. 156.39 Bathe and Bathe (cited in note 26 above), p. 97.40 Hawkins went to Charleston to make his fortune, "hearingit frequently said thai a young man of moderate educationand industrious habits, with a good recommendation, wouldbe sure of an eligible and constant employment in the southernstates . . . ." (Joseph Hawkins, A History of a Voyage to the26 voyage to the coast of Africa. He was sent inlandfor a cargo, got a large number of slaves and muchivory and gold dust. On the homeward voyage theship fever broke out; he took it and lost his eyesight.When or how he ever attained any mechanicalknowledge, I do not know. [9] He was always awelcome visitor to the shops so far as my brother and I were concerned, not only from his enthusiasm inexplaining the merits of his invention, but for thelong yarns he used to spin of his adventures inAfrica. [10] Being a good penman, and having command of thepencil as a sketcher before he lost his eyesight, henever lost the power of using them. With his lefthand to hold the paper on the table in a mannerthat he could use his thumb to indicate where to start the lines, with a pencil he wrote very freely,keeping his lines straight, and at all times he wasready with pencil to sketch with sufficient accuracyto aid him in explaining whatever he had to present.Besides the volume, the history of his early life, heoften had with him a portfolio filled with rude draw-ings of his own make, from which he would illustrate Coast of Africa, and Travels into the Interior . . . and InterestingParticulars Concerning the Slave Trade, Philadelphia, 1797, p. "). his plans. No one hearing him explaining and seeinghim pointing out the parts would, if they did not seehis sightless eyeballs, even suspect his blindness. Itwas a remarkable case of the cultivation of otherorgans to supply the place of lost ones.He had evidently tried, or had tried for him, manyexperiments with steam; his whole thoughts were onthat subject. He said he had satisfied himself thatthe greatest economy was in using steam at very highpressure, and also the greatest safety from explosion;he even talked of using steam of 1.000 lbs. pressureto the square inch, of the great reduction in theweight of furnaces, boilers and steam engines forocean navigation that he should make, and that byhis system dangerous explosions would be an absoluteimpossibility, as the steam for every stroke of theengine would be generated as used. He claimed tohave demonstrated that the spheroidal state of water,when thrown on heated metal, was entirely preventedby using highly-heated tubes of great strength, andmaintaining in them an attenuated vapor at a pres-sure of not less than 175 lbs. This was done by theescape valve being loaded to that pressure.His plan was to inject into these tubes just thequantity of water required to generate the steam atthe pressure wanted and required to fill the cylinderand make the stroke. He had another modificationthat had grown out of the difficulty of regulating thejets of water with absolute certainty. This was tokeep his heavy, strong and highly-heated tube-generators full of water, and to allow just so muchhighly-heated water to escape and flash into steamas was required for each stroke of the engine. I donot recollect the exact mode he proposed to accomplishthis.Toward the latter part of the time father was con-nected with Mr. Perkins, Hawkins had succeeded ingetting, by subscription, what he thought would en-able him to demonstrate his theories. This subscrip-tion was headed by two retired merchants from Charleston who had settled in Philadelphia, and hadknown Hawkins in his early days; part was by shopsin the shape of work; a brassfounder subscribed thebrass castings; a coppersmith the steam pipes, etc.Hawkins was given the use of bench and tools in theP. & S. shops, and there he brought the differentparts of his engine together, which he erected undera shed in a yard in the vicinity.Perkins took great interest in the work as it wenton, and, no doubt, gave him much aid. 41 On thefirst trial of this engine the soft solder of two wipedjoints of the small copper steam pipe melted, and itblew apart in a few minutes after the engine wasstarted. Here Hawkins' trouble commenced. Forthese copper pipes he substituted musket barrels,joining them by conically counter-sinking one andtapering the other to fit into it, drawing them togetherby clamps and bolts.There did not seem to be any serious trouble withhis generator, but the great heat of his high-pressuresteam burned out the hemp packing of his piston andpiston rod. Then came a long series of experimentswith metallic packing, which at the high heat, forwant of lubrication, fastened to the cylinder. Thenfollowed a most ingenious device. He put on a largersteam cylinder to work with lower pressure, a con-denser to give him hot water from the escape steam;simultaneous with the flash of highly-heated steam,or water flashing into steam, hot water was injected,reducing the temperature and increasing the volumeof steam at a lower pressure.He had a scheme of open and single-stroke engines,with a plan of lubricating, that I do not remember,nor do I recollect to have ever heard him allude tousing high steam for rapid shooting, as was exhibitedby Perkins with his steam gun in London. But hehad a vision that he liked to dwell on and talk of forprotecting such harbors as New York that I cannotbetter describe than by using his own words as nearas I can recollect them.He would say that: "Ascertaining the narrowestpart of the channel, I choose the position for mybattery of generators, always kept heated ready to be 11 An account of the demonstration by Perkins of the Hawkinsboiler, before Charles Willson Peale, Robert Hare, and severalothers is in the Memoirs, book 20. pp. 5-1 1. Mention offurther developments in Philadelphia of the Hawkins boiler,involving the dentist Plantou, is made in ScHARF and WesT-cott (cited in note 14 above), vol. 3, p. 2263, and in CharlesColeman Sellers (cited in note 20 above), vol. 2, pp. 397-398.27 forced to the required pressure on the approach ofan enemy's fleet. Now, imagine a row of greatmortars, each loaded with a shell of not less than aton weight. I know the exact capacity of my steamengines and pumps to eject the highly-heated water; I know to a certainty its effect on flashing into steam; I also know to a fraction the quantity of water toproduce the required effect : I hurl this immense shellinto the air; it is no guess-work; it is all a certainty;it falls from 300 or 400 feet on to the deck of thefrigate at its weakest part. What would be the effect?"Jacob Perkins, with Col. Fairman, Mr. Spencer,and some of their workmen, went to England, ex-pecting to contract with the Bank of England to fur-nish their plates; they failed in this, but in connectionwith Heath, of London, they furnished the plates forthe Bank of Ireland and many private banks. Aboutthe time they were leaving, Mr. Hawkins expressedhimself as confident that Mr. Perkins would interestparties in England, and induce them to send for himto put his system to a full and fair test.From this time I lost sight of Hawkins until afterMr. Spencer's return from England. It was supposedthat he [Spencer] was doing well in London, and onbeing asked the reason of his return, he replied thathe was doing well enough. But Perkins, with hissteam engine and steam gun, had been so flatteredthat he had lost balance and imagined himself to bethe inventor of the universe. He had never heardhim put forth a claim to have invented his (Spencer's) scroll lathe, but almost always when explaining it totheir swell visitors, it was done in a way to convey theidea that it was one of his slight inventions, and thisso annoyed Spencer that he returned to America.About this time Hawkins came into father's officewith a letter in his hand from Mr. Perkins, in whichhe said he had been using his best endeavors to bring our steam engine favorably before the public, that hehad met with great difficulties not only in doing so,but in successfully working an engine he had con-structed; but he hoped in the end to overcome them all. The word "our" greatly excited the blind man;he stamped his foot, exclaiming, "/( is mine, mine only/"He had a London paper giving a glowing accountof Perkins' new steam engine and Perkins' steam gun.If the published accounts of the first engine inLondon are correct, it differed but little from Haw-kins' Philadelphia engine. It proved a failure. Had <*?M^ m^if^tpmiKf.,C Figure 15.?231 High Street, the "MarketStreet Store" of Nathan Sellers located nearSixth Street (see end paper map). Home ofGeorge Escol Sellers from about 1817. Fromdrawing by Horace Wells Sellers. Courtesy ofCharles Coleman Sellers. it been a financial success, I have no doubt butHawkins would in that particular have had justicedone him. After the first failure, Perkins labored foryears on improvements, with no better practical success. Hawkins disappeared from Philadelphia, or I should most probably have again seen him. Ishould be pleased if this notice would bring out fromsome one what became of him after leaving Philadel-phia. What will ever eventuate out of his ideas,elucidated as they were by Perkins, must be left to his[Perkins's] favorite maxim, "Time proves allthings." [11] 28 4. An Adventure in Learning George Escol Sellers was born into a Quakerhousehold in which his father's work, and indeedhis workshop, was part of the daily family expe- rience. The house in which he was born was inMulberry Court, 42 which opened onto the westside of Sixth Street above Market, and justaround the corner from his grandfather Nathan's store, shop, and dwelling, the second door eastof Sixth on Market. When Nathan Sellers in r 8 1 7 or 1818 built the home that he called '?Mill-bank" on the Sellers tract in Upper Darby Town-ship, Delaware County, the author's family movedinto the place he vacated. This is the "MarketStreet house" referred to below. As to my early shop practice, it had a very earlystart but no regular apprenticeship on any one branch.It did not begin exactly at my birth but so soon afterthat I cannot fix the date nearer than that it wasimmediately after our removal into what we calledthe second house in Mulberry Court. It was a cu-rious old fashioned wainscoted house, the cellar havinga series of br>ck arches and a foundation adequatefor a fortress. Open fireplaces were in every roomwith tile facings and high wooden mantels and allthese fireplaces opened into separate flues of great size that united formed a stack that passed throughthe centre of the garret room and out of a gambrel roof. The garret had dormer windows opening on theCourt, as well as the rear.and a single gable windowto the west which was directly opposite the stack offlues, the space between which and the windows wasmuch less than the space on the east side owing to thehouse entries being on that side. The size of thisstack of flues might have had something to do withthe boys' first outfit in way of a work shop, for thecarpenter's bench father made for us stood againstthe south side of the flues and in length was exactlythe width of the great stack. His own carpenterbench was on the north side of the same stack, its stopand screw vise end extending some two or more feet be- ,2 The author describes, in the present chapter, the "secondhouse" in Mulberry Court. Elsewhere, however (in chapter9), he establishes his birthplace as Mulberry Court. yond the stack to the east. This put his daylight workin a bad light but father said boys must have the bestlight, for their work was in the day time and hismostly by candle light, and he wanted the best day-light for his turning lathe which stood by the westgable window.This lathe was rather a primitive affair; its pulleyhead was made of wrought iron; wooden shears; tailhead, a wooden block; crank wheel, wooden, and along treadle ran lengthwise of the shears with another at right angles which ran nearly across the garretfloor. Primitive affair as this lathe was, father usedto do some very beautiful work in hard wood andivory on it and on it he gave Charles and me ourfirst lessons. This was at a time when no goodcarpenter tools of a size to suit boys were to be boughtand father himself made most of ours, or helped usmake them for ourselves. It was while with fatherwe occupied this joint garret shop and that he gotpossession of the fine set of carpenter tools that hadbelonged to David Jones. I never can forget theglee of us boys when helping carry the tools up tothe garret shop and to see the then empty tool chesthoisted up outside and taken in through the gablewindow. It was the advent of these tools that gave us our first lessons in the importance of system and order. With care and under father's watchfulnesswe were allowed to use some of these tools. It wasan adage with father, "That an indifferent workman29 might do tolerably good work with good tools, butthat it took a skillful one to do so with bad tools." Heused to tell us never to say "can't" but to try andkeep on trying until we could.Jacob Pearce was the first male teacher we everwent to. His school was back of Friend Edwards'house at the northwest corner of 5th and South Alley,now Commerce St. Adjoining the school room he hada little work shop in which he made cases and traysfor his minerals and cylinder electrical machines andtheir fixtures. To encourage us boys to work he gaveus a small glass cylinder conditioned that we do allthe work of mounting without assistance. We were at a loss to know how to turn the parts?cups andjournals for the ends of the cylinder, as father's lathewas too high for either of us to do the turning and atthe same time tread the treadle, but a small stool wasmade for one to stand on while the other worked thetreadle. While we were pegging on in this way, I recollect father coming up and offering to help,meaning by that to do the turning, but that was notthe bargain. Then father said the time had comewhen the boys should have a lathe of their own, andlong discussions came as to the ways and means ofaccomplishing this. The crank wheel seemed to bethe greatest trouble. Father finally concluded tomake one of wood and to get weight for the rim bydrilling auger holes in it cast full of lead. This wheelwas made in the garret shop and I have an idea thatit is still in existence.When we moved to the Market Street house just as I was entering my 10th year and Charles was 12years old, a fourth story had been added to the back buildings of the Market Street house for a privateshop for father and the boys' sleeping room. Theshop was lit by two windows and a skylight. IsaiahLukens had a set of patterns and father got him tofinish a set of lathe heads and rest carriers. He hadthe crank wheel cast and fitted up at Oliver Evans'shop at the junction of Ridge Road, 9th & VineStreets. This new lathe was put up in the new shopat a height that we boys could use .... [Another]crank wheel was made at which we boys helped, andif my recollection is not entirely at fault the rim wasglued up out of mahogany that had been rejected forpaper mold frames. This was used to run a watch-maker's lathe which was mostly used for light drillingand for boring [andl polishing ....Among the tools most prized by the boys when inthe Mulberry Court garret shop was a miniature axe,a present from Beatty the axe maker. Somethingwas to be done on the roof of the woodshed? I don'trecollect what?probably a boy's weather cock orwindmill. Some things for whatever it was werethrown on to the roof before we climbed to it. Charlestold me to throw up the little axe which I had in myhand. This was done but the roof was too steep forit to stay there and it slid off and in falling struckone of Charles' upper front teeth breaking it squareoff close to the gum. This was a sad affair for itwas a second tooth and the only remedy was a falseone. I do not recollect what dentist killed the nerveand reamed out a tapering hole for a wooden plugby which the false tooth was affixed. The tooth wouldsometimes twist around and Charles had frequentlyto make new wooden plugs. [12] 30 5. John White'sPress-Screw Manufactory The remarkable feature of this chapter, whichdescribes a screwcutting lathe and its operationthat the author first observed when he was under10 years of age, is the exactness and entire plausi-bility of the detailed information concerning it.Within my knowledge, there exists from thisperiod no American lathe for heavy work in iron,nor have I discovered any contemporary docu-ment that shows a useful picture of one. Forexample, the patent drawing of the i 798 screw-cutting lathe of David Wilkinson, of Providence, is a restoration, made after the Patent Office fireof 1836, and in view of Wilkinson's later attemptsto obtain compensation from Congress for in-venting a machine (the lathe) that was then inwide use in government arsenals, the detailedresemblance of the restored drawing to the original machine is open to question. It should be noted that the making of large ironscrews was possible without either an enginelathe or one like John White's, described below.Records of the U.S. Mint mention the purchaseof screws for coining presses as early as 1792,"and the surviving press from this period, now ondisplay in the Philadelphia Mint, indicates thata rugged screw with a long pitch and deepsquare threads was within the capability of earlyshops. It is probable that many of the screwsmade at this time in Philadelphia were, like thosemade in England, hogged out of the solid by ajudicious combination of cold chisel, hammer,file, brawn, and skill.John White's shop was on Market Street, westof the Permanent Bridge over the Schuylkill. 44The remoteness of the location, a mile and a halffrom the author's home, no doubt accounts forSellers visiting it only during summer vacations. 1 remember the time when every boy must possessan original Barlow knife. 45 At that time the samemay be said of the Southern tobacco grower andcotton planter. They must have screws for theirpresses, and these screws must be of John White'smake; no others would be accepted if these could beobtained, not even imported screws. I now propose to describe, as well as I can, withoutthe help of drawings, White's mode of operating, andthe tools he used in making his screws. I can fix the 13 The sum of S21 was paid to George Breining for cutting ascrew in 1792; $50 to Reynold and Sharpless for cutting ascrew and nut in 1795; and 'n ' 797, Adam Eckfeldt built ascrew coining press on contract (Frank H. Stewart, History of the First United States Mint, Camden, N.J., privately printed, '92 4- PP- 75. 8a . 1 79>- " Philadelphia city directories give this location for John date at 181 6, from the fact that I watched with greatinterest his entire process at various times during mysummer vacations of 1816 and 181 7. Engine latheswith gearing to cut screws of various pitches wereunknown at that time. The screws he cut for cotton-presses and paper mills were of two kinds?one calledthe lantern head, a large globe head with holesthrough it, crossing at right angles for wooden presslevers; the other with a square body slightly taperedto receive a trundle or lantern wheel of four bars, White, blacksmith, through 1820, lending weight to Sellers'simpression that White died before 1821. John White, black-smith, of 54 Frankford Road, appeared later, but it seemslikely that this was another man. ' 5 A discursive account of the Barlow knife is in Laurence A.Johnson, "The Barlow Knife," Chronicle (Early American In-dustries Association), (June 1959), vol. 12, pp. 17,20. 31 between which and the body of the screw the presslever was thrust; this latter was at that time cominginto use, being less liable to break than the lanternhead. The large diameter of the trundle enabledthe pressman to use it as a hand wheel to run thescrew down and give considerable pressure beforeusing the lever and windlass. This class of pressscrews were made of cast iron, and rarely exceeded6 inches diameter. They were cast at the foundryof Rush & Muhlenberg,46 Philadelphia, and turnedready for cutting the screw thread on a lathe got upby Cadwallader and Oliver Evans. This lathe wasthe nearest approach to our present engine lathethat I can recollect in Philadelphia at that time. Itwas a wooden shear lathe with cast-iron slides forthe poppet head and tool-carrying rest, which restwas moved by hand wheel with crank-handle operat-ing a pinion attached to the rest and working into afixed cog-rack on the front shear.Screws for tobacco and other small presses were ofwrought iron and varied from about 2% to 4 inchesdiameter, and in every case made of piled charcoaliron, nine square bars being used to each pile; theobject being to have a solid center bar. These pilerods of hammered iron of the required size were madeat some one or other of the Pennsylvania charcoalforges. The piles were heated in a hollow fire ofimported bituminous coal, at that time known asLiverpool coal, or an open hearth by a blast froma couple of wooden tubs about 4 feet diameter, theirpistons alternating by a wooden walking beam,worked through a connecting rod by a crank on theend of the shaft of a breast water-wheel. There was athird tub with weighted piston to regulate the blast.The forging was done under a couple of triphammers, one for roughing, the other for swedging,driven by an undershot watcrwheel, with tappetwheels on its shaft, regulated in their diameters andnumber of tappets so as to give twice the number ofblows to the swedging hammer. The heads of thescrews with lever holes at right angles and one abovethe other were shaped and finished on an ordinaryanvil, with hand hammer and sledges. On the endof the screw bolt was forged a square tit not overhalf an inch long and of such a size as to come within *? An outgrowth of the Oliver Evans Mars Works. Rushand Muhlenberg, both sons-in-law of Evans, established theirfoundry and machine works in 1816 on the site of the presentU.S. Mint, on Spring Garden Street west of Broad. (GrevilleBathe and Dorothy Bathe, Oliver Evans, Philadelphia, His-torical Society of Pennsylvania, 1935, p. 232 and passim.) the diameter of the bottom of the screw-thread whencut; the object of this tit will be explained further on.The turning and screw-cutting lathes were of themost primitive construction. The bed or shears weretwo white oak timbers about 12 or 14 inches square,about 6 inches apart, securely bolted to stone founda-tions. The lathe head was two pieces of timber thesame size as the shears boxed into and crossing them,with a space of about a foot between them; intothese the boxes that carried the mandrel were let,the overhanging center-carrying end of the mandrelwas square on which the face-plate, or rather cross,was keyed; the entire end thrust was taken by theboxes by collars on the journals, the back end of themandrel was also square and overhung sufficientlyto carry a spur wheel about 4 feet diameter, with5- or 6-inch face with wooden cogs in which a trundlepinion worked as the driver; part of the pinion shaftwas square, on which part slid a ratchet clutch,which fastened by a corresponding ratchet on theiron hub of a loose, deeply grooved wooden pulley,driven by a twisted rope belt made of raw hide;the ratchet clutch was so arranged as to be shovedinto gear or disengaged by a foot treadle in front ofthe lathe shears, giving the operator instant com-mand both in starting and stopping.The back or poppet head was similar to the mainhead only differing in its timbers not being so heavyand being set closer together, and on their under sides connected by a piece of wood fitting and pro-jecting into the space between the shears, to act as aguide for the back head; the mandrel was squarelet into and screwed on its angle to the head blocks,the end of this back mandrel carrying the centeroverhung the blocks about 3 inches and was ac-curately turned to a collar, which, besides its especial object, prevented the mandrel sliding back on thehead blocks. There was no arrangement to movethis mandrel forwards or back; the head was clampedto the shears in the usual way, and the center heldto its work by wooden wedges driven between thehead block and a piece of scantling that lay acrossthe shears, held in its place by iron pins in holesin the top of the shears. There were rows of theseauger holes about \% inches in diameter and 6 or 8inches apart. The tool rest or rather rests, for theywere the lengths suited to the bolts to be turned andscrews to be cut, were flat bars of wrought iron se-cured to wooden rests; the only way to regulate theheight of these long rests was by the thickness of thewooden supports. Close to the edge next the work of 32 ?T ? Figure 16.?Screw press, 1822, for expressing vegetable oils, such aslinseed. Restored patent drawing in Record Group 241 , National Archives. these wrought iron rest bars, was a slight groove.From end to end in this groove was rolled a buttonend hand tool with so long a handle that the operatorcould rest it on his shoulder. I was often astonishedat seeing the long curled shaving turned off in thisprimitive manner, and at the accuracy of the boltturned, when tested by straight edge and calipers. [13] After a number of bolts of the same size had beenturned, came the thread cutting, and this may beconsidered an advance or evolution from haphazardhand chasing and die cutting to the present enginelathe work, and even at this day will be looked at asan ingenious device. On the 3 inches of the over-hanging back mandrel was slid up against its collarwhat Mr. White called his "screw guide"; it was atemplate screw of the diameter and pitch of thescrews he was about chasing, of about 4 inches inlength on its thread; the portion projecting beyondthe 3-inch overhanging mandrel was closed to asquare hole in its center, into which the tit heretofore described on the end of the screw bolt would loosely fit. The carrying center of the back mandrel was around steel rod about 8 inches long, perfectly straightbeyond its pointed end. This center rod fitted in thecenter of the back mandrel, and was driven forwardand held to its work by a wedge-key through a slottedhole in the mandrel. When the bolt on which thescrew was to be chased was put in the lathe, the backhead was driven forward by the wooden keys so as tobring it and the template firmly together; the backcenter was then driven forward by the key throughthe mandrel. By this arrangement the guide tem-plate was made to revolve with the screw bolt.The chasing tool? or, rather, tool carrier?waswrought iron, in form of a cross, with very short,broad arms?in fact, they did not project more thanhalf an inch beyond the body. These arms weregrooved to carry the cutting tool and guide. Theend of this carrier next the work was much lighterthan the body, and was shaped so as to pass under the33 bolt to be cut and press against it opposite to thecutting tool. Both guide and cutting tool were firmlyclamped to the carrier, and pressed forward and heldin position by set screws through longer arms thanthe tool-carrying cross. The handle of the carrierwas wood, about five feet Ion", with a drop handle ofsome 1 8 inches or two feet. When the chasing wasto be done, a steel bar with a narrow edge for thecarrier to slide on was substituted for the iron bar-restused in turning; this was well lubricated. The guidetool was shaped to fit into the thread of the template,both snide and cutting tool being adjusted in itsthread. This generally placed the guide and thecutting tool about 3 inches apart. The cutting toolwas what might be called a stubby hook tool. In thefirst adjustment, the guide was set just as deep into thethread of the template as experience had taught thefirst cut could be made. The operator rested the longhandle of the carrier on his left shoulder, grasping itin his left hand, steadying it by the drop handle in his right. The first cut required considerable skill on thepart of the operator; the following not so much, asless care was required to adjust the guide and cuttingtool. When the depth of required thread was cut,the screw was finished by a toothed comb thatsmoothed the work and gave a slight taper to thethread; the final polishing was done between deadcenters. The brass nuts on all the wrought ironscrews were cast on them, the screws being heatedand well coated with rosin and lamp black over anopen charcoal fire.In chasing the large cast iron screws, the templateor screw guide was not carried by the square tit, asin the case of the wrought iron screw, but simply bya steel pin in coinciding holes in screw bolt and tem-plate. The cutting tool also differed, as both guideand cutting tool were carried by a deep collar thatwas slid in to the template, fitting both it and thescrew bolt; this collar had an arm that held it fromturning by the lathe rest on which it slid, the guidetool being on the collar next the poppet head, thecutting tool on the opposite or advance side, and, asin the above described hand [tool,] the cutting toolgoing in advance of the guide?in fact, a screw cuttingdie with a single cutting point. When this die hadtraveled to the end of its cut, the cutter and guide werewithdrawn and the die or collar slid back by hand,the tools readjusted and again started. I recollect on one occasion my grandfather askedMr. White why he did not adopt this simple plan tocut his wrought iron screws. The reply was, because it has no feeling; that no two bolts of wrought ironwere ever alike in texture. He then expatiated largelyon the necessity and advantage of a piece of ham skin, the fat side next the screw, that he placed inthe lower part of the bend of his tool carrier thatclasped the back of the screw. By bearing down thelong handle of the carrier, this ham skin was pressedup against the bottom of the screw being cut. and, ashe expressed it, so increased the sensitiveness of thetouch that with his eyes shut he could detect the slightest dulling of the cutter, or, should a cornerbreak off of it that might interfere with the guide,he was notified of it before the eye could possiblyhave detected it: again, he claimed that consideringhe could take a heavier cut when he could feel hiswork, and the time lost in backing the tools, slidingthe collar carrier and again readjusting the tools, thathe had an advantage that nearly doubled the amountof chasing per day.On a simple plan being suggested to him of revers-ing the lathe and automatically starting and stoppingthat would run the tool back rapidly ready for afresh cut, his comments were very characteristic ofthe man, and, no doubt, many other hand workersopposed to innovations. He had listened very at-tentively, and after what appeared to be due con-sideration, he said: "Nathan, I have no doubt whatthee proposes would act just as thee suggests; butwhen I hire a workman I hire his brains as well ashis hands. They are naturally careless enough, andif thee would save their thinking and give part of itto the machine, it would only make them moreheedless, and I would be the sufferer. If I were tospend money to adopt thy jimcracks, I would still beobliged to have the man to watch them, to set thetools and keep them sharp and in order, and why notlet him do the work? It is better for him than tostand with his hands in his pockets; they would soonbe in mine."The heavy cast iron nuts for the cotton press andpaper mill screws were bored by head and cutters ona vertical boring bar, guided both above and belowthe nut, which was clamped on a wooden platform,the boring bar and head being worked capstan fash-ion by men walking around pushing levers. Forcutting the thread, the boring bar had a screw threadthe pitch of that to be cut, on which was clamped atwo part nut secured to the upper guide of the boringbar. When a cut was run through, the cutting toolwas brought back by the men reversing the direction.At the time I am writing of, this primitive mode of34 Figure 17.?John White'sscrew-cutting lathe, about 1817.The chasing tool is attached to thelong wooden handle which restson the operator's shoulder. Theadvance of the tool along theworkpiece is initiated by the "screw-guide," located at theright-hand end of the workpiece.However, the operator had topossess skill as well as brawn inorder to chase a uniform thread.The model shown here was builtfor the U.S. National Museumfrom the description given in thepresent chapter. Smithsonianphoto. boring was followed by Patrick Lyon, the then cele-brated builder of fire engines in Philadelphia, forboring his brass engine cylinders.As to how long this primitive process of press screwmaking was carried on after the time I am alludingto, I have no way of knowing with certainty. I havean impression that Mr. White died before 1821. I recollect a curious incident connected with thesescrews: The house of which my grandfather was headreceived through the Spanish Consul resident in Phil-adelphia a letter of inquiries as to the cost of a largenumber of wrought iron screws, a peculiarity of whichwas they were to be forged solid, then bored out,leaving a certain thickness of shell, the hole closed bya well fitted plug secured by a screw tapped half inthe shell and half in the plug. Other peculiaritieswere explained by the Consul as a necessity to securelightness, as they had to be transported long distanceseither on ass or llama backs. The order came, thescrews were made, and shipped through a Philadel-phia drug house having extensive commerce withSouth America. At the same time was shipped byCadwallader and Oliver Evans machinery for a flour mill. Some years afterwards, when the old UnitedStates Mint on Seventh Street was being dismantled,the machinery broken up and sold as old metal. Inoticed among the rubbish some old rusty, battered,hollow screws, that reminded me of the screws madeby White. I stated the circumstance of that orderto Mr. Adam Eckfeldt, the then coiner. He smiled,and said he could tell the sequel. It was like asermon of three divisions and finally: Firstly, whenthe screws were made, from some cause mercury was cheaper in Philadelphia than either Spain or SouthAmerica. When produced, the hollow screws werefilled with mercury, and in that condition reachedthe gold mines. The secondly was, after the mercurywas run out, the hollow body was made to take theplace of an ingot mould and cast full of gold, theplugs returned and securely riveted, some bent andbroken, all badly rusted, and with other pieces ofmachinery were safely transported to the seaboardshipping port, having offered no attraction to brig-ands who infested all the roads. The thirdly was, asold machinery and waste metal they passed the Cus-tom House and evaded a heavy export duty leviedon all gold shipped to any other country than Spain:they also got cheap transportation and safety by vessel to Philadelphia. The finally was the goldenharvest at the old United States Mint. They hadanswered the purpose of the projector, had broughtinto our country over 8150,000 that otherwise couldnot have reached it in a direct way. They had letttheir maker's hands at a cost probably not exceedingS30 each, and returned after their long travel bywater and by land, each carrying within its old.battered, rusty shell over $5,000 of pure gold. Some of these old screw shells should have been preserved as relics of Yankee ingenuity, for it was all the work of an American who had found his way to the goldmines in the mountains of South America. Thehumor of the thing was making the Spanish Consul,probably an innocent party to the fraud againsttheir customs, act as a go-between in the entiretransaction. [14] 35 6. The Philadelphiaof Oliver Evans Oliver Evans was 53 years old when GeorgeEscol Sellers was born, and he died before Sellerswas 1 1 . 47 However, the author in this chapterdelineates a profile of Evans considerably sharperthan the standard one constructed at second handfrom written and printed sources.Evans had a really first-rate mind. He wasoriginal and generally sound in his conclusions.His high-pressure steam engine represented acourageous departure in practice from the low-pressure engine pioneered by Boulton and Watt. His system of materials handling in a flour mill,using vertical bucket and horizontal screw con-veyors, was fully set forth in his Young Mill-Wright and Miller's Guide, first published in 1795and republished through 15 editions, the lastappearing in i860. His high-pressure steamengine took form after 1800, and in 1805 heissued his Abortion of the Young Steam Engineer'sGuide, whose title reflects the frustrations thatbeset him as he sought support for a pioneer workon the steam engine. -T or several years prior to the organization of theFranklin Institute, of Pennsylvania, 48 there was greatinterest and activity in what at that time was con-sidered a rapid advance in mechanics, both in Americaand Europe.The problem of ocean as well as land transportationwas occupying the minds of many thinking men.Steam power was looked to, but was ridiculed aschimerical by the world at large. Our own OliverEvans, from the time of his first high-pressure enginein 1785 or 1786 49 to the time of his death in 181 9,never lost an opportunity to impress on any listenershe could hold the feasibility of not only navigating 47 Most of what is known of Oliver Evans has been broughttogether by Greville Bathe and Dorothy Bathe, in OliverEvans (cited in preceding note), a quarto volume of 362pages, profusely illustrated.48 Founded in 1824. A brief outline of the Institute's historyis in Henry Butler Allen, "The Franklin Institute of theState of Pennsylvania," Transactions of the American PhilosophicalSociety (1953), vol. 43, pt. I, pp. 275-279. '? These dates apparently were derived from those of hispetitions to the various state legislatures. While he asked in1786 for a patent, or privilege (the U.S. patent system began our rivers, but crossing the ocean and continents bysteam power.As early as 1 786 he petitioned the Legislature ofPennsylvania to grant him the exclusive right touse his improvements in flour mills, and also forroad wagons p'opelled by steam. The act passed in1787, granting him the right so far as flour millswere concerned; but no notice was taken of thatpart of his petition relating to steam wagons. In 1 787 the Maryland Legislature granted him, hisheirs and assigns, the exclusive right for fourteenyears for his improvements, including the steamwagon. The term "locomotive," as now applied,had not at that time been suggested.As a boy, I have often listened to Mr. Evans'earnest predictions as to land travel by steam. Hesaid he had lived to see part of his prediction verifiedin steamboats? that high-pressure steam and lightengines had made it practical on our western rivers,and would in time on good turnpike or tram road. in 1 790), for his steam wagon, his first steam engines were builtafter 1800 (Bathe and Bathe, cited in note 46 above, pp.66-69).36 In speaking of the Pennsylvania Legislature, hecalled them "the assembled wisdom of the State,that could not see beyond their noses." They couldsee the grain go into the mill and come out flour,but as to a wagon being moved by any other powerthan the slow-moving ox, the horse, or mule, or beingdragged by man power, was beyond their compre-hension. He had asked no aid other than protectionin case of success. It would cost them nothing, yethe had been treated with contempt little short ofinsult.Of the grant from the State of Maryland he saidthe Hollingsworths, the Ellicotts, the Tysons, andothers, were men of enterprise and progress, moreso than the average of the time.He was very severe in his denunciations of Ben-jamin H. Latrobe, whom he blamed for a report onsteam navigation he had made, in which he alluded tohim (Evans) as a visionary, seized with steam mania,in conceiving and believing that boats and wagonscould be propelled by steam to advantage; while he(Latrobe) demonstrated by figures that could not liethat the entire capacity would be required to carrythe engines and fuel, leaving no available tonnage forfreight and passengers. 50 The B. H. Latrobe referredto was the father of the very eminent engineer, B. H.Latrobe, Jr., who carried to a successful terminationone of the greatest of American enterprises?theBaltimore and Ohio Railway, and other importantworks. The elder Latrobe was an accomplishedEnglish architect and engineer, who designed anderected the first water works of Philadelphia, bywhich a steam engine on the Schuylkill River raisedthe water into a brick underground conduit, throughwhich it flowed nearly a mile into a cistern in Centre 50 This is the report on steam engines in America that Latrobemade in 1803 for transmittal to the Rotterdam and BatavianSocieties (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1809,vol. 6, pp. 89-98). %c- Figure 18.?Oliver Evans (1 755-1 81 9).From Appleton's Dictionary of Machines, Mechanics,Engine- Work, and Engineering, 2 vols. (New York,1867). Square, the site on which the new public buildingsare now being erected. Over this cistern was theengine house, on the top of which, covered by a dome,was the reservoir or basin, to give head to supply thecity with water through bored wooden pipes.Mr. Evans frequently referred to his blasted hopes.He had succeeded in obtaining indorsements of Prof.Robert Patterson, David Rittenhouse, C. W. Peale,Nathan Sellers, and a number of others whose names I cannot recall, as to the feasibility of his plans. Hewas meeting with success in interesting parties ofmeans, and was full of hope of demonstrating to theworld that he was no visionary, when Mr. Latrobe'sreport proved too much for him to overcome, andhe was obliged to abandon the project of demonstra-tion by outside aid. It is now about 66 years 51 since I rode with myfather and Oliver Evans from Philadelphia to a mill 51 This article was written in 1884. That would make thedate of the ride 1818, when Sellers was nearly 10 and Evanswas within a year of his death at 64. 37 in Delaware county, Pa., in which the latter wasputting in a set of his elevators, hopper boy, andflour press. Yet much of the conversation I listenedto both in going and returning on that never-to-be-forgotten trip, is as fresh in my memory as if it hadoccurred but yesterday.Mr. Evans had much to say on the difficulties in-ventive mechanics labored under for want of pub-lished records of what had preceded them, and forworks of reference to help the beginner. In speakingof his own experience, he said that everything he hadundertaken he had been obliged to start at the veryfoundation; often going over ground that others hadexhausted and abandoned, leasing no record. Heconsidered the greatest difficulty beginners had to en-counter was want of reliable knowledge of what hadbeen done.Even at that early day Mr. Evans suggested andurged the formation of a Mechanical Bureau thatshould collect and publish all new inventions, com-bined with reliable treatises on sound mechanicalprinciples, as the greatest help to beginners. He didnot believe it could at that time be made self-sustain-ing, but it would be to the interest of mechanics,manufacturers and merchants to subscribe to itssupport.Another subject discussed was the importance of aschool to teach mechanical drawing. Mr. Evansmade all his drawings full size on chalked boards; hehad no confidence in working to scale with the char-acter of labor to be had at that time. His drawinginstruments consisted of a two-foot rule, straight edge,square and compass. His first designs were roughpencil sketches, not drawn to scale. To combine andreduce these full size working drawings and put themin shape to exhibit, he depended upon Frederick andJohn Eckstein, then copperplate engravers in Phila-delphia. I think he named at a later date WilliamKneass, s2 who was also a copperplate engraver, anda good draftsman, but of this I am not quite certain.Mr. Evans gave an instance of the advantage, infact, the importance of artistically finished drawingsto the mechanic, by citing the Philadelphia waterworks. He said it was Latrobe's fine drawing heexhibited of the Boulton & Watt steam engine andpumps, and above all the exterior of the pumpinghouse, with its Doric columns and pediments, both front and rear, its center dome-shaped buildingcovering the reservoir, with the novel expedient ofthe stack and chimney, terminating on the apex ofthe dome, vomiting its wreath of black smoke, thatcaught the eye of the members of the city council thatadopted the plans and gave to Latrobe the super-intendence of the work. Mr. Evans called it the cityplaything on which to expend money; more forornament than utility, barely calculated to supplytheir wants without provision for a growing city, buthe said that notwithstanding Latrobe had classed himamong the visionaries, he would give him credit forhaving introduced a higher standard of mechanicaldrawing that would stimulate our native mechanics,and in that respect they owed him much.Boy as I was at the time, it did not occur to me thatthere might have been a dash of satire in Mr. Evans'allusion to Mr. Latrobe, or that he might have beena competitor with him in plans for the water works. I do not now know that he was or was not. Besidethe Boulton & Watt condensing engine and pump inthe old Centre Square Water Works there was anengine known as the "American Engine," a verticalcylinder, lever-beam engine, the original OliverEvans engine, and I presume built by him or underhis supervision. This engine, if my recollection doesnot deceive me, was oftener seen running than the "great English engine," as it was then called. s3In speaking of the water works, Mr. Evans saidPhiladelphia had paid dearly for rejecting a proposi-tion of Nathan Sellers, who was then a member ofthe council, for the city to purchase the Fairmounthills and reserve them as a site for reservoirs whenthe wants of the city should require an extension ofits water works, and he believed Mr. Sellers hadspoken prophetically when he said to the council thathe expected to live to see the Centre Square WaterWorks torn down. Mr. Evans said that about that 52 John Eckstein and William Kneass are noticed in Dictionary oj American Biography. Eckstein died about 1 8 1 7 ; Kneass becameengraver at the U.S. Mint in 1824. 53 Sellers has confused the Center Square Water Works withthe Fairmount Water Works. The former, built in 1799-1801,contained one steam engine, 32 inches by 6 feet, to pump waterinto an overhead reservoir. The engine was built by NicholasRoosevelt in his Soho Works near Newark, N.J. Anothersimilar engine, 40 inches by 6 feet, also by Roosevelt, waslocated at the Schuylkill end of the supply tunnel, to supply theCenter Square pump. The Fairmount pumphouse, however,answered to Sellers's description. Built in 1812-1815, theworks contained one locally built engine on the Boulton andWatt plan and one engine, a Columbian, built by Evans.Evans's engine was slightly more economical. (Bathe andBathe, cited in note 46 above, pp. 65, 21 1-213, 227, 246-247.)38 Figure 19.?Pumping engine of Philadelphia Water Works,about 1 80 1. This engine, built by Nicholas Roosevelt andlocated in a pumphouse on the Schuylkill River at ChestnutStreet, pumped water to the Center Square Works where asimilar engine pumped it into a small reservoir above theengine. Original wash drawing in the Frederick Graff Collec-tion. Photo courtesy of The Franklin Institute Library. 39 time he was called before a committee of the council,and that he said to them: "As sure as there is aHeaven above us, it will not be long before the citymust own the Fairmount hills regardless of cost." Iinfer from this that Mr. Evans must have had plansin connection with these hills that were not approvedat the time the "Centre Square plaything," as healways called it, was adopted. I will here add that one of the last visits NathanSellers paid to Philadelphia after his retirement in hisold age to his place in the country, was to see thefirst stone removed in the destruction of the CentreSquare building that he had so earnestly opposederecting?not from any mechanical defects in the plan,but for inadequacy in supplying the requirements ofa growing city. 54The want of published mechanical works that Mr.Evans complained of so much did not begin to besupplied until some years after his death. It was not until 1825 that Nicholson's Operative Mechanic, so longa standard, was published in England, and the secondAmerican edition bears the date 1831.55 I do notknow the date of the first. As late as 1831 I couldnot find on sale in either New York or Philadelphiaa copy of Dr. Alexander Jamieson's Mechanical Dic-tionary,56 then considered a standard work in England,and was obliged to import a copy through Carey &Lea, who ordered with my copy some extra ones,which they held a long time before finding purchasers. I have dwelt longer on Oliver Evans than I in-tended, for I look back with pleasure at having beenprivileged to listen to the plans and predictions of sofar-seeing a man.A good style of mechanical drawing was taught inPhiladelphia long before the want of a mechanicalpublication was filled.William Mason, of the firm of Mason & Tyler,makers of philosophical instruments and small tools,taught a private class which I attended.William Strickland, as an architect, was alwaysready to lend a helping hand to young beginners. 54 The Center Square structure was removed about 1828(Scharf and Westcott, cited in note 14 above, vol. 3, p. 1844) . Nathan Sellers died in 1830.55 The first English edition was published in 1825. Thefirst American edition, from the second London edition, wasissued in Philadelphia in 1826.56 Alexander Jamieson, A Dictionary of Mechanical Science,Arts, Manufactures, and Miscellaneous Knowledge, 2 vols. (London:1827). The 7th edition carries the date 1832. He would lend them drawings to copy and givekind advice. I recollect his once saying to me, "Come often and study the plates of my Stuart'sAthens;*1 copy them and recopy them; they are thefoundation of sound principle and true taste."Some really fine mechanical drawings of my earliestremembrance were made by a divinity student, atthat time acting as draftsman at what I think wascalled the Eagle Foundry and Machine Shop. Itwas located on the Schuylkill River, near the footof Callowhill Street. I do not remember who oper-ated it, but it must have been short-lived, as for many-years the great stone building stood vacant and idle. 58This student was an accomplished and rapid pencilsketcher of machinery. That and music were passionswith him. He spent two or three evenings a week atour house, kept a violin there, and joined my motherand others, of whom I may yet speak, in home con- certs. He frequently brought his drawings to showto my father. On one occasion a finished coloreddrawing of a pair of bevel cog-wheels in gear, drawnin perspective, to my boyish eyes was a most wonderfulpiece of work, and, as a matter of course, I had manyquestions to ask. He then proposed, if I would devotemy half-holidays (our Quaker schools gave two?oneon meeting day, the other Saturday), he would teachme all he could. On this my father went with John, as we familiarly called him, and selected my fine case of drawing instruments, and with them, proud enough, I trudged away out to the foundry. I say "away out," 57 This is repeated, but not from this source, in AgnesAddison Gilchrist, William Strickland, Architect and Engineer, 1788-1854 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,1950), p. 31. The influence of Stuart and Revett's Antiquitiesof Athens on Strickland's work is mentioned several times byMrs. Gilchrist in her book.5 ' The Eagle Works furnished cannon during the quasi-warwith France in 1 798-1800. In 1799 a contract with the U.S.Navy called for cannon to be cast solid and bored out "at theboreing Mill on Schuylkill" {Naval Documents Related to theQjtasi-War Between the United Slates and France, 1797-1801, 7 vols.[U.S. Naval Records and Library Office, Washington: 1935-1938], vol. 2, pp. 205-206). The Eagle Works was operated in1799, and as late as 181 o, by Samuel Foxall. Under the direc-tion of Samuel Richards, in 1820, water pipes of 22-inchdiameter were cast in 9-foot sections (Scharf and Westcott,cited in note 14 above, vol. 3, p. 2251). James Mease, inThe Picture of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: 1811), p. 77, says: "All kinds of castings are also made at the Eagle Works, onSchuylkill, belonging to S. & W. Richards." Sellers apparentlywas unaware of the earlier history of the works, which issurprising.40 C a-/-/ /" - ?vy~ ./?- -?f?^ *??>--. -rsis^-ifi^ *?? ? Figure 2 1 .?Center Square Water Works, Philadelphia. FromCharles \\l . Janson, Stranger in America (London, 1807). Libraryof Congress photo. 42 7. Sellers and PennockFire Engine Works A cousin of George Escol's father, JamesSellers, was in the fire engine trade for severalyears before the short-lived partnership ofJacob Perkins and Coleman Sellers was formed.It was James Sellers who developed, perhaps asearly as 1811, riveted leather hose as describedin an earlier chapter. It was not until 181 8,however, that he took out a patent for it, incollaboration with Abraham L. Pennock.The date at which the partnership of Coleman,his cousins James and Samuel, and Pennock ? doing business under the name of Sellers andPennock?was formed to carry on engine andhose making is thus uncertain. However, the "regular fire engine shop" at 1 6th and MarketStreets that the author refers to in the following passage is that of Sellers and Pennock. 60Samuel Morey's visit to Philadelphia occurredsometime during the 1820's. The explosive vaporvacuum engine, one of the earliest internal com-bustion engines to be developed in the UnitedStates, was patented in 1826.The sojourn of the titled itinerant Germancraftsman, whom we know only as Henri Mogeme,apparently occurred in 1823.Charles Sellers, the author's elder brother, tookcharge of the shops in 1826. Two years later,Coleman withdrew from this partnership, movedto the Sellers lands in Upper Darby Township,Delaware County, and built the shops that gavetheir name to the section of Upper Darby now-known as Cardington. Ijefore we quit school, I made all the workingdrawings for the Hydraulion. It is curious how,before the establishment of the shop at Market & 16thStreets, the first engines were gotten together. Ihave already told how the brass cylinders werebored in the garret of Market Street, ' ' the patternsfrom which they were cast being made in father'sshop and the castings being made by John Wiltbank. 62 60 In an 1828 Philadelphia directory, "Sellers & Pennockpatent rivet hose and fire engine manuf." was located at 231High (the Market Street store), and also at Schuylkill Seventh(16th Street) on the west side, one door south of High. 151 I have found no specific description of Coleman Sellers'scylinder boring operation, which was no mean job at the time.It can only be assumed that the boring was done on a foot-driven lathe, however, from which I should guess that thecylinders were not larger than 4 or 5 inches in diameter.12 John Wiltbank, of 262 High Street (Philadelphia directoriesof 1828 and 1838), who bought the Cardington property uponthe failure of the Sellers brothers machine works in 1838 or1839 (Memoirs, book 5, p. 17). The air vessels and other copper work was done by-Israel Morris. I think this was the man, he lived onthe corner of 3rd and New Sts., his shop being in the rear on Xew St. I think this was the name of the street, a street from 3rd to 4th opposite the CatholicChurch above Race or Vine. 63 Joseph Oat was hisforeman and after he went into business did thecopper work for .Sellers & Pennock until they estab-lished their own shop. 6i The cast iron cylinder headswere cast and turned and the stuHing boxes filled at '3 This was St. Augustine's Church, on North 4th Street,between Race and Vine. Xew Street is correct; it was also called Story Street. "Joseph Oat w-as a coppersmith at 12 Quarry .Street for sometime before taking his son, in 1843, into the partnership ofJoseph Oat and Son (Nicholas B. Wainwright, Philadelphiain the Romatic Age oj Lithography, Philadelphia, Historical So- ciety of Pennsylvania, 1958, p. 159). 43 Oliver Evans' shop corner of Vine and Ridge Road,the levers were forged and fitted up at his blacksmithshop on Cherry Street, 65 the ash wood handles wereturned by Hansell, 66 the wheels and running gear at acarriage shop at Hestonville (I cannot recall the name)and the box or body for the first engine was built inthe back shop on Market St. and afterwards in thenew building on 6th Street 67 until the advent of theMarket & 16th Streets shop. I must not forget thepainting, which was done by Woodside the signpainter. 68 With all this scattered work you can formsome judgment of the amount of leg wear to a boy oldenough to run errands. Samuel Meredith and GeorgeRawlings built the first engine bodies.After the advent of the regular fire engine shop,things were consolidated and systemized and a muchbetter character of work was turned out. To do thatwith the character of tools then in use the highestcharacter of skilled labor had to be employed, whichthey were very fortunate in securing.The only labor saving machines for wood workwere a small circular ripping saw driven by a handcrank wheel [and] a pattern maker's lathe drivenby the same crank wheel. In the finishing room wereplenty of vises, cold chisels and files. There was onehand lathe for metal which had a Maudslay slide rest that belonged to father who had purchased itfrom a workman who brought it from England. Irecollect that he paid $40.00 for it. It was too tallfor the lathe in the little home shop without blockingup. There was also a small wooden shear (ironslided) slide lathe for turning piston rods, etc. Alldrilling not done in the lathe was done by a handcrank with a weighted jointed overhead lever orwith ratchet drills.The blacksmith shop was the best equipped of anypart of these works?it had four regular fire hearths 65 Oliver Evans's Mars Works were at gth, Vine, and RidgeRoad. I know of no Evans shop being on Cherry Street.68 Thomas Hansell, turner, next to 41 North 8th Street(Philadelphia directory of 181 7).67 Perhaps 10 North 6th Street (Memoirs, book 4, pp. 66-67,book 17).69 A favorite of the Philadelphia fire companies, John A.Woodside is mentioned frequently in the account of fire com-panies in Scharf and Westcott (Cited in note 14 above),e.g., pp. 1053, 1898, 1900, 1 901, 1902; see also Joseph Jackson, "John A. Woodside, Philadelphia's Glorified Sign-Painter,"Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (1933), vol. 57,PP- 58-65. Woodside is the artist who drew the picture infigure 8 (p. 10). and a small one for tool dressing. The bellows for thelarge hearths were home made and as I think fatherdesigned them they may be worth describing. Theywere oblong square boxes the size of which, as nearas I can recollect being 3x6 feet and 1 2 or 14 inchesdeep. There were double flap valves in its solidbottom and the lower leaf, the size of the box, washinged at the travel end and leathered in the usualmanner. The box was the air chamber and betweenits upper edge and a float plank was a space of about6 or 8 inches leathered so slack as to allow the plankto sink to within a couple of inches of the bottom ofthe box. To keep this floating plank central therewere a couple of upright round rods that passedloosely through holes in cross bars above the box.This float was loaded to the pressure of the requiredblast.The first work that I recollect in the shops was themaking of a number of what they called villageengines. These were made for sale without regardto special orders. Then followed a larger class onwhich taste was displayed in the design. They weremounted on springs with galleries for goose neck andbranch pipes, as well as for the hose attachment atthe side and with suction to take water from pondsor cisterns.Though still a school boy I was actively at workon the fancy designs. I have some of these sketchesbut do not know where to lay my hands on them.Playing from the gallery and through the hose fromthe side attachment was what made Pat Lyon dubthem as "D. D. Cholera Morbus Machines." Ithink the first of these large fancy engines was builtfor the Philadelphia Hose Company, then followedthe Phoenix, and at this time a first class engine wasbeing built for Providence, R.I., and another forRichmond, Va., also one for Washington. D.C. Ithink the last built by the firm was the Assistanceand it had father's floating piston in the air vessel,and on a trial with the "Diligent" thoroughly wetthe ground several feet beyond the "Diligent's" lastdrop. 69 On one of my visits to Philadelphia afterthe burning of the Theatre opposite the GirardHouse I was told by an old member of the Assistancethat after the steam fire engines had failed to ex-tinguish the flames on the high cornice of the Girard 69 It should be noted that this followed Diligent of 1820 byseveral years, perhaps seven or eight.44 Figure 22.?Great wheel lathe (foreground, 1765-1800) and pole lathe(right background, 1750-1765) from the shop of the Dominy family of East-hampton, Long Island, and now installed in the Henry Francis du PontWinterthur Museum. Note the two spring poles (one in use) at upper right.Photo courtesv of Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. House which had taken fire, that the old Assistancewas got out and did it. ... [16] I was going to tell of Mr. Morey's 70 efforts to haveone of his interesting engines attached to a hydraulionbut in detail it would be too long a story. 70 Samuel Morey (1 762-1843). George Calvin Carter'sSamuel Morey, the Edison of His Day (Concord, N.H.: Privatelyprinted for G. C. Carter by the Rumford Press, 1945) is aninexact, uncritical, and slight work. More solid informationis to be found in Dictionary 0/ American Biography. A sketch ofMorey's steamboat enterprises is given in Greville Bathe,An Engineer's jXote Book (St. Augustine, Fla.: 1955), pp. 123-144. I think the old gentleman came from Hartford.Conn., bringing a working model of what he calledby so long a name that I cannot recall it, but thesubstance was that it was an explosive vapor vacuumengine. The machine he brought had two singleacting cylinders about 10 inches in diameter and heused turpentine or any substance that would, at alow temperature, give an inflammable vapor. Heclaimed that for fire engines, his engine could be putin operation in less than a minute alter lighting hislamps under the vaporizer.He exhibited his model propelling a bateau on theSchuylkill and it was then brought to the fire engine45 shops. I do not recollect that he had any plans toattach it to the fire engine pump; I think he onlyproposed to furnish the driving power.Finding a set of light small wheels, I think those thathad been used on the Perkins garden engine, he pro-posed to demonstrate the practicability of running theengine to a fire without the aid of men with the longropes. For the purpose he mounted a kind of buck-board carriage and to prevent firing of this board heplaced under his vehicle cylinders a pan containingwater. When the explosion took place in the cylindera flame would shoot through a clap valve at the bottomof the cylinder into the water. At every explosion hewould get a vacuum about equal to what was got bythe doctors in the old fire cupping process. On the upstroke of Morey's engine, atmospheric] air and vaporwere drawn in, the valves closing before the pistonhad quite reached the end of its stroke, in doing whichit forced a small hole opposite to which a lamp wasburning, the flame of which was drawn into the cylin-der and its inflammable mixture exploded and thepiston descended by atmospheric pressure into thevacuum.After Mr. Morey had made what he thought satis-factory yard tests, he had the gate onto Market Streetopened that he might mount the seat he had provided,guide the machine and run out Market Street whichwas then a common road not having been paved withcobble stones although the side gutters were pavedwith brick, but the narrow paved sidewalks were notcurbed.In starting the machine, somehow Mr. Morey whenabout mounting his seat lost his hold, tripped and fellflat. As he gathered himself up calling "Stop her,stop her," which no one seemed ready or knew how todo. the thing ran across the street, through the gutter,over the sidewalk and turned a sumersault into thebrick yard where the clay had been cut away severalfeet lower than the sidewalk, a complete wreck. Thiswas the end of the vacuum engine, [i 7] There were some incidents connected with Sellers &Pennock's fire engine shops that, as they had a bearingor influence on my mechanical education, it may bewell t<> relate. Charles was more at the shops at thattime than 1 was for I seemed to have found my placein the Market Street store weighing and putting upcard teeth, giving them out with the leather to the setters, keeping the accounts, taking in, inspectingand paying for the work clone. As near as I can recol-lect, the average number of workers was considerably over 200. There was a great register book with namesand residences, this book had been kept from an earlytime, and I recollect once having counted over 3,000entries in it. Charles about that time had begunmould making, and the frequent drawings that I wasdoing for father led me to the engine shop as often as I could get there. I recollect on one occasion seeing a short thicksetman walking about the shop looking at the workgoing on, and he seemed to be explaining what hesaw to a smooth faced young chap who was with him.Their dress showed them both to be foreigners andwhen I got near enough to hear him, it was in Germanthat he was speaking. Somehow I became interestedin watching the man and when father came in 1reported the man's actions to him. Father asked ifhe interfered with the work and when I replied "No,"father then said, "Let him amuse himself."Soon after I again met the man and was surprisedwhen he spoke to me in good English and said he was a workman looking for a job, that he had beenlooking around and thought he would like to workin the shop and asked me to whom he should apply. I took him to father who was then in the office andafter he had made his application father asked himhis trade or what branch he worked at. His replywas, that it did not much matter, he had been lookingaround the shops and he could do anything he sawbeing done there. At this reply father had a veryquizzical look and asked him what trade he hadlearned.None in particular: in the Polvtechnic he hadlearned how to use tools and he had been workingaround in different shops for over two years. Fatherasked where, to which he replied London, Manchester,Liverpool, five or six months for Kemble at WestPoint and his last place had been in Allaire's shopsin New York. 71 Father made some remark about hiswandering habits and told how long some of thehands had been with them. "Yes," said the man, "but the more move the morelearn and the better work do." Some allusion wasmade to the young man with him and it was askedif he wanted work too. "No, he go to school when I go to work." " Gouverneur Kemble, "The West Point Foundry," Pro- ceedings of the New York Stale Historical Association, (1916), vol. 15, pp. 190-203. James P. Allaire (1 785-1858) is noticedin Dictionary oj American Biography.46 Figure 23.?Model of Samuel Morey's turpentine engine, 1826- 1828, theearliest recorded American internal combustion engine. The turpentine vaporcarburetor was in the large box between the two cylinders. After explosion ol the vapor, water was injected into the cylinders to produce the vacuumwhich caused the pistons to descend under atmosphere pressure. USNM314668; Smithsonian photo 43888. Father asked the place of his nativity and to whatPolytechnic he went. To the first question I thinkhis reply was Bavaria, and to the second Heidelberg,but of this I am not quite certain. There was agood deal more talk and among other things Fatherasked what wages he expected to get when he toldfather he left that entirely to his employers. Father told him that at present he did not see an openingfor him, and to this his reply was "No matter; anytime." When asked to leave his address he wrote "Henri Mogeme" and the name of a tavern thatwas in the next block east on the south side of MarketSt. next to Wiltberger's iron foundry. It was aframe building with a Ion? range of back buildings,47 stables and stock yard?a kind of drovers tavern.On some remark of father's to its being close athand, he said, "Yes, I always like to be close to work."Father told him if there was any opening he wouldlet him know, but instead of leaving the man stood,then said as if talking to himself, "I see no copper-smith's bench or tools."Father said, "We have that work done out." "Better work, better fits if done here."When father told him that there was not workenough to warrant starting a coppersmith's shop theman said he had a tool chest and only some mandrelswere wanted and went on to say that the little wastescrap room adjoining the blacksmith shop was bigenough for all the copper work and to cast the brass.He was then told that there was but one brass founderin the city that could cast the cylinders and thatthe air furnace in which the brass was melted wasalmost as big as the little room by the smith shop. "No want air furnace, one big pot, or two nextbig better?no blow holes to cast up no plugs to putin cylinders (he had seen this being done)?goodcylinders, no bad castings. Only one little chimbly,two grates, bricks, one man to help mix cement and I build him in two days." Father seemed a gooddeal amused at the idea of starting two branches ofbusiness with one man in the little scrap room andhe said he would have to talk with his partners about it. The man on leaving asked when he should comeagain and was told any time after tomorrow.After he left father said that man was a puzzle tohim. He might be a very useful hand or a verymischievous one, but that he was certainly a bettereducated man than any foreign workman they hadever employed and that he certainly had a goodconceit of his ability.All the coppersmith work being done at the shopon New St. so far away from the engine shop made itnecessary for Joseph Oat to be sent for if any smallchange was to be made or any brazing or solderingto be done and this was not only troublesome butexpensive and to have it done in the shop was cer-tainly more desirable.It was not many days before Henri Mogeme wasinstalled in the waste scrap room fitting it up for hiscopper work. As I have always considered Mogeme'sadvent at the shops as the most important step inmy mechanical education ... I have gone into thedetail of the matter. I do not claim a recollectionof the various conversations verbatim, but have put it in this shape as the easiest to be understood as well as what will follow. I never went into his shop that I did not learn something. He was always ready toanswer my questions and mostly with some illustra-tion. I will give an instance: I once found him tugging at a bellows with a smallcrucible on a blacksmith hearth, and I asked himwhat he was doing. He told me to look on and hewould show me. He said he was making solder tobraze fine finished brass to copper without meltingor hurting the brass. He told me the exact weightof clean copper he had in the pot (a little pile ofpieces): he also told me the weight of the spelter,which he said we called zinc, and also of a piece ofbismuth. All these must be put in after the copperwas melted. I could only see something sparkling as if burning in the crucible ....Mogeme explained to me that what I saw sparklingin the crucible was charcoal brays, to prevent theoxidation of the melted copper ; while talking hekept blowing the bellows. After a bit he said, "Nowhe is melted." He scraped off the charcoal, droppedin the zinc piece by piece, stirring all the time, andfinally put in the little piece of bismuth, then thewhole was poured out on a flat plate of iron, brokenup with a hammer as it cooled. When done he said all right, that he could now braze the finished brasscoupling screws to the copper pipes without hurtingor melting the brass. Then to show me why he hadmelted the copper first he put a piece of zinc in aniron ladle and told me to watch him melt, thenhe get red, then he grow littler and littler and gooff all in smoke. He said we called it "sublimating."Mogeme was a capital teacher: when explaininganything to me it would be as if I was entirely ig-norant. He would say, "No understand withoutbeginning right." At the time I refer to he gavethe formula for solders for brazing iron and steel,copper to copper and copper to brass, and he wasvery particular to see that I had put them right inthe memoranda book I carried.He had learned that in a boyish way I was inter-ested in mineralogy and he gave me many finespecimens which I could never learn how he obtained.At the time of the solder making he gave me somefine specimens of the Franklin ores from New Jersey,one or two of which I still have. At this time hetold me that when coming from New York to Phila-delphia he had gone to see Dr. Franklin's DeadFurnace. He said it was choked to death. In thebottom (the hearth) was salamander, iron, cinderand charcoal all mixed up and massed. The top48 of the furnace also choked?the harder they blowthe more he choke. He then said he would showme how. He pounded up a piece of the ore andseparated the specular iron ore from the zinc andput some of the zinc on a plate of iron, laid it on thefire and told me to see it smoke. He held a coldiron shovel in the smoke and scraped together thewhite deposit that was soon on it and said, "that iswhat chill and choke him up."Up to the advent of Henri Mogeme all the copperpipes were jointed and the coupling screws attachedby soft solder by sweating as it was called: firstturning well, slipping one within the other thenover an open charcoal fire soaking in soft solder andpiling over the joints a mass of solder wiped intoshape like the plumber's lead pipe joints. Henri'sbrazed joints got rid of these unsightly ones.There were no regular foremen at the shops. Ithink Daniel Cullom was the name of the leadingwood worker in making the engine bodies withSamuel Meredith and George Rawlings workingwith him. I think I have before said that therewere four blacksmith fires and work was given outthrough the man at what was called the first fireor smith and the same plan was carried out in thefinishing and erecting. If they could be consideredforemen they were also workers.Among all the hands employed I think I can safelysay that not a single one had become on friendlyterms with Henri. When speaking of him it wasalways as that mean, stingy, dirty Dutchman. As todirty and unkempt they were not wrong when abouthis work. Cullom once said to me that he had triedto make up to him and had offered to treat him atthe bar, but he said he never took anything. Cullomwent on to say that he knew it was only stingy mean- ness?he was afraid he would be obliged to return it. I said I did not think a man who had the two bestrooms at the tavern, who regularly paid his boardand gave the boy (as his companion was alwaysspoken of) the best private teachers and had himalways look like a gentleman could be called meanand niggard, that for my part I could not see how hedid it on his wages of Sg.oo per week.That is just it, said Cullom, there is somethingwrong and we are bound to find it out. We knowhe is mean and stingy, he chews the vilest tobacco,dries the quids and smokes them in his nasty blackpipe, uses the ashes for snuff and picks his nose togrease his shoes and a lot more of the same kind of stuff. I told father of this and he said he feared that trouble was coming, he had heard of a good deal ofgrumbling among the hands and he thought thatHenri's evident partiality to me and the fact that Iwas so much in his little shop might have somethingto do with it. He did not know what the mensuspected but he did know that they were shadowingHenri's every movement. Every Saturday the menwere paid off, their wages being put up in envelopesand they had learned that sometimes Mogeme did not call for his for several weeks.There were no drawings to scale in use at that timebut full size drawings on boards were in common use.Father was very ready with the pencil and was oneof the best offhand sketchers I ever knew and hemade good use of me in making the full size drawings.In the smith shops were two great boards or boardsjointed together. On one of them was half of the setof levers drawn to full size for the large engines andon the other were the levers for the village engineswhich the blacksmiths worked to for the curves. Inmaking these drawings part of the time I was obligedto lie on my belly and use my arm as radii for thecurves with father standing by directing the changesof the trial marks I made.No rolled iron was used; all the iron came from acharcoal forge on the Brandywine near Coatesville, I cannot recall the name. Wooden patterns were sent.In order that the main lever bars might be drawn tothe proper taper and the centre piece or drop fromthe fulcrum to give the motion to the horizontal pumpchamber, patterns were made.The two principal welds were to connect the armsto the centre drop. They were scarf or top weldsand for the large levers when finished would be about5 or 6 inches X i inch. There was a great deal ofhammer and flattening work done on these afterthey came from the forge. A lever on a large engine(I think it was the Philadelphia Hose Co.) gave wayat one of these welds. Externally it looked to beperfect but there was a considerable cavity internallyshowing that in welding cinder had been enclosed.Father had given directions to the head smith to bevery particular in shaping the bevels to be weldedso as to have them so shaped that the first blowsshould be effective on the centre and drive the cinderout if there should be any.An engine had been shipped to Richmond. Va.It went on the deck of a schooner, I think on a linecalled Hands Line for Norfolk and Richmond, andGeorge Rawlings went along as caretaker. Fatherfollowed by the Steamboat and Stage routes via49 Washington and Fredericksburg and expected tobe absent some two weeks. Cousin James Sellerswas to be at the shops with Charles, who acted astime taker, etc. Cousin James was taken sick andCharles was there alone. I went out to the shops tosee how he was sjettina; along and as I went in Mogemesignalled that he wanted me in his shop. He toldme that Jack? I do not remember his last name?wasgetting his hollow fires reach' to weld up a set oflevers and that if I would s;o and look I would seethat the bevels for the top were not made with thecare father had directed. I went into the shop with a carpenter's rule in un-hand and as I knew Jack was a very touchy fellow Ispoke to him pleasantly and laying my rule on theend of the piece that was then restina; on the anvilreadv to be put in the fire I saw at once that if theother piece was not better, that if not perfectly clean,cinder would be wrapped in. I said. "Jack you aregoina; to take a heat and shape these as fatherdirected."He said, he knew his own business, they were allright and that he was not going to take any ordersfrom a boy who knew no more about it than a cow.This got my back up and I said, "Jack, if you makethat weld without doing as father directed I will tellhim when he returns."Jack worked himself into a rage, blustered andtalked loud enough to be heard all over the shop androared out, "that I might tell and be d?d for all hecared he was not going to be bossed by a boy." Hetook off his apron, threw it down and went talking tothe other men, evidently tryina: to induce them to joinhim in a strike against being bossed by a boy. I started to hunt for Charles and have him try hishand at getting rid of the fellow and prevent hismaking trouble with the other hands, but Henri beck-oned me into his shop and said that fellow had toldme I didn't know any more about it than a cow andthat I should go back into the blacksmith shop, takehold and show him if he was still there and the otherhands that I did know something. He said that thesmith who had the fire next to Jack was a good work-man and could be relied on to help and that he didnot think he had much love for Jack. His helper wasa German called by the other men Dutchy.The idea of my attempting to make the weld, onlya school boy not yet 1 5 years old who had never weldedtwo pieces of metal together, was absurd and I toldMogeme so. His reply was characteristic of the man: "Does the leader of the music band make the music? Xo, his baton only keeps time. Does the little hammermake the bis; weld? No. it is the baton; the two bighammers they do the work." He then rapidly toldme what I ought to do, that he would attend to theproper heat, that he and Dutchy would be strikers,that I must have Jack's helper at the bellows and tohandle the drop piece as it was too heavy for me andthe second smith must handle the Ions; bar and thathe, Henri, would attend to the proper placing beforea blow was struck.After everything was arranged and fully understood I ictween him and me, no one to know of this consulta-tion and he not to be called until everything was inreadiness, when I was to direct what I wanted him todo. The first man I spoke to was Jack's helper whom I asked if he wanted to quit, and his answer was No.Then I told him to get his fire in order and take a heaton the drop bar and I would try and see if I couldn'tshape it as it should be. Then to the man at thesecond fire I told to take the long lexer bar and shapeits end as I should direct ready to weld and to get hisfires reach' for a welding heat. At that time Liverpoolcoal was used for hollow fires. 1 then sent for Mogeme and when he came (as it hadbeen prearranged) I told him that I was going to makethe weld and show Jack, who was still there, that Idid know how to do what I had directed him to do,and asked if he would strike for me with Dutchy as Iwas not strong enough and that Jack's helper and thesecond smith would have to handle the bars for me.Of course Henri agreed to do his best. He alsoattended to having the heats right and clean. It mayhave been for the fun of the thing or for a real desireto help me that he did these things.The second smith and helper brought the barsproperly together on the anvil and I with a pair oftongs had hold of the drop piece, more to steadymyself than anything else for the maneuvering wasleft to those who understood it and could bettermanage. I got my first tap with my hand hammerwhich was quickly followed by Henri and Dutchy,but at first so lightly that I thought the job would be afailure but they knew better, increasing the force oftheir strokes, and in less time than it has taken me towrite this the weld was made and I took up the plan-ishing swedge, unfortunately by a firm grasp of thehandle and the first stroke sent a shock up to my shoulderthat made me wince, which Henri must have seenfor he said, "Hold him loosely to find his own flat."When the planishing was done I took up a handled chisel to do some trimming when Jack pushed in and50 took it out of my hand (in welding there had beenconsiderable spreading that had to be trimmed off).He said, "Let me finish it. I take back all I have said, I have been making a blasted blustering d? d fool of invself and I promise not to do so again." Iwas glad of the relief for I was near giving out. I nodoubt deserved credit for my pluck but not for makingthe weld which I got, for it really belonged to HenriMogeme and the helpers. The object was gainedand before father's return from Richmond therewere some well made levers finished ....One day, I cannot say how long afterwards. I wasin the Market Street store giving out cards to be setand there were a number of girls between the desk andthe counter when the front door opened and a mandressed in black with a low crowned broad brimmedhat with a wisp of crape around it came in. Theman's face was clean shaved and under the rim of hishat dark hair curled in ringlets as if just from thecurling tongs of the hair dresser.The man spoke before I recognized that it wasHenri Mogeme. He said he had come to bid usGood-by as he was about to sail for his old home. Itook him to the back end of the store and father andA. L. Pennock were there. When he took off his hatfather remarked that he had grown some ten or moreyears younger. History was soon told. He had a roll of papers in his hand which he unrolled andshowed us colored drawings of Hydraulions in detail.He said this was the work of his nephew. He saidthat after graduating at the Polytechnic he resolvedto make himself a practical workman and the onlyway of doing so was to go out incognito and that hisfather, the Duke, thought it a mad scheme and was not willing that he should go alone and he hadtherefore taken his nephew who was an orphan andfor nearly four years they had been together. Hesaid that while in France and England he had madeseveral visits home but had not been home sincecomin? to America and that now he was obligedto return as his father had suddenly and unexpectedlydied. He said that under an assumed name andcharacter was the only way he could accomplish theobject he had in coming to this country because heknew the Americans' fondness of toadying to titledforeigners and that as a son of a Duke with theprospective title society claims would have taken allhis time. There was but one person in America towhom his identity was entrusted and that was Mr.Biddle the head of the broker firm and that was anecessity in case of any trouble, such as his fellowworkman had tried to bring on him . . . ."-'In showing his nephew's drawings it was to showhow- well he had played his part as they had a largenumber of drawings of American machinery whichhe said might be useful to him. He regretted thathe had not been able to devote some time to the west, particularly the steamboat navigation of thegreat rivers. When I asked after the boy he said hewas in New York getting their belongings ready fora vessel to sail directly for a German port and thatthey had already engaged passage. [18] ; - I have found no further information on the German,except for the deleted portion (2,500 words) of this passage,which tells of the spying on Mogeme by other workmen. Areview of published travels has yielded nothing. 51 8. Isaiah Lukens and Joseph Saxton Two of the most attractive personalities de-lineated by Sellers were those of Lukens andSaxton, both small town boys who became out-standing craftsmen and innovators. Lukens,nearly 30 years older than Sellers, is seen aspatient preceptor and friend of all boys of mechan-ical bent who came his way. Sellers andSaxton, who was about 10 years older thanSellers, became fast and life-long friends.Isaiah Lukens was born in 1779 near Horsham,in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, less than20 miles north of Philadelphia. 73 He grew up tothe trade of clockmaker and watchmaker, inwhich his father was engaged. He was about 32when he went to live in Philadelphia, taking upresidence in his shop in back of 1 73 Market Street,probably near Fourth Street. 74 In the 1813 citydirectory he was listed as "turner &c." Hebuilt many tower clocks, his most noted commis-sion being that in 1828 for the clock to be installedin the restored tower of the old State House, nowIndependence Hall. 75At the first election of officers of the FranklinInstitute in 1824, Lukens was made vice-president,an office that he held for many years. Havingbecome interested in the then new surgical opera-tion of crushing stones in the bladder in orderto permit flushing out the fragments, he devised an improved lithontriptor, a claw-like instrumentthat could be manipulated externally. In 1825 hejourneyed to England to introduce his instrumentthere, but apparently it was coolly received. 76He returned home in 1827 or 1828. He died in1846.Lukens was a fine craftsman in the best tradi-tion, and his most proficient pupil was Saxton.Joseph Saxton was born in Huntingdon,Pennsylvania, on the banks of the Juniata, in 1 799. The second of 1 1 children, he was putto work at the age of 1 2 in his father's nail factory,and he was apprenticed for a time to the villagewatchmaker. When he was 18 he made hisway to Philadelphia, traveling by boat to Harris-burg and thence overland on foot to his destination.After having mastered the skills that Lukenscould teach him, Saxton visited England in orderto enlarge his knowledge. 77 In the several yearsthat he spent in London, principally as an as- sistant to Jacob Perkins in his Adelaide Gallery,Saxton became acquainted with some of theoutstanding engineers and scientists of his day.Among his acquaintances was the celebratedFaraday, lecturer extraordinary of the RoyalInstitution in Albemarle Street. It was Saxtonwho in 1833, building upon the discoveries ofFaraday and others, devised a successful though 73 A sketch of Lukens's life appeared in the Journal of theFranklin Institute (December 1846), vol. 42, pp. 423-425.Another is in Charles Coleman Sellers, "Portraits andMiniatures of Charles Willson Peale," Transactions of theAmerican Philosophical Society, (June 1952), vol. 42, pt. 1, p. 132.74 "Back of 1 73 High Street" in 181 3 and 1820 city directories.Numbering at this time was continuous from the Delaware Riverwestward. Nathan Sellers's store, at 231 High, was next belowthe northeast corner of Market and Sixth, and across fromNo. 190, Washington's presidential mansion(Mcmoirs, book 17).However, George Escol recalled Lukens's "little shop of twostories in what had originally been built for a stable of an Arch St. house. It was on a little alley that ran north from Arch St.near 3rd on the opposite side of the same alley was Tom Saysrooms." This was probably between 1820 and 1825, before hewent to England. Later, according to Sellers, his shop was at9th and Market Sts. (letter from George Escol Sellers toColeman Sellers, May 4, 1895, in Peale-Sellers papers, MSS,American Philosophical Society Library).75 Isaiah Lukens contract with Francis Gurney Smith formaking a clock for the State House steeple, April 7, 1828 (incollections of Historical Society of Pennsylvania).76 British patent 5255, September 15, 1825, and U.S. patentof December 30, 1826. No record of the U.S. patent survives 52 rudimentary commutator, which led to a prac-tical rotating electrical generator.Returning to the United States in 1837, Saxtonwas employed in the U.S. Mint until, in 1843,he moved to the Coast Survey and was giventhe responsibility for constructing the standardbalances, weights, and measures that were dis-tributed to the various state governments. Manyexamples of this work are still in existence,delighting the eye and exciting admiration forhis surpassingly fine craftsmanship.Joseph Henry paid him a well-deserved compli-ment in describing him as one who "had thegood fortune, denied to many, of neither beingbehind nor in advance of his age, but of being inperfect harmony with it. He neither pesteredthe world with premature projects destined tofailure because the necessary contemporaneousconditions were not present; nor retarded theadvance of improvement by advocating old errorsunder new forms."Saxton was a tall man, his forehead was highand broad, and his countenance was, accordingto Henry, thoughtful and benevolent. Honoredand esteemed by his more illustrious contempora- ries, Joseph Saxton willed to his successors aheritage of mechanical excellence that one mayhope will, in time, be adequately appreciated. in the National Archives. Lukens visited Jacob Perkins whilehe was in England. A letter from Lukens to Thomas P. Jonesdated March 8, 1827, is quoted in Bathe and Bathe (cited innote 26 above), pp. 128-129.77 A memoir of Joseph Saxton's life was written by his friendJoseph Henry, the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institu-tion. In his memoir Henry mentioned a diary that Saxtonkept "for several years" while he was in England, in whichhe "recorded daily events intermingled with suggestions whichillustrated his habits, his thoughts, and his varying employ-ment" (Joseph Henry, "Memoir ofJoseph Saxton 1 799?1 873,"National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs, vol. 1, Figure 24.?Isaiah Lukens (1779- 1846).Portrait by Charles VVillson Peale, 181 6.Photo courtesy of The Franklin Institute andFrick Art Reference Library. 1 have alluded to the activity in mechanic artsduring the few years preceding the organization ofthe Franklin Institute; I now propose incidentally tospeak of some of the leading spirits that conceived ofand organized that institution, in what was truly atransition period. [19] Henry and Stephen Morris; Samuel V. Merrick andhis partner, Agnew, then engaged in building fire-engines; Matthias Baldwin, carrying on a general job-bing machine shop, and at the time, if I recollect right,constructing the first hydrostatic presses made inAmerica; the members of the firm of Sellers & Pen-nock, Rush & Muhlenberg, Professor Robert M.Patterson, Franklin Peale, the inventor and construc-tor of the first steam-power coining press for the L .S Washington, 1877, pp. 287-316). This diary has not beenlocated, but the present editor maintains a fervent hope thatit yet exists. 53 Mint, were among the enterprising and progressivemen of the day, and the conceivers and originatorsof the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania. I must notforget to name Dr. Thomas P. Jones, afterwards Com-missioner of Patents, and Dr. John K. Mitchell, whowere among the first to lecture before the members ofthe Institute on applied mechanics and chemistry. 78 I have referred to the small class that William Masongave instruction to in the use of instruments in mech-anical drawing. The lessons were few, and hecrowded so much into them that he soon exhaustedhimself. In the class I worked with were John C.Trautwine, previous to his going into Strickland's office, and while he was yet a pupil of Espy's; Wm.Milnor Roberts, Solomon W. Roberts, EdwardMorris, (all well-known civil engineers); John Dahl-gren, (world-wide known as the inventor of the cannonnamed after him, and as commodore in charge of theUnited States Navy Yard at Washington), all at thattime pupils of Joseph Roberts at the Friends' School,4 North Fifth Street, Philadelphia. Among this littleband, of which I am alone the survivor, a life-longintimacy and friendship existed. [20] It is hard for the machinist of the present day to realize that, at comparatively so recent a period,bedposts, legs, and rounds for the old-fashionedWindsor chairs, spade handles, rolling-pins, and thelike, were turned on spring-pole lathes, operated bya foot treadle, one-half the time being lost in thebackward motion of the piece being turned. Al-though the wheel and crank attachment to the foottreadle had been adopted for a Ions; time, and wasused by the better class of workmen, it was not untiltwo or three years previous to 1824?the date atwhich the Institute was organized?that the woodengrooved treadle wheel, for cat-gut or raw-hide roundbelts, gave place to the cast-iron wheel and flat belt.This innovation was made by Isaiah Lukens, andwas followed by Mason and Tyler. These, woodencrank or treadle wheels were constructed of segmentsof hard wood, beech or mahogany, so arranged as to 78 Merrick, Baldwin, Patterson, Jones, and Mitchell arenoticed in Dictionary of American Biography. Henry and StephenP. Morris were makers of iron and brass forgings and umbrellaframes (Henry Morris letter book, etc., 1822-1825, 4 vols, incollections of Historical Society of Pennsylvania). John Agnewcontinued building fire engines when the partnership of Merrickand Agnew was dissolved in 1836; he died in 1872 (advertise-ment in .-1. M'Elroy's Philadelphia Directory for 1840; Journal ofthe Franklin Institute, 1872, vol. 95, pp. 214, 215). present the end grain of the wood to the periphery ofthe wheel, the depth of the felloes being about 5inches; width of face, say, 4 inches, admitting ofthree grooves of the required diameters to change thespeed of the lathe mandrel without varying the speedof working the foot treadle. To give weight to thesewheels to act as fly-wheels, and to counterbalancethe crank and treadle, rows of holes around the rimon its sides were bored, and cast full of lead. As lateas 1828 the spring-pole lathe had not entirely goneout of use for chair rounds and spade handles, norhad small steam engines, now so extensively used,taken the place of the big wheel turned by man-power, for heavy lathe work, or to drive the grind-stones and emery-wheels of the cutlers and surgicalinstrument makers in the cities.It was about the year 1822 or 1823 that a Maudslay slide-rest, then a new thing in England, found itsway to Philadelphia. 79 It was taken hold of andgreatly simplified by Rufus Tyler, who was at thattime making small iron shear foot-lathes, he havingadopted the steel mandrel, conical on its front bear-ing, running in hardened steel collars, and also thepush-pitman to the treadle, instead of the ordinaryhooks (this was original with him). The lathes and slide-rests of Mason and Tyler were certainly thebest tools made for sale at that time.Isaiah Lukens was chiefly engaged in makingtown clocks, but found time, with never more thanthe assistance of one or two men, to finish two orthree small lathes and an air-gun or two in thecourse of a year, for which there were always readypurchasers. He also got up a simple slide-rest.To cut the screws for it he converted one of his littleiron-shear foot-lathes into a very effective slidelathe, with gearing to cut screws of various pitches.The bed-plate of his slide-rest was wrought ironforged with a drop stud or spindle that was turnedto fit in the ordinary rest-carrier, to take the placeof the common rest. The face of this bed-plate was 70 Henry Maudslay (1771-1831), of London, is generallycredited with having introduced the slide-rest?which providesa positive means of guiding a cutting tool with relation to thework?into machine shops by designing and building for salea practical rest that was immediately and widely accepted.The Maudslay design, although it had the necessary elements,was yet groping toward the solution that now appears soobvious, in which the rigidity of the rest is greatly increasedby reducing its height, resorting then to other and simplermeans for gaining the necessary height to reach the center ofthe work. (See fig. 26.)54 Figure 25.?Lukens's lithontriptor, 1825. The instrument with wires (showndotted) for crushing bladder stones was inserted through tube b and mani-pulated externally by handle A. After British patent 5255, September 15,1825. The instrument was patented also in the United States, December 30,1826. 9 inches long by 3^ inches wide, the cross-headhaving a travel on it of 5 inches, and the tool-carryingblock or head a traverse of 2% inches. These meas-urements are not given from recollection, but froma Lukens slide-rest now by me, that has been inmy possession over sixty years, and in use most ofthat time. It is in good condition now. It is notlike the boy's old knife, that first had a new bladeand then a new handle: for the bed-plate, with itsscrew and traveling-head, are as originally made.The tool-carrying cross-moving head was of brass,and wore out bv clamping in the turning tools. I renewed this with cast iron, but in every respectlike the original.It affords me great pleasure to give a history ofthis old slide-rest, as it enables me to pay my tributeto one of the greatest of our pioneer mechanics,who was emphatically the young beginner's bestfriend, and a sound mechanic to the core. He wasa bachelor, of rather eccentric habits. He lived inhis shop, sleeping in an adjoining room, taking hismeals at an old hostelry on Market Street, largelyfrequented by the farmers of Chester and Lancastercounties, where he would meet his friends andrelations from the country. He was naturally of asocial disposition, although an impediment in hisspeech made him appear shy and dilhdent in ladies'society. He called his shop his wife, and he reallyloved it. He also loved his old grey horse that hekept at the stables of the Market Street tavern, andeither in the morning before '"sun up," or on moon-light evenings he would have him hitched to hisyellow two-wheel top gig and take lonely rides, unless he chanced on some boy to whom he hadtaken a liking, then he would claim him for company.He always took a summer vacation of from six toeight weeks. At these times he would lock up hisshop, and with his fishing tackle, mineral hammer,and change of clothes in his gig box, his trusty air-gunby his side, he would drive off on his solitary ex-cursions, never hinting to his most intimate friendswhat course he would take. I doubt if he knewhimself: but he was free to be guided by circumstances.There is scarce a point of interest to the mineralogistin northern Xew Jersey, eastern and middle Penn-sylvania, that he did not visit, even extending hislonely drives as far south as Washington.?Lukens lost an eye from a chip of steel when dressinga grindstone. Up to that time he was certainly thefinest workman in Philadelphia, but afterwards hewas fearful of trying his remaining eye on very finework. 81 He took an assistant? I cannot say as to an 8? In 1822, Lukens brought back from the Catskills a liverattlesnake, which he presented to Charles Willson Pealt foihis Philadelphia Museum (Charles Coleman Sellers, "Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale," Trans- actions of Ike American Philosophical Society, June 1952, vol. 42.pt. 1, p. 132).81 Writing to his younger brother Coleman on May 4. 1895, 1 1 years after this article was written, George Escol gave thisslightly altered version: "Lukens was never the fine and accu- rate workman that Rufus Tyler and Wm. Mason were?butfor speed he far outdid them." However, Lukens was engin an essentially different class of work from that of Mason andTyler. In the same letter Sellers wrote of Lukens: " . . . forbushings and fiat surfaces, escapements, pallets and such likehis favourite tool was a soft metal lap wheel and grinding with55 Figure 26.?Maudslay's lathe and slide-tool, about 1807.The slide-tool (lower), was fitted over the inverted-V lathe bed,replacing the conventional tool rest, shown installed, above.The cutting tools were secured under the four-legged yokes bythumbscrews A, b. From Olinthus Gregory, A Treatise ofMechanics, 3d ed., 3 vols. (London. 1815), vol. 3, pi. 36.56 Figure 27.?Tyler's lathe. 1828.Built for the trade by Rufus Tyler, of Philadelphia. From Journal of TheFranklin Institute (January 1828). new ser., vol 1 . apprentice; he called him his pupil, and he did honorto his preceptor. I refer to Joseph Saxton, who hasleft his mark in his scales for the U.S. Mint, in instru-ments for the coast survey during his long connectionwith Prof. Alexander D. Bache, and as head of theDepartment of Weights and Measures of the UnitedStates. From the time of Saxton's coming to Phila-delphia we were intimate and warm friends until hisdeath.The first summer vacation of Lukens' after Saxtoncommenced to work with him, his shop was not closed as usual, but Saxton was left in charge, to "tinker," as Lukens said, with anything he liked. He planned,and was making for himself a cane gun. My elderbrother and myself each concluded to make one; and,although we had every facility of the time to do thework in the shop our father had fitted up for us, therewas a small portion of the work could be better donewith Lukens' slide-rest. I was in his shop beside Saxton doing that little job,when Lukens, who had unexpectedly returned fromhis summer trip, came in. He looked at, and askedwhat I was doing. On examining the plan he sug- emery and oil. This was driven by a crossed catgut belt froma groove in the rim of a face wheel with a handle for crank . . .he turned the wheel with his left hand while he held his workto be ground in his right hand." (Letter in Peale-Sellers papers,American Philosophical Society.) gested some slight alterations. Saxton showed his gunthat was completed. He had worked out the planhimself, and Lukens was greatly pleased with itssimplicity.Lukens had returned in improved health and spirits,and asked why I did not make a slide-rest for myself.He then produced the forging of my rest, and said hehad rough-chipped it, had turned the stand stem, andit would fit my father's rest-carrier, and was aboutthe right height for his lathe. He therefore told meto take it, and trv my hand on flat-filing. We had noplaners or shapers in those days. The hammer andcold-chisel had to do the rough work on forgings,often far from perfect and with plenty of stock left toremove. In this case the rough work had alreadybeen done by Lukens. He loaned me his patterns,from which I had the brass castings made. I cut thescrews on his lathe, and did most of the work in hisshop, occasionally helped by himself or Saxton. Thepleasant associations connected with this slide-resthave no doubt, been the cause of my preserving it,and using it as a favorite tool during these long years. I have related the circumstance to illustrate the con-siderate kindness of Lukens to earnest beginners.After Saxton closed his term with Lukens. to perfecthimself as a machinist and to enlarge his views, hewent to England and spent several years there ....[2.] 57 IF//I j#U*_/ 6.-6 cXu,/- ^^^ iyJtauLK, /} /w^^-u^ Figure 28.?Sketch of slide-rest as built by Sellers about1820. In letter from George Escol Sellers to Horace WellsSellers dated Crestview, October 14, 1895. Peale-Sellerspapers. Photo courtesy of American Philosophical SocietyLibrary. It is often the most trifling thing that changes thedestiny of man. I will now . . . relate as nearly asI can, as [Saxton] did to me, the incident that decidedhis course and took him from the farm into theworkshop.He had sprung up rapidly, and, as he said, hadoutgrown his strength. The work on the farm wasirksome to him, and every chance he could get hewould steal away with an old flint-lock musket, whosebarrel he had shortened to convert it into a fowlingpiece. He said his fondness for hunting and neglectof the farm work greatly distressed his father, whocould know nothing of the feeling of lassitude thatcame over him, and the utter averison he had for hisoccupation. Often when he was thought to be hunt-ing, he was lying in the shade of some tree thinking,as he expressed it, of improbable possibilities that might occur to change his father's views and take himfrom the plow, that was nothing but tramp, trampback and forth in the furrow, exhausting physicalpowers and leaving the brain to stagnate. 82His father, to encourage him to greater exertion inthe line he wished him to pursue, on certain condi-tions, promised him a rifle. He said he was notconscious that he had improved any; that he had 82 Henry's memoir of Saxton does not mention farm work specifically, but since the community was in rural surroundingsand work in the nail factory may have been seasonal, there wasplenty of time for farm work and hunting, too, in the longyears of youth. However, that Sellers was confused as toSaxton's boyhood is indicated by his mention, in the nextparagraph, of Lancaster, which is more than 100 miles fromHuntingdon. Carlisle, mentioned later in the text, is 50 milesfrom Huntingdon. 58 worked on as if in a dream, when one day his fathersurprised him by saying, "Joe, you have fairly earnedyour new rifle. I am going to Lancaster and willbuy you the best one I can find. What bore do youwant?"He replied that he did not want less than threeballs to the ounce, but he would prefer one-halfounce; that he wanted one that would kill a bear orbring down a deer at long range; but that he didnot want any other make than Gibbs.When his father returned with the rifle and put itin his hands he said, "Joe, I think if you lug thisheavy thing a day vou will soon get tired of foolingyour time away hunting; but if it don't suit you, Mr.Gibbs has agreed to exchange it for a lighter one."It was not long before he found he had made amistake. Bears were growing scarce, the deer seasonshort, the bullets were too large for squirrels andsmall game, and the rifle too heavy for quick shooting.But his pride was touched, and he was not willing toacknowledge his mistake. He found he could savelead by using a smaller ball and thicker buckskinpatch; these patches he thoroughly saturated withmelted tallow.One day when starting out on a hunt he primedhis rifle, shaking the powder well into the touchhole,closed the pan, and tried to force down a bullet withone of these well-greased patches, but it would notstay down; whenever he loosened his hold of theramrod, if would rise in the barrel. After severaltimes forcing the bullet down as far as he could byhand grip on the ramrod, and finding it still comingback, he lost patience; he put the end of the woodenramrod against a tree, grasping the rifle in bothhands, and said, "Dang you! you shall go down nowand stay there." He gave a violent thrust.When he got up from his back, his hands and armswere lacerated and bleeding, and his gun lay somedistance from the tree further than he was. Whenhe gathered himself up he was dazed. His firstcollected thought was what a fool he had been toprime his gun before putting in the powder andpushing down the ball, and then to be so careless asto have set it at full instead of at half cock, as hesupposed he had done. On examining his hands hefound them badly torn by splinters of the ramrod.He picked up his rifle, expecting to find it hadburst. No, it was all right. The hammer with itsflint stood at half cock. On opening the pan, thepriming was unburnt. Here was witchcraft, orsomething very like it. On examining the touchhole, MUSEUM, REGISTER, JOURNAL, AND GAZETTE. 183.1 SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24. IS27. [Pine .til.IMPROVED SLIDE REST. -7 Joe was not long in satisfying himself that it wasthe elasticity of the air being cut off from escape bythe touchhole, and the tight piston made by thebuckskin patch on the bullet, that caused the bulletto rise; but it did not to his mind account for firingthe powder. Thinking it possible there might havebeen small particles of sand or flint in the powder, heexperimented by adding to them; but neither frictionnor percussion, as he tried them, would ignite thepowder. He asked the schoolmaster, and the doctor,the learned men of the district, but got no solution.He said he could not rest; he lay awake at nightsthinking, when it suddenly occurred to him that hisgunbarrel was full of air at a certain temperature,and he asked himself the question, "What becomes ofthe heat in the air if suddenly compressed? would it notbe sufficient to ignite the powder?" Acting on thisthought he got an old pistol-barrel, polished it wellin the bore, plugged the touchhole, fitted a perfectly air-tight piston, on the bottom of which he had asmall projecting pin, on which he wound cottonlampwick saturated with powder softened by alcohol,and by sudden concussion ignited it. He wasgreatly elated, thinking he had made a new discovery.Soon after this he went with his father to Carlisle,and there he saw a glass air-compressing pump, with a little cup in the piston for holding tinder tolie ignited by the percussion of the air; and when notinder was in it the flash of light could be seen. Healso found in the hands of boys at the college littlebrass percussion pumps for igniting tinder.This only increased his longing to get out into theworld and learn what was doing and what had beendone. His father, finding him so set in this, took himto Philadelphia.*4 All he asked was a chance tolearn, and he would take care of himself.Lukens' little shop was just the place. AlthoughLukens wanted help, he was averse to taking any onefor a fixed time under instruction. He said to myfather that it was easy enough to get any number, butnot so easy to get rid of them if they did not suit him;for no matter how ill they filled the place, he couldnot turn them adrift. When the circumstance of thedischarge of the rifle was related to him he decided totake Saxton, for he said that a boy who could workback from effect to cause was the making of a man.In this case the boy had stretched up to nearly, ifnot quite, six feet tall. [22] 84 According to Henry, Saxton, in company with two otherboys, floated down the Juniata and Susquehanna to Harrisburg,where they sold their boat and continued to Philadelphia onfoot. 60 "**m& Figure 30.?The second U.S. Mint, Philadelphia. Designed by WilliamStrickland, this building was completed in 1833. From Gleason's PictorialDrawing Room Companion (July 17, 1 852 J , vol. 3. 9. The United States Mints Early coins of the United States have been care-fully described in numerous publications. How-ever, when we ask how these coins were wroughtwe find that little attention has been paid to suchquestions. Modern textbooks of diesinking, forexample, leave a distinct impression that the artwas commenced yesterday, or perhaps thismorning, and that it came into being in perfect,complete, and final form. Nor has the evolutionof the several processes of casting, rolling, anneal-ing, blanking, edging, coining, and so forth yetreceived much more attention from the technicalhistorian than from the textbook writer.The building in which the first mint wasestablished in Philadelphia in 1792 was still inexistence in the early 1920's. Its owner, Frank H. Stewart, tried to sell the property to the Cityin order to preserve it, but there was no interestshown by the City and it became another victimof progress. Stewart did, however, inquire intothe history of the building, and his work, privatelyprinted, sets forth the record that he could piecetogether. 85The present narrative presents by far theclearest picture known to this editor of whatactually went on in that three-story brick building 85 Frank H. Stewart, (cited in note 43 above) GeorgeG. Evans, Illustrated History of tht United States Mint (Phila-delphia, 1890). is a work concerned almost exclusively withthe coins produced. Patterson DuBois, Our Mint Engravet s(Boston, 1883), is a slight work that was reprinted from American 61 in North Seventh Street, corner of Sugar Alley.The second mint, completed in 1833 at tnenorthwest corner of Chestnut and JuniperStreets, was in a building designed by WilliamStrickland/6 In 1835, the Sellers brothers fur-nished heavy iron castings for new equipment inthe melting department, which was overhauledby Franklin Peale after his return from a two- year study of European mints and mintingprocedures. 87 When the branch mints in NorthCarolina and Georgia were established in 1836,George Escol designed the steam engines to beused in them. His designs overturned, by theway, a dogged preference for vertical steamengines to drive the coining presses and othermachinery. JN aturally, as the capital of the United States atthe time, the first mint was located in the city ofPhiladelphia, and few realize now the humble begin-ning from which the greater mints of the country havesprung. The old U.S. Mint in Philadelphia was onthe east side of Seventh Street, on one of those areascalled in Philadelphia a city block, these blocks beingbounded on their four sides by the principal streets,and perhaps subdivided into smaller blocks by alleysor courts. The particular block in question wasbetween Sixth and Seventh Streets on the east andwest and Market and Arch on the south and north,and in point of fact the building was about midwayof the block on the corner of a small street namedSugar Alley, which ran from Sixth to Seventh Streets,bisecting the block.The building used for the mint had very much theappearance of an ordinary three-story brick dwellinghouse of that period, the back building and yardextending on the alley. In a rear room, facing on the Journal of Numismatics (1883), vol. 18, pp. 12-16. Jacob R.Eckfeldt and William DuBois, A Manual of Gold and SilverCoins of All Nations Struck within the Last Century (Philadelphia,1842), describes the medal ruling machine, which wasdevelopedby Franklin Peale from the earlier designs of Christian Gobrecht.86 A brief sketch of U.S. mints to 1880 is given in Scharfand Westcott (cited in note 14 above), vol. 3, pp. 181 2-1 81 9.87 Franklin Peale was in Europe from 1833 to 1835 (SisterSt. John Nepomucene, "Franklin Peale's Visit to Europe inthe U.S. Mint Service," Journal of Chemical Education, March1955, vol. 32, reprinted in Numismatist, December 1958, vol. "1, pp. 1473-1479). The 272-page manuscript report of his visit is amongst the extensive Philadelphia Mint papers inRecord Group 104, U.S. National Archives. The reportrefers to numerous drawings, "intended as working drawings,"made to accompany the report, but the drawings have not asyet been located. The report reveals that the large balance,built by Joseph Saxton and now on display in the U.S. Mintin Philadelphia (fig. 40), was constructed at Franklin Peale'sorder in 1835, while Saxton was still in London. A biograph-ical notice of Franklin Peale appears in Proceedings of the AmericanPhilosophical Society (1870), vol. it, no. 85, pp. ^97-604.62 alley, with a large, low down window opening into it,a fly press stood, that is a screw-coining press mostlyused for striking the old copper cents. Through thiswindow the passersby in going up and down the alleycould readily see the bare-armed vigorous menswinging the heavy end-weighted balanced lever thatdrove the screw with sufficient force so that by themomentum of the weighted ends this quick-threadedscrew had the power to impress the blank and thuscoin each piece. They could sec the rebound or recoil of these end weights as they struck a heavywooden spring beam, driving the lever back to theman that worked it; they could hear the clanking ofthe chain that checked it at the right point to preventits striking the man, all framing a picture very likelyto leave a lasting impression, and there are no doubt still living many in Philadelphia who can recollectfrom this brief notice the first mint.The impression made upon me as a boy was themore enduring as it was one of almost daily occur-rence. The block on which the old mint stood,besides being divided by Sugar Alley, had on SixthStreet near Market the entrance to what was knownas Mulberry Court. This court extended nearlyhalf way to Seventh Street, and at the head of thecourt was a dwelling house facing the entrance tothe court. This house separated Mulberry Courtfrom another alley or court that entered from SeventhStreet, known as St. James Street. The differencebetween the terms alley and court in this case wasthat the name alley was given to a narrow street of uniform width, either entirely passing throughthe block or entering it for a short distance, whilethe term court was applied more particularlv to anarrow entrance from the main street widening into a broader area, around which area the more pre-tentious houses were frequently erected.On the north side of Mulberry Court were threedwelling houses, in one of which I first saw the light. Figure 31.?Early coining press used in the U.S. Mint.This machine was restored from disassembled parts, leavingthe arrangement of the levers in some doubt. The fly weight is too small to fit the author's description. On display in theU.S. Mint. Philadelphia. Photo courtesy of the U.S. MintService, Mrs. Rae V. Biester. The lot where stood the house in which I was borncornered with one on Sixth Street occupied by Mr.Frederick Graff, 88 who followed Latrobe as engineerof the Philadelphia water-works, and who designedand constructed the Fairmount water-works; agateway connected our yards. Mr. Graff was one ofmy father's most intimate acquaintances, who withDr. Robert Patterson, then in charge of the mint,and Adam Eckfeldt, chief coiner, were togetherfrequent visitors at our house on the court; it was a 88 Graff papers, consisting mainly of drawings, arc in FranklinInstitute Library, Philadelphia. Some Frederick Graff cor-respondence (1806-182Q) is in the collections of the HistoricalSociety of Pennsylvania. clannish neighborhood, gates connecting all ouryards, even to the yard of the fire-engine shopscarried on by Jacob Perkins and my father at theend of St. James. From this yard was an openinginto Sugar Alley, which to us as youngsters hadother attractions than the coining press, for therestood the little shop of the best molasses ranch makerin Philadelphia. The house at the end of the courtwas eventually removed, the streel being then calledSt. James Street, now Commerce Street, of which street it is a continuation.One day in charge of my elder brother I stood ontip-toe with my nose resting on the iron liar placed across the open window of the coining room to keep63 Figure 32.?Enlarged view of early coining press showingthe relatively short "quick-threaded" (that is, of long lead)screw. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Mint Service, Mrs. Rae V.Biester. out intruders, watching the men swing the levers ofthe fly press; it must have been about noon, for Mr.Eckfeldt came into the room, watch in hand, andgave a signal to the men who stopped work. Seeingme peering over the bar, he took me by the arms andlifted me over it. Setting me down by the coiningpress he asked me if I did not want to make a cent, atthe same time stopping the men who had put on theirjackets to leave the room. He put a blank planchetinto my hand, showed me how to drop it in, and whereto place my hand to catch it as it came out; the leverand weights were swung, and I caught the penny as we boys called cents, but I at once dropped it. Mr.Eckfeldt laughed and asked me why I dropped it?Because it was hot and I feared it would burn me.He picked it up and handed it to me, then certainlynot hot enough to burn; he asked if it was not coldwhen he gave it to me to drop into the press; he toldme to look and see there was no fire, and feel the pressthat it was cold; he then told me I must keep the cent until I learned what made it hot; then I might, if Iliked, spend it for candy-When I showed the bright new cent to my father,whom I found in his workshop, and asked him to tellme what made it hot, he said he would show me; he64 Figure 33.?Arcade Building. Philadelphia, located onChestnut Street near Sixth. Designed by John Haviland,this building was completed in 1827. There were three floors,the first two having some 80 shops open to arcades; themuseum was located on the third floor. From TraugottBromme, Gemdlde von Nord-Amerika, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1842). 65 handed me a common sulphur-tipped match, 80 thentook up a small rod of copper, told me to feel that itwas cold, held its end on an anvil, and struck it a fewquick sharp blows with a hammer, then applied it tothe match which I held in my hand, which to myamazement was at once ignited; he said, now youhave something to think about and may be able tounderstand when you are older; it was an objectlesson that led to many a train of thought.When years after in speaking of it to my mother'sfather, Charles Willson Peale, he took up an old fileof letters and sorted out a number from BenjaminThompson (Count Rumford) and read from themmany passages descriptive of his wonderful experi-ments and researches into the nature of heat, and itsgeneration by friction or percussion, that have sincebeen so beautifully illustrated and enlarged on byProf. John Tyndall in his work on "'Heat as a Modeof Motion," and by Joule on the "Correlation ofForces," after a lapse of over half a century. 90 . . .The little yard in the rear of the old mint was avery attractive place to us youngsters [with] its greatpiles of cord wood, which by the barrow load waswheeled into the furnace room and thrust full sizein the boiler furnace, which to my young eyes ap-peared to be the hottest place on earth. Therealmost dailv was to be seen great lattice-sided wagonsof charcoal being unloaded, and the fuel stackedunder a shed to be used in the melting and the an-nealing furnaces.As I grew older and better able to understand,my interest in all the various processes increased,from the fuel yard to the melting room to see thepots or crucibles charged with the metals and theirfluxes placed in the furnaces and the fires started,and when melted to see the man with his cage-jawed grasping tongs lift the crucible out of thefiery furnace and pour the melted metal into theins;ot molds. Then the rolling these ingots into strips of sheet metal, splitting and turning them intonarrow strips by revolving cutting shears. Thinningor pointing the end of the strips by rollers withflatted spaces on them, so that the strips can lie in-serted between the regulated and fixed dies of the draw-bench to equalize their thickness as they areseized by a pair of nippers or gripping tongs, thehooked handle of which the operator at once engagesin a link of the constantly traveling chain by whichthe strip is drawn through, between the dies, theoperator then by hand pushed the grippers backinto place to take a grip on another strip. These strips were fed by hand into the planchet cutting-outpresses, and it required practice to attain the adroit-ness to so handle the strips to cut them out to thebest advantage so as to leave the least metal to bereturned to the melting pots. Silver planchets bythe rolling and drawing process become too hardfor coining without first annealing.Then the hand-milling press was a very interestingone to watch, it was raising and notching or letterins;the rim of the planchet as a preventive against clippingor robbing. This was done by rolling betweengrooved and notched parallel rulers or bars, onebeing fixed, the other movable endways by a pinionworking into a rack. The operator after placingtwo planchets one in advance of the other betweenthe parallel bars, then by a partial turn of a hand-crank the movable bar is thrust ahead sufficientlyto entirely rotate the planchets, when they aretaken out and two others put in.Everv gold and silver planchet as cut out was passedthrough the hands of an adjuster; if overweightreduced by a file, a leather pouch in front of hisbench catching the filings; if too light they werereturned to the melter. I have no recollection of ever having seen the copperplanchets for cents being made in the mint, but Ihave a vivid recollection of small iron hooped casksfilled with copper planchets for cents and half cents. I have the impression that they were imported ascopper in that condition and only stamped or coinedin the mint. 91 These casks were similar to the casksin which card wire was imported from England atthat period. My object in giving these notes of opera- 89 This is not an anachronism. "Common matches, whicharc in daily use for lighting fires, derive then principal utilityfrom being tipped with sulphur" ("Sulphur," in Abraham Rees,The C) lopaedia, London. 1819, vol. 36. This volume was pub- 1 in 1816). 1 lid be remembered that Charles Willson Peale diedin [827. 91 The copper planchets were in fact imported for more thanjo years from Matthew Boulton works in Birmingham. England.In 1796, when negotiations for furnishing the planchets wereunder way, Boulton would have preferred to mint the penniescomplete in his works for ?140 per ton, of which ?21 perton was for minting. However, he consented to supply theplanchets while pointing out that "there is an art in the an-nealing, without which, were the Copper rolled ever so fine,the surface would be injured, but these are things I am perfectlymaster of, and have an excellent Rolling Mill and every otherconvenience, besides which I am concerned in many CopperMines and a partner in a Copper Smelting Works . . . ."66 tions of the old mint is that to the general reader theadvances from the old hand to steam coinage andtheir importance and value may be understood. [23]When the present U.S. Mint in Philadelphia '- wasbuilt it was furnished throughout with entirely newmachinery that the old mint might be kept in fulloperation during its construction. The new machin- Figure 34.?Steam engine designed by Franklin Peale, at the U.S. Mint.Philadelphia. This engine drove the new toggle-joint coining press shown infig. 35. The governor is shown below engine at left. Plates from Paul R.Hodge, The Steam Engine (New York, 1840), in which this observation appears(p. 206): "The close attention that has been paid to the order of architectureselected is very obvious in the entablature, the capitals of the columns, theornamental tripod stand of the governor, the etruscan vase for the startinghandle, and the fret work of the eccentric lever . . . ." ery did not differ in any essential points from the welltried [machinery] of long service in the old, onlvdiffering as to amount to meet the requirements inincreased coinage. With this new machinery we hadnothing to do. I felt great interest in the building as it progressed, inasmuch as it was under the charge ofmy friend. J. C. Trautwine, then a pupil of WilliamStrickland, its architect. After the new mint wentinto operation the machinery of the old mint wassold under the auctioneer's hammer, mostly byweight as old metal. We became the purchasers ofthe rolling mill department with its shafting and con-nected machinery. The housings, rolls, etc.. did notgo into the melting furnace, but were relitted as a The planchets were shipped in casks, each weighing about375 pounds. A shipment of 20 tons departed from Liverpoolabout a month before the start of the War of 1812; anothershipment was ordered before word reached Philadelphiaof war's end. The balance due Boulton and Watt in 1812.?74: 6: 11. had grown through the war to ?87: 8: 10 in181=;. (Boulton to Samuel Bayard. February 2-,. 1701.:Boulton to Boudinot. April 2. 1799, 60 casks, nearly io tons; invoice, Liverpool. February 11, 181 2; Boulton to Patterson,May 1, 1 8 1 5 ; all in Philadelphia Mint papers, f S. NationalArchives.) ''- The Philadelphia Mint, now located on Spring GardenStreet at 16th, where stood originally the Rush and MuhlenbergHush Ilill Winks, was built in the early years of this century, after Sellers';, death. 'I he "present" mint described here wasnew in 1833, as noted m the introduction to this chapter. 67 i I I I I I I I I I I I I Feet 3 train of rod rolls and went into service in a Penn-sylvania rolling mill.In giving such recollections as may occur to me ofthe evolution in the various processes up to the finalsteam coinage, I shall endeavor as far as possible toclear them of the accumulated cobwebs and dust oftime. These advances and improvements commencedduring the administration of Dr. Samuel Moore asdirector, 93 who first saw there was room for improve- 03 Director from 1824 to 1835, preceded by Robert Patterson,the elder, and succeeded by Robert M. Patterson, son of theearlier director. ment in the melting and refining department to securemore uniform results and to save waste.For the purpose of learning what had been doneboth chemically and mechanically in the Europeanmints and metallurgical establishments, that theymight be introduced in the U.S. Mint, he obtainedpermission to appoint an assistant assayer and an ap-propriation to send him abroad for a thoroughinvestigation of methods. For this purpose mymother's half brother, Franklin Peale, was selectedand appointed and went abroad on the mission inMay, 1833, and he was engaged in the investigationabout two years, reporting progress from time to time. 68 r i i .'i' i i e Figure 35.?First steam-driven coining press, U.S. Mint,1836. Designed by Franklin Peale. Front view (opposite)and side elevation. Detail of the toggle joint is shown at ex-treme upper left of figure on p. 68. From Journal of TheFranklin Institute (November 1836), vol. 22. On his return he took his position in the mint asassistant assayer, and at once inaugurated the mostimportant changes in that department, which eventu- ally led to vital changes in coinage from hand to thatof steam power, but of this further along. To showthe fitness of Mr. Peale for the position which led tosuch important results, a resume of his early training will not be out of place here. .... Franklin of his own volition had gone to thecotton factory of William Young, on the Brandswine,in Delaware, to learn the trade. Mr. Young was afriend of the family and great confidence was placedin his counsel and advice in leading the boy out ofwhat was considered a foolish whim. Connectedwith Young's cotton factory was a machine shop formaking carding and spinning machinery. It was69 carried on, If I am not mistaken in the names, by thebrothers Hodgson; ''4 into this Franklin soon drifted.They were for the time considered very fine workmenwhen hand tools had to be depended on. I haveheard one of the brothers say that within a yearFranklin with cold chisel and file on hand . . . workfar excelled them.When Franklin became satisfied that he had learned all he could in that establishment he returned toPhiladelphia and went to work with my father, whowas at that time a member of the old firm of X. &D. Sellers, at making machines for cutting and bend-ing wire into card teeth. While working at thatmy elder brother worked with them, and I gotmany good lessons in the handling and use of tools.He was a skilled workman as a turner on the footlathe with hand tools. I have rarely seen his equal,never his superior. In that shop to show his skillhe turned one of those wonderful ivory balls?threeskeleton balls one within the other?in imitation ofthose brought from China. As to filing flat surfaces,to show and explain how a file should be shovedto avoid rocking I have seen him file a piece of metalover two inches broad, so that when a straightedgewas laid on it bore on the extreme outer edges, andlight could be seen under the center; in others words,filing to the curvature of the file he was using.At a later period when he was manager of thePhiladelphia Museum he delivered such chemicaland other lectures as could be made interesting tothe general public by brilliant experiments. He alsoexhibited many ingenious automata of his own in-vention and construction. About the same time hedelivered at the Franklin Institute a course of lectureson machinery, illustrated by models and movablecard drawings. 90About the time the accounts came from England of the locomotive experiments on the Liverpool andManchester R. R. that excited great interest in all civilized countries, Mr. Peale, to profit by the excite-ment and general interest, designed a model locomo-tive, based mainly on the description of the Ericssonengine in the Rain Hill tests. 96 This working model 94 Sellers was not mistaken in the name. However, the mapof the Brandywine Millseat Company Survey, 1822 (MS inHagley Museum) indicates that the Hodgson brothers' shopswere located a mile or more from Young's mills.95 He was employed in the Museum from 1822 to 1833;and he lectured at Franklin Institute from 1831 until he departedfor Europe in 1833 (Charles Coleman Sellers, cited in note20 above, vol. 2, pp. 345, 382). was built by Matthias W. Baldwin, and for a time wasa great attraction, making the circuit of the museumrooms, that at that time were in the Arcade Building,drawing two miniature cars, each seating four persons.At the time this model was built Mr. Baldwin wascarrying on the business of making bookbinders'tools and copper cylinders for calico printing. Nodoubt this little locomotive may safely be consideredas the nucleus of the great Baldwin LocomotiveWorks of the present day.Prof. Robert M. Patterson succeeded Dr. SamuelMoore as director of the U.S. Mint. He was a warmfriend of Mr. Franklin Peale, and had great confidencein his philosophical and mechanical ability, and it wasduring his administration that most of the greatimprovements resulting from Mr. Peak's mission toEurope were introduced and carried to perfection inthe mint. No one could have been better qualifiedfor the directorship of the mint than R. M. Patterson,who it might almost be said was born in or to it ? the son of Dr. Robert Patterson, who in the early-history of the mint was for so long a period its head.Adam Eckfeldt as chief coiner had grown old in the service. This was before the time of nefarious politicaldoctrine, that "to the victors belong the spoils," hadreached the officers of the mint, to whom of all otherspractical knowledge and experience is so essential; "it is practice that makes perfect."Mr. Eckfeldt was a man of staunch integrity, acautious, careful, orderly and painstaking man; hewas not one of the dashing, pushing, inventive me-chanics, though under his care many apparently slightimprovements were gradually adopted that in theaggregate amounted to a great deal in the economyof working. He was by no means deficient in inven-tive ability. I have more than once heard that leaderin fire engine building in Philadelphia, Patrick Lyon,give Mr. Eckfeldt the entire credit for the long-endlevers with folding handles, that superseded the side-levers on the old-fashioned fire engines, and by whichthe operators applied their force easier and in a moredirect manner. Although Pat Lyon was the first to 99 It will be remembered that Ericsson's Nooelty was not the successful contender in the 1829 Rain Hill trials. It wouldbe interesting to know why Peale chose this design ratherthan that of Stephenson, whose Rocket was the winner (seeJournal of The Franklin Institute, May 1833, vol. 15, p. 301). Ina lecture on the model, Franklin Peale explained its "analogyto, and differences from" the Novelty. 70 Figure 36.?Medal coined on the steam-driven coining press,March 23, 1836. Diameter i's inches. Photographed bycourtesy of the U.S. Mint Service. introduce them he always spoke of them as theFckfeldt levers.Although Mr. Peale's legitimate duties in the mintpertained to the assay and refining department, andin which he was making great changes, including theintroduction of the humid assay and some importantchanges in the details of refining to save labor andprevent wastage, the yellow smoke or fumes from themint smoke-stack at the time created quite an excite-ment among the residents of neighboring houses whoknew nothing of the work the acids were doing. Mr.Peale's natural bent being mechanics his mind ranfrom his department to improving the machinery ofthe coining, and Mr. Eckfeklt availed himself of hissuggestions, in a moderate degree. The first instancethat I can recall to memory was to import a diesinking lathe. I do not recollect the name of theinventor, but it saved hand labor in duplicating dies. I shall have occasion to refer to this further on.It was during the transition stage of the assay andmelting that we were first called on to do any workfor the mint. The first job was making patterns forand the casting for the new melting furnaces; alsofor a cupel furnace ,J7 and a crushing and grindingmachine, pulverizing the old black-lead crucibles to 97 A cupel is a relatively small furnace for the refining andpreparation of precious metals. recover the metal that adhered to or permeated them,but we had nothing to do with the finer machinery until after our first locomotive was put in service onthe Pennsylvania State road in 1836, some accountof which I have given [in chapters 22ff, below]. Dr.R. M. Patterson and Franklin Peale were of the com-pany on an excursion to exhibit the performance of theengine to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and return, a fewdays after which we received a note from Dr. Pattersonrequesting us to call at the mint. I answered this call, when Dr. Patterson placed inmy hands a copy of a note he had addressed toM. W. Baldwin. S. V. Merrick, and to several othermechanical concerns, inviting proposals for themachinery of the branch mints, then about to bebuilt at Charlotte, North Carolina, and Dahlonega,Georgia, saying that he should have addressed similarnotes to us had he known that we were constructingmachinery of the quality, as to workmanship, as wasrequired.He knew that we were engaged in general foundrywork, and for iron furnaces, rolling-mills and paper-mill machinery; that to his mind did not come up tothe required standard, but on the locomotive excursionthe workmanship of the engine had satisfied him ofhis mistake. He said bids would Lie received for anyportions of the work and referred me to Mr. Eckfeldt,who was present at the interview, for specifications.71 Figure 37.?Pressing and milling room of the U.S. Mint,Philadelphia. Three toggle coining presses are shown inbackground; three coin milling machines are in left foreground.From Gleason s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion (July 17, 1852),vol. 3. He said bids would be considered for iron and brasscastings, including; patterns, finishing by surfacemeasure; also by day's work, including use of lathes,tools, etc. This interview was on a Saturday after-noon; he regretted that the time was so short andthat he had not called on us sooner, for if we desiredto bid for any portion of the work we must do so bynoon on Monday.To my surprise, on reference to Mr. Eckfeldt Ifound that there were no drawings or plans of anykind. The specifications were all in writing, and forthe details of machinery reference was made to themachinery then in operation in the mint. That forthe steam engine, gave diameter of cylinder, lengthof stroke, length of connecting rod, size and weightof fly-wheel, cylinder to be vertical, the general planof engine to conform to that in the mint, which I think was a Rush and Muhlenberg engine, the successors of Oliver Evans. 9S In addition to the shafting [were] pillow blocks, hangers, giving sizeand lengths, all of cast-iron, with coupling boxes, etc.; as to the rolling mill, draw benches, coiningpresses, milling machines, we were referred to thosethen in use. 98 In the U.S. Treasury Department's "Report on the Steam-Engines in the United States" (H. Ex. Doc. 21, 25th Cong.,3d sess., p. 156), the mint engine is listed as 30 horsepower,built in 1 829-1 830 by Rush and Muhlenberg. Early mintaccounts show payment to Oliver Evans of $6508.52 on June24, 181 7, for a steam engine and sundry iron castings formachinery of the mint (Frank H. Stewart, cited in note 43above, p. 186.)72 I found Mr. Eckfeldt so opposed to horizontalsteam engines that he would not listen to their beingadopted; he had not had any experience with metallicring spring packing, and he believed that with theordinary hemp packing a horizontal cylinder wouldsoon wear oval and the piston head could not bekept tight.The interview with Dr. Patterson and Mr. Eckfeldtwas a long one, and it was after night when I gothome at our works to consult with my brother;taking with me such written specifications as Mr.Eckfeldt had prepared?so meager and no time to refer to the machinery in use that I did not see apossibility of making estimates safe to bid on. Thegetting up of plans and patterns for the long-stroke vertical engine was out of the question. Having stillon hand the old rolling-mill machinery on which verytrifling changes had been made for the new mint, ascale beam estimate would give a tolerable safe basisto bid on for that portion. We might secure thecastings for the melting departments, for we had allthe patterns for the improved furnaces that Mr.Peale was constructing in Philadelphia and expectedto introduce into the New Orleans Mint, beyondwhich I did not think it possible we could secure anyof the proposed work. [24] But on that Saturday evening while my brother wasgetting the weights of the old housings, rolls and theirconnections, I started on sketches to show Mr.Eckfeldt the extreme simplicity of a horizontal steamcylinder, mounted on a cast iron box bed or shears,instead of on wooden sills, as was the custom at thattime. These sketches resolved themselves into tworude colored drawings?an elevation and "roundplan. The elevation I have recently found among alot of odds and ends that have knocked about withme for more than half a century; the finding of thishas recalled to memory much of what I am now writing. I worked on these drawings most of thenight and probably a good way into Sunday. I kept my appointment at the mint about noon onMonday, taking with me these hastily made drawings; also drawings of the ring metallic packing for pistonhead as used in our first locomotive, and also amovable model of an arrangement that at that timewe were making to regulate by governor the pointof cut off. It was a very simple device gotten upby a Mr. Childes, at that time our foreman in [the]finishing shop. It was a simple D slide-valve, butinstead of opening and closing the steam ports by Figure 38.?Coin milling machine, designedby Franklin Peale, for raising and serratingthe rim of a coin. F'rom Journal of The FranklinInstitute (November 1836), vol. 22. its ends it had ports through it. the top of the valvebeing faced, on which lay a loose plate or valve withtwo upright stops between which a conical wedgeturned so as to regulate the play of this plate andallow the valve proper to slide under it. To insurethe top valve traveling with the main valve untilstopped, a constant steam pressure on it was securedby a small opening into the escape section of theD valve." 69 When a study is made of governor controlled rut-offvalve gear schemes leading up to that of George Corliss, in1849, this gear can take its place amongst the large group ofdesigns perhaps more ingenious than useful. 73 This simple little device, the simplicity of the feedpumps as we were then placing them under thesteam cylinder operated by an arm from the cross-head, and the solidity of the proposed cast-iron bedso pleased Dr. Patterson that he used many argu-ments to induce Mr. Eckfeldt to give up his verticalhobby; the argument that had the greatest weightwas the necessity of the greatest simplicity to avoidbeing obliged to keep skilled workmen for repairs atsuch out-of-the-way places as Charlotte and Dahl-onega were supposed to be. Should the change bemade to horizontal steam engines some change inthe designs of the buildings might be necessary.The matter required consideration and probablysome correspondence with the architect at Washing-ton.The only conclusion reached at that interview wasthat we should have the castings and work apper-taining to the assay and melting department of themints, and an appointment made for Dr. Patterson,Messrs. Peale and Eckfeldt to visit our shops atCardington, the objective point being to see theoperation of our planer, which at that time was theonly one in Pennsylvania, there being, if I am notgreatly mistaken, only two others in the UnitedStates, one in Kemble's West Point Works, and theother in Dr. Nott's?both imported machines. 100Ours was a very rude affair as compared with theperfect machines of the present time, but by allowingit plenty of time it did good work. Its only automaticaction was in the screwdriven lied plate to give aquicker return; both cross-feed and up and downfeed being by hand, requiring constant and carefulattention of the operator. The size the machinewould take in and plane was 8 feet in length by 4feet wide and 3 feet high. Its capacity had much todo with shaping and sizing the designs for furnace 100 It is my impression that a planing machine had been builtin Providence, but I have not found positive documentation.It is certain, however, that the cold chisel and file were still themost important tools for producing plane surfaces. For ex-ample, the 16-ton bed-plate castings for engines of the U.S.S.Mississippi, cast in 1839 at Southwark Foundry of Merrick &Towne were finished by chipping and filing (Transactions of theAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1894-18015. vol. 16, pp.757?758). John Fritz, in his Autobiography (New York, 1912),p. 60, refers to use of a two-handed chisel and sledge in 1849.For general information on the West Point works, see Kemble(cited in note 71 above), pp. 190-203. Dr. Nott's was theNovelty Works, on New York's North River. An illustrated article on this works is in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1851), vol. 2, pp. 72'-734- plates and other mint machinery. The introductionof the kind of ingot molds that had been made byMaudslay for the royal mint finished on his planer[made possible] the increase in silver melts fromfifty pounds to over two hundred much sooner than it would have been done if the finishing by cold chisel, file, and scraper had to be depended on.A few days after this visit we received notice fromDr. Patterson that the works for the branch mints hadbeen divided. The portion given to us was, in addi-tion to the melting department on which we were thenengaged, for the branch mints?the steam engines(horizontal), shafting, rolling mills and milling ma-chines, including the erection and starting of all themachinery. The coining presses and draw bencheswere given to the Merrick works, then carried on byMerrick, Agnew and Tyler. 101This work brought us into almost daily communica-tion not only with Dr. Patterson but with both Pealeand Eckfeldt, and I became pretty thoroughlyacquainted with every step that was taken during thetransition period, as every advance step was verythoroughly discussed, and now as I write so crowdon my memory that I find it hard to cull what may beof interest to the general reader. [25] [In 1836] there was imported, I think from France,a die sinking lathe. 1 "- To use this lathe to do itsportion of the die sinking a template die [was made]for the dollar about 6 inches in diameter. For thisUncle Titian [Peale] modeled the flying eagle and Mr.Thomas Sully, the female figure of Liberty. Fromthese, plaster casts were made and from them plaster[molds] from which to cast bronze templates. Ithink the bronzes were cast at Merrick's but were not satisfactory; then a lamp maker's foundry was triedwith no better results. I told Dr. Patterson and UncleFranklin of what I had seen Henri Mogeme do tomould the fine Berlin iron and his crucible castingsand what he had told me of the importance of mould-ing by pressure and not tamping, [which] he calledkneading or dry facing. Uncle Franklin suggestedthat we should try to make an iron casting from the 101 In another account of the mint work, an excerpt fromwhich is inserted two paragraphs below-, Sellers named Merrickand Towne, who operated the Southwark Foundry. However,there were many interlocking partnerships, and this one wasnot impossible.102 This machine, known only as a "Contamin lathe," ismentioned in connection with the exhibit of the original flying-eagle medallions at the U.S. National Museum.74 Figure 39.?Main steam engine at the U.S. Mint, Phila-delphia. Probably built in 1829-1830 bv Rush and Muhlen-berg. The text accompanying the illustration stated: "Thereis a most beautiful steam engine . . . called a steeple engine."The engine had two cylinders. From Gleason'i Pictorial Draw-ing Room Companion (July 17. 1852), vol. 3. 75 medallion patterns and for that purpose he went outto Cardington with me. As the medallions wereflat on the back and the edge turned with ampledraft, the moulding was only done in half flasks, thepattern being fastened on a board. For facing weused the foundry dust swept from the overhead collarbeams. A thin coating of this perfectly dry througha bolting cloth sieve was sifted onto the pattern, thenthe moist sand through a wire sieve and as layer afterlayer was added without any jarring, the sand with aflat block was carefully pressed. When the flask wasfilled it was turned over and the pattern carefullydrawn, then the gates were cut for the metal and the air vent and the other half flask adjusted. The inten-tion was to have used a crucible taking the metalfrom the cupola and reheating to purify, but UncleFranklin proposed that the first trial should be madechiefly from the cupola and it turned out so well thatthe crucible was not resorted to, and only the twocastings were made and as perfect as possible from thepattern. Though the die sinking lathe was a greathelp, if I recollect right the Government was opposedto its use. [26] About this time Mr. Peale was advanced from assistant assayer to that of assayer, melter and refiner(this was in 1836, and to chief coiner in 1839).Although engaged in the radical changes in thatdepartment his active mind could not be concentratedon its details alone, fortunately for the public service.He saw room for improvement in handling the metalingots after leaving his department, and he suggestedand planned improvements that have proved to be ofgreat value.Although Mr. Eckfeldt was pleased with what hadbeen accomplished he did not at first look favorablyon the improvements Mr. Peale suggested in hisspecial department of chief coiner. He once said tome, "If Mr. Peale had full swing he would turneverything upside down; why he even talks of throwingaway our costly coining presses that have done andare doing such good service, dispensing with man-power, and yet he won't hear of applying steam powerto our old screw presses, which has been successfullydone in the Royal Mint, London. He wants some-thing better and no doubt he would have it if we werestarting anew."The giving up of almost life-long pets that had beenMr. Eckfeldt's constant care would naturally go hard,and still harder coming from another department,but as improvements gradually crept in and proved their efficiency Mr. Eckfeldt gave full credit where itbelonged, and I remember him becoming quiteenthusiastic over the labor saving in duplicatingworking dies.In the fall of 1832 I visited the Royal Mint, but Iwas hurried through as sightseers generally are. Atthat time there was in the coining room a row ofscrew coining presses similar to those in our homemint, save that they were driven by steam power,though the driving power was not visible in the room.The top of the screw still carried its heavily weightedbalanced lever, from the momentum of which thecoin impression was made; the weighted lever endstriking a wooden spring block was thrown back bythe recoil opening the dies for thrusting out the piececoined and inserting a fresh planchet. The power wasgiven by a shaft through the ceiling from the power-room above, which by a clutch box, took hold of thetop of the screw; this clutch was automaticallyengaged and disengaged. As Mr. Peak's mission toEngland was nearly a year later than my visit hemust have been acquainted with the entire operation,though I do not recollect among the numerous draw-ings he made of the machinery of the Royal Mint,any detail drawings of the mode of applying anddisengaging the power; and from what I recollect ofthe conversations with him on the subject the impres-sion is left that it was anything but satisfactory to him.He dwelt much on the value of progressive . . .pressure to be had by the toggle for coining instead ofthe blow or impact given by the screw with its flyingweights. Through daily intercourse and frequentdiscussions I feel that I have a pretty clear recollectionof the progress of his invention of the steam coiningpress that was so nearly perfect at the first essay.The original press was exhibited at the Centennialin Philadelphia, in 1876, at work striking medals ? it was represented as Peak's first press, and as havingbeen made by Merrick, Agnew & Tyler, underMr. Peak's supervision. This does not fully agreewith my recollection. 103 That firm built the firstcoining press for coining dollars and half dollars thatwent into operation in the fall of 1836, at which timeMr. Eckfeldt was chief coiner; Mr. Peale did nottake that position until Mr. Eckfeldt's retirement in >839-The mint repair shop was not fitted with tools fordoing heavy work, which was done out at other shops. 103 xhe press in question, now on exhibit in the FranklinInstitute Museum, delivers upon demand souvenir medals.76 For the first Peale press the patterns and castings weremade at our works, the forgings made and finishedfrom drawings, and were delivered at the mint, andthey were mostly put together by Mr. Peale doingmuch of the work himself. In confirmation of these recollections, I still have the original drawings fromwhich the work was done. I was present when thepress was adjusted and the trials made on the copperplanchet with the one-cent dies of that period. [27] This test was only in the presence of Dr. R. M.Patterson, the then director of the U.S. Mint, AdamEckfeldt, the old and first coiner of the U.S., Mr.Gobrecht, the die sinker, Joseph Saxton and mvself.[28]When properly adjusted it [the press] was exhibitedcoining a one-cent size copper medal, having on itsface, around the rim, united states mint, 1836, andin the center and on the reverse a liberty cap sur-rounded with rays. [29]Of those present at the select exhibition on the 23d[of March, 1836], I recollect Matthias W. Baldwin,Rufus Tyler, William Mason, S. V. Merrick, andS. Morris, 104 as among the most prominent mechanicsof the time. [30]The press was then regularly put to work on thecopper cents of that period in the fall of the sameyear, when the dollar press was put to work. Atotal change was made on the face of the coins.The female figure, with liberty shield, staff and cap,was designed by Thomas Sully. I do not recollectwho made the model in relief from his design, butthat of the flying eagle on the reverse, surroundedby United States of America?one dollar, with twenty- six stars on the plain surface, was designed andmodeled by Titian R. Peale. From these reliefmodels, which were about 6 inches in diameter,castings were made to be used as templates or toolguiders in the die-sinking lathe. To get these cast-ings satisfactory manv experiments were tried inour foundry, finally settling on a kind of speculumalloy not too hard for hand finishing. 105Although the die-sinking lathe was a labor-saving ,<" Stephen P. Morris, founder of Pascal Iron Works, whichlater became Morris, Tasker and Company (Scharf andWestcott, cited in note 14 above, vol. 3, p. 2252.)105 Tne repetition is caused by insertion of a passage par-ticularly describing the molding process. The discrepancies I have been unable to resolve. tool in the rougher portions of die sinking, it didnot dispense with the final delicate hand finish, yetMr. Charles Gobrecht, who was then die sinker,was much opposed to its use. When the first fewdollar coins were struck, it was found that Gobrechthad taken the inexcusable liberty of placing hisname on the die, which became conspicuous on thecoin, and the coinage had to be stopped until itcould be obliterated.Mr. Peale's improvement in the draw-bench forequalizing the thickness of the metallic strips, makingthe return of the grippers to take hold of the stripto be equalized automatic instead of being shovedback by hand, was an important advance in thecoining department; it was followed by the rotarymilling machine for raising the edge of the planchet,which did its work rapidly, only requiring attentionin keeping the feed tube supplied with planchets.This was a beautiful machine from an artistic pointof view, as was all the machinery devised byMr. Peale, who brought to his work the refined eyeof an artist. Through a hollow column from a tripodbase the driving shaft unseen rotated the millingwheel or die by a cam arrangement within the cir-cular table: the planchets were fed from the screwingtube, all the work being automatic, dispensing withthe labor of a skilled hand, and doing the work withnot less than ten times the rapidity. Those beautiful scales for weighing gold and silver, so plain and simplein appearance, and of such nice accuracy, were ofhis design, and their final adjustment the work ofhis own hands.The small steam engine, so architectural in design,that for many years drove the steam coining presses until their increase called for greater power, was,from its high finish and silent movement, a mostattractive object to all visitors to the mint, was ofhis design, and was constructed under his personalsupervision. In planning this little engine, the ca-pacity of the planer I have referred to was a considera-tion. The table or bed plate was an oblong, hollowcast-iron box, supported on four fluted doric columns,the entire table being finished and polished, as wasalso the rim of the fly-wheel. These architecturaldesigns for machinery were before the plain, simple,round-cornered and direct forms dictated by utilityof the present time, but in their chaste simplicitywere a step in the right direction.During the construction of the engines and machin-ery of the branch mints, both Dr. Patterson and Mr.Peale were frequent visitors to our works, and on77 Figure 40.?Mint balance built about 1835 by JosephSaxton in London at the order of Franklin Peale (see note 87).On display in U.S. Mint, Philadelphia. Photo courtesy of theU.S. Mint Service, Mrs. Rae V. Biester. consultation great changes were made from the original plans, in all of which Mr. Peale took activepart, taking an immense amount of labor to securethe best practical results.When we consider that all the improvements incoining were made by Mr. Peale while acting incapacitv of assayer, melter and refiner, and were entirely extraneous to the duties due the country inthat capacity, and for which the salary?whateverthat might be?was considered the equivalent, wecan form some idea of how much the country at large is indebted to his inventive genius and zeal. The bulk of the inventions were put into practical operationwhile Mr. Eckfeldt was chief coiner, and it was not until his retirement in 1839 that Mr. Peale got hisreward by being advanced to that position, givinghim the management and control of the products ofhis own brain work. As to what the pecuniary ad-vance was I know nothing. He served in the capacityof chief coiner until the fall of 1854, during whichperiod no essential changes were made in his originalsteam coining press, milling or other machinery.Improvements were made in minor points, but thegeneral principles remain the same to the presenttime .... [31] 78 10. Redheffer'sPerpetual Motion Machine The name of Charles Redheffer keeps poppingup in footnotes today, just as his remarkable per-petual motion machine kept appearing andreappearing in Philadelphia and New York, inLiverpool, England, and no doubt in other citiesand towns, when he was alive.In Philadelphia, the showman Redheffer madehis appearance in the fall of 1812 with an adver-tisement in the daily newspaper, Aurora, announc-ing an exhibition of his "self-operating, self-moving machine - ' in Chestnut Hill, a suburb ofPhiladelphia. The admission price for gentlemenwas five dollars; "female visitors gratis." Theeditor of the Aurora was impressed. In an edi-torial comment comparing Redheffer to Godfreyand Fitch, inventors of quadrant and steamboat,respectively, he exulted in Pennsylvania's leader-ship in mechanical philosophy. 106In 1 81 3, Isaiah Lukens built for CharlesWillson Peale's Philadelphia museum a model ofthe Redheffer machine, and some 12,000 hand-bills were printed to tell the inhabitants that itcould be seen in operation in the museum. 10,Redheffer returned to public notice again inthe summer of 1816 when he invited a 25-membercommittee?including Nathan Sellers, RobertPatterson, Adam Eckfeldt, and men of similarstamp?to consider the merits of his machine. Hedid this after the state governor refused toappoint such a committee. After an initial meet-ing in late July at the City Hotel, on Chestnut street at Seventh, the group assembled on two successive Saturdays in a room in the west wing of the State House to see the machine operate.They fidgeted for several hours on the firstSaturday while Redheffer tried vainly to start hismachine. On the next Saturday they listened tothe extraordinary proposition that two or three oftheir members (Redheffer suggested Nathan Sel-lers and George Clymer) be apprized of the secretby Redheffer, and that they in turn reveal it tothe committee in the absence of the inventor.The committee's response was a flat demand thatthe machine be shown in operation immediately.Redheffer said he "could not, with safety?butrefused to give reasons or explanations."The committee thereupon, on August 27, pub-lished in Poulsons American Daily Advertiser, butnot in the Aurora, an account "To the Publick"of the whole bizarre proceedings, appending theirnames to a round and sound denunciation ofRedheffer and his behavior. 108 However, it is notclear that anyone was convinced that there wasany overt fraud involved. Thomas P. Jones, edi-tor of the Journal of The Franklin Institute, referredto the machine in an article published in 1828,12 years later. "On which side," Jones asked, "were the scientific of Philadelphia ranged when Redheffer'smachine was exhibited at Chestnut Hill? Thosewho recollect the period will find no difficulty inanswering the question. We believe that nine-teen-twentieths of those who were so esteemed 109 Quoted in Scharf and Westcott (cited in note 14, above), vol. 1, pp. 561-562.107 Charles Coleman Sellers (cited in note 20, above), vol.2, p. 280. ion According to Cadwallader D. Golden, Robert Fulton hadexposed the fraud when Redheffer exhibited his machine inNew York, in 1 8 1 3 (Coleman [younger brother of George Escol]Sellers, "The Redheffer Perpetual Motion Machine,"Cassia's Magazine, September 1895, vol/ 8, pp. 523-527; this article refers to Colden's The Life oj Robert Fulton, New York, .817). 79 were avowed believers, or, as the politicians would say, upon the fence." IMJones in 1828 accurately assessed the approachof the great majority of men to the question of "perpetual motion," as it has been generallyunderstood from the 13th to the 20th century.Over the years, an increasing number of peoplehave paid lip service to the conclusion that theoperation of such a device would require viola-tion of natural laws. Jones pointed out, however,that "there are but few persons who admit thistruth as they admit an axiom; there appears ingeneral some mental reservation; some apprehen- sion, that if they declare the thing impossible, itmay, nevertheless, happen that some lucky wight may 'hit upon it,' and ruin their reputation asaccurate philosophers." uoThe quest for perpetual motion continues. Idoubt whether there lives a mechanically inclinedperson who has not gone through the phase ofbeing attracted by the question, usually going sofar as to commit a rude sketch to paper and toconfront a friend or colleague with the question, "Why won't this work?"Generally that is the end of it; but I haveanswered my share of letters from those who have "hit upon it" (on paper), and who want either toreceive the standing reward that they have beentold exists, or to share their exciting discovery withthe public, asking only the public acclaim that will come with their great revelation. [An incident of] my boyhood was strongly impressedon my mind, and as I do not know any one now liv-ing who can describe it from their own knowledge, Ishall try to do so, believing it will be of interest. . . . I refer to Redheffer's perpetual motion, which in itstime created as great a furor in the world as any move-ment motor has. With our knowledge of the presenttime we look with amazement at the credulity of menof means, supposed to possess more than ordinaryintelligence, investing their money in secret for inter- ests in theoretical motors claimed by their projectorsto be regenerators of the economic laws of the world.This was exactly what was claimed by Redheffer, andinterests in his wonderful discovery were eagerlypurchased. I have no way of fixing the date of this excitement,nearer than that my first recollection of it was hearingthe matter discussed during one of my summer vaca-tions at the residence of my grandfather, CharlesWillson Peale , who at that time was living at hiscountry-seat near Germantown, one of Philadelphia'ssuburbs; this would place the date somewhere near theend of the teens of the present century. 111 I recollect that at one of these discussions mygrandfather expressed himself as believing that Red-heffer, though at that time he was practicing a fraudin exhibiting his motor in operation on the original 109 Journal of The Franklin Institute (November 1828), vol. 6,pp. 318-327.110 Ibid.111 In 1 8 16, when Sellers was not quite 8 years old. conception of the theory on which he based its opera-tion, had been honest in the belief that the machinewould be a perpetual self-mover; and that it was notuntil he had discovered his error after having wastedhis time and impoverished himself, that he resorted tothe ingenious device that enabled him to exhibit hismachine in operation, to recuperate by the exhibitionfees and gull the creditors into purchase of interest inhis perpetual motor. My father, who was present atthis discussion, was not disposed to be so lenient; hefreely expressed himself as believing the thing to havebeen a fraud or trick from its earliest conception.The machine then on exhibition being within easywalking distance, it was proposed that the party go tosee the wonderful machine in motion; I, as a boy,accompanied them. We found quite a crowd there;lines of carriages in waiting; many pedestrians fromthe city. The machine was running, and many ofthe visitors were holding their pocket-knives on thegrindstone that was apparently being driven by theperpetual motor. Mr. Redheffer was explaining inhis characteristic manner the principle on which themachine was built and operated. "You see," saidhe, "the machine running, and the power withwhich it turns the grindstone; now this power isentirely due to the manner the little carriages areloaded on the revolving platform"; he then said hewould answer any questions, and fully illustrate theprinciple. "You see here I have a little four-wheelcarriage; its platform is double, and so arranged that I can set it at any angle. I have this plain plankfor it to run on; now the platform is level and parallel80 Figure 41.?Model of Redheffer's perpetual motion ma-chine. This model was built by Isaiah Lukens for the PealeMuseum in 1813. Photo courtesy of The Franklin Institute. with the plank. I place on it this weight" (whichwas a leaden brick, rectangular, about 3x4 inches,and about one inch thick); the carriage stood still,gravity being directly down, the weight equally distributed on all the wheels; the bed was then raisedand fixed at an angle of about 45 , and the weightcarefully placed on it; the carriage started and ransome 10 feet or 12 feet, then stopped. 81 A very plain-looking man standing by said: "FriendRedheffer, I think thee gave it a little starting push." "Not the least," was the reply. "Watch me, I willshow it again." This time with one hand he heldthe carriage in check, while with the other he placedthe weight on the incline; when he loosed his holdon the weight, simultaneously removing the handthat held the carriage in check; it was evident to allclose watchers that the weight slid down the incline ashort distance to its stop. "I see," said the plain inquisitive man, "that theedid not give it a push, but thee let the weight slideenough to start the carriage; but, see, it did not run as far as the first time. Now, Friend Redheffer,when I load my wheelbarrow with rock it takes allmy strength to start it. but when started I can trundleit along with ease. This starting the scholars callovercoming the inertia; but I am no scholar, I onlyknow what I see or feel; but it does seem to me thatif thy weight loaded on the slant exerts a powersufficient to start the carriage to overcome the inertia,and that power is, as thee asserts, constant, thecarriage, instead of stopping, should increase inspeed, and go on running forever." "And it would," said Redheffer, "if it were not forthe friction and the resistance of the air; these, yousee by my machine running, I have overcome,"pointing to the machine, which most certainly wasrunning, and apparently exerting some force.The plain inquisitive fellow seemed to have ruffledRedheffer so much that most of his attention was givento him, either to convince or to get rid of him. Hesaid to him: "I think I have here what will convinceyou that a fixed weight in the position I place themon my carriages will exert a constant pressure in thatdirection that will and does force the carriage ahead,and if friction and all other obstructions are eliminatedits onward course would be perpetual, as you see itdoes in my working machine. Here I have this cast-iron cannon suspended by its muzzle by this short freelink chain" (the cannon was one of those stubby can-non used on merchant ships as signal guns). "Now,"said Redheffer, "put your feet against this cleat on thefloor, take hold of the butt ball of the cannon, andpull it to about the angle I have my weights on thecarriages, and tell me if it does not maintain a con-stant pull, and does not grow lighter."Very soon the man said: "No, I really think it growsheavier, and pulls harder; but Mr. Redheffer, theeought to have a great steelyard and suspend the can-non on that, then thee could show if any of the direct down pull or gravity was lost or changed by pullingthe cannon out of the perpendicular." "That is a capital thought," said Redheffer, "for ifthere is any loss it would show what I gain by theangle I load the weight on my carriages."There was much more of this kind of badinagebetween the plain, simple-minded engineer andRedheffer. I have told this as a continuous story,only intended to convey the general substance; partis from recollection, but probably more from conversa-tions with my father in later years.A conversation between him and my grandfather, after we left Redheffer's exhibition, made a lastingimpression. Grandfather asked father if he did notthink it a bold thing, and a capital piece of actingin Owen, to play the ignorant inquisitor. Myfather asked what Owen? The reply was: the fineWelsh machinist and clockmaker that worked withDavid Rittenhouse until his death, and has pursuedclockmaking ever since. My grandfather then saidbefore going into the show he had recognized himby his voice, and that was totally changed afterentering the building; he had watched him closelywithout discovering the least halt or change in hisassumed character; since coming out he found Owenhugely enjoying his successful joke, which, he says,he did not undertake with an intention of exposingRedheffer, but only for a little quiet fun. He showed a couple of English silver shillings so bent and shapedthat one was so placed in his mouth as to depressthe corner, and prevent the play of the muscles aboutthe corner that are so expressive of character; theother was used to modulate his voice and enablehim to keep up his assumed character; the only otherdisguise was the Sunday suit borrowed from Mr.Peale's Scotch gardener?the knit cap, broad collar,square cut, short-waisted coat, and loose trouserscovering his ordinary breeches, and silk stockings,and a pair of dirty brogans completed his disguise.After this long digression I will now try to describethe Redheffer machine, as exhibited. The foundation of the structure was a trap rock boulder, hollowed outon top sufficiently to form a step-box for an upright shaft. As near as I can recollect, this shaft was some10 or 12 feet long or high; it was made of wood, sayabout 12 inches diameter, and octagonal; its step andjournals ordinary cast-iron wing gudgeons, the lowerone resting in the rock step-box, the upper journal bystrap-box to a cross-beam. This shaft was free torevolve, and so arranged with the stone step-box, andopen strap-box on the upper end, that no power could82 be possibly applied to either of these journals withoutbeing discovered. Near the lower end of this verticalshaft was a strong wooden wheel of about the diameterof the length of the shaft. This was a spur-wheel,with wooden cogs, beautifully constructed, and a finespecimen of the millwright's art. The outer ends ofthe arms of this wheel were planked over, forming aconcentric platform of about two feet wide. For stiffness and stability, light iron suspension rods ranfrom the arms close to the concentric platform to aspider ring, or wheel, at the upper end of the vertical shaft. On this concentric platform was a narrow-gauge tramway, encircling it. On this tramway wereplaced several four-wheeled carriages. The platformsof these carriages, on which the propelling weightswere placed, were at an angle of about 45 to the tram-way. The teeth of this spur-wheel worked into alantern pinion or trundle-wheel, in early times knownby millwrights as a wallower. This was on an upright shaft, on the upper end of which was a crown-wheel,bevel, or miter, driving a horizontal shaft, on whichwas a V pulley, with a corresponding one on [the]shaft of a grindstone. A round belt of either catgut orrawhide, [was] drawn very tight between the Vpulleys. When the weights, which were of lead, andprobably as much as forty or fifty pounds each, wereplaced on the carriages, the big wheel would at firstslowly commence to revolve, but would soon acquirewhat was claimed to be the normal speed due to theweights. Then the credulous crowd were invited tosharpen their knives on the grindstone driven by theuntiring perpetual motor that neither consumed fuelor food, and whose lifetime alone depended on thedurability of the materials of which it was constructed.Soon a crowd would be pressing to take their turnswith their Barlow blades, to be shown as having beenground by the power of Redheffer's great invention,the perpetual motion. I have but a dim recollection of the discussions, orthe opinions expressed by those present at this exhibi-tion of the machine; but many times subsequently Ihave heard my father state that he had been verypositive in advancing his belief in the entire thingbeing a fraud; that instead of the perpetual motiondriving the grindstone it was being driven by thegrindstone, or in other words, that the shaft of thegrindstone was being driven by crank and manpoweron the other side of the partition.The grindstone being placed near the partition, itsjournals, to prevent cutting by the grit from the stone,were covered by roughly made wooden boxes in a manner to convey the idea that it was an after-thought; when the box cover next the partition wasremoved it was plain to be seen that the grindstoneshaft did not reach the partition, but no opportunitywas given to caliper this end of the shaft, and ifslightly out of round when the box cover was re-placed, an undetected connection could be made withthe operating crank, and the power be carriedto the machine by the tight round belt through thebevel wheels and the lantern pinion.My father said that the wooden cogs of the platformwheel were so nicely made, fitting so closely into therounds of the lantern pinion, that in the shadow fromits top platform it was impossible to see whether thepinion was driving or being driven, that the samemight be said of the bevels on upright and horizontal shaft. My father, to satisfy himself, had gone withsome slips of soft, damp paper, which, when un-observed, he had inserted between the cogs and theround and had got ocular demonstration that thelantern pinion was driving, and not driven, and hehad become satisfied, and had freely so expressedhimself, as to the modus operandi of the fraud beingpracticed.This got to Redheffer's ears, and so excited himthat when the legislature appointed a committee, athis own solicitation, to examine and report on hiswonderful discovery and invention, he refused to allowthe examination until some one was substituted for mygrandfather Nathan Sellers, who was named on thecommittee, on the ground that both he and his sonColeman had so strongly represented the whole thinga fraud and deception that a fair, unbiased reportcould not be expected with either of them on thecommittee. 112 I do not know how the matter gotbefore the legislature, or its object. On my inquiriesas to the nature of their report, the reply was non-committal. They had seen the machine in motion,had heard the charges of fraud, but, if one, they hadfailed to discover it.Though nothing of value had come from the motor,the interest in it had not abated, and it was still asuccessful exhibition, crowds daily visiting it. Oneday on hearing loud talking in my father's office, andwhat sounded to me as insolence to him, I wentforward in time to hear Redheffer say to him, "Yourcharging me with fraud has done me great injury,and I insist on your coming and bringing with you 112 This paragraph appears to be almost entirely in error.See introduction to this chapter. 83 whoever you choose, and I will convince you andthem that my perpetual motor drives the grindstone;you may cast the belt, or do whatever you like."My father, who seemed hurt by the language thathad been used, believing it was due to Redheffer togive him the chance, reluctantly agreed, and a timewas fixed. My father took with him my uncle,Rubens Peale, Isaiah Lukens, and I think, eitherWilliam Mason or Rufus Tyler?most probably thelatter, as he was the most frequent visitor at our house,and the open-front carriage my father drove onlycarried four persons. Lukens was the town clock-maker and general machinist; no man of that periodbetter known, or held in higher estimation. BothMason and Tyler were accomplished machinists,makers of the highest order of philosophical instru-ments, fine-class foot lathes, slide rests and models. I have often heard Lukens relate the incidents of this visit in a most humorous way, made more so by hisimpediment in speech, when telling anything exciting.They found the grindstone removed from its positionnear the partition, the belt cast, the stone standing,and the motor running; the only change my fatherobserved was in the position of the bevel wheels?thecrown wheel that had been under that of the hori-zontal shaft was now on top. This change Redhefferexplained as having been made to admit of beingthrown out of gear, on raising the shaft out of itsstep-box, that the length of the rounds of the lanternpinion admitted of his doing so; he thought that wouldconvince Coleman Sellers that the power that ran hismotor did not come by the way of the grindstone, butwas due entirely to the weights on the carriages. Themachine was stopped, and propped to prevent starting;the shaft was raised sufficiently out of its step-box,as Lukens used to describe it, to admit of passing aknife blade under; that was all the rounds of thelantern pinion would allow, but, as Lukens said, not sufficient to let him put his finger under, to feel if thebottom of the shaft was not like the pipe of a watchkey, that, on being lowered, would connect with thepower, that, on signal, might start in the adjoiningroom.Then he, without giving any reason for so doing,was about asking of Redheffer the privilege of takingthe upright shaft down with its lantern pinion, andallowing the machine to run without that appendage,when he was interrupted by my father saying toRedheffer, "Your machine is beautifully finished in all its parts; why was it not carried out in this?" putting his cane on a plank or timber rather roughlyhewed, showing the marks of the broadaxe.To this Redheffer's reply was, "I was in a hurrymaking the changes, and as it is entirely outside, andnot connected with or essential to the machine, Ilet it go." "Yes, yes, I see it is not, but it does not seem to besecurely fastened, and could be easily removedwithout the least injury to the machine; if you will sell it to me, and let me take it up now, I will giveyou one hundred dollars for it, and you can replaceit for less than one dollar."It was here, in telling the story, that Lukens, inhis inimitable way, mimicked Redheffer's rage, whenindignantly rejecting an offer that he took as aninsult. The telling was so amusing that we nevertired of hearing it repeated. Father had rightlysurmised that the plank in question covered theentire secret.Rubens Peale was at that time manager of thePhiladelphia Museum, belonging to his father; heconceived the idea that the furor raised by Redheffermight be turned to advantage, if a working modelof the perpetual motion could be so constructed thatthe power moving it could not be discovered, itwould prove attractive. This Isaiah Lukens under-took to do, and made rather a rude working model.This, I think, is still in existence in the collection ofthe Franklin Institute of Philadelphia." 3 This didnot carry out the perfect deception required, andin its exhibition needed the constant attention ofsomeone to manipulate it, to stop on the removalof the weights, and to start on their being replaced.The lower journal or step of the upright rested ona plate glass that could be removed, and the uprightwith its platform wheel raised or lowered, but wouldhold this shaft perpendicular. Above this glass stepthere was a light bridge, but heavy enough to havethe power from clock work in the base by light,delicate gearing, to carry the power to the uprightthrough it; this was a step in the right direction, but it did not meet the case. But to make a workingmodel that would start on placing the weights onthe inclined beds of the railway carriages, and stop 113 I saw the model, in i960, in storage at the FranklinInstitute. Another model was made by Lukens in 1822 forthe Peale Museum in Baltimore (letter from Rubens to FranklinPeale dated June 11, 1822, in American Philosophical SocietyLibrary, pointed out by Wilbur H. Hunter, Jr., "Tribulationsof a Museum Director in the 1820's," Maryland HistoricalMagazine, September 1954, vol. 49, pp. 214-222).84 on removing them?this was the problem thatLukens undertook to, and did solve, in so ingeniousa way that the deception was perfect, and to myknowledge never discovered, though repeatedly ex-amined by the most thorough and ingenious menof that period.The beautiful machine he made for the PhiladelphiaMuseum was mostly of mahogany; it had a massiverectangular base, within which the clock spring andgearing was concealed; at each corner of the baserose a mahogany column, each column above itsentablature finished by a mahogany ball; from oneof these balls a steel rod passed down through thecenter of the column to the gearing in the base,making it by the ball a "stem winder." Diagonallyfrom the column were the beams to carry the glassbox for the upper journal of the main upright shaft,which was of wood, octagonal, in imitation ofRedheffer's, with wing gudgeons for both lower stepand upper journal. The lower step journal was ofmuch greater diameter than the upper, in model, asnear as I recollect, about % or % inch in diameter.Both upper and lower, being of transparent glass,could be seen through, to show that there was nopossible connection with the shaft. The lower orstep-box was, as seen, a large square plate of glassfirmly fixed in the base of the machine, with a holein its center to fit and receive the lower gudgeon; thisstep-box was two separate plates of glass, the uppersquare one secured to the base had the hole for thegudgeon bored entirely through it; the lower platewas solid, circular, and in close contact with theupper; it was mounted in a revolving ring carriedby arms from a vertical shaft with regular boxes andstep, and driven by a train of spur wheels from theclock-work, which kept it constantly revolving. Thelower wing gudgeon of the perpetual motion wasmade of hardened steel, and highly polished, theupper journal long enough to allow the shaft to besufficiently raised as to lift the lower one entirely outof the step-box, and be examined. The end of thelower gudgeon was ground off to so slight a bevelthat it could not be perceived, but the weight of theupright with its platform and cars, in reality, onlyrested on the outer edge of one side of it, and theirweight was not sufficient to cause adhesion sufficientfor the revolving glass to transmit its motion to them,but when the leaden weights were placed on theinclined beds of the carriages it would slowly start,and soon get up to its normal speed; this slow starting,taken in connection with the large space, giving the chance at all times to see through the glass boxesmade the deception complete, and as I have beforestated, was never discovered.The machine was enclosed in a glass case and whenthe museum was in the old State House, or Independ-ence Hall, it was in the care of old Moses, the profileor silhouette cutter of the museum, whose duty wasto see that the clock work never ran down duringthe hours of exhibition. He would open the case,and allow inquiring visitors to remove and replacethe weights; he told of Redheffer asking this privilege,then sitting for hours watching the machine running,and all the time talking to himself, the gist of which,as far as Moses understood, was, Lukens has hit it,and proved my theory right.Lukens told of Redheffer having called on him,and began by abusing him for having stolen hisinvention, and robbing him of the income he madeby its exhibition; that people instead of going outto Germantown, now all went to the museum. Lukensreminded him that stealing and robbing were uglywords that he would not allow, that then Redhefferchanged his tactics, and proposed a union of interests,saying that he, Lukens, by skill and superior work-manship, had accomplished what he was aiming todo, and that by a union large sums of money couldbe made. Lukens said he told him that he wouldhave nothing to do with money made in that way.He had made the machine for Mr. Peale, and hadbeen paid for its cost and the time he spent on it,and that was all he should ever make. They hadnever claimed it to be a perpetual motion, butsimply a model of a machine that he, Redheffer, wasexhibiting as such.Redheffer persisted in expressing his belief thatLukens had solved the question, and that therecould be no trick in the museum machine. Lukenshad said, "If you believe so, go back to the museum,have Moses open the case, take off the weights, andit will then stop; then reverse the carriages, replacethe weights, you will find it will start and continueto run in the same direction it was running, directlythe opposite to what it should, if your incline loadedstatic weights were the propelling power. If thatdon't satisfy that the angle or inclination of the weightshas nothing to do with the running of the machine,just load them onto the platform wheel in any positionyou choose, and the thing will run just the same;they make it run, and it won't run without them." I have never seen any published account of thedevice Lukens adopted to carry on for so long a85 period so perfect a deception. At one of the early it became the property of Barnum, and was burnedmeetings of the Franklin Institute, he fully explained with his Philadelphia collection in the Williamand illustrated it. I do not know what became of Swain Building at the S. E. corner of Chestnut andthe museum model, but I have the impression that 7th streets. [32] 86 Part IIOn PapermakingIn the United States and England This part of the book is chiefly concerned with papermaking devices, both hand andmachine, and their builders, but Sellers's observations are of much wider significanceto an understanding of the development of machines for manufacturing operations of all kinds.His visit to England in 1832, where he was entertained and treated with unusualopenness by some of the outstanding mechanicians of the day, enabled him to observe several prominent shops and mills and to compare English with American practice.Although he was only 24 years old, the relative ease with which he gained the confi-dence of and obtained information from such cautious men as John Dickinson andBryan Donkin suggests that Sellers was an intelligent?even expert?listener todetailed technical descriptions, and that the information that he had brought withhim from America was of great interest, even if its influence upon English practicewas hardly measurable.The transition from hand to machine papermaking occurred during 20 years or so after 1815. Dickinson and Donkin, both of whom figure prominently in these pages,were the leading designers and builders of papermaking machinery. To Donkingoes particular credit for developing and perfecting the Fourdrinier type of machine,while Dickinson carried on a parallel development of the evacuated-cylinder type.In America, before he was 10 years old, Sellers was gaining experience withmachine papermaking on the Brandywine Creek near Wilmington, Delaware, in the mill of Coleman Sellers's good friend Thomas Gilpin, who had copied the Dickinsoncylinder machine.George Escol's boyhood had been fairly surrounded by the tools and talk ofpapermaking. His grandfather Nathan Sellers, his father Coleman, and his brotherCharles all were engaged in the making of wire paper molds and the fashioning ofwatermarks for handmade paper while carrying on their numerous other mechanical enterprises. Although the principal innovations by the Sellerses in papermakingequipment were the annealing of small sizes of wire in the absence of a destructivelyoxidizing atmosphere and the improvement of wire mold making, it is likely that fewmechanically advanced ideas escaped the alert and well-connected family, 87 Most of the technically inclined American visitors to England in the early 1 830'swere there to learn how to build canals and railroads, and often to buy rails and rolling stock. But George Escol Sellers journeyed there to learn all he could aboutadvanced machines and methods that might be adapted to papermaking in theUnited States. His mission was accomplished successfully although he spent lessthan three months in England. He found time also to inspect, under the guidance ofthe elder Brunei, the unfinished Thames Tunnel; to visit the celebrated machineworks of Maudslay Sons and Field; and to spend many interesting and enjoyablehours in the company of his good friend Joseph Saxton, who introduced him tonumerous people and places in London, and particularly to the marvels and curiosi-ties of Jacob Perkins's Adelaide Gallery.The last chapter of this section (chapter 18) is a strange and exciting tale ofcounterfeiting that not only conveys the suspense and hazard of the chase and thehopelessness of a prisoner in the era of universal solitary confinement but provides also a unique account of the ingenuity and consummate skill expended in imitatingpaper and engraving that were specifically designed to discourage duplication. 88 11. Nathan Sellersand Wire Working Nathan, first son of John and Ann Sellers, wasborn in 1751 on the ancestral Sellers estate inUpper Darby, just west of the county of Phila-delphia. On the Sellers property, cut east andwest by the West Chester Road and north andsouth by Cobbs Creek, was Nathan's home untilhe moved during the Revolutionary War to the "Market Street Store" at 231 High Street. Tothe Upper Darby estate he returned at the ageof 66, building at that time a new home, called "Millbank." to serve him during his retirement.He was a Pennsylvania militiaman when, inthe summer of 1776, he marched off to war in NewJersey with Col. John Paschall's Flying Camp.Within a few weeks, however, he was returned tohis home by a resolution of Congress because of theurgent need for his skill in wire work and theconstruction of paper molds, and from that timeforward his life was devoted to the exacting art ofmaking molds and watermarks.He formed a partnership with his brotherDavid, six years his junior, and the business,which encompassed numerous other enterprisessuch as the making of woven wire sieves, textilecards, and eventually riveted leather fire hose,was carried on in the Market Street house andstore that George Escol came to know so well.The firm of N. & D. Sellers survived thedeath of David, in 1813, 114 and Nathan was Figure 42.?Nathan Sellers (1 751-1830).Portrait by Charles Willson Peale, 1808.Photo courtesy of James Townsend Sellersand Frick Art Reference Library. actively at work until 181 7, when, plagued bystrokes of vertigo, a "terrible nervous condition" ? attributed to his wire work 115?and other infirmi-ties, he retired to Millbank "to seek rest and quietto my Brain, in the country, and there to guardby every means in my power, such as frequentbleeding, temperance and avoiding ardent think-ing, against the recurrence of such strokes." I16In spite of his ill health, Nathan lived until1830, and during the last year of his life he main-tained a detached but lively interest in the estab-lishment of his son's and grandsons' CardingtonShops, close by Millbank. in "My recollection of Uncle David," wrote George Escol, "was very indistinct for I was only five years old when he died. I recollect liking to sit on his lap before the open fire in theback end of the store, but the most lasting impression wasseeing him in his coffin in the little parlour in the 6th St. houseand how cold his forehead felt when I was told to kiss it."(Memoirs, book 1, p. 20.) 115 Ibid., p. 27. 116 Letter from Nathan Sellers to Nicholas Biddle datedOctober 24, 1824, quoted in Dard Hunter, Papermaking inPioneer America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,1952), pp. 138-139. An appreciation of Nathan Sellers isin Hunter's book, pp. 130-139. See also John W. Maxson, Jr,. "Nathan Sellers, America's First Large Scale Maker of PaperMoulds," The Paper Maker (i960), vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 1-16.Mr. Maxson is writing a biographical work on the Sellersfamily. 89 From my earliest recollection everything pertainingto papermaking was familiar to me. I might almostclaim to having been born to the business, my grand-father, Nathan Sellers, having been the first person toestablish the business of wire-drawing and wire-working, and certainly the first man who made apair of paper moulds on this continent .... I have often listened with great interest to my grand-father's account of the straits the people were reducedto for want of paper during the revolutionary embargo.Fly-leaves were torn from printed works and blankleaves from account books for letter-writing. Thestock of paper for printing Continental money hadrun out, the English-made paper moulds had wornout, and there was no wire in the country to refacethem. 117 This was the state of affairs when hishonorable discharge from the army was granted byspecial Act of Congress. From the many conversa-tions I had with him on the subject, I got the impres-sion that the object was to employ him in makingmoulds for the Government use; that it had beenrepresented that he was competent to do so, and notthat he had been pursuing the business; and that onhis return he had immediately gone to Yorktown, Pa.,and there made the moulds for the Government, buthis diaries . . . throw a different light on it. 118On the 3d [of September, 1 776] we find him at workon paper moulds, continuing in the old routine,diversified by signing Continental money on Septem-ber 24 and 25; brassing (this means new facing) andwater-marking moulds for Willcox, of Ivy Mills,Chester County, Pa., now Delaware County, atthat time making paper for Congress and for Conti-nental money under military protection. I will hereremark that up to the present time the Willcoxescontinue extensively engaged in making the finestqualities of bank-note paper ....The entry of May 17, 1776, of "Straightening wirefor paper moulds" refers to what was known as laidmoulds, in contradiction to woven or vellum-faced,each successive wire being laid by hand on the framesthey were to cover and form the faces of; being secured 117 This paper shortage is further documented in Lyman H.Weeks, A History of Paper-Manufacturing in the United States,i6go-igi6 (Xevv York: Lockwood Trade Journal Co., 1916),pp. 41-56.118 The diaries, more properly journals, are in the AmericanPhilosophical Society Library. Their contents are sampled inHunter's and Maxon's accounts of Nathan Sellers. See note 1 1 6, above. at each bar, one to the other, by hand-twisting thecrosswires that were of such a thickness as to regulatethe spaces between each parallel wire. It must beself-evident to any one that the hard brass wire fromthe reel or coil, and simply cut into lengths with its set or curvature, could never be laid one wire parallelwith the other, preserving equal distances apart,without first having the curvatures taken out andbeing made perfectly straight. My grandfather hadpreserved all of his original tools, including thestraightening board used at the time of the aboveentry; also a wire-drawing block, made of lignum- vitae, wire plates, rippers, that is, link pincers thatclosed, gripping the wire in the act of drawing it ? all of which were in my possession until my removalto the West in 1841.Looking at these old relics it was always a marvel tome how a young man, fresh from the farm, could havetaken up and successfully pursued a business withoutany knowledge of what had been previously done.It must have been a series of inventions and experi-ments.As to this first straightening board, it was on thesame principle as was in use in England and France,but in construction greatly improved, so much so asto have been re-invented and patented in France aslate as 1800 or thereabouts. The principle of takingthe curvature out of the wire is by drawing it between stiff wire pins fixed in a board, which act to bend thewire first in one direction, then in the reverse, in awaving line, the waves decreasing or growing shorter until the last bend leaves the wire perfectly straight.The placing of the pins required considerable skill onthe part of the operator, and often considerable adjust-ment by bending in or out by strokes of a hammer.In my grandfather's original straightener, two orthree first bends were made by pins permanentlydriven into the board; the after bends by a series ofsmall flat steel bolts, rounded at the working ends, and slightly grooved for the wire to run smoothly in.These bolts were secured to the board by a couple ofstaples to each bolt. They were set in position andadjusted to give the required bends by set screwsagainst their ends. Immediately in front of the lastbolt was set a permanent shear or cutting blade,jointed to it an upper blade with a wooden handlethat the operator held in his left hand, while with apair of pliers in the right hand he took hold of the wire, drawing straight by running his thumb on theedge of a straight-edge secured to the board to themark indicating the length of wire required when, by90 Figure 43.?Sloping wire draw-bench similar to the one described by Sellers.The tail of the lever (b) was actuated by studs or cams on a water wheel shaft.From John Nicholson, The Operative Mechanic, and British Machinist, 2d Americaned. from 3d London ed., 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1 83 1 ). vol. 1, opposite p. 354. depressing the handle in the left hand, it was clipped of]'.As late as the year 1 832, I found the pin straighteners still in use in England. One extensive wire workerwas using the adjustable arrangement I have de-scribed. He called it the Sellers straightener, whichhe explained by saying that his predecessor had beena correspondent of Nathan Sellers, from whom he hadreceived the plan, and at the same time the plan ofhis annular annealing pots, which they had not suc-ceeded in using for the finest numbers of brass wire,which I found them still annealing over open charcoalfires, requiring great skill on the part of the workman,and even then the work was very imperfectly done.On examining their furnace, the cause of failurewas evident; a uniform heat could not be had in it,nor could the degree of heat be regulated with anycertainty. I made them drawings of grandfather'sfurnace that had been without any change in plansuccessfully used for over fifty years, had one erected,charged a pot, worked off a heat, to the amazement ofthe proprietor, who was not slow in seeing certaintywhere there was uncertainty and a saving of not lessthan ten per cent in labor in that particular branchof his business. [33] From all I can learn the early memorandums ofdrawing brass wire relate to a sizing of the wire, andnot making it from the crucible or ingot. Allimported wire of that period, when in long lengths,showed a perceptible difference in size, one end fre-quently being a full number larger than the other.This was supposed to be owing to the wear of theholes in the draw-plates, and not as it proved to be anaccumulation of minute scales or hard matter in platesclosing the holes and constantly reducing the size ofthe wire as it was being drawn.For laid moulds, wire of absolute uniformity wasrequired to give a perfectly smooth level surface, hencethe necessity of a careful redrawing of all importedwire for that purpose, in fact all the finer numbers forweaving the vellum faces were subjected to the sameredrawing or sizing; frequentlv they were reducedfrom so much larger sizes as to require severalannealings.But it was not this perfecting of brass wire that leddirectlv to the annealing in closed vessels, importantfactor as it afterwards proved to be in the successfulprosecution of that branch of the business. It wasthe difficulty experienced in drawing the finer qualitiesof iron wire suitable for card teeth, and for weaving 91 into fine numbers of iron wire. The entire processat that time was of the crudest character. The wirerods, instead of being rolled as at present, were madefrom slabs forged at some one or other of the Penn-sylvania charcoal furnaces, taken to a mill on Chestercreek, rolled into flats, passed through slitting rollsmade for slitting nail rods, leaving them about '/'square and not over 6 feet in length.Grandfather induced the proprietor of this slitting mill to erect a furnace for reheating these rods andto have some grooves turned in his plate rolls,thinking that by passing two or three times throughthese grooves would give a good round wire rod;but it was not a success, the slit rods were rough andirregular on their corners; on passing through the rolls corner pins were driven into the rods not per-fectly welded, so that the wire drawn from them wasfull of flaws. For a long time the process pursuedwas to take short heats on these slit rods on an openhearth, and draw into round rods in half roundswedges under a light quick-stroke trip hammer.The long and frequent exposure to the air caused avery hard scale to form on the surface, that had to beremoved before passing through the wire plates.This was done by quick light strokes of a handhammer, and by scraping; a tedious process requiringgreat care, for if the scales were not all removed, inthe first drawing through the wire plate, they wouldeither be indented into the rod or thrown off, and sofixed in the hole of the plate as to cause deep andunsightly scores in the wire that all after drawingscould not entirely remove.The drawing of rods into wire of about %2-inchdiameter before using wire blocks or drums was alldone by short pulls by nippers or linked pincers,operated by cams or studs on a water-wheel shaftagainst a wooden lever to which the chain to thenippers was attached; this lever was kept in contactwith the shaft by a chain connecting it to a strongspring pole. Each stroke gave a pulling motion tothe nipper of about 12 inches. The draw-bench was set at such an inclination that the nippers wouldreturn for a fresh grip by their own weight, openingtheir jaws sufficiently to allow them to slide under thewire down the incline, being kept in position by astud on their under side that slid in a well-lubricatedgroove in the draw-bench, the wire remaining betweenthe jaws, that were so shaped as to allow it to passover the arms of the nippers, allowing time for themto close and take hold of the wire. The 12-inch stroke gave about 11 -inches pull through the wireplate.Although this alternate pulling process had goneout of use long before my time, the old machineryhad not been removed, and my grandfather fullyexplained the manner of its use. The plan was simpleenough, but very defective, not only losing the timeof the return of the nippers, but they would frequentlyfail to take hold of the wire, and always at every bitethey would leave the marks of their teeth on thewire. This plan of drawing wire must have continuedin use in England for the coarser kinds long afterit had been supplanted in America by powerfullydriven iron drums or blocks, for I well remember thetooth marks on imported wire, and so close together as to show their pulls were not over 3 or 4 inches long.It is hard for us of the present time to imagine thelong continuance of this crude, jerking processbefore the adoption of the simple expedient ofconstantly revolving drums, especially when weconsider that the revolving wire block had long beenin use for drawing the fine numbers of wire, and itsadoption for the coarser wires was only a questionof power and strength of the machinery.If I am not greatly mistaken, the credit of this ad-vance is due to Josiah White, to whom we are alsoindebted for the introduction of anthracite coal, theopening of the mines on the Lehigh, and its improve-ments to admit of running small coal barges. 119 Hecreated a wire mill at the falls of Schuylkill with atrain of small rolls to run billets into round wire rods,and cast iron drums or blocks on which the wire wasdrawn, after having given a few pulls with the nippersto give length to clamp to the blocks. This was notinvention but simply adopting by increased strengthand power, what was successfully working on finewire to the drawing of the largest. But had it notbeen for this advance, simple as it was, what would 119 Josiah White (1 781-1850), merchant, wire worker, builderin 1 816 of a wire suspension foot-bridge 410 feet long and 2 or3 feet wide at the Falls of the Schuylkill, and developer of an-thracite coal and of waterways to deliver the coal to a market.There are two slight biographies: Richard Richardson,Memoir of Josiah White (Philadelphia, 1873), and ElizabethG. Stern, Josiah While (New York: Stephen Daye Press, 1946).The former is useful for an engraved portrait and a shortphysical description of White. Both are based upon the sameautobiographical manuscript: Josiah White's History Given byHimself (Philadelphia, 1909), privately printed from the pri-vately held manuscript.92 we do in this day of telegraphs, telephones andbarbed-wire fences?To return to the early wire drawing of my grand-father, he explained that as the wire was elongatedas drawn by the nippers, he seized and coiled it byhand into rings of a suitable size for annealing. Hewas not long in discovering the great waste by oxi-dation from the frequent annealing in open furnace,that on the coarser wires the scale was removed with-out seriously injuring the wire by steeping or boilingin vats of very dilute sulphuric acid, which at thattime was a costly process, but some saving was madeby evaporating the spent liquid in the shape of theresidual copperas or green vitriol, but as the wirewas reduced in size, the effect of the acid was veryinjurious, causing much waste by breakage in drawingfine numbers, and sometimes rendering it so brittleas to unfit it for card teeth, not only breaking inbending the teeth, but in after use the cards breaking off close to the leather. Some mode of annealingmust be devised to prevent contact with the air andoxidation.The first experiment he tried was to reel the wireinto coils of about i foot diameter, with a body of 2inches, which he firmly bound with wire, making itas compact as possible. This he encased in well-ground and worked clay, such as is used for brick-making. He was careful in selecting his clay to havesuch as would not harden and self-glaze at a tempera-ture so high as to effectually anneal the wire encasedin it. After slowly cooling, this outer casing wasbroken off and the wire cleaned by heating, when itwas found almost as bright as before annealing.The next move was to turn on a lathe soapstone rings, half hollowed out to receive the coil of wire,encasing it. When two of these rings were closedtogether, the union being made tolerably air-tightwith finely ground soapstone, making a dry luting,they were placed in a dome furnace, the lower oneresting on iron bars. Five or six of these rings placedone above the other, separated by small soapstoneblocks, filled the furnace. When heated to a propertemperature, the fire was drawn, the dampers closed,and they were allowed to cool in the furnace, for itwas found, if taken out, to recharge the furnace witha fresh set, and they were allowed to cool in the air,the soapstone rings rapidly disintegrated. The wireannealed in these rings was not as bright as whenencased in clay; the confined air was just sufficientto blue the wire, without forming any injurious scaleto injure the draw-plates. As to quality of wire, all that was desired was ob-tained, but the maintenance of the soapstone ringsand loss of time in cooling in the furnace was tooexpensive. To obviate this, a Mr. Miller, who wasat that time carrying on a pottery for the finer quali-ties of earthenware and fire tiles, made a number offire clay rings that was an improvement on the soap-stone, as they did not injure by quick cooling, andcould be taken out of the furnace and a fresh chargeput in without cooling down. This success led toexperimenting with cast-iron annular annealing pots;they were from 12 to 14 inches deep, with annularspace of from 2% to 3 inches. The wire was reeledto a size to fill this space, and so loosely bound thatwhen driven down with a wooden rammer and handmallet they filled the entire space to the exclusion ofthe air, as much so as when encased in clav. Thetop of this annular space, when filled within about 1 inch of the top, were closed with sectional iron plates,well luted.When I took my first lessons in this process, charcoalwas used as the fuel, but it soon gave place to anthra-cite coal, except for the finest numbers of brass wire.The furnace was of the simplest possible construction,circular, with dome-top annealing chamber, whilethe pots were placed on a couple of iron bars extendingacross the furnace sufficiently above the bottom of thecharging door to admit of an iron forked lever carryingthe pot to pass in and seat it, and again to be usedin removing it?the fire immediately under on agrate, as in the common cannon stove. Over andclose to the fuel was a flue opening into the main flue;this was closed by a damper when the fire was wellignited, and the entire heat thrown into the annealingchamber, passing through the center and around theoutside of the annealing pot? the draft through thechamber being regulated by a circular flue in the apex of the dome that opened into a close chamber. Con-nected with the main flue, over this circular flue, wassuspended a long truncated cone, made of soapstone, so arranged that it could be raised or lowered fromthe outside of the furnace, leaving an annular openingaround it, which could be increased or diminishedwith great accuracy, and thus perfectly regulating theheat within the annealing chamber.In the first experiments, the management of thisconical damper seems to have been one of greatnicety until perfectly understood. To test the furnacefor uniformity of heat in the annealing chamber, avery ingeniously constructed double gridiron pryom-93 eter was used, having one set near the sustaining barsin the lower portion of the chamber, the other nearthe apex of its dome. The file and the damper wereso worked as to have the index hands of this doubleinstrument coincide; this was only used in acquiringa perfect knowledge of the manner of working thefurnace. In the first annealing of fine brass wire inthe annular pots, two cupels were placed side by side,with a button of fusible alloy on each, one that wouldmelt at a temperature sufficient to thoroughly annealthe wire without danger of melting it, the other tomelt at the danger point, which the operator had tobe careful not to reach. Careful practice soon taughthow to operate with safety, trusting to eye sight rightthrough the peep-hole in the door, and judging bythe color of the annealing pot, which, when it arrived at the proper heat, the dampers were closed and timegiven for the heat to penetrate the entire mass ofencased wire; the average time required to anneal apot was about one hour. One man with a long,forked, iron lever, suspended by a chain to a crane,would with ease withdraw the hot pot and replace itwith a cold one. I have been thus particular in describing the earlypractice of my grandfather in annealing both ironand brass wire, believing, as I do, that the credit ofthe experiments that led to the use of close iron anneal-ing pots is due to him, and that England is indebtedto America for an advance that not only improvedthe quality oftheir card tooth wire, but made con-siderable saving from the waste of oxidation and itsremoval by the acid pickling process. The principalproprietor of the English works I alluded to in mylast paper 1 -'? told me that he had served his apprentice-ship at them. He would not give the exact date oftheir commencing the use of the close annular anneal-ing pots, but he was confident that it was prior to i 780,or about that period, for they then commenced fur-nishing the firm of N. & D. Sellers with card wire,they having given up the iron wiredrawing branch oftheir business. That, on the receipt of the first orderfor card wire, and fine numbers of iron wire forweaving, Mr. Xathan Sellers made it an indispensablecondition that no acid should be used after the wirehad been reduced to No. 14, that all after annealingsrequired should be done in close pots, or annealingkettles, as he called them, to exclude the air, and to 120 Probably Mathews of London. The "last paper" formsthe first part of this chapter. enable them to do this he sent them sketches of hisfurnace and pots, and gave an account of the experi-ments he had tried that led to their adoption.At the time of my visit this firm had been the agentsof and regular correspondents of N. & D. Sellers andtheir successors for over 60 years. They had carefullypreserved the old sketches, which were shown to me,and which I at once identified as the work of mygrandfather. They unfortunately were not dated,though reference to some of the early correspondencefixed the date about as above stated. The advantagesof annealing the finer qualities of iron wire excludedfrom the air, was considered of such importance tothe concern that for a quarter of a century that portionof their work was done secretly by a member of thefirm and one or two confidential workmen. From themost reliable information I could obtain it was notuntil the beginning of the present century that otherwire works adopted the pot or retort system of anneal-ing, and then it was introduced into England byFrench workmen from the manufactory of Messrs.Mouchel, of the department of L'Orne, France.What struck me as most extraordinary was that aconcern who for so long a period had successfullyannealed their iron wire for card cloth and fine steelwires for musical instruments, had so utterly failed inevery attempt to anneal fine brass wire. Thev saidthe lower coils in the pots were certain to melt andrun together, when the upper ones would not be suffi-ciently annealed to draw well.After having their furnace remodeled, I admit tohaving found considerable difficulty in getting up andmaintaining a perfectly uniform heat with coke as thefuel, it requiring a different management of both thelower draft and the conical soapstone damper; butafter a little practice I made the venture successfullywith a pot charged with brass wire of a number fineenough to weave into vellum wire of 80 meshes to theinch.As late as 1832 some of the English wire mills were still annealing their coarse wires in the flames of areverberatory furnace, and wasting stock and injuringquality by severe vitriol cleaning, and others thatwere using retorts or pots did not charge them toexclude the air as effectively as it should have beendone for saving in the vitriol process. Two extensivecard-wire mills that I visited were exercising thegreatest possible care in charging their pots andluting them, bringing the wire out in condition forthe wire plates without the use of acids to an in-jurious extent. [34]94 As near as I can recollect, it was about the year1820 or 1821, that my grandfather and father jointlyinvented and constructed with their own hands amost important labor-saving machine, for laying orweaving the faces for laid paper moulds. Previousto that time it had been done entirely by hand, eachwire being laid separately as it was to remain, formingthe outer face of the mould; the fastenings or twistsof each seam were made by hand one after the other.Hence as a labor-saving machine, twisting all theseams at the same time, it was as one to the numberof seams in a face. For instance, a mould for makingcommercial post paper, has about 22 seams, each barof the mould frame representing a seam. Double capmoulds have from 28 to 30 liars; besides this saving,a uniformity never before approached, was obtained.The faces, being formed or woven independent of themould frames, were laid on and secured to the underface or foundation by sewing with wire. This, aboutthe year 1824, was the earliest work of the kind Iturned my hand to.My elder brother Charles had, about two yearsprevious to this, partially relieved our grandfatherfrom forming the devices for water marks, and sewingthem on the moulds, which up to that time, embracing a period of at least 55 years, had been exclusively hiswork. The manner letters or other devices for watermarks were formed of plated copper wire was on blocks of hard wood, faced on the end of the main,similar to the blocks used for wood engravings. Onthese were drawn the letters or other devices. Wedlepoints were driven into the Mock and left projectingslightly above its face at every point where the watermark wire was to be bent. When the blocks werethus prepared the silver-plated wire was held in closecontact with them, and wound or bent around thesepoints until the device was formed. It was thencarefully raised from the block, laid on the brass plate,the bends adjusted or squared with small hand pliers.previous to sewing on the mould face. This afteradjustment was necessary, as no acute angle or squareturn could be made around the steel pins. It was notlong before my brother improved on this method offorming the devices. He made his designs on metalplates, and used a tool like the watchmaker's smallround handled screw driver, notched on its end tostraddle the wire to be bent, holding the handlebetween thumb and fore finger, the wire on the metalplate, by a simple rolling motion of the tool, he couldturn a perfectly square turn, follow the device with all the accuracy of the old method, without requiringany after adjustment. At that time all the makersof fine writing papers were very critical as to theuniformity and accuracy of their water marks, suchas arrows, dove and olive branch, Robinson's lamb,Kelter's carrier pigeon, and others more elaborate.[35] 95 12. A Visit to the Millsof the Brandywine In 1 817 or 1 818, George Escol Sellers, not yetten years old, journeyed with his father to seeThomas Gilpin's new cylinder paper machineon the banks of Brandywine Creek, just northof Wilmington, Delaware. The area was acenter of industry that included mills for themanufacture of paper, flour, gunpowder, cottongoods, and textile machinery.The paper mill of Thomas Gilpin had beenestablished 20 years earlier by his elder brotherJoshua Gilpin and Miers Fisher. 121 Flour millshad been in operation since before 1 750, andby the 1 780's several were employing OliverEvans's bucket- and screw-conveyors. 122 Thepowder mills were those of E. I. du Pont cleNemours, who had opened them in 1802.William Young's cotton factory and the machineshops of the Hodgson brothers have been men-tioned in chapter 9. It was in the Hodgsonmachine shops on the Brandywine that George Escol's uncle, Franklin Peale, had learned themachinist's trade.Thomas Gilpin's paper machine, patented in1816, 123 was based upon the similar machine ofJohn Dickinson, of London, patented in 1809. r2iDetails of Dickinson's machine had been obtainedthrough the extensive European travels of JoshuaGilpin l25 and from Lawrence Greatrake, whohad returned to England on personal business at the time the Gilpins were considering thepracticability of producing machine-made paperin America. 126Other cylinder paper machines followed Gil-pin's, as related by Sellers. Of John Ames'spatent for a cylinder machine, the editor of theJournal of the Franklin Institute commented in 1833that he could detect nothing novel in the Amesspecification, since Ames was merely adaptinga design that had originated in France and thathad since been improved in England and in theUnited States. 1 -'7 121 The Gilpin mill is featured in the Hagley Museum,located on the Brandywine at the site of early Du Pont powder mills, a few miles above Wilmington, Delaware. See HaroldB. Hancock and Norman B. Wilkinson, "Thomas and JoshuaGilpin, Papermakers," The Papa Maker (1958), vol. 27, no.2, pp. 1 -10; and, by the same authors, "The Gilpins andTheir Endless Papermaking Machine," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (October 1957), vol. 81, pp. 391-405.96 >'-- Peter C. Welsh, "Brandywine: An Early Flour-MillingCenter," Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the SmithsonianInstitution . . . 1959, pp. 677-686. Illustrated, and with notesthat arc bibliographic in scope.123 U.S. patent, December 24, 1816. No restored drawing exists, but a reconstruction of the machine from existing draw-ings located by Hancock and Wilkinson (see note 121) is onthe cover of The Paper Maker (1958), vol. 27, no. 2.121 British patent 3 191, January 19, 1809. Figure 44.?Dickinson cylinder papermachine. The cylinder was immersed indilute pulp to the level Q-r. The sheetformed on the cylinder's surface was transferred at s to the continuous felted belt (m). FromRepertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture(December 1817), ser. 2, vol. 32. *<4-inch apart to receive rods of about No. 16hard brass wire, that was soldered into the notches,forming an underface like the underface of a papermould. Over this was a backing of wove wire ofabout 14 meshes to the inch, on which the fine wirecloth face was placed. The ends of the cylinder wereclosed with solid brass plate heads having journals cast to them on which the cylinder turned. One ofthese journals was hollow, through which a tubepassed into the bottom of a V-shaped trough withclosed ends, the edges of the trough coming into closecontact with the inside of the cylinder, which it washeld firmly against by having a journal opposite tothe tube end and centering in the solid journal of thatend of the cylinder.The dilute pulp being delivered to the cylinder bypumping out the water and partly exhausting the airfrom that portion of the cylinder covered by the spacebetween the edges of the V-shaped trough, the ex-terior atmospheric pressure sufficiently consolidatedthe film of pulp to prevent it squashing and disfiguringthe paper as it passed under and on to the felt of thecouching roll, and thence between the various press rolls. This V-shaped trough, in which the amount ofexhaust could be regulated, was the great feature ofthe Dickinson cylinder machine, and was deemed essential.The manner of reeling the wet paper was ingenious.To prevent any undue strain that would tear thewet paper asunder, the reels were driven by thefriction of a wooden V-edge wheel in a correspondingV lined with leather wheel on the reel shaft, theamount of traction being regulated by a P weightsliding on a lever arm that pressed the wheels together.The reels were formed of six wooden slats on spiderarms. One of the slats had a groove from end to endin which a knife was run cutting outwards. Thuswhen the required quantity of paper was wound onthe reel, [the knife was drawn through it], 130 separating it and allowing it to fall on to a sliding table fromwhich the porter separated the sheets, carrying andhanging them in the drying loft. To prevent loss of 128 The Nash mill was purchased by John Dickinson in 181 1.(The Firm of John Dickinson ami Company Limited, cited in note126 above, p. 7). 130 Line omitted from printed version has been supplied bythis editor. Manuscript has not been found.98 time in changing the reels and cutting the paperloose from them, two reels were hung at opposite endsof center-pivoted arms. Mr. Gilpin had attached toeach reel a counter with dial showing the number ofrevolutions or sheets wound.When a reel had on it the number of sheets required,the attendant would swing it over without stoppingthe paper being formed, and as soon as the empty reel had taken the place of the full one he would,with a stick, break down the wet paper pressing theend between the slats of the empty reel, and thewinding would continue on it.Mr. Gilpin complained of the necessity of having so many different sizes of reels, or being obliged tochange slats to suit the different sizes of paper ordered. I asked why not make the reels to expand andcontract to adjust for the different sizes?He turned to me and in his quick, impulsive manner,said: "Boy, that is easier said than done. I have oftenthought of it but I cannot see any way of accomplish-ing it."His sudden explosion almost took my breath fromme; I felt as a boy, I had been too hasty in putting inmy oar. I stammered 1 : "If you will come to ourshops, and see grandfather's old sieve hoop roundersor stretchers, they may give you an idea."These old stretchers were nothing more than a plate scroll screw, that, on turning, thrust out a number ofarms against the inside of a sieve hoop holding it toa perfect circle, while the wire cloth was being tackedon?the same in principle as the present universallathe chuck. It was not long until Mr. Gilpin cameto see the stretchers, and was so well pleased that heundertook to have a couple of six-arm expansive reelsmade.At that time there was no face lathe in Philadelphiawith arrangement for cutting the scroll screw. Hehad recourse to Isaiah Lukens, who wound a wrought-iron scroll thread, riveted and brazed it on to awrought plate in the same manner grandfather hadmade his original stretchers. Mr. Gilpin was veryproud of these reels, so much so that he had a grad-uated scale with vernier attached, that enabled himto at once adjust for any length of paper; this, withhis counters and their registers, he considered a greatadvance, but they were to be superseded by steamdryers, calenders, slitters, and cutters to deliver thefinished sheets direct from the machine.Sometime previous to the visit of Mr. Gilpin'smill a very simply constructed cylinder was broughtto be covered with wire cloth. I cannot recall the name of the Frenchman who brought it nor thelocation of his mill except that it was in New Jersey,and that it was a hand mill making wrapping andsugar loaf paper. It was a small affair, not over a feet 6 inches long and about 2 feet in diameter.It was constructed on the principle of a squirrel cagewheel. Six slender-arm brass wheels on an ironshaft that was covered with a copper tube formedthe framework of the cylinder. The end wheels hadrims about i% inches deep by %-inch thick, and attheir smallest diameter a projecting rim or collarabout i inch, not over %-inch thick at its outer edge.The four center supporting wheels equally spacedon the shaft had round rims of about %-inch diameter.Holes were drilled close to the outer edge of the endwheels about I inch apart of a size to take in a No. 6brass wire through these holes. Brass wire rods ofthat size were run from end to end of the cvlinder,resting on and being supported by the round rimsof the intermediate wheels. This was the conditionof the cylinder when it was brought to the shop ofN. & D. Sellers to be finished and faced with wirecloth by its inventor and maker, and I recollect itas a very creditable piece of work. The rims andcollars of the end wheels were accurately turned, thearms and hubs finished, as were also those of thesupporting wheels whose round rims were turned asmuch as they could be beyond the arms, the portionsbetween the arms file and scraper finish. The manhad worked out in his own mind exactly what hewanted done. In the first place the longitudinalrods must be secured to the round rims of the sup-porting wheels so as to keep them straight and equaldistance apart; this he proposed doing by tieing tothe rim with soft copper wire. It was done by thekind of loop sewing as wire screens were then made.This being done the cylinder was wrapped from endto end with No. 18 hard brass wire laid so as to leavea space of )\ inch between each round. This wassecured to the longitudinal rods in the same mannerof loop sewing as they were secured to the rims ofthe supporting wheels, then covered as the Gilpincylinder was by a wove brass wire backing of 14meshes to the inch, over which the fine wire facewas placed.The explanation given of the object of the projec-tion rims or collars on the ends of the cylinder, wasthat the cylinder was to be sunk, to say, % or 3 ^ of itsdiameter in a vat of dilute pulp, these collar projec-tions coming into close contact with the sides of the vat. By tacking a strip of sheep skin with the wool on99 it to the vat, so that the wool would rest on the collars,and by their intercepting the pulp would form apulp tight joint, and allow the cylinder to revolvewith very little retarding friction. Holes through thevat near the bottom inside of the cylinder led into anoutside vat into which the water from inside thecylinder could freely pass; in this outside vat he hada Persian wheel, that by revolving would raise thewater to its hollow center axis, through which itpoured back into the pulp vat, only allowing so muchto escape through an adjustable gate as would cor-respond to the amount of water coming in with theconstant supply of pulp. By regulating the speed ofthe Persian wheel, the difference in the height ofdilute pulp outside and the water inside the cylinderwould be kept uniform with sufficient difference toconsolidate a film of pulp to pass onto the felt of thecoucher without squashing. I have no knowledge of what experiments had beentried, but from the confidence the man spoke on thathead, it gave the impression that he spoke from actualtrial results. There must have been difficulties hemet with in getting his machine into successful opera-tion, for it was a considerable time before he sentspecimens of a very fair quality of printing papermade on the cylinder. I have been thus particular in describing thiscylinder, for I believe it to have been the first simplesquirrel wheel cylinder ever made; and also on ac-count of its close resemblance to the cylinder inventedand patented by John Ames, of Springfield, Mass., ata later date, and from which patent grew long andexpensive litigation. I recollect that when my father sketched and ex-plained this simple cylinder to Mr. Gilpin that heseemed perfectly incredulous as to the possibilityof consolidating a film of pulp sufficiently to couchwithout the V-trough and exhaust pumps, but at thesame time he showed considerable uneasiness; for,said he, could such a simple cylinder and machine bemade to work at all it would be a dangerous competi-tor to his expensive cylinder machine. [36] If I am not greatly mistaken at the period of our visit to Mr. Gilpin's mill, he was the sole manufac-turer of endless or machine made paper in America,and it was from perfecting the simple cylinder that Ihave described as the work of a Frenchman in New-Jersey, and its appliances, that the rapid introductionof machine made paper in America takes its date. I am strongly impressed with the belief that when John Ames, of Springfield, Mass., got up his squirrel-wheel cylinder and machine, and patented it, thathe had no knowledge of what had preceded him inNew Jersey, although they were substantially the same.My father greatly improved this simple cylinder, bysubstituting for the longitudinal round rods, drawnrods, of an oval or rather egg-shape, somewhat likethe wooden bars of the paper mould, only being madeof brass, much smaller. These, besides being securedin drilled holes in the rims of the end wheels or thecylinder, were sunk half their depth into sharp-edgedrims of the supporting wheels, to which they werefirmly secured, instead of simply resting on roundrims secured in position by looped wire sewing, as inthe case of the New Jersey cylinder. To secure thewrapping wire of No. 1 8 hard-drawn brass, forming thefoundation or under face (without sewing) notches ofone-half the diameter of the No. 18 wire, were cutspirally around the cylinder in the outer edges of theoval longitudinal bars, leaving a space of %-inchbetween each turn. This was done by a traversingbuzz cutter 131 that spirally notched the bars as thecylinder revolved. The No. 18 wire, being wound inthese notches, was held firmly in place by a wove wirebacking of about fourteen meshes to the inch, on whichthe outer face of the cylinder was placed, the onlysewing being that to secure the ends of the faces wherethey met together.This simple cylinder produced the effect appre-hended by Mr. Gilpin; its comparatively small cost,compared with his elaborately constructed cylinder,put it within the reach of all paper makers, no matterhow small their mills. Many single vat mill ownerswere among the first to adopt it.The putting up and starting paper machines becamea leading business for a number of millwrights. Theproprietor of the mill would procure a cylinder com-plete, with the shafting, gearing and spindles for thewooden press rolls, all of which we furnished in sets.Beyond this, all was the work of the millwright. Oldapple orchards furnished the material for the press rolls; even the housings they ran in were at that timemade of wood. I do not recollect finished cast-ironhousings, with boxes complete, being called for earlier 131 Essentially a milling cutter. Henry Maudslay had devisedsuch a cutter for cutting gear teeth on a lathe. The cutter(according to John Nicholson, The Operative Mechanic andBritish Machinist, 2d American ed. from 3d London ed., Phila-delphia, 1831, vol. i, p. 332) turned at 7,300 revolutions perminute.100 than 1829, about which time we began to keep themon hand to fill orders.The cost to the paper maker of a complete cylinder,2 feet diameter by 3 feet long, was $160, with a chargeof $3 for every additional inch in length. A fewcylinders, as much as 30 inches diameter, were made,mostly for making inferior grades of wrapping paperout of stock lacking in felting property requiring moredifference between the dilute pulp outside and thewater inside of the cylinder, such as straw digestedwith quick-lime, discovered and introduced about thattime by George Shryock, of York, Pa. 132 The cost ofputting and starting a simple squirrel-cage cylindermachine with wooden press-rolls, was from S500to $600.From about the year 1830 we had a number ofmillwrights constantly out and employed on thiskind of work, it being about that period that therapid change from hand made to machine madepaper had fairly set in. I give the above figuresentirely from recollection. When my brother andmvself left Philadelphia in 1840, the old accountand order books were stored there; but since thedeath of the person they were left with I have lost all trace of them, which I regret, as from them reliable and actual dates of all the advances made inpaper making machinery, from Gilpin's machine andthe New Jersey cylinder of the Frenchman, up tothe close of 1839, could have been obtained.From the best of my recollection, Messrs. Phelps& Spafford 133 were the first builders in the UnitedStates of the long-web Fourdrinier machine, withsteam driers complete, their machine being a closecopy of Bryan Donkin's. About the same periodcvlinder machines with driers were being built at Brattleboro, Vt., and other places, our works atthat time being confined exclusively to cylindermachines without driers, which we did not commencebuilding until 1833.The rapid change from hand to machine madepaper, when the start had fairly been made, createdso great a demand that many establishments wentinto the manufacturing of both cylinder and Four-drinier machines, the names of many of which Icannot recall. Nelson Gavatt, who had been em-ployed in setting up and starting machines forPhelps & Spafford, established works in Philadelphia.At a later period Barton, Rice & Co. and F L. Severs.of Worcester, Mass.; Smith & Winchester, of SouthWindham; Merrill & Co., Beloit, are among thenames that at present occur to me who built papermachinery.About the years 1831 and 1832 there was muchdiscussion as to the merits of copper or cast ironfor drying-cylinders. The thin copper transmittingthe heat rapidly, it was urged that the same regularitycould not be kept as when the thicker and less rapidconductor, cast-iron, was used. It was reported thatJohn Dickinson, for his fine qualities of copper plateveneered paper, used cast-iron drying cylinders, andthat Bryan Donkin was covering cast-iron dryingcylinders with sheet copper that was so perfectlyand beautifully done as to excite the admiration ofeveryone. They bore the appearance of having beenfinished by turning with great accuracy, a very dif-ficult job with copper as thin as used when notsoldered or cemented to the cast iron. Fetters fromEngland spoke in such high terms of these improveddryers that several prominent paper makers werecontemplating importing machines from Donkin. [37] 132 Paper of straw was made by George A. Shryock, of Cham-bersburg (not York,) in 1829. He purchased the rights to theprocess from William Magaw, of Meadville, Pennsylvania.(Weeks, cited in note 117 above, pp. [61?162, 221-223.)133 of Windham, Connecticut, in 1830 (Manufactures of theUnited Stairs in i860 . . . Eighth Census, U.S. Census Office,Washington, 1865, p. exxvii). The first Fourdrinier machine in the United States was built by Bryan Donkin and erectedin Saugerties, New York, in 1827 (R. H. Clapperton, "In-vention and Development of the Endless Wire, or Fourdrinier,Paper Machine," The Paper Maker, February 1954, vol. 23, no. i , pp. 1 -1 7). On these points, see also Weeks, (cited in note117 above), pp. 179-181. A satisfactory history of paper-making machinery in the United States remains to be written. 101 13. Papermaking byHand and by Machine The art of making paper by hand, although it is still practiced commercially in England, 134 hadreached essentially its final form during Sellers'sboyhood years. It was during these years alsothat papermaking machinery was being devel-oped. While this chapter anticipates the author's visit to England, its emphasis upon the state of theart in the United States prepares the way for themore detailed descriptions of English practicethat follow in subsequent chapters.John Dickinson (i 782-1869) I35 was, whenSellers visited him in 1832, one of England'sforemost papermakers, owning at least fourmachine paper mills to supply his vast paperwarehouse in London. The eldest son of acaptain of the Royal Navy, Dickinson had beenled to the paper trade through his father'sintimate acquaintance with the official stationers to the East India Company. Coming into thetrade when the Fourdrinier machine was in theearly stages of development, Dickinson hadconceived of an essentially different approach tothe problem of forming paper on a machine.While carrying on a conventional paper business,he developed the cylinder machine that hepatented in 1809, two months before his 27thbirthday. It was Dickinson who, in 1829, produced thefirst smooth-surfaced "safety paper" for bank- notes, incorporating between laminations bits of I nightly colored silk thread.His prominence as a man of affairs was attestedto by his election, in 1845, as a fellow of the RoyalSociety. He was active in business until 1857,when at the age of 75 he retired. 1 o realize the great value of the continuoussheet of paper making, we have only to glance at thelong and tedious hand making process?the numberof limes that every single sheet of paper had to be han-dled. Hand labor from the beginning of the process.Before bleaching with chlorine . . . which was notearlier than 181 7, the year Grandfather gave upactive business, every single rag had to be inspected 131 An informative series of illustrations of hand papermaking .is practiced now in an English mill and samples of handmadepaper are in Quentin FlORE, "Paper," Industrial Design(November 1958), vol. 5, pp. 32 59.135 An obituary is in The Times (London), January 20, 1869.See also The Finn oj John Dickinson and Company Limited (citedjte 126 above), 63 pp., and Joan Evans, The Endless Web:John Dickinson (s Co., Ltd., iSuj-iyjj (London: Cape, 1955),about 300 pp. for on its color depended that of the paper. Eventhe whitest rags after washing, dusting and cleaninghad to go through rotting process before, in the daysof the stamps, they could be pounded into pulp. I refer to this to show the first important step was therag beating engine. After the pulp was made the vatman with his hand mold had to dip sufficient to formthe sheets, then to so handle the mold as to drain offsufficient water to leave the pulp of a consistencyso that it could, by the coucher, be couched (trans-ferred) to a sheet of woolen felt and covered by anothersheet and so on until the pile or post was complete.It would then go into the hands of the lay man whosefirst duty was its wet pressing (screw press) to remove all surplus water and leave the sheet in a condition so that it could be separated from the felt. Hecarried it to the drying loft, hung in nests of four or102 Figure 45.?Handmade-paper mill. The vatman (center background)dips the mold into the vat of dilute pulp, forming the sheet of paper. The screw-press in the foreground is being loaded with alternate sheets of newly formedpaper and felt. Excess water is being squeezed from the stack of paper andfelts in the press in background. From Louis Figuier, Les Merveilles de rIndustrie(Paris, 1873?), v?l- 2 - five sheets well separated on ropes or poles to dry,and after drying;, such paper as had to be used .iswriting paper had to be sized by dipping into a vat ofwarm liquid animal size or gelatine, and again driedand finished by pressing between I maids, sheets ofcopper or zinc or polished pasteboards known asfullers boards. The highest grades were dried by hotpressing, by heated plates of iron at certain distancesapart in every post being pressed. After all of this thesheets, sheet by sheet, had in the finishing room to gothrough the hands of inspectors, mostly women, who with an erasure would remove specks and knots,rejecting what was called retrieve and that generallyamounted to about a quire to every ream put up,which was divided and pi. iced on each side of theream. Now, we have no retrieve, every parcel olpaper put up is perfect according to its grade andinstead of an average time in favorable weather ofsay eight days from the vat for writing papers, nowfrom the same point, prepared pulp, an order maybe taken for any desired thickness, size and finish,and within an hour from starting the paper machine, 103 Figure 46.?Paper mold and deckel. Thedeckel (frame), a. provides a lip around thelaid wire mold. B. while the sheet is beingdipped from the dilute pulp in the vat. Thedeckel is then removed from the mold in orderto couch (transfer) the formed sheet to a felt.From Louis Figuier, Les Merveilles de ^Industrie(Paris, 1873?), v?l- 2 - whether it be the long web or the cylinder machine,packers may begin putting up the order.And to whom does the credit belong for this vastadvance? The question is easily answered: mainlyto Bryan Donkin and John Dickinson in their differentlines. The first who took up the long web idea ofRobert, a French workman, in principle correct but104 in detail so imperfect that the machine of Robert &Didot, the mill owner, was an absolute failure; butDonkin's brains and skillful hands made it a perfectsuccess. Not at once, but by long years of persever-ance, improvements and additions [he] produced thesplendid perfect machine that is known now as theFourdrinier Long Web Machine, a misnomer, itshould have been a Donkin. Fourdrinier's part waslike that of Boulton to Watt, capital and confidence. 136John Dickinson was a blacksmith making the fly-knives and bed plates for the pulp beaters. He con-ceived the idea of a wire covered cylinder inserted to,say two-thirds its diameter in a pulp vat, which by aproperly arranged inside suction the pulp could becouched on an endless belt and be carried to press rolls. This idea was the foundation of the cylindermachine. His cylinder was an elaborate affair andone of very difficult construction. At the time of my visit to London he was carrying on five or six separateextensive paper mills, had the most extensive paperwarehouses and was said to be the most extensivepaper dealer in London.My first interview with Mr. Dickinson was not at all pleasant, for on learning that I was an Americanand interested in paper machinery he launched out inmost bitter denunciation of our friend Thomas Gilpin,whom he accused of having wormed himself into hisconfidence, became acquainted with what he wasdoing with his first paper machine, bribed Greatrakehis right hand man and took him to America, fore- stalling him there. The nature of my introductionwas such that I hoped to get some information Iwanted and Mr. Donkin had told me that Mr. Dickin-son was the only person who could give me this, buthe had added that everything would depend on mygetting on his right side. I made my visit short andwas leaving greatly discouraged when Mr. Dickinsonasked my address in London, and when I gaveMathews, Crooked Lane, he said "he is a most 136 Nicholas Louis Robert, while employed in the mill ofLeger Didot, of Essone, France, in 1 798 patented the con-tinuous web machine. Didot took his patents and a modelto London, where Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, stationers andmill owners, took a half interest in the British patent (taken inthe name of John Gamble: 2847, April 20, 1801). BryanDonkin. who was called in to help perfect the model, built thefirst full-scale machine in 1803. (Clapperton, cited in note133 above.) See also D. C. Coleman, The British Paper Industry,ijq--i86o (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), pp. 179-199.Donkin's part in the success of the machine is developed morefully in chapters 14-16, below. Figure 47.?Drying loft. After pressing, the paper is hungto dry on racks in the ventilated drying loft. From LouisFiguier. Les Merveilles de /'Industrie (Paris, 18-3?). vol. 2. 105 worthy gentleman." (Greatrake was the father ofEliza our Uncle Franklin's first wife.)When I made my report to Mr. Mathews, whoknew the information I wanted to get from Mr.Dickinson, he seemed a good deal put out. The nextevening he told me that Mr. Dickinson had called onhim and he thought it probable that I would hearfrom him, which I did in the shape of an invitation todine with him, pot luck, as his family were at theirhouse at Brighton. I felt like declining but Mathewsinsisted on my going. He [Dickinson] had his wifeup from Brighton for the night and gave me a pressinginvitation to accompany her to Brighton, which Ideclined. After breaking bread with him he was anentirely different man from what I found in his officeand during the remainder of my stay in London I hadmuch more attention from him than I supposed sobusy a man could give. I received all the information I wanted as to his cast iron drying cylinders, includingdrawings he had made for me of what was then hismonopoly, machines and dryers for what he calledenamelled plate paper.At the time I was in England there were not morethan a dozen of the complete machines in use. I only visited three of the mills. Though invited, I did notget the opportunity of visiting the Dickinson mills. I was indebted to Mr. Dickinson for much informationand kindly advice, and it was a great satisfaction tohave met on so friendly terms these two greatinventors. [38] I cannot with certainty fix the time of my first visitto York, Pa. when I was shown the room that Grand-father worked in when facing and making molds forthe Continental Government, and the Old Kingpaper mill on the Codorus Creek at York, an ante-Revolutionary Mill at the time of my visit beingcarried on by George King, who I think was a son ofthe original proprietor. 137 They were old customersof N. & D. Sellers.The object of my visit was to plan the changes andto give the direction to change the mill from a handvat into a machine mill. On my return Grandfatherwas greatly interested in my description of the sur-roundings and showed that he had a very clear recol-lection of them and also of a mill I visited on theConewago, also an old Revolutionary mill, and Ihave the impression that he said at the time he was Figure 48.?Screw press, for paper, showinglantern-head (f) on the iron screw. FromAbraham Rees, ed.. The Cyclopaedia (London,1819), plates vol. 4, "Paper Mill." there these mills were mostly making cartridge paperfrom the copperas striped linen rags of the country, or white paper as much as they cotdd get rags to make. It was at York 138 that Shryock first made straw boardsand paper by the lime process. We made his cylinders I think at a later period than the alteration of theKing Mill was made. 137 Philip Jacob King, in 1798 (Hunter, cited in note 116above, p. 156). Chambersburg, according to Weeks. See note 132 above.106 The time of this visit must have been as near as Ican fix it in 1827 or 1828 for it was before Charles'marriage which was in the fall of 1829, and at thetime John Brandt was living in the first mill house putup at Cardington. Charles and I were both stayingwith the. Brandts. Charles was working with him onthe card machinery and I in a little shop, a leantoof the old Marshall saw mill. 1 had Robert Beatie and another journeymanworking with me making the Squirrel Cage papercylinders that there was quite a demand for, itbeing the time of the transition from hand made tomachine made paper. We had for our power asmall overshot water wheel. In the shop we had ourhigh-headed hand wood-turning lathe and a smallwooden-shear chain feed engine lathe. It [the shop]was a small affair and was originally built as a shopfor David Jones to make paper mould frames inand was used for that purpose as long as he livedand was able to work, and when he became toofeeble in which he taught Samuel Meredith, whocontinued as frame maker until disqualified by ageand loss of sight, when George Rawlings took hisplace and continued as long as we carried on mouldmaking.Making early paper machinery with the facilitieswe had was a very troublesome business. The shaftsfor the cylinders and for the apple wood press rollsthat were used before it was found that the papercould successfully be worked from metallic rolls,were turned in the engine lathe I have referred to.The press rolls were also finished in it after havingbeen roughed down by hand in the wood lathe, whichbesides this roughing was used to bore and turn thebrass spider wheels for the paper cylinders, the mostcommon size being 2 feet diameter and a few asmuch as 30 inches. The turning was done by aMaudslav slide rest, but I do not remember howthis came in our possession; I rather think it wasimported through Mathews. While this kind of work was going on Grandfatherfrequently walked down from Millbank and would sit for hours at a time in the doorway of the littleshop watching the work as it went on and he alwaysseemed to take more interest in it than in the workof the card mill. He had taken a liking to myNewfoundland cloy with whom he would play andtalk to as if he were human. He placed so muchconfidence in the dog's sagacity and trustfulness that I have frequently seen him throw a silver half dollarinto the mill race for the dog to find and bring out,and I don't think he ever lost one.One day when Grandfather was sitting on a stoolat his usual place in the doorway he startled me by ascream. On looking I saw Robert Beatie with hishead close to the shaft he was turning with his armand hand frantically trying to reach the belt shiftinglever. I jumped quickly to the lever, shifted the belt,backed the lathe by hand and when I got his longended black silk cravat which had caught in thecarrying dog unwound he fell to the floor limp andinsensible and it was some time before we broughthim to. I had frequently cautioned him againstwearing the long ended cravat. This so frightenedand unnerved Grandfather that it was a long timebefore he again came to the shop. He said he couldnot get rid of the horrid sight of Robert's swollentongue. I have, relerred to the troublesome business of earlypaper making machinery, the different parts were soscattered about. The housings were cast at Park'sfoundry, Kensington; most of the gearing at Wilt-berger's foundry, S. E. Corner of Market and 16thSts. The housings were chipped and filed at Bovl<-"sshop where most of the smith work was done; therewere no iron planers at that time. The gear wheelswere bored and fitted at our little shop at Cardingtonand either Jesse Hayes, William Lungren or Caulkinswere the millwrights who made the vats and put upand started the machinery. [39] 107 14. A Visit to England. I:Maudslay and Brunei George Escol Sellers departed from New Yorkon the first day of September 1832 in the packetship Hibernia, of the popular Black Ball line.He arrived in Liverpool nearly four weeks later,on September 27. After three busy months inEngland, he returned home in January 1833,after having spent New Year's Day on theocean. 139While Sellers was in England, his sister Eliza-beth married Alfred Harrold, who had come tothe United States from Birmingham, England.George Escol was accompanied during at leasta part of his journev down to London fromLiverpool through the Midlands by AlfredHarrold's brother, who apparently was able toopen some doors that otherwise would have beenclosed to an American visitor.Sellers had gone to England primarily to seepapermaking machinery, but he passed up fewopportunities to view anything in the mechanicalline that was accessible. In the present chapter,his visit to the shops of Maudslay Sons andField occurred more than a year after the deathof the firm's founder, Henry Maudslay (1771-1831), but Maudslay's stamp was so clearly uponthe shops and, indeed, upon the mechanicalpractice of England, that more than -cursorymention of him is called for. 140Maudslay's genius as a gifted craftsman andoriginal thinker in the machine-building art wasevident before he was 20 years old, while he wasemployed by Joseph Bramah (1748-1814), lock-smith and builder of a practical hydraulic press. It was here, in the development of machinetools for producing lock parts, and a few yearslater, in his own shop but in concert with SamuelBentham and Marc Isambard Brunei, in de-veloping machines for making pulley-blocks forthe Royal Navy that his capacity as an innovatorbecame evident. But it was with the slide-tool,or slide-rest, for an engine lathe that his namehas become inseparably associated.Although Maudslay was not the first to devisea lathe-tool carrier, in which the cutting tool washeld securely and could be positively advancedand traversed under control of sturdy screws, his slide-rests were the first generally available inEngland, and their advantages were within ageneration recognized by mechanics everywhere.His screw-cutting lathe, while again not the firstin existence, was certainly the first to be widelyused.Perhaps more important than his works, how-ever, was Henry Maudslay's influence uponseveral younger men who later became prominentmachine tool builders. James Nasmyth, RichardRoberts, Joseph Clement, and Joseph Whitworth, all of them leading mechanicians of the generationfollowing Maudslay's, were sincere in their praiseof their old mentor. "The masterly manner inwhich he would deal with his materials, andcause them to assume the desired forms," wroteNasmyth, "was a treat beyond all expression.Every stroke of the hammer, chisel, or file, told is an effective step towards the intended result.It was a never-to-be-forgotten practical lesson in 139 George Escol Sellers letterbook, in Peale-Sellers papers(American Philosophical Society Library), contains copies ofoutgoing letters. The vessel, illustrated but not named inthis iournal (p. 5), is identified in Memoirs, book 10, p. 7.Date of return is in Memoirs, book 17, p. 3.110 Maudslay is noticed in Dictionary of National Biography; a chapter is devoted to him in Joseph Roe, English and AmericanTool Builders (New Haven: Yale University Press, 19 16); anda brief summary of his work is in K. R. Gilbert's chapteron "Machine-Tools'" in A History of Technology, CharlesSinger et al., edit., 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954-1958), vol. 4.108 ,*v.V *^yfc~ fey. /)r^4- U^n^- workmanship, in the most exalted sense of theterm." 141The spirit of Maudslay, one of England'sgreatest craftsmen, was yet fresh in the shops thathe had lately vacated and where work was beingcarried on by his sons and by Joshua Field ( i 787?? 1 863 ), who had worked with Maudslayfor some 27 years.Marc Isambard Brunei (1 769-1849), the re-markable father of the equally remarkableIsambard Kingdom Brunei, was in 1832 en-gaged?almost singlehandedly? in pushing hispioneering tunnel under the Thames. Com-menced in 1825, the work had been stopped in1828 because of lack of funds, and it was not until1835, nearly three years after Sellers's visit, thatthe task was renewed, to be completed in 1843.Brunei's tunnel, now well into its second centuryof use, carries London Transport electric trainsunder the river. 14 -'W HEN DISCUSSING THE ADVISABILITY of going toEngland to investigate the entire subject and learn ifpossible the advantages, if any, over the Americanmachines, Philadelphia was stricken for the first timeby the Asiatic cholera. Having no fear of the disease, I became active in cholera hospital arrangements,and in attending at them. The result was an acuteattack, and I was so utterly prostrated by it that forrecuperation a sea voyage was decided on, and thetrip to England was hastened. It being before the i* 1 James Nasmyth Engineer, an Autobiography, Samuel Smiles,edit. (London, 1883), p. 147.1,1 See Richard Beamish, Memoirs 0/ Sir Marc Isambard Brunei(London, 1862). There is a bibliography in L. T. C. Rolt,Isambard Kingdom Brunei (London: Longmans, Green, 1957) ?&..-' -i a ? S*> a. ?J5?^-c^ Figure 49.?Sellers's sketch of the packetship Hihernia, of the Black Ball Line, in whichhe sailed to England. All studding sails(stuns'ls) were set for a pleasant breeze fromdead astern. In brilliant moonlight, Sellersclimbed out onto the jib boom to get a betterview of the veritable cloud of canvas. FromPeale-Sellers papers, George E. Sellers letterbook containing copies of outgoing letters,1832. Photo courtesy of the AmericanPhilosophical Society Library. day of ocean steamers, three or four weeks on a sailingpacket was deemed sufficient. I arranged to spend at least four months in Englandgiving ample time to see and learn all that wasaccessible in the way of civil and mechanical engi-neering. We had learned through Jacob Perkins andmy friend Joseph Saxton, both then in London, thataccess to many mechanical works was difficult, and,in some cases, impossible for Americans; that BryanDonkin's works that above all others I desired to see,was absolutely closed against all foreigners. BothMr. Perkins and Saxton had frequently met Mr.Donkin in a social way, but had never been invitedto visit his works. In fact, Mr. Saxton had madeapplication without success. My prospect in thatdirection looked dull.My uncle. Rembrandt Peale, the artist, on his re-turn from Italy had spent some time in England, andby invitation visited Sir Walter Scott, at Abbotsford.He said that while there Sir Walter referred to BryanDonkin in the warmest terms of friendship, and offered 109 Mr. Peale an introduction to the man whom heesteemed as a model man for application, energy andsterling honesty. My uncle, in offering me a letterto Sir Walter, suggested that through him I mightget a favorable introduction to Mr. Donkin. Al-though there was no man in England out of my ownline of business that it would have afforded me morepleasure to meet than Sir Walter, I declined, feelinca delicacy of intruding as a mere curiosity hunter. Irefer to this to relate a little incident that occurred onthe outward voyage.About mid-ocean we met a west-bound vessel.Our captain slightly altered his course to come wiihinhailing distance, the answer to which came: "Bark - ? , lumberman, of St. John's, New Bruns-wick; from London; homeward bound." This was at a time of great political excitement in England?inEnglish phraseology, a crisis. Wellington had beeninvited to re-form a cabinet; in answer to the hail of "What political news?" came "Sir Walter Scott isdead;" to the question of "Any other news?" as thedistance increased between the vessels, all we couldcatch of the reply was the reiterated. ""Sir WalterScott is dead." No possible calamity short of totalshipwreck could be greater to the skipper of thelumbering lumber bark than the loss of the authorwhose writing had cheered the hours of his long andtedious voyages. It was a heartfelt tribute to SirWalter Scott. I spent considerable time previous to going toLondon in visiting mines, iron and general mechanicalworks in the vicinity of Manchester, Birmingham,Sheffield and Halifax. At one establishment Ifound them casting of iron, washing and beatingengines [for paper making] the entire cistern in asingle piece. There were no recesses or any provisionfor sand traps. This inclines me to believe that thisimportant attendant to all good beating or washingengines is of American origin where they were incommon use from my earliest recollection, and theseunalterable cast-iron engines were the first I had everseen where they were omitted.During these excursions, which were made underthe most favorable circumstances as to introductions, I had the opportunity of seeing several of Donkin'sFourdrinier machines in operation, and from theowners of two of the mills using them received lettersof introduction to Mr. Donkin, in both cases withoutsolicitation on my part.On my way from Birmingham to London I stopped at Oxford, mainly to see the great printing establish- ments, said at that time to be the finest in the world.To Oxford I was accompanied by a friend from Bir-mingham, who introduced me to Mr. fames Swann,of Ensham. a very courteous gentleman who had twoexpensive paper mills both equipped with Donkin'snewest and most improved machines. He took usto his place where we remained a couple of days visiting with him both of his mills, giving opportunityof learning all then known as to paper making ma-chinery. The beauty of these machines, and greatperfection in performing their work, made me moredesirous than ever to become favorably acquaintedwith Mr. Donkin. It was at these mills that I first saw the Ibotsonpulp dresser, 143 built by Donkin, in use. It only dif-fered from the slit plate pulp dresser in use in theUnited States in being made of separate bars, thespaces between which were regulated by slips of sheetbrass of a thickness to give the space required betweenthe bars. My father had invented and patented inthe United States a pulp dresser that we had suc-cessfully applied between the stuff chest and vat ofthe hand-making paper mills. 144 I took one of theseto England with me, thinking it might be worthsecuring there by patent: at all events it would beuseful as a favorable introduction in obtaining theinformation I was in search of. I sketched for andexplained this device to Mr. Swann. who advisedmy sending the machine to Mr. Donkin, and advisingwith him.He asked me if I was aware that simply exhibitingthe machine would, in case of litigation, be fatal to apatent either issued to the inventor or introducer.On replying that I was fully informed on that sub-ject, he said I would be perfectly safe in consultingMr. Donkin in confidence. He then asked if I had anyfriends in London who could favorably introduce me. I replied no, unless it were John I. Hawkins 145 orMr. Jacob Perkins, or Charles Leslie the artist.He said Mr. Perkins would not do, for he knew Mr.Donkin was jealous of, and prejudiced against, 143 See note 156 below.ui Patented June 6, 1832. No restored drawing exists, butan illustration was published in the Journal of the FranklinInstitute. Sec figure 53.145 Not to be confused with "Old Blind Hawkins." JohnIsaac Hawkins (1 772-1865) was born in England but s| enta considerable part of his life in the United States. He was inLondon a patent agent. He is perhaps best known for hisdesign of an upright piano. See Minutes of the Proceedings oj the Institution oj Civil Engineers (1865), vol. 25, pp. 512-514.110 Americans, and he had reason to think of Mr. Perkinsin particular. As to Mr. Hawkins no one could bebetter, but Hawkins was aged and somewhat infirm,and might not be able to go with me to the works.As to Leslie, he had never heard Mr. Donkin speakof him as an acquaintance, though no doubt he knewhim by reputation. I said that I already had two letters of introductionfrom parties owning and using Fourdrinier machinesmade by him.If open letters of introduction there would be noimpropriety in his asking to see them.When I place them in his hand he glanced at thesignatures and shook his head, saying that my havingreceived the letters I was bound by etiquette todeliver them, but he did not think they would gainmy object. He went to his desk and wrote to Mr.Donkin, placed it in my hands, and asked if it metmy views. He simply told Mr. Donkin, by whom I was introduced to him, that I was engaged inAmerica in the same line of business that he was;that he believed a free interchange of ideas wouldbe mutually beneficial; that he could assure himthat I would not intrude or be inquisitive into anymatters that he was not disposed to communicate.He then advised my going to Mr. Donkin withoutany one with me, and in handing him the lettersto be careful so to place them, that he would belikely to look at the others before opening his; he toldme of many of the little peculiarities of Mr. Donkin,and told me to observe him closely as he read theletters .... [40] After having seen in operation the admirable papermachines, from the Bermondsey works of BryanDonkin & Co., the making his acquaintance, and,if possible, seeing the works was to me the principalobjective point in going to London. And yet I hadbeen there for over a week without having presentedmy letters of introduction. There seemed to be afatality attending every effort I made. There wasalways something of interest to be seen. My friendsmade arrangements and appointments for me that I could not well avoid or put off.Finally, one morning I got ready for an early start,but as I was stepping into a cab I saw my friend,Joseph Saxton, coming in great haste. He said hehad come to take me to the Maudslay Works inLambeth, exactly in an opposite direction fromBermondsey, where I was going. He came with aninvitation from Josiah Field, the surviving partner of Henry Maudslay, the original founder of theworks, who had died about a year previous. Theworks were then beine; carried on l>\ Mr. Field andthe sons of Maudslay.Mr. Saxton said that there was then on the boringmachine the largest steam cylinder ever cast at theworks; that he particularly wanted me to see theboring machine in operation; that they would com-mence taking down to remove from the erectingshop to their destination the largest pair of marineengines they had ever constructed, being estimated, if I recollect right, at some 300 effective horse-power ? mere dolls compared with the marine engines of thepresent day.When I told Mr. Saxton that I was starting forMr. Donkin's works, he replied that I would probablymeet him at Maudslay's, for he knew that he wasexpected to meet a number of prominent persons tosee the marine engines, among others Mr. Barton,director of the Royal Mint, whom Mr. Maudslayand Donkin had been associated with in establishingthe English standard measures, and that Lord Broug-ham would probably be there with Mr. Sharp, theAttorney-General of Barbadoes, and his fellow com-missioner, Mr. Reese, who had been my fellow pas-sengers in crossing the ocean, and whom I hadpromised to notify of my arrival in London, buthad not yet done so. I was curious to meet Lord Brougham, not so muchon account of his being Lord Chancellor, as for hisreputed advanced ideas of civilization and his con-nection with the Penny Magazine which was thenbeing published. Mr. Saxton thought it probable weshould meet some artists whom he knew I was desirous of seeing. The temptation was irresistible; we at once set off for Lambeth, crossing the Thames by theWestminster Bridge; by the early start we would haveconsiderable time to see the works before the arrival ofother sightseers.Mr. Field met us very cordially; showed us the col-lection of Mr. Maudslay's own hand work that hadbeen carefully preserved. The most interesting washis work in producins; a standard screw, and hisoriginal screw cutting lathe, said to lie the father of alllathes, that by a combination of gear wheels and onequide screw any variety of pitch could be produced. 14 "After seeing all that was of interest in this collection.the record of Henry Maudslay's ingenuity, sreat appli- ', I.Ill lit*-. li,iiiiinN'feji'iii'iiiii'.1 1j^i 1 1 Tlie Entrance to theTunnel is near to Rotlier-Church, and nearly ?site to the London-Docks. The nearest land-lace from the rivet isChurch Stairs. The Green-and D< ptforil coae made that legal proceedings were avoided byMr. Donkin replacing the machine I had seen withan lbotson.During about a week that I remained in London. Ihad several very pleasant interviews with Mr. Donkin, all strengthening the opinion I have previouslyexpressed, that he was the most advanced mechanicalengineer of the time, and it is to his inventive ability, zeal and persistent application through a period ofover 30 years, that the world is indebted for the per-fecting of the crude ideas of Robert and Didot, andproducing the self-acting endless web paper machinein such perfection by the year 1832, that in the 54subsequent years no essential changes have been made,and now the great bulk of the paper of the world isproduced on machines substantially as they camefrcm his brain and hands at that early period. [48I 130 17. A Visit to England. IV:Perkins's Adelaide Gallery The actors in this scene we have met before inPhiladelphia. Jacob Perkins, now in his 67thyear, had been in London for 1 3 years. JosephSaxton, who was 33, had been there for about 4years, and during much of that time he had beenworking for Perkins in his National Gallery ofPractical Science, in Adelaide Street, WestStrand.To the dozens of mechanical-wonder exhibitsthat fairly showered from Perkins's hyperactivebrain Saxton had added some of his own. His "paradoxical head" was the carved bust of a Turkso contrived that it remained intact even after asword, wielded by an attendant, had apparentlysevered the head from the neck. He built amagnet that sustained a "weight of 525 pounds.He devised a huge magnetic needle, several feetlong, with a mirror mounted at one end, whichby means of a reflected light beam demonstrated(in the words of Joseph Henry) "on a magnificentscale, the daily and hourly variations of the mag-netic force of the earth." 1MSaxton's "package express," mentioned belowby Sellers, was called by its creator a "locomotivedifferential pulley." The full-scale system con-templated a railway, a carriage, a horse, and adifferential pulley device so arranged that the horse, pulling on the disadvantageous end of arope, could propel the carriage some ten times asfar as he moved, and thus at ten times his own velocity. Patented by Saxton in 1832, " ,5 theinvention was seized upon by John Isaac Hawkins,who laid down in Regent's Park an experimentalrailway upon which to try the scheme.An indignant correspondent of the LondonMechanics' Magazine characterized the contraption as a "friction machine" but the guantlet wascaught up by the mechanically inclined BenjaminCheverton, who, while admitting that Saxton'sscheme might not be economically sound, thoughtthat mechanically it was the best locomotive systemfor railroads that had yet been devised. Perhapsthe horse had the last word. At any rate, theidea produced a fortune neither for its inventornor for its promoter. 160A fundamental contribution to the progress ofelectrical machinery was made by Saxton in 1833when he devised a practical commutating systemfor a "magneto-electrical machine," which wasthe prototype of electrical generators."57 It ispossible that his commutator, which consisted ofof wire-ends dipping successively into a small poolof mercury, was already at work in the "electricmagnetic motor" noticed by Sellers. When i went to London in the fall of 1832 I tooka letter from father to Jacob Perkins. I found him atthe Adelaide Gallery where he seemed to have foundhis true level, the typical showman of that period. 184 Joseph Henry, "Memoir of Joseph Saxton, 1799-1873,"Biographical Memoirs (Washington: National Academy ofSciences, 1877), vol. 1, p. 295.165 British patent 6351, December 20, 1832.166 Mechanics' Magazine (London, 1834), vol. 21, pp. 3-6,106-108. He received me very kindly, said he would haveknown me as the man grown from the boy who askedquestions and would have an explanation of every-thing. He had at that time Joe Saxton as his right 167 Ibid., pp. 66, 96, 333. Mechanics' Magazine reprinted Un-report from the Journal <>f tin- Franklin Institute that told of IsaiahLukens's building a Saxton machine for the Peale Museum andof substitution (by Jacob Green?) of a solid metallic commuta-tor for Saxton's. A careful account of Saxton's machine is inHenry (cited in note 164 above). 131 hand man in his exhibition and it was a very interest-ing one.He had a long water tank in the centre of the roomin which he exhibited various ways of propellingboats. He had one little boat with the ordinarypaddle wheels propelled by clock work. He wouldhave his visitors time it in the long tank and he wouldthen take out the wheels and substitute his featheringwheels in their place. These paddles entered thewater edgewise and came out in the same way, as hesaid "the skillful rower feathered his oar." He hadSaxton's '"package express," an arrangement of cordsover differential wheels the draft being given at theperiphery close to the contact with the rail?a prettyplaything. [49] I do not think Mr. Saxton ever had the idea ofapplying this practically, but merely as an attractivefeature to the exhibition; it certainly caused muchamusement to take hold of the cord, and by a shortdraft hurl the little car from end to end of the longgallery. Saxton also had on exhibition an electricmagnetic motor of his own invention and constructionin which great velocity was obtained, the power beingfrom battery, as in Page's engine, that at that timewas exciting much attention in America. 168 [50][There was also] a hydrostatic machine to measurethe compressibility of fluids; an arrangement ofevaporating pans to show the circulation of water;but the great attraction was his [Perkins's] steamgenerator and steam gun, with which at certainhours or when there were sufficient visitors to witnessit, a stream of leaden bullets would be shot the lengthof the room and flattened and shattered against aniron target. The show never lasted as much as aminute but an almost incredible amount of leadwas shot. The bullets were about l^-inch jn diam-eter. I had notes of the weight of lead thrown in agiven time but I have lost them. His steam generatorinstead of being the round massive tubes used byHawkins, were cast iron and square, as much as 5or 6 inches on a side, the holes through their centresbeing not much if any greater than one inch indiameter. They passed from side to side in layersthrough the fire chamber of his furnace. With everystroke of his force pump a given quantity of water P- 2^4- I must not forget another great attraction. Heinvited visitors to bring with them old steel files andhe would saw them into pieces with a soft wroughtiron toothless saw. I have said that Mr. Perkins received me kindly,and through him and Saxton, who was my almostconstant companion during my stay in London, Iwas favorably introduced to Brunei, Maudslay,Herbert, and many others and I had the opportunityof seeing much that otherwise would have been asealed book to me.On one occasion Mr. Perkins took me to the mansionof Sir Sloan to show me how he had heated thegrand house by a system of hot water circulation. "Time proves everything," was an adage with Perkins,which he repeated many times daily. On showingme the hot water pipes around the washboards of themany apartments he laid great stress on the absolutetightness of all the pipe joints and showed the greatvalue of his double cone connections; here they hadbeen in use for over three years and never a leak. "Time proves all things."Here, as we Americans say, I came near puttingmy foot in it by thoughtlessly remarking, "Yes theyeven stood Hawkins' high pressure."He was ready for me?"Ha-ha you have a goodmemory, don't you recollect that when his pipeflanges blew off that I invented my double cone junc-tion for him." (I have no recollection of any otherconnection. They were certainly the same used inthe Hawkins experiments as I first saw them.)On another occasion he referred to poor Hawkinshaving had the idea of high pressure steam being generated safely by jets of water on highly heatedplates of metal, but it was for him, Perkins, to con-ceive the idea of heating confined water to a veryhigh temperature to flash with steam on its escape.These were the precise ideas I had received from themany talks I had with the poor old blind man whena mere boy ....Having written so much about Perkins, howeverout of place it may be, I cannot refrain from givingthe estimate that by later thought I would give ofthe character of mind of this truly great man, for hemay be said to have stood alone in his line. At thetime of my visit to England, he had been there somethirteen years, the first eight or ten years of which themechanical world had been kept in a feverish state ofexcitement by what Perkins was doing and the effectit would have on the mechanical world.It was never what he had done but what he wasdoing. He had undertaken to do far more than hiscontemporary workers believed to be possible, butthe world at large believed and as his patents wereissued they were capitalized and money for develop-ments flowed in. There can be no doubt he had thefaith himself with which he inspired the public, andwhen all elaborate efforts to demonstrate provedfailures year after year it was natural that his patronsshould drop off and he became as bitter against them as he was laudatory at the time he made them thegift of his minor invention, the riveted hose. Thiswas the state of things at the time of my visit toLondon.His own words to me were, "I was deserted whenon the eve of perfect success as time will prove. I will be vindicated and all the theories I have ad-vanced will be substantiated." He showed me manyof his ingenious devices to overcome difficulties asthey arrived. There was a perfect maze of them andif they could be all brought together and exhibitedthey would establish his character as a man of ex-pedients and extraordinary ingenuity. I will cite butone instance, that of his high temperature steam,which carbonized all piston lubricants. I cannotventure to name all his devices to obviate this?theyeven went to a great number of experiments in metal alloys for metallic packing that would not needlubricating.To sum all up, he certainly filled a useful place inadvancing improvements in steam engines, for hisschemes set many level headed men to thinking in the right direction. [51] 133 .... Wirt Robinson, nephew and chief assistantof Moncure Robinson (who was at that time chiefengineer engaged in the construction of the Richmond& Fredericksburg Railroad of Virginia) was sent toEngland to examine the question of locomotive power,and to contract for engines for that first Virginiarailroad. In company with him, I had visited all theshops that at that time were building locomotives,and he had contracted for several, one of which wasbeing shipped on the Philadelphia packet ship,Algonquin, on which we had taken our homewardpassage.Some accident delayed the starting of the vessel forabout a week; and although we had already beenover the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, all of this week's delay was devoted to examining it and itslocomotives more in detail, often accompanied byengineers connected with the road. We had severalvery pleasant interviews with George Stephenson,who afforded us every facility. At that time he washaving constructed for America a number of fullcrank four-wheel complex locomotives, with thecylinders under the smoke-box, without either trucksor pilot wheels. He explained very fully his train ofreasoning and his experiments that led to his adoption of tubular boilers. He was no doubt the originator ofthe multi-tubular boiler to which the great success of the present system of locomotive engines owes somuch .... [52] Ficure 57.?Saxton's magnetoelectric machine, which wasbuilt for display in the Adelaide Gallery. The machine is adirect-current generator. The commutator consists of disk(e) and double-pointed needle (e'). The lower side of the diskis partly immersed in mercury in the cup (d). A currentpath is completed when a needle point makes contact, duringa part of each half-revolution, with the mercury. FromMechanics' Magazine (London, May 3, 1834), vol. 21. 134 18. An American Counterfeiter It remains for someone more diligent and morepersistent, or perhaps more fortunate, in hissearch than I have been to exhume the externalframework of the rousing good story of intrigueand perilous adventure that follows. The namesof the participants, the exact dates, the locationof the bleak island in the St. Lawrence River near Montreal, and the fate of the others in the coun-terfeiting ring?all these data would be interesting,but our ignorance of them detracts none at allfrom the irrepressible delight with which weread our final lesson in the higher branches of theart of papermaking. .[Nicholas Biddle, then president of the U.S. Bank,had more faith in security against counterfeiting inthe quality of the paper and its water marks, than hehad in the most complicated and elaborate engraving. I have frequently heard him argue that engraving,no matter of what quality, could be secretly imitatedwith but little chance of discovering the operator, butthat a paper that could only be produced by ma-chinery of magnitude and of great cost, beyond thereach of the counterfeiter could not be hid away.Many curious devices in water marking were tried at his suggestion. At one time he brought us aspecimen of French paper with a shaded water mark.It had evidently been made on a vellum-faced mould,most probably of soft copper wire in which undula-tions were formed by dies analogous to those used inembossing paper cards. The pulp deposited in thedepressions made a slight difference in the thickness ofthe paper, which being reduced to the uniformity requisite tc take a fair impression from the engravedplate, by compression in finishing caused the darkshade around the wire water mark sewed in the bot-tom of the depressions. These were very difficultmoulds to make. The under facing or foundationwires that are about ?{ 6-inch apart on the wooden barsof the mould had to be bent by hand to suit the de-pressed portions of the wire face. When these papermoulds were completed Mr. Biddle remarked that he now felt safe against the counterfeiters, for theymust first obtain moulds and then some mill to makethe paper, and he did not believe the owner of anymill in the country could be found so unprincipledas to join them.How little he dreamed of what Yankee ingenuitycould accomplish. Not long after the issue of notesprinted on this security paper, the most perfectcounterfeits the bank ever had to contend with wereput in circulation.It was several years before it was learned how thecounterfeiters had obtained the peculiar water-markedpaper, in fact not until the old United States Bank hadbecome a Pennsylvania State Institution, 169 and whenthe facts were learned it was in so singular a waysavoring more of romance than reality that I must beexcused for what may run into a long digression inrelating them.During the frequent conferences with Mr. NicholasBiddle, in hope of reaching some mode of preventingcounterfeiting bank notes, I learned in confidencemuch of what had been done in the detective line andits results by an unsuspected officer of the bank whoseposition was high, and who had become so much in-terested in the pursuit that in disguise he affiliated 1,19 This is probably the date from which one must start in orderto track down court records. The United States Bank wassucceeded by The Bank of the United States of Pennsylvaniaon March i, 1836. 135 with some of the most desperate counterfeiters of theperiod: although both he and Mr. Biddle havepassed away, reasons still exist why he must remainnameless. It was through his machinations that themost expert engraver and counterfeiter this countryhad ever produced was arrested with all his tools andmachinery, including a simple and most ingeniouseccentric lathe with which he reproduced the workof Spencer's mole lathe, that had never before beendone by counterfeiters. The man was convicted andsentenced to the Eastern Pennsylvania penitentiary fora term that, at his age, amounted to a life sentence.The judge in passing sentence, in my judgment,committed a most unpardonable vandalism in order-ing the destruction of the unique eccentric lathe andother ingenious appliances, and in seeing the ordercarried out with the exception of a few burins andother small tools, which Samuel R. Wood, the thenWarden of the Eastern Penitentiary, preserved.Mr. Wood was a Quaker, and a most kindly dis-posed man; he became interested in his prisoner andhad wormed out something of the early history of thisingenious mechanic who had gone astray?"throughforce of circumstances that should be taken into con-sideration when judging the man." These were Mr.Wood's own words when expressing to Mr. Biddle hisbelief that if by promises of shortening his term byprocuring a pardon, his confidence could be gained,much valuable information tending towards the sup-pression of counterfeiting would result from it, butwithout some such course he was satisfied the im-prisonment would be of short duration; for labor theman was listlessly picking oakum, and physicallyrapidly sinking. Mr. Biddle thought the experimentworth a trial. Soon after Mr. Wood reported thathe had made no progress; he had tried kindness, butthe man had become more reticent; to all his advanceshe only received muttered monosyllabic replies. I suggested that he might probably be reached bygiving him more congenial employment than oakumpicking, and proposed substituting die sinking such aswas then coming into use for stamping the corner ofnote and letter papers. Provided with samples andsuch tools of his as Mr. Wood had preserved, with him I had my first interview with the man in his solitary cell; he was sitting on the side of his cot, his fingerslocked together clasping his knees, a bundle of partlypicked oakum lay by him; as we entered the cell heglared at us; his high narrow receding forehead,aquiline nose, thin tightly-compressed lips, deep set136 piercing eyes gave him more the appearance of acaged eagle than a human being.Mr. Wood explained that I had proposed work thathe might find relief from oakum picking. He wantednone of it, nothing could kill time; at first he refusedto listen to me; when he saw the kind of work hedenied having the ability to do it; he had never doneit or seen it done.Then looking at me he burst forth in a perfecttorrent. "Can you tell me what became of that red-haired fellow who was taken with me; he fought theofficers like a very devil, and yet, though I know hewas secured and ironed, he was not brought to trialwith me; I see it all now, he was a fraud, it was a trickto trap me; if I was only free for a day, and could getmy hands on him, his life should pay for it, and Iwould die contented."Mr. Wood, to quiet him, said the man had a sepa-rate trial, and had been sentenced to a long term.His reply was: "I don't believe a word of it, he wastoo smart for that; he was a splendid fellow with hispen; he never had his equal and never will again; hecould raise a note that would defy detection." I took from my pocket and held towards him his oldburins and other small tools; he seized them withtrembling hands, he fondled them as if they wereliving; their touch seemed to have totally changed theman?for when Mr. Wood took them from him, ex-plaining that they could not be left with him, he atonce agreed to try his hand at the work I proposed.In addition to his little tools he would require a lighthammer, a small oil stone, a bench or stool with clampor vise to work on. It was arranged that the dies anddesigns should be prepared.His sentence, in accordance with the Pennsylvaniasystem, was solitary confinement with labor. Hoursfor this new work were arranged, during which aguard was to be with him, who was to deliver to himthe tools and work, taking them away at the expira-tion of the time. After leaving the cell, Mr. Woodsaid it was necessary for him to have the consentof the prison inspectors for this change of labor; as tothat, he had no doubt they would meet the eveningbefore the time fixed on to initiate the man at his new-work.When I went to the penitentiary with the dies anddesigns, Mr. Wood informed me that he had beenunsuccessful in obtaining the concurrence of theinspectors, who believed the kind of work would keepthe man in practice, and that on the expiration of hissentence he would resume his old business. Mr. Wood considered this absurd; for, said he, if the man livesand serves out his term, he will he considerably overeighty years of age.The inspectors would not give way. Mr. Wood hadnot told the man of this decision, and preferred that I should do so, in hopes that by showing him the dies,and the preparations that had been made, he mightbe induced to talk more freely than he had done. Asthis was the last interview I had with him, and whatwas learned and resulted from it so far exceeded ourexpectations, that to be understood it seems necessaryto state some things that had been learned in regardto the man and his work, through Mr. Biddle'samateur detective, and one of the hair-breadth escapeshe made when in this pursuit, and the mode by whichthe man was finally secured.Reliable facts learned were that, although the manwas living among counterfeiters, and with themfrequently shifting from place to place, he confinedhimself to certain portions of the work on the spuriousplates, for fixed considerations, always exacting hispay in genuine money; that, when flush, he wouldsometimes go on protracted sprees until his moneywas exhausted, when he would return to his work;that, when on these spells of reckless dissipation, thecounterfeiters kept a strict surveillance over him,fearing that in his drunken orgies he might divulgeimportant secrets; that at that time he was with partof the gang working in a shanty on an island on theSt. Lawrence River; there the bank officer went,accompanied by a member of the band, and armedwith a forged letter of introduction, purporting to havebeen written by the master spirit of the gang as he wasleaving the country for an absence of some weeks,representing him to be an expert penman, whowould prove to be a valuable auxiliary. After a fewexhibitions of his ability, he was heartily receivedamong them, and for some days worked alongsideof the man he had ventured so much to secure.He soon made himself familiar with all theirappliances, and learned many important secrets; buthe failed to find any way of convicting without his owntestimony, and to give that, divulging his identity asa bank officer, would simply be signing his own deathwarrant; for such was the desperate character of thegang.Feeling greatly discouraged, not knowing whichway to turn, early one evening he threw himself intohis bunk, in the working room, only separated fromthe living room by a thin board partition. He fellinto a troubled sleep, from which he was awakened by unusual sounds from the adjoining room. He wassoon aware that there was an unexpected arrival; hedistinctly heard an unfamiliar voice say: "This letteris a forgery; I gave no one an introduction; the manis a fraud or a detective, and we must run no risks;we must 'fix' him at once, so he can tell no tales."This was hint enough; and he was not slow to acton it. He slipped out of a window, and although theriver was running full of cakes of floating ice, hethrew his boots and hat on the bank and took to thewater. It was a desperate swim. But fortune favoredhim; for after over an hour battling with the cakes ofice, he landed on the Canadian shore, fully two milesbelow, nearly frozen to death, but, fortunately, neara cabin, to which he dragged himself, and foundshelter for the night. A spurious story of wreck ofboat and loss of companion satisfied the simplepeople, who gave him a bed, and while he sleptdried his clothes. In the early morning, a store at anear railroad station furnished boots, hat and arough overcoat?a little money paid for servicesrendered him, and before night he was comfortablein the St. Lawrence Hotel at Montreal, where he hadleft his baggage, when he started on this desperateisland adventure.For safety it was necessary that the counterfeitersshould have evidence of his having been drowned.Keeping his room for a few days, consulting withthe head of the police and a prominent member ofthe medical faculty, a corpse was procured, dressedin the clothes he wore on his escape from the island.In the pockets were put such small tools as wouldidentify the body, which was represented as havingbeen taken from the ice in the river.The knowledge obtained on the island enabledthe police to make a certainty of having some ofthe gang view it, as well as the clothes and pocketfindings. This being done, the bank officer was safe,as the sequel proved; for, within a year, in the guiseof a manufacturer of spurious money, and an expertin raising notes to a higher denomination, he wasagain in contact with the man? this time at Charles-ton, S.C. He then, by a liberal advance of moneyand promises of high price for work, induced theman to come to Philadelphia, where he representedthat he had rooms in which the work could be done,so arranged as to defy detection.The first lathe work required was for a Sio billof the LTnited States Bank. This he refused to do,but would execute entire a $5 bill, saying that bythe Bank charter they were prohibited using notes137 of a less denomination than $10 after a certain date;that imitating an illegal issue was not counterfeiting.It was while the proof impressions of the $5 bill werebeing taken that the police broke in, securing bothemployer and workmen, with all the machineryand tools, and a partly-finished plate of $10 denomi-nation, found on the work-bench. I have seen the room where the work was done, andthe arrest made, and all the ingenious devices forconcealing work, machinery and tools, and thearrangement for escape of operators, apparentlyperfect, but which proved as perfect a trap as couldbe devised. When the man sprang for what hebelieved a certain way to escape, and was met byrevolvers in the hands of resolute men, it was naturalthat his suspicion of treachery should center on hisred-haired employer and fellow workman, who hesaw so desperately struggling with his captors. [53]When entering the counterfeiter's cell in companywith Mr. Wood, with the prepared work in my hands,there was a gleam of satisfaction on the man's face,but when he was shown the preparations that hadbeen made, and then told of the decision the inspectorshad come to, the change was instantaneous to that ofutter despondency. He muttered, "Then I must tryand be content with oakum picking these long, longdays, until death relieves me; but there is nothing in it to employ the mind and bring a single moment ofthe rest of forgetfulness." I said to him that it had occurred to me that a manwho had shown such ingenuity as he had in producingthe facsimile of Spencer's scroll lathe work couldmake such valuable suggestions in the direction ofpreventing counterfeiting as would excite an interestin a direction that might shorten his term of imprison-ment and find him employment that would put himbeyond the necessity of pursuing so dangerous abusiness as engraving for counterfeiters.His reply was: "There is no use in it. for there isnothing, no matter how complex, that one man or set of men can do, but others can and will be foundto duplicate it." I explained to him Mr. Biddle's idea that the greatestprotection might be in a kind or quality of paper thatcould not be produced without extensive works andcostly machinery that could not be worked secretly.This brought the first semblance of a smile that Ihad seen on the man's face, as he said: "I supposeMr. Biddle felt secure with his shaded, water-markedpaper; that no paper-maker could lie found to imitate it. Why, I made that paper in a room not over 12feet square, with only two wash tubs, a bucket, abasin, a plain wire-faced mould, just large enough tomake a sheet for three bank notes, a common copyingpress, a few small sheets of polished zinc, and I cutup a well-worn woolen blanket for felts. By soakingand reducing to pulp a piece of the genuine banknote to be imitated, with my microscope I found thecharacter of the linen fiber and the shreds of crimsonfloss silk, and their relative proportions in its compo- sition. I found on sale a strong, heavy linen paper,hand-made, with a fiber closely resembling that of thebank note. I bought a quantity of it, soaked it inone of my tubs, changing the water to get rid of theanimal sizing, and by hand reduced it to pulp. Thethreads of silk I got by folding and scraping on myknee a crimson silk pocket-handkerchief, just as lintis scraped. My second tub I used as a vat to mixthe pulp to the proper consistency to form the paperwhen I dipped my mould."On my remarking that he must have had someknowledge of paper-making, his reply was: "A little.Before I was apprenticed to the tannery, I was thelayman's assistant in a hand-making paper mill; Icarried the wet sheets and hung them in the dryingloft. I tried my hand at couching, and occasionallythe vatman allowed me to dip a sheet or two."But you said you used plain moulds; how did youmake the shaded water-mark with them? "Oh, that was simple enough. It was evident thedark shade was from a slight thickening of the paperwhen formed on the mould by depressions in its face,and which, to take a uniform impression from thecopper plate, must be reduced to an even thicknessby pressure, which so consolidates the fiber in thethickened portions as to produce the dark shade. Ishould have adopted that way, but I noticed on thesheets of paper I bought some darker shades that heldthe same relative position on several of the sheets, butnot on all of them. They were not like the spotscaused by water dripping from the deckel whenremoved by a careless vatman. If from indentationsor undulations in the wire cloth I should most prob-ably have found the same shades in all the paper Ibought, but no paper-maker would allow unevenface moulds to be used. There must De some othercause." "I asked myself the question: what would be the effect if a careless workman allowed some spots of hismould-face to become clogged, and the intersticesbetween the wires closed on the distribution of the 138 pulp or filter as the water drained from it.' Shellacvarnish and a camel's-hair brush soon solved thequestion, and I was not long in finding what portionof the wire face in connection with the wire water-mark must be closed to produce the shading." Hethen added, "Explain this to Mr. Nicholas Biddle,and he will see how futile any effort at producing awater-marked paper that cannot be imitated willprove; there are more ways of killing a dog than byhanging him."At this stage of the interview Mr. Wood left mealone with the man, afterwards explaining that as Ihad struck a chord that had made the man moretalkative than he had ever been, his presence mightbe a restraint. After he left, I again expressed regret at the decision of the Inspectors; that I had hopedwhile working on the dies, to have seen him frequently,and learned his ideas as to the best mode of preventingcounterfeiting, which would have been used, as I hadsuggested, to his advantage, but as he was not allowedto do that kind of work this would be the last time Ishould see him, and that I was sorry I could not sayto Mr. Biddle that he would co-operate with him inhis efforts to produce a note that could not be counter-feited, even though he believed that not to be possible.Naming Mr. Biddle seemed to rouse a very demonwithin him, for he passionately exclaimed: "NicholasBiddle is the last man I would have anything to dowith. It was his red-haired emissary that houndedme to where you see me. 1 am what is called anunbeliever. There is not a particle of superstition inme, and yet all the time that fellow was winding mearound him, helping me to perfection in my work, I had the feeling that we had met before. I shouldhave seized and throttled him, and charged him withhaving tried to trap me on an island in the St. Law-rence, but I believed that I had ocular proof that thefellow was drowned. I saw his mutilated remains inMontreal. I saw the clothes he had on when heattempted to escape from the island by swimming the river. I saw some of my own tools that were takenfrom his pockets when he was dragged from amongthe cakes of ice in the river. If there is a devil thatcan take a human form, these two men were the sameand that devil."After he had quieted a little. I again advised hisconsidering the possibility of obtaining a pardon byaiding in the efforts making to prevent counterfeiting. "No use, no use; you are asking me to do what isimpossible." He then added, "I know from what youhave said that you believe, with my ability, I might have had wealth and position by an honorable course,but you do not know how I was wronged by men thenin high position, my family reduced to poverty, mycharacter traduced, nor how sweet revenge is. Iswore to have it, and I have kept my oath. Bycounterfeits undetected I broke their institution andreduced them as low as they did me, but at what acost. For over thirty years I have been dead to myfamily and connections; I have lived the life of a dog; I have recklessly squandered all I ever made by hardwork and degradation to utter misery; when en-trapped I had no means for my defense, and wasdeserted by the cowards I had made rich, and hadbecome bound to and entangled with beyond a possi-bility of es-cape. All they did for me was to procureindirectly the attorney that defended me, but it wasof no use. That $5 plate would not have convictedme, but that devil had placed among my things thepart finished Sio plate that I had refused to work on,and that I now am convinced was a genuine platebelonging to the bank."Thinking he had exhausted himself, I was about sig-naling the corridor walker to notify Mr. Wood that I was ready to leave, when he stopped me, sayingthat if I knew the circumstances that led him intoalmost a life-course and his present position, I wouldnot judge him so hardly. He had long ago resolvedwhat was left in memory of his early life should diewith him; but since he had been talking to me, hehad been seized with the feeling that he must unburdenhimself, not in justification, for that was not possible,but in case of his death, which he hoped and believedwould be soon; circumstances might occur that whathe proposed to communicate might be used in a wayto make some amends for his many misdeeds. Withthe long story that with marvellous volubility hepoured into my ear, we have nothing to do here, saveone point, showing what apparent trifles change man'sdestiny.When depending on daily labor to support hisfamily, he was in Boston. Wishing to take somepresent to his wife, he found that after paying stage-coach fare for over 100 miles to his home, he had justmoney enough left to purchase a set of silver tea-spoons; but there was no time to have initials engravedon them before the stage would start. The silversmith gave him a burin, showed how to hold and use it. told him to smooth off the face of a copper cent topractice on it before attempting to letter the spoons.He was so successful that his neighbors were glad tohave him letter their spoons, thimbles, etc. Then139 came names on dog collars, and finally, as a business,engraving plates for visiting cards, in what time hehad from his labor in a tannery. This was his firststep into a course of retaliation and revenge againstthe heads of the institution that he accused of havingwronged him, whom he referred to in his previousoutbreak.The earnestness and fluency in telling his story wassuch that under ordinary circumstances would havecarried conviction of its truthfulness, but I could not rid myself of the feeling that it was the outpouring ofa diseased brain, and so represented it in repeatinghis story to Mr. Wood. But he took a different view;he thought an investigation following the hints givenwould develop more truth than fiction; at all eventswe must fully report to Mr. Biddle. When that wasdone Mr. Biddle agreed with Mr. Wood, and under-took to have as thorough an investigation made aspossible.About this time there came from John Dickinson,of London, specimens of his machine made safetypaper, in which shreds of crimson floss silk were intro-duced between two laminae leaving the surfacesmooth and free to take the impression from thecopper plate, instead of being mingled with the pulp,and thus incorporated in the body of the paper aswas practiced in America. The samples were ob-jectionable on account of being thicker than was usedfor American bank notes. But Mr. Biddle's activemind at once suggested the possibility of introducingbetween the laminae the fine fibres of crimson silk sowoven as to form devices somewhat similar to lineengraving, and from the device in one note to pass tothe next either in straight or winding lines, so thatwhen the notes were cut apart the silk could be seenin the edges. That if that could be accomplished aperfect safety paper would be the result. Muchthought was expended on this idea, as the devicesmust be formed and inserted simultaneously with thepaper making, and for this costly and complicatedmachinery would be required. This met Mr. Biddle'sviews, for in its complication and costliness he lookedfor safety; sufficient advance in plans was made toshow the thing to be possible, and approximate esti-mates of mill and machinery were made, when theentire scheme was abandoned in consequence of ahand-made specimen to show what the general ap-pearance of the center silk marked paper would be.This specimen did not carry out the idea of formingthe devices of many filaments of silk that would passfrom the device in one note to the next either in straight or waved lines that would show a floss edgewhen cut apart, but was made by a single strand,showing what could be produced without the aid ofthe machinery, that Mr. Biddle was looking to as thegreatest safeguard. He pronounced the specimenbeautiful, much beyond what he anticipated, but atthe same time it was to his mind confirmatory ofwhat the convict had said: "That what one mancould do others could and would be found to dupli-cate."The manner the specimen (Roman letters U.S.with a spread eagle between them) was made verysimple. A plate of transparent glass had 17? floatedover it, that, when dried, left a thin pellicle that wasneither adhesive nor absorbent; over this was floatedan adhesive gelatine so deliquescent that by breathingon it its surface became very sticky. This plate whenprepared was laid over a clearly drawn design, thenwith a hollow pointed handle or pencil, similar to theever-pointed lead pencil, a fiber of crimson silk froma freely turning spool in the handle took the place ofthe lead; the end of this fiber was pressed on andsecured to the gelatine by a needle point in the lefthand, the fiber being drawn from the pencil as ittraced the design by gently breathing directly downon the plate; the gelatine was kept sticky and heldthe silk; partially embedding it; in making shortturns when filling in the design with delicate traceriesthe needle point had frequently to be used, when thedesign was complete: for security, a dilute float ofgelatine was given. The next operation was at apaper mill at the time making bank note paper; avery thin sheet was crushed on the post of felts, fannedfor a few minutes to consolidate and partially dry it,then the silk design on the glass plate was crushed onto it transferring the silk from the plate to the paper;the perfect transfer was a delicate matter, and involvedseveral failures. After being successfully made, a thinsheet was crushed onto it. The manner of finishing,getting rid of the excess of gelatine size, etc., is need-less to refer to here. At the time the scheme wasabandoned I thought it too hastily done; for I thenand still believe it was in the right direction. Theproposed use of many hundred filaments in formingthe devices, with the floss edge to the notes could onlybe produced by complicated and costly machinery,and could not be imitated bv hand. i" A word apparently was omitted here. The material thatwas floated over the glass plate to produce the "thin pellicle"is unknown.140 I think it was about two years later that my sister,on her return from England, told me that on visitinga great institution she was taken into the engravingroom, shown some exquisite machine work, and intro-duced to the maker and inventor as an American.She said his sharp features, deep-set, piercing eyesnever could be forgotten. On some reference beingmade to Philadelphia, he asked if she was acquaintedthere. On her replying that it was her native city,he asked if she had ever met me.When she told him I was her brother he gave hera piercing look, turned to his table, wrote a word ortwo on a scrap of paper, folded and handed it to her,saying: "Hand this to your brother, and say to himno deeds or words can express the gratitude I owehim; say all is well with me, he will be glad toknow it."Supposing the paper to be only the man's name,she put it unopened in her pocket-book. When shedescribed her interview, the man and his work, and I opened the slip of paper and found on it only fiveletters, the surname under which the counterfeiterwas convicted; who I supposed, if not dead, wasserving his long term in the Eastern Penitentiary ofPennsylvania, I was amazed, as no other man couldanswer the description given. I went to Mr. Biddle to learn if he could throw anylight. On my reporting what I had learned frommy sister, he said he was glad to have her confirma-tion to reports he had from London, and then wenton to say that he thought he had told me the result ofthe inquiries he set on foot that had confirmed muchof the man's story to be true. That about that timehe had a letter from his London correspondent, whowas the head of the institution my sister referred to,asking if he knew any man in America competentto do certain portions of the mechanical engraving,that could be induced to go to England; he had re-plied that the only man he knew was serving a longterm in the penitentiary for counterfeiting; that hetold as much of the man's story as he felt at liberty to, and said his belief was if the man could be releasedby pardon, taken away from all his former associates,placed in a position that would supply his wantsunder such surveillance as he would have in theirinstitution, he believed he could fill the place to theirsatisfaction.The reply came that, if the pardon could be ob-tained, they would take the risk. With this letterMr. Biddle had personally gone to the Governor,represented the case, obtained the pardon, placed theman in charge of a trusty employe, who never lethim out of sight until he left the steamer by the pilotboat outside the port of New York. All the accountsMr. Biddle had received from London were favorable. I will only add that his course was such that gainedhim confidence and respect; and when unable fromage?probably premature, from early dissipation?toperform his work, he was maintained in comfortablecircumstances by the institution he had faithfullyserved. Although it is now over fifteen years sincehis death occurred, reasons still exist why I am notat liberty to name him.It affords me pleasure to pay a just tribute to thenoble trait in Mr. Nicholas Biddle, who, so long asit was for the interest of the United States Bank, un-tiringly pursued the man known to be the mostexpert and dangerous counterfeiter of the time, butbelieving in reformation, rather than vindictivepunishment, after the man had received a just sen-tence, instead of dismissing the matter from his mind,continued his investigations until he felt the worldwould be the gainer of the man's ingenuity if properlydirected. He then lifted him out and gave him achance, with the result as I have shown. I speak knowingly when I say that during the mostprosperous days of the United States Bank, withMr. N. Biddle at its head, the internal improvements of the country, the prosperity of the manufacturerand producers, even to the humblest mechanic,found in him a friend and aider. [54] 141 Part IIIInternal Improvements At the time of Sellers's birth, in 1808, the first halting steps were being made toward a system of internal improvements. Along the eastern seaboard, roads of a sort existed, although nearly all commerce and many passengers were still carried in sailing vessels wherever navigable waters permitted. Many of the better roads wereowned and operated by turnpike companies. It was possible to go by coach fromPhiladelphia to New York in a single day if one started before dawn and kept to theroad until after dark. Two days were required to travel the 100 miles from Phila-delphia to Baltimore. A few turnpikes, such as the gravelled road from Philadelphiato Lancaster, tentatively probed the interior of the great continent.When the traveler approached the foothills of the Alleghenies, however, he foundthe going from rough to impossible. Emigrants, hauling families and belongingswestward over the mountains, often were forced to add their brawn to that of theirhorses in order to drag their vehicles through the bottomless, sticky mud. Stagepassengers frequently walked while the stage wagon was dragged along at a pacediscouragingly slow. 171In 1808, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin laid before Congress a report calling for federal appropriations of nearly $20 million for roads and canals sufficient,in his considered opinion, to link the eastern seaboard with the western rivers andGreat Lakes. 172 However, except for the National Road, finally completed fromCumberland, Maryland, to Springfield, Ohio, and partially completed as far ascentral Illinois, none of the many internal improvements that were undertaken duringsucceeding decades were paid for with federal funds. State governments were forcedto engage in some works whose size or complexity exceeded the resources of privatecompanies. The Erie Canal, begun in 181 7 and opened in 1825, was a New YorkState work. The Pennsylvania thoroughfare from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, com-bining canal, railroad, and inclined planes, was commenced soon after the Erie Canalwas finished.The Sellers brothers, George Escol and Charles, built two locomotives for thePhiladelphia and Columbia Railroad, which formed the eastern division of the Penn-sylvania works. Through his former schoolmates William Milnor Roberts andSolomon White Roberts, who were civil engineers on the remarkable Portage Rail-road, which scaled the Alleghenies between Hollidaysburg on the east and Johns-town on the west, George Escol was thoroughly conversant also with that part ofthe great undertaking.Sellers sets the stage, in the following chapter, for his experiences with railroads,locomotives, and locomotive builders. 171 A graphic description of conditions in Pennsylvania in 1817 is in Henry B. Fearon, Sketches of America, 3d ed. (London, 1819), pp. 184-196.172 American Stale Papers, 38 vols. (Washington, 1832-1861), class 10, miscellaneous, vol. 1, pp.724-921. 143 19. Stage Lineto Washington The trip described here, from Philadelphia toWashington, may have occurred early in 1832.The railroad from New Castle, on the Delaware,to Frenchtown, below Elkton on the Elk River,was opened for horse-drawn traffic in 1 83 1 ; locomotives were placed on the road in 1832. 173When the rivers were open for navigation, thetraveler boarded a steamboat in Philadelphia, steamed down the Delaware to New Castle,changed to horse cars which took him overland toFrenchtown, and in another steamboat continuedhis passage down the Elk River, across ChesapeakeBay, and up the Patapsco River to Baltimore.In winter, the only public conveyances availablewere stagecoaches or, as in the present case, open-front sleighs. Trom the commencement of the New York andErie Canal by the State in 181 7 until its completion,it was looked at with no little jealousy by the Middleand Seaboard Southern States, because, if successful,it would change the stream of immigration throughthem that was at that time peopling the valleys of thegreat western rivers. It was therefore not surprisingthat the question of maintaining their position madethat of internal improvement in transportation theparamount one of the day. I remember well that thiswas almost the absorbing subject of conversationamong all classes. Steamboats on the rivers had donemuch; still more was required ....What Philadelphian, whose recollection extendsback over a period of fifty years, does not rememberthe streams of produce-loaded great Conestoga wagonswith their high, hooped white canvas covers or roofs,drawn by teams of four or six horses, that poured overthe Lancaster pike into the city? These, in seasons ofhard, dry roads, to avoid the payment of toll, cameby way of the West Chester or other dirt roads, leavingin their wake for miles and miles clouds of almostimpenetrable dust. These great wagons, backed to 1,3 Bulletin of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society (1935),no - 38. pp. 60-61. See also U.S. Treasury Department's "Report on the Steam-Engines in the United States," H. Ex.Doc. 21, 25th Cong., 3d sess., pp. 9, 198.144 the curb on both sides of Market Street?the mainthoroughfare of the city and one of its widest streets ? their poles all slewed to an angle of some 45 , pointingin the same direction; the great feeding trough, thatwas carried hung on the back of the wagon, affixed onthe pole, with horses on either side, feeding; turningmany blocks of the main street into a horse stable,leaving scarce passing room for vehicles between thisCheval-de-jrise of wagon poles. At that time, with theexception of the commerce on the rivers, the entireproduce of the country and return merchandise wasmoved in road-wagons by horse-power.The journey from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in thefast mail coach was a fearful undertaking of threedays and two nights. Six passengers were crampedin a coach, with mail pouches filling all proper legroom. Rather more comfort was to be had in theslower nine-passenger coach. 174The journey from New York to Washington was nomean undertaking, though, when navigation was 171 VV. Hassell Wilson, in his "Notes on the Internal Im-provements of Pennsylvania" (Philadelphia, 1879, reprintedfrom articles in Railway World in 1878), p. 32, mentioned an 1 83 1 announcement in Pittsburgh newspapers of the "Reeside,Slaymaker & Co." express stage, seating six passengers, makingthe trip from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia in 2'? days, and aslower stage requiring four days. Western Div.Canal Alle-ghenyPortage Eastern DivisionCana I Phila. & ColumbiaRailroad Figure 58.?Map of State of Pennsylvania showing system of canals andrailroads from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, 1834. open, it was greatly eased by the steamboat from NewYork to New Brunswick, and from Trenton toPhiladelphia on the Delaware. This was called theUnion, or Stevens and Stockton Line. At the timeof strong competition between it and the Citizens',or Gibbons', Line?that ran steamboats from NewYork to South Amboy, stages to Bordentown, andboats from there to Philadelphia?the furious drivingon the coaching part of the line in clouds of dust wasfearful; but the distance from city to city was madeby daylight. Now it is made by rail in two hours.From Philadelphia to Baltimore, by steamboat onDelaware to New Castle, from which place stagecoaches had given place to four-wheel cars drawn byhorses on a light strap rail on wooden stringers toFrenchtown, from there by steamboat to Baltimore,the time being about two hours longer than from NewYork to Philadelphia; the time from Baltimore toWashington by stage was about 3% hours. This was summer travel; but in the winter, when the riverswere frozen, the entire distance had to be traveled instage coaches.On one occasion, when this state of affairs existed, I was obliged to go from Philadelphia to Washington,and thought myself very fortunate to be of a partywith Mr. Reeside, the proprietor of the line, and atthat time one of the largest mail contractors andstage line owners in the United States. 175 He promisedus a quick trip, with relays of his best teams, thehardest stage to be with six instead of four horses.We left Philadelphia an hour before daylight, in anopen front coach on sleigh runners. The day wasvery cold, and before we reached Elkton, Md., adriving, blinding snowstorm set in, steadily increasingin violence. It was long after dark when we got to 175 "James Reeside, U.S. Mail Contractor, 28 S. 3d St."{Philadelphia Directory, 1830). 145 the Susquehanna, opposite Havre de Grace. Theriver was frozen, and had to be crossed on the ice. 176There were sleds to be pushed by men, or drawn bya single horse to a sled; these were to take over themail, passengers, and baggage of the six coaches thathad left Philadelphia in the morning. Of these, theReeside coach was the only one that had arrived.Some of the sled men refused to venture in thestorm; all considered it dangerous. The road trackswere covered by the falling snow; gaping airholeswere on every side; the night very dark, the drivingsnow blinding, and the only guide the sound of aconstantly-tolling bell on the Havre de Grace side.Mr. Reeside encouraged us to venture, and advisedwalking behind the sleds instead of riding on them.He had confidence in the men taking us safely overin this way. All but two passengers, who refused togo before daylight, started.When about midway of the river, the bell eitherstopped tolling, or its sound was carried by on thewind that had increased to almost a gale. Soon thesled pushers, that had kept well together, becameconfused and called a halt; then, by the dim light ofpoorly-constructed candle lanterns, they groped about,feeling with their hands in a vain hope of finding oldtracks in the ice. They were evidently off of the road.Mr. Reeside urged them to push on, offering to takethe lead with only the direction of the fiercely-blowingnortheast wind for his guide. No one of the party-had a compass. The men, knowing the danger ofthe airholes, held back. "Then," said Reeside, "stamp about and keepyour blood circulating, or you will all freeze." Hethen sat down on a sled, pulled off one of his heavyboots, thrust into it some crumpled newspaper andsheltering a lantern from the wind under his cloak, set fire to the paper. As it blazed he shook it aboutin the boot, which, when well heated, he pulled on tohis foot; then went through the same operation forthe other foot. Several of the party followed his ex-ample. It was a lesson that I have profited by severaltimes since. His next move was to demolish a sled 178 The river was bridged at Havre de Grace in 1867. SeScientific American (June 1, 1867), vol. 16, pp. 348-350. to make a fire, but before it was kindled the windlulled, and we again heard the tolling of the bell. Itwas then evident that the pushers had got consider-ably off the track. By slow and cautious work theylanded us safely. There was not a temperance mem-ber of that party who refused a hot whiskey punch ofReeside's brewing, to brace and warm up while a hotsupper was preparing. We afterwards learned thatthe rest of the stages had been stopped by the storm,and laid over for the night at Elkton.From Havre de Grace to Baltimore in regular stagecoach, arriving there after daylight, and Washingtonby noon?over thirty hours of hardship in accomplish-ing what is now done within five hours on the rail-road, regardless of the seasons, with ease and comfortto the traveler. This is what the country owes to thelabor and skill of its civil and mechanical engineers,backed by the capital of far-seeing men, who were toreap the profits from its accomplishment.At the time I am writing of, Pittsburgh and Wheel-ing were great distributing centers for what was thenconsidered a vast emigration to the Western Terri-tories and new States. They were fast settling in andfilling the valleys of the great rivers, the naturalroadways. On reaching these places on the rivertheir hardest labor was over. The keel boat, theflat, and the few steamboats then running were forthose who had the means to use them, and those whohad not, built for themselves small family boats,often not over 4 or 5 feet by 10 or 12 feet, protectedby bent poles and wagon covers from the weather.In this way thousands moved to their destined newhomes. I have seen more than a score of thesefloating tents gliding down the stream, or tied up tothe shore, by camp fires to cook their family meals,within a single reach of the crooked Ohio. The bulkof these emigrants had come from across the ocean.The most thrifty moved with wagons and teams, buta large portion, with a single horse attached to acrazy cart or wagon, and not infrequently a favoritecow, brought from the old country, in the shafts, didthe duty of a horse in hauling the household goods,and occasionally a helping lift to the mother and herinfant, all the rest of the family tramping onfoot .... [55] Editor's Note: In addition to the published works cited in chapters 20-24, a large and important body of manuscript materialon the Pennsylvania works is in the Pennsylvania State Archives. See Hubertis M. Cummings, Pennsylvania Board of CanalCommissioners' Records . . . Descriptive Index (Harrisburg, Pa.: State of Pennsylvania, Department of Internal Affairs, 1959),235 PP- 146 20. Philadelphia andColumbia Railroad Work on the Pennsylvania improvements startedin 1826. 177 Stirred to action by the evidentadvantages to New York of the Erie Canal, andfearing loss of western trade that funneled throughthe seaport city of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvanialegislature had in 1824 formed a canal commissionwhose duty it was to determine a route for acontinuous canal from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.Reporting back to the legislature early in 1825,the commission recommended a crossing of theAllegheny mountains that required, in additionto innumerable locks, a tunnel some four mileslong. By 1826, the possibility was being con-sidered of a portage railroad over the mountains.After several surveys had been made by variousengineers, construction of a system of inclinedplanes with connecting graded railways wasundertaken in 1831. Meanwhile, portions of the canals of the centraland western portions of the Pennsylvania workswere placed under contract. In 1828 the legis-lature authorized construction of a railroad overthe eastern division, from Philadelphia to Colum-bia, on the Susquehanna River. Locating parties,under the direction of Maj. John Wilson (1789-1833), 178 completed location of the line during thatsame year.When the entire Pennsylvania system of im-provements was opened for traffic in 1834, it wasin four divisions, as follows:(1) Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, agraded railway with inclined planes near each ofits terminals, in Philadelphia and Columbia(total length, 82 miles).(2) Eastern Division Canal, commencing atColumbia, proceeding north through Harrisburg 177 The Pennsylvania works, from Philadelphia to Pitts-burgh, arc described in J. Elfreth Watkins, History of thePennsylvania Railroad Company, 1846-181)6, 3 vols. (Philadelphia,1896), vol. 1, pp. 53-201. This work was never formallypublished, although the text was set in type and engravingswere made of the illustrations. Copies (of bound page proofs)are in Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and in Associationof American Railroads, Bureau of Railway Economics Li-brary, Washington, D.C. There are several published memoirsby engineers who built parts of the original works: Motes onthe Internal Improvements of the State of Pennsylvania, by W. HassetlWilson, C. E., and Reminiscences of the First Railroad over theAllegheny Mountain, by Solomon W. Roberts, C.E. (Philadelphia,1879, reprints of articles appearing in Railway World during1878; Solomon Roberts's Reminiscences were published alsoin Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1878, vol. 2,no. 4, pp. 370-393); W. Milnor Roberts, "Reminiscencesand Experiences of Early Engineering Operations on Rail-roads, with Especial Reference to Steep Inclines," Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, (August 1878), vol. 7, pp.197-216. See also W. Hassell Wilson "Notes on the Phila-delphia and Columbia Railroad," Journal of The Franklin Institute (May 1840), vol. 29, pp. 331-341. A useful summaryof the eastern portion of the works is in John C. Trautwine, "The Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad of 1834," Phila-delphia History (City History Society of Philadelphia), 1925, vol.2, no. 7, pp. 139-178. A monograph on the Pennsylvaniaworks from an economic standpoint is Avard L. Bishop, TheState Works of Pennsylvania (New Haven, 1907, reprinted fromTransactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, No-vember 1907, vol. 13, pp. 149-297). Descriptions by visitingforeign engineers are in David Stevenson, Sketch of the CivilEngineering of North America (London, 1838), chapters 6 and 9;Michel Chevalier, Histoire et description des voles de communi- cation aux Etats-Unis, 2 vols. (Paris, 1840-1841); and FranzA. R. von Gerstner, Die inneren Commumcationen def VereinigtenStaaten von Nordamerika, 2 vols. (Vienna, 1 842-1 843). An in-telligent analysis of the Pennsylvania works by Julius Rubin isin Carter Goodrich et al, Canals and American EconomicDevelopment (New York: Columbia LIniversity Press, 1961),which appeared after I had completed this passage. > 78 John Wilson was born in Scotland, attended the Universityof Edinburgh, emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1807,and after serving in the War 181 2 was appointed a major in the147 to the Juniata River, crossing the Susquehanna at the mouth of the Juniata, and following theJuniata to Hollidaysburg (total length, i 71 miles).(3) Allegheny Portage, from Hollidaysburg toJohnstown (total length, 37 miles).(4) Western Division Canal, commencing atJohnstown, proceeding by way of the Conemaugh,Kiskiminetas, and Allegheny Rivers to Pittsburgh(total length 104 miles).Covering a distance of 394 miles, the passagerequired from 4% to 6 days. There were 1 1 5 locks in the eastern and 65 locks in the westerndivision canals.The Philadelphia terminus of the Philadelphiaand Columbia Railroad was at Broad and VineStreets, a few blocks north of the Center Square.The railroad proceeded west and then north- west, 179 crossing the Schuylkill near Peters Islandon the first Columbia Bridge, a 1 000-foot longwooden structure near the foot of the inclinedplane.The inclined plane, employing stationarysteam engines and hemp ropes to wind the carsup and down two parallel tracks, rose 187 feet ina distance of slightly more than half a mile. Thegraded railroad proceeded from the head of thisplane by way of Downington, Coatesville, and Lancaster to Columbia, where it ended at thehead of another, somewhat shorter inclined plane,which eased the cars down to the town of Colum-bia, on the east bank of the Susquehanna.Several rail and tie configurations were used onthe railroad. A few miles of the road consistedof flat iron bars, 2% inches wide by % inch thick,fastened to continuous longitudinal granite sills;there were a few miles of wooden string-pieces,plated in the same manner; most of the way hadEnglish rolled "Clarence" rail, not unlike thepresent rail pattern except for the absence of thebottom flange. The rails rested in verticalnotches at the top of cast-iron chairs, or support-ing brackets, to which they were secured bywedges; the chairs were supported on stone blocks2 feet square and 1 foot thick, spaced 3 feet oncenters. The gauge, 4 feet 8% inches, was main-tained by wooden crossties spaced 15 feet apart. 180The railroad was, according to a contemporaryobserver, "almost a continuous series of curves," 181due mainly to the locating engineers' attempts toavoid extensive earthwork in order to keep thecost of the line as low as possible. When the linewas located, it was expected to be merely a publicway for privately owned horse-drawn cars subjectto tolls collected by the state. The early use oflocomotives was not anticipated. While mr. trautwine 182 was superintending thelaying of the first T-rail that ever came to America,and was then called the Stephenson wrought iron rail, 183 in contradistinction to the cast iron fish-belly rail then in use, the same kind of work was going onbeyond the head of the inclined plane. The railswere being laid and keyed in cast iron chairs, securedto large square blocks of lime stone, and partly onlong stone cross-ties, the chairs being fastened to the stone by iron bolts, leaded in holes drilled in them.This work and that on the wooden truss bridge acrossthe Schuylkill, the inclined plane with the enginehouse and machinery at the head of the plane, were all sources of great interest and attraction to thePhiladelphians and the people of the surroundingcountry.On one occasion, in company with Mr. Trautwineand his associate Elwood Morris, we crossed the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers. This information isfrom a very short sketch of his life in the introductory matterof his son's (W. Hassell Wilson's) Notes on The Internal Im-provements of the State of Pennsylvania (cited in the preceding note). ,T9 The present Reading Railroad line follows, west of BroadStreet, the route of the Philadelphia and Columbia.I8U Stevenson (cited in note 177, above), p. 240, wrote: "There are hardly two railways in the United States that aremade exactly in the same way, and few of them are constructedthroughout their whole extent on the same principles . . . ."He illustrated (pp. 240-248) two of the constructions used inthe Philadelphia and Columbia, as well as those used in several other roads. "I American Railroad Journal (June 20, 1835), quoted in Wat-kins (cited in note 177 above), vol. 1, p. 129. After inspectingthe road in 1836, the editor of American Railroad Journal wrote: "The unfortunate location of the road is very evident, frequentand short curves are introduced so uniformly, that it would besupposed that such a location was to be preferred to a directone" {American Railroad Journal, July 30, 1836, vol. 5, pp.465-466).|S2 John C. Trautwine (1810-1883) is best known for TheCuil Engineer's Pocket-Book (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen &Haffelfinger, 1872; 21st ed., 1937). Sellers described an inci-148 Figure 59.?Detail of Philadelphiaand Columbia Railroad's "Clarence" rail. The rail was secured by wedges tocast-iron chairs, which in turn werefastened to stone blocks. The blockswere laid in a carefully prepared rock-filled trench. Stone blocks werespaced more closely than indicated inthis sketch, however. Compare withfigure 63. Schuylkill and walked to the head of the inclinedplane, there we found a large collection of citizenswho had come in carriages, on foot, and in skiffs byway of the Schuylkill, all greatly interested in work sonew to them. Major Wilson, then chief engineer,stood in the center of quite a crowd; he seemed to bea good deal annoyed by the questions he was pliedwith; many of them no doubt of a character to annoy, dent in which a Pennsylvania canal engineer, who was experi-menting with hydraulic cement, was visited by Trautwine andSellers: "Mr. Trautwine's note-book, which was his constantcompanion, even during his school-boy days, was out at once,and he eagerly noted all of Mr. Huffnagle's formulas and the results, as far as he had gone with his experiments. It is tothis peculiarity of Mr. Trautwine of not allowing anything toescape being fixed in his note-book that the engineers of thepresent day are indebted for their constant companion, his 'Civil Engineer's Pocket-Book,' with its vast stores of usefulinformation on every subject that can possibly come withinthe range of their profession." American Machinist, (March 14,1885), vol. 8, p. 5.183 Sellers's nomenclature is confused. The Stephenson railwas a wrought-iron edge-rail with a fish-belly web. RobertLivingston Stevens (1 787-1856) is credited with designing theT-rail, now the standard section of American railroad rails.The rails actually laid between the Schuylkill River and BroadStreet were of the Clarence pattern, in 1831 called "edge rails"by W. H. Wilson. See his manuscript notebook, dated 1831(no pagination), in Pennsylvania Railroad Library, Philadel-phia. Carefully documented and beautifully illustrated, thisnotebook is a primary source for details of construction of thePhiladelphia and Columbia. The Clarence pattern apparentlytook its name from the Clarence Railway in Durham County,England. but the high standing and character of the questionerswere such that civil answers must be given.While this was going on my attention was called toa group slowly advancing toward us; among themwas my father. He and the others seemed muchamused at the quaint actions of a respectable farmer,a broad-brimmed and broad-skirted member of theSociety of Friends, who was known to be as levelheaded a man as was to be found. He would godown on one knee, put his head near the groundand look along the line of the road, then he wouldstraighten up, hold his cane, that had a cross-headhandle, between his thumb and finger; making thecane a plumb bob, he would look along its cross-head,evidently making his own observations and com-menting on them; which, together with his quickand quaint actions, was the cause of merriment tothose with him; when they joined the group aroundMajor Wilson, to whom our Friend was formallyintroduced, and at once began, "Friend Wilson, Inotice that thee has run the road between here andFriend ? ?'s farm, first to right, then to the left andagain to the right and left, much like a long letter Sor a dollar mark ($), where the straight lines wouldbe the shortest; what is thy object for doing so?"The Major, either knowing or suspecting hisquestioner to be a farmer, chose in answering him, afamiliar illustration. He said, "If you take a potatoin your hand in a few minutes you could learn thenumber of its eyes, and all its lumps and irregularities.Our potato is bigger, but, as engineers, we have tomake ourselves as well acquainted with it before we 149 can locate our road, as you would with the potatoheld in your hand. Then, in locating we have anaxiom, that we try as close as possible to adhere to.That is, to make our cuts so that they shall furnish theearth for the piles, thus we 'kill the two birds withone stone.' " "But," asked our friend, "does thee not take intoconsideration the additional length of iron, and thestone blocks, and the labor expended on them?"The reply was, "Certainly, but in this case it doesnot amount to much." "But," said our Friend, "it takes more power tohaul a load over what thee calls curves than on astraight line, and I think this ought to enter into thecalculation of first cost." He stooped down andpicked up a stone, and, holding it towards MajorWilson, continued: "Thee cannot carry this stonetwenty steps and back without expending some power.Now, if thee counts the number of times thee carriesit back and forth for a single hour, thee would findhow much longer it would take thee to add only onestep further to each trip. This is what I mean bythe constant loss during all time, and then thy curves will give great additional trouble to the mechanicwhen he comes to construct steam engines to runthis road and accommodate themselves to runningaround the curves."By this time it was evident the Major was morethan annoyed; he was excited, for he replied ratherpetulantly: "My good Friend, I would have you tounderstand that this railway is not being made forsteam power; it is a State road for the benefit ofevery one, just as any turn-pike road. The Statemay furnish wagons or cars, or individuals may puttheir own on the road, and every farmer may attachhis own horses and haul his produce to market, andif I have my way no steam engine shall ever run onthe road." He turned his back on the Friend andentered into conversation with some one else in amanner to show his determination to end the palaver.The honest old Quaker flushed as if his feelingswere hurt, and stood for a few minutes as if silentlycommuning with the spirit within. Then he spokein a subdued manner as if he was talking to himself: "Well, for the life of me I don't see the use of theinclined plane to get down to the Schuylkill, for bystarting at Friend - ?'s place it would be easy tostrike the river a little above Fairmount dam, or if(naming another farm) by way of Mill Creek Valleythrough Friend Mayland's place to the river aboveGray's Ferry bridge." Major Wilson heard this, and, turning quickly, andin no gentle terms said: "You don't know what youare talking about. It seems to me that you are onlytalking to hear yourself talk."The reply came very slowly: "May-be so, may-be so,but one thing I certainly do know, if I do not know all the knobs and bumps on what thee calls thy bigpotato?though I was born and have lived all mylife among them? I do know that God never createdwater that could run up hill, and that the water fromHis living springs and His refreshing rains?all that isnot drank up by the hungry earth?from the firstplace I have named finds its way into the Schuylkillabove Fairmount dam, and the springs and the rainfall west of that by way of Mill Creek, and thistells me the natural routes to get down as well ifnot better than thy three-legged spy-glass can tellthee. I am an old man and may not live to see it,but there are others present that will, when theinclined plane and all its works will be abandonedand the road will take one or other of the routes that I have indicated. I have walked out the road asnow making, and have noticed all its ups and downsand its circumbendibuses, and know that with fewerof them and at less cost, by heading the runningwater it could ha\'e got down. That is all I know;"and he walked away.In relating the above, I have endeavored to con-dense the substance of a vast deal of by-play intosimple collocution. The impression made at thetime was strong, and has been kept alive by frequentreference to it in conversation with Mr. Trautwine,and on more than one occasion we together have seennumbers convulsed with laughter by Ellwood Morris'sinimitable mimicking of the old Friend and theMajor, frequently with additions and embellishments. I have not told it, although the Friend's predictionscame true as soon as the old State Road, which hasso aptly been styled the Parent of the PennsylvaniaCentral, passed into its hands. Nor would I detractfrom the sterling integrity, perseverance and skillof our early engineers. We are all naturally dis-posed to follow leads. The great canals of the worldmade tunneling a necessity; much talent and skillwas expended on them. To the tunnels the master spirits of the Liverpool and Manchester added theincline plane; our following was natural, and Pennsyl-vania was not alone in doing so on her Columbia andher Portage Railroad. The Charleston & Hamburg,the Lawrenceburg & Indianapolis and others mightbe cited, all of which planes have been superseded by150 Figure 60.?Detail of roadbed of Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad.A few miles of railway consisted of strap iron rails secured to a continuous lineof granite blocks (a). From David Stevenson, Sketch of the Civil Engineering ofNorth America (London, 1838). gradual grades, worked by the ordinary locomotive.Major Wilson was filling the wants of the timeconstructing as he said a "railway turnpike." [56]The rapidly increasing traflic on the Pennsylvaniaroad, even before the completion of the Portage andand opening of the through line to the West, was sufficient to demonstrate the error that had beencommitted in constructing the Peters Island inclineplane. The inclines on the Portage might be sufficientfor through trade for many years, but the local tradebetween Philadelphia and Hollidaysburg, eastern endof the Mountain division, had increased to such anextent that it was evident the incline plane, at thePhiladelphia end of the road, would soon be taxedbeyond its capacity. Locomotives had not been inuse on the road over one year before the delay topassenger trains became very annoying, and suchpressure was brought on the Canal Commissionersthat they ordered surveys to be made, with the objectof substituting for the incline plane gradual gradesthat could be run with locomotives.The citizens were not idle; a branch road to avoidthe plane was chartered, called the West PhiladelphiaBranch, a company organized, surveys made, andsome little work done; financial trouble caused itssuspension. 184 Henry R. Campbell, then chiefengineer of the Philadelphia, Germantown, andNorristown R. R., was mainly instrumental in forminga company to build a branch to cross the Schuylkill 184 The route of the West Philadelphia Railroad Companywas located by Henry R. Campbell in 1835. More than toyears later, when the legislature agreed to rerouting of thePhiladelphia and Columbia to avoid the Schyulkill inclinedplane, the unfinished West Philadelphia Railroad was takenover by the state. See WATKINS (cited in note 177 above), vol. '. PP- i43- [ 47- river, at or near Morristown [sic], and come into theheart of the city by the Germantown road. 185 Muchof this branch was graded, materials, including theiron, purchased, and on the ground, when the samefinancial troubles that caused the suspension of theWest Philadelphia stopped this work; it was neverresumed. The iron was sold by the sheriff.Mr. Baldwin's first locomotive, built for the State,was put on the road in the spring of 1834. It was thethird engine of his build, a six-wheel engine, one pairof drivers back of the fire-box, and a four-wheelswivel truck. If my memory is not entirely at fault,there were two English engines received about thesame time, and Wm. Norris put on his first effectiveengine. 186 This was also a six-wheeler, but differingfrom Baldwin's, in having the drivers in front of thefire-box, and of course a much greater weight onthem. I think it was about the third engine of i?5 Henry R. Campbell was chief engineer of the Philadelphia,Germantown, and Norristown Railroad from 1832, locatingengineer for the West Philadelphia Railroad Company (seepreceding note), and consultant for the Philadelphia andColumbia Railroad in 1837. See, respectively, W. HassellWilson (cited in note 177 above), p. 30; American RailroadJournal, (December 26, 1835), vol. 4, p. 430; and H. R. Camp-bell, Report of Surveys Made to Avoid the Inclined Plane and for theImprovement of the Eastern Division of the Columbia and PhiladelphiaRail Road (Philadelphia, January 1837). I have not been ableto confirm this enterprise of the Philadelphia. Germantown.and Norristown Railroad, nor have I located this Morristown.if indeed it is not merely a typographical error.186 -p|lc fjrst Baldwin locomotive commenced running on June28, 1834. The second was delivered in September. Tine.English engines, built by Robert Stephenson, arrived in 1835.Two were in operation by June 20, 1835. A Norris locomotivewas on the road before Octobei 30, as was a locomotive builtby George Escol Sellers and Charles Sellers. See Watkins(cited in note 177 above), vol. 1, pp. 124-129. 151 Morris' build, and the one that I have before referredto 187 as having climbed the Peters Island incline plane. I have no notes as to the grade of that incline, but myimpression is that it was i foot in 17. 188There was nothing practical in running the loco-motive and tender up this heavy grade, further thandemonstrating the traction of plain wheels on the rails, but from it dates an entire change in Americanpractical engineering. 1 "9 William Milnor Roberts,identified as he was with the system of the Portageroad, wrote for the particulars of this performance ofthe Norris engine, and from them he made elaboratecalculations, verifying them by experiments on thePortage inclines. He came to the conclusion thatgrades up to 100 feet per mile 19? could be successfullyoperated with properly constructed locomotives, andeven higher grades by the aid of an auxiliary or help-ing locomotive, and that any of our mountain rangescould and would be crossed without stationary power.Mr. Welch, as chief engineer of the Portage, did notagree with Mr. Roberts in this, but in view of the in-creased business, which he foresaw must eventuallypress on the Portage, he had various plans to increasethe capacity of its inclines, his favorite one beingsimply doubling the tracks and machinery. He wasmuch annoyed by the persistent predictions of his assistant, William Milnor Roberts, that with properlyconstructed locomotives heavy grades of 100 feet permile, or even greater, would be successfully overcome,and with the aid of an auxiliary, or helping engine, befound more economical than the inclines with sta-tionary power that had cost the State so much laborand expense; that long before the inclined planeswould be taxed to their capacity they would be 187 In chapter 27, below.188 Tne chronology is in error. Norris delivered the WilliamPenn in October 1835; his George H'ashtngton, delivered in July1836, was the one that climbed the incline (Watkins, vol. 1,pp. 129-130, 137a). The grade of the plane was 1 in 15, ornearly 7 percent; that is, a rise of 187 feet in 2,805 feet (W.Hassell Wilson, cited in note 177 above).169 Based on a presupposition?imported from England andaccepted uncritically by American engineers?that a railwaylocomotive was not capable of negotiating a grade steeperthan about 1 percent, that is, 1 foot in 100. This idea wasfixed in George Stephenson's mind by the experiments that he superseded by regularly graded roads. We all knowthese predictions came true, but the change did nottake place as soon as Mr. Roberts anticipated, for heat that time thought it would be within ten years, butthe planes continued in operation for a period ofabout twenty years, answering all the purposes forwhich they were intended, and, what is remarkableand speaks volumes in favor of their construction andcareful operation during that time, without a singleserious accident.After the achievement of the Norris engine inclimbing the Peters Island incline there was muchcorrespondence between Mr. Roberts and his friendsin Philadelphia. I now regret that I have not pre-served letters to them showing that at that earlyperiod he urged utilizing as much as possible of theweight of the locomotive for traction by connectingthe wheels. In one of his letters he expressed him- self about in this way: "I, as a civil engineer, makeno pretensions to being a mechanical one, but I have satisfied myself that the power evolved in the steamengine is in all cases greater than the traction due toits entire weight, therefore as much as possible of itshould be utilized for climbing the heavy gradesnecessary to overcome our mountain chains." Mr-Henry R. Campbell was one of the correspondentsto whom I refer; he took up with great avidity theuse of heavier locomotives with a more even distribu-tion of weight on the drivers, and increased traction;two or three years later he obtained a patent for aneight-wheel engine with four connected drivers andfour-wheel truck, the type of the standard Americanpassenger engine of the present time . . . . 191 [57] and Nicholas Wood made in 1818. A paper by someone onthe basis, rise, and fall of this principle is long overdue. Somematerials are in Nicholas Wood, Practical Treatise on Rail-Roads (London, 1825; 2d ed., 1838); Thomas Tredgold, Prac- tical Treatise on Rail-Roads and Carriages, 2d ed. (London, 1835);and Samuel Smiles, The Life of George Stephenson, Railway Engi- neer (London, 1857).190 Nearly 2 percent. 191 U.S. patent dated February 5, 1836. This was just beforethe Patent Office fire of 1836. Restored patent drawing is inU.S. National Archives. 152 21. The Portage Railroad The Pennsylvania Portage, connecting the easternand western division canals of the great Pennsyl-vania works, extended 37 miles from Hollidays-burg, on the eastern slope of the Allegheny ridge,to Johnstown on the western slope. A total of 10inclined planes, from 1,500 to more than 3,000feet in length, connected by graded railways,overcame a rise of 1,400 feet in 10 miles fromHollidaysburg to the summit, and descended 1,175feet in the remaining 27 miles to Johnstown.The cars were dragged up and let down eachplane by ropes running over winding drumsdriven by stationary steam engines in the headhouse. The locating engineers were careful topoint out to squeamish commissioners and legis-lators that the maximum gradient of the planes(10 percent), was less than that of some hills onthe Philadelphia and Pittsburgh turnpike road,which crossed the mountains hard by thePortage. 192Boldly conceived and ably designed and con-structed, the Portage Railroad was favorablyviewed by many visiting engineers, native and foreign. For example, David Stevenson, theScottish engineer, uncle of Robert Louis Steven-son, wrote of this "mountain railway, which, inboldness of design and difficulty of execution, Ican compare to no modern works I have ever seen,excepting, perhaps, the passes of the Simplon,and Mont Cenis in Sardinia; but even theseremarkable passes, viewed as engineering works,did not strike me as being more wonderful thanthe Allegheny Railway in the United States." mGeorge Escol Sellers was more intimatelyconcerned with the Philadelphia and ColumbiaRailroad, for which he and his brother Charlesbuilt two locomotives, but he knew the Pennsyl-vania Portage at first hand. His boyhood school-mates and companions William Milnor Robertsand Solomon White Roberts were principal assistant engineers to the chief engineer, SylvesterWelch. Sellers's account of the Portage Railroadis substantially accurate in all details, and it isvaluable as a background against which his loco-motive work can be more clearly seen and betterappreciated. iliARLY in the vear 1 834 the entire line of thePennsylvania mongrel improvements, part canaland part railroad, between Philadelphia and Pitts-burgh, was opened for freight and passengers, andworked, with the exception of steam on its inclinedplanes, by horse or mule-power. The small four-wheel freight cars, limited as to capacity and load,not to exceed three tons per car, were mostly ownedby individuals or firms who also owned the canal- 192 The references cited in note 177, above, are useful for in.formation on the Portage.193 David Stevenson, Sketch of the Civil Engineering of XorthAmerica (London, 1838), pp. 185-186. boats and horses. The road was built for and usedas a public highway, charging toll.It was not long before breaking bulk at Columbia,reloading from the cars into the canal-boats, andagain at Hollidaysburg from the canal-boats on to cars, and, after passing over the portage, or MountainRailroad, division to Johnstown, again transferringto canal-boats, with the damage from handlingcertain kinds of freight, and greatly increased costof transportation on all classes of freight, was a state of things that called mechanical ingenuityinto play. The first success was in making the boxor car body independent of the trucks, so arranged153 as to be easily and securely attached or disengaged,and the building of open canal-boats with low-downdecks. On the arrival of the cars at Columbia thebox bodies were loosened from the trucks, and, to-gether with their freight, hoisted by cranes, swungover and deposited on the low-down decks of thecanal-boats; and again, in the same manner, trans-ferred from the boats to trucks at Hollidaysburg,and, after crossing the portage to Johnstown, againinto canal-boats.The system of the portage railroad consisted of teninclined planes and eleven levels?the height over-come in the ten miles between Hollidaysburg and thesummit tunnel being 1,339 feet > an^ tne descent toJohnstown, in 26% miles, 1,171 feet. This entirework was constructed in the most permanent andbest possible manner known at the time. Thedouble-track incline planes were heavy wooden stringers, secured to stone foundations, and laid withflat bar rails. The levels between the incline planeswere laid with what was then called the StevensT-rail 194 of about 40 lbs. per yard, keyed into cast-iron chairs, which were bolted to sandstone cross-ties, alternating with sandstone blocks. These stoneblocks did not extend under both rails, as the cross-tie stones did; they were about 12 inches deep, andhad a base equal to about 20 x 24 inches; the chairswere set three feet apart. All the masonry of theroad was of the finest and most substantial character.The Conemaugh Viaduct, which, I believe, is still inuse by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, was agreat point of attraction to engineers as well as totravelers.As to the steam engines and machinery of theincline planes, the fact that they were in use for abouttwenty years, and frequently taxed to their utmostcapacity without a serious accident, fully attests thecompleteness of the plans, care in their construction,and use. Hemp ropes were used on the inclines, itbeing before the day of wire ropes. 195 The usualnumber of cars drawn up the inclines, while thesame counterbalancing number was being let down,was four of these small four-wheel box cars, whichwere then taken from the head of one incline plane tothe foot of the next, or vice versa, by horse-power. 194 Actually, edge rails of Clarence pattern. See note 183above.its Wire rope, manufactured by John A. Roebling, was usedas early as 1839 (W. Milnor Roberts, cited in note 177 above,pp. 2o6n, 2o8n). At the time the portage railroad was under con-struction, it was a subject of much discussion among all classes, and the general opinion was that it wouldprove a failure. Sylvester Welch, the father of thescheme and chief engineer in its location and con-struction, was often sorely beset by influence broughtto bear on the canal commissioners, and even afterexhaustive surveys had been made and the routelocated, still other surveys were ordered with a vainhope of finding a practicable route without theinclined planes, with gradients not to exceed 40 ft.per mile, that being the extreme limit then thoughtpractical to work with safety even with horse-powerby doubling teams. In later years when Mr. Welchwas engaged on the Covington & Lexington Railroad,of Kentucky, he used to relate the difficulty he had to satisfy the canal commissioners that his system ofinclined planes and levels was no complication, asthey conceived it to be, to persuade them to allowthe work to go on. They admitted the simplicity andeffectiveness of the Peters Island incline plane on theColumbia road, yet feared his on account of whatthey termed its complication, when he insisted thatin fact it was but a repetition of simplicity.The fact that my schoolmates and most intimatefriends were the chief assistants of Mr. Welch, mademe take great interest in the progress of the surveysand work, concerning which I was kept constantlyposted. William Milnor Roberts had charge of thedivision from Hollidaysburg to the Summit, and thework on the east end of the great Allegheny tunnel,and Solomon W. Roberts of the west end, and thework from there to Johnstown; and Edward Millerhad charge of the machinery of the incline plane.No engineers are better known by their lifelongworks than S. W. and W. Milnor Roberts, who thoughof the same name were of no blood relationship. W.Milnor's life was sacrificed to his profession in SouthAmerica at so recent a date that most engineers mustbe familiar with the circumstances of his undertakingthe great South American works at his advanced age,under a binding contract for four years' service. 196Although most of my life has been devoted tomechanical engineering, the intimacy with my early civil engineer friends was always kept up; and at thefrequent meetings with both of the Roberts, the sub-ject of their first work, the Old Portage was never i?e Both Solomon W. Roberts and VV. Milnor Roberts arenoticed in Dictionary of American Biography.154 Figure 6i.?View of Belmont inclined plane on Philadelphia and ColumbiaRailroad, looking east. The first Columbia Bridge over the Schuylkill is atupper center; Philadelphia can be seen in the distance at right. From J. C.Wild, Panorama and Views of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1838). Library ofCongress photograph. tiring, and it is from these reminiscences that I havedrawn more of what I have written on the OldPortage than from my own observation, as I onlyvisited it twice during the time the Roberts were on it. On one of these occasions W. Milnor Robertsreferred to the great trouble he had in the effort tosubstitute locomotive power for horses on the levelsbetween the inclines.The Portage had not been operated over one year,when a locomotive built in Boston was received. Atthat time moving grain in bulk to the Eastern marketshad not been conceived of; it was all racked, loadedinto canal boats at Pittsburgh, and at Johnstown it and other heavy freight such as flour, pork, and whis-key in barrels, was transferred on open four-wheelplatform cars and covered with canvas or tarpaulins.The sparks thrown from this wood-burning Bostonlocomotive set fire to the canvas covers, and neces-sitated carrying a man with broom and buckets ofwater to every two cars of the train. The same kindof canvas-covered cars were also on the ColumbiaRoad for the same class of freight, but as the woodburning locomotives came into use in place of thehorse-power the canvas-covered cars had to be taken off. By the end of the second year all the elevenlevels of the Portage were operated by locomotives.155 ?*5t ///, . , . ' /a am s s?r/s Figure 62.?Grade crossing on Philadelphia and ColumbiaRailroad. Two longitudinal bearing timbers, of locust, werebedded in broken stone. Locust crossties carried chairs for "Clarence" rails. White oak "guard rails" were shoed withflat iron bars % inch thick and 2^ inches wide. The estimatedcost of this crossing, excluding the cost of rails and chairs, was$60.30. From manuscript record book of W. H. Wilson,preserved in Pennsylvania Railroad Library. About 60 pagesof the record book are devoted to the Philadelphia and Colum-bia Railroad and an equal number to the Philadelphia andReading; there are many illustrations of bridges, tunnels,track, and switches. The next expedient to save the expense and delaysof breaking bulk and handling freight, was makingcanal boats in sections. This ingenious device an-swered a good purpose, notwithstanding the increaseddead weight of the permanent cabins and water-soaked hulls, over the movable box-car that had to behauled over the portage. At first they had to contendwith great opposition and prejudice on the part ofshippers of fine goods. Much was said at the timeabout damage caused by leakage of the square trun-cated ends of the boat sections in consequence ofracking and drying [of] the cars and opening of thecaulked seams. This was, no doubt, greatly magnifiedby competing transportation firms. Any one who willtake the trouble to look over the advertisements infiles of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh papers, say from156 1835, can form some idea of the rivalry between thedifferent transportation firms or companies.The boat sections for freight going west were loadedin Philadelphia warehouses, hauled by horse-powerto the foot of the Peters Island incline; from the headof the plane they were mostly taken by locomotivesto Columbia, for at the date of their advent locomo-tives had nearly if not quite supplanted horses on theColumbia or State road.In the published history of the Baldwin Locomotiveworks from 1831 to 1881 they give the date of thecompletion of their first engine for the State road asJune 1834; it was fully a year before this that theLong & Norris engine was tried on that road, and ifmy recollection is not entirely at fault there weretwo Norris engines and two or three imported Figure 63.?Roadbed of abandoned Portage Railroad.Note the closely spaced granite blocks. From an originalphotograph in division of transportation, Smithsonian Institu-tion. English engines working on the road in the fall of1834. 19? Floating the boat sections from their trucksinto the canal basin at Columbia, bringing themtogether and uniting them into full canal boats, wasalways a sight of great interest to travelers, as wasalso their transfer to trucks at Hollidaysburg.For the traveling community the small coaches orcars seating from 20 to 26 passengers were a greatimprovement for comfort over the old stage coach,though destructive to the proverbial stage coach con- viviality; but this was in a measure made up on thecanal boat portion of the routes, where passengerswere at ease with full liberty to walk about or lounge 197 His memory apparently was at fault. The chronology isgiven in note 186, above. However, a Norris locomotive, theGreen Hawk, built in 1832. was the first locomotive on the road;and the Black Hawk was in successful operation before Baldwin'sLancaster was completed. See Watkins (cited in note 177.above), vol. 1, pp. 114. 120; also, see note 205 below. as they liked; groups were formed, games indulged in,and not unfrequently rival races on the tow path.As to the passenger canal boats they were a marvelof ingenuity in their arrangement for accommodationand comfort of the traveler; they might be termed theforerunners of the Pullman sleeper and dining car.Much was concentrated within their hulls and minia-ture cabin; comfortable, broad omnibus seats alongthe sides, with space between for camp stools, withoutgreatly interfering with the passage; a long diningtable was set, and fair meals furnished at reasonable rates for way passengers, those for the through pas-sengers being included in the fare. At night rows ofberths one above another along the sides of the cabinwere arranged, a curtain separating the ladies' fromthe gentlemen's cabin, and all were intended to beand supposed to be made comfortable, and, barringmosquitoes at certain seasons, no one had a right tocomplain, as all these comforts were furnished withoutextra charge. 157 li^t,-^--rT*' -s^tEs&S'-* - : -^ BS12A1TO IjiArf^D'iia'Aiaorf ? DBEEAS1X x * _. " ^ ,- (VIA) _ 7 -^ROM PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURG Figure 64.?Portable iron boats, 1839. A Reliance Transportation Co.advertisement in 1839 stated that "those boats are built of rolled iron, insections susceptible of being connected when on Canal, so as to form a boat,and separated when on Rail Road to answer as car-bodies, resting on cradlesmade to fit the curves of the boat and placed on eight-wheel cars, which whenconnected are passed into canal by inclined planes or lift locks, no hoistingmachinery being required, as the water floats the boat from the cars. . . .The improvements in transportation between Philadelphia and Pittsburghwithin the last 50 years have advanced with rapid strides. Our drawing repre-sents the first Pack Horse prostrate beneath a burden of some three hundredpounds weight, next the saving of horse power on Canal, on which one horseis capable of doing the work of 500 pack-horses, and next represents a Locomo-tive propelled by steam moving heavy cars burdened with freighted boats,bounding up the towering heights of the Alleghanies, startling the deer fromits lair, and striking with awe the Indian Hunter as the fiery meteor with itslengthened train flits across his path." Photo from copy of broadside in divisionof transportation, Smithsonian Institution; text quoted from advertisement in .4. M'Elroy's Philadelphia Directory for 1839. (A review of the history of Penn-sylvania sectional canal boats is contained in Jessee L. Hartman, "JohnDaugherty and the Rise of the Section Boat System," Pennsylvania Magazine 0/History and Biography (October 1945), vol. 59, pp. 294-314.) 158 The quiet gliding of the boat along the valley of theSusquehanna with its beautiful ever-changing scenery,and the wilder valley of the Juniata was very enjoy- able. In fair weather, and moonlight nights, the roofor deck of the boat would be well covered with pas-sengers, using their trunks for seats, but ever mindfulof the call of "low bridge" from the helmsman, (andsome of them went so low that the trunks on the roofbarely cleared them as the boat passed under) theducking and contortions of the passengers, sometimesthrowing themselves flat on the roof, was always asource of amusement. On nearing the Portage allwas excitement, particularly among those crossing forthe first time; for the old portage or mountain crossingwas one of the greatest wonders of the world in its day.On the landing of the canal boat at Hollidaysburg,passengers would rush for the cars to secure the mostfavorable seats for seeing. Many of those crossing forthe first time, and all the timid ones, while the carswere being fastened to the rope of the incline wouldmake for the side walk and go up on foot; some wouldwalk up the second incline, but by that time all wouldgain sufficient confidence to trust themselves to ride.On one occasion I was one of four to carry an invalidlady in a chair to the top of the first incline, and thento so surround her in the car that she had partlyascended the second before discovering it; then shewas terror-stricken, and made a great effort to faint,but failed in the attempt, the mountain air being tooexhilarating. She finally subsided, and I really be-lieve enjoyed the rest of the passage, except the tunnel.The estimated capacity of the incline planes wasten trains of four cars each way per hour. I havetimed them when pressed to their utmost; unavoid-able delays at the top for the descending, and at thebottom in making up the ascending trains, broughtthe average number of trips not to exceed 7 perhour. Mr. Miller thought that an excessive averagefor a length of time: though with everything favorable10 had been accomplished in a single hour.Several prominent engineers of England and Francecame to America for the express purpose of witnessing the working of the American Mountain Railway. Imet with two of these, who both spoke of it as thegrandest conception that had ever been ultimated. ' "Even Charles Dickens, who, on his first visit toAmerica, crossed the Portage before it was super-seded by the Pennsylvania graded road, although hewas oblivious to the bevel-edged plate glass mirrors,and gorgeously new furnished and upholsteredcanal boats for his especial use, and that of his party,an old friend of mine, long since departed, who wasone of the party, said that Dickens was, no doubtbored by intruders on the route, but he showed moreinterest and animation on the Portage than at anytime during his intercourse with him; that he couldnot say enough in praise of the boldness of the design,and the grandeur of the scenery, frequently recurringto it; but he disgusted one who had been prominentin embellishing the canal boats, and who lost noopportunity of calling his attention to them by saying, "Very nice, very nice, but rather stuffy-bluffy andsomewhat disagreeably odoriferous." Probably thefumes from the kitchen and the wine bins did notharmonize. 199 [58] 198 xhe works of Stevenson, Chevalier, and Gerstner are citedin note 177 above. W. Milnor Roberts (cited in note 177above), p. 20411, mentioned also General Bernard.190 A special boat was not provided for Dickens, though hewas given choice sleeping accommodations: "a shelf in anook ... in some degree removed from the great body ofsleepers." The rest of the passengers slept on "three long tiersof hanging book-shelves, designed apparently for volumes ofthe small octavo size." Dickens's account of his Americanjourney in 1842 is focused upon people, sleeping and eatingaccomodations, incessant spitting of tobacco juice, and jailsand public institutions, but his descriptions of travel by canal,railroad, stagecoach, and steamboat are useful and alwaysthoroughly delightful. (Charles Dickens, American Notes forGeneral Circulation, ist ed., 2 vols. London, 1842. There havebeen many reprints, and a paperback edition, Premier Ameri-cana, di28, was published in 1961. The Eastern DivisionCanal and the Portage Railroad are described in chapters9 and 10.) 159 22. CardingtonLocomotive Works The first shop building at Cardington waserected probably in 1829, about the time of thedissolution of the Sellers and Pennock fire enginepartnership. On the extensive Sellers propertyin Upper Darby Township, Delaware County,just west of the present Philadelphia city limits,the shop was located at the site of the old MarshallSaw Mill, where the Marshall Road crossedCobbs Creek.The shops were built to provide facilities forthe construction of textile card machinery de-signed by John Brandt, of Lancaster. Brandt,who had devised a machine that set card teethin the leather backing more firmly than could bedone by hand, was induced by Coleman Sellers,George Escol's father, to come to Philadelphia tomanufacture the card machines. Presumably thename Cardington came from the product of theshops.Brandt remained in Philadelphia for only abouta year. Coleman Sellers continued the cardmachine business, however, and enlarged the shops in order to build paper machinery. Thefoundry and large machine tools required forpaper machinery were used as well for generalmachine work. After Coleman's death in 1834,the Cardington shops were run by George Escoland his elder brother Charles.Meanwhile, Brandt had accepted a positionwith the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad,and at his suggestion the railroad contracted withthe Sellers brothers to build two locomotives.The successful completion of the locomotives ledto the building of steam engines and other ma-chinery for the U.S. Mint. The Cardington shopsprospered for a time, but the Sellers brotherswere unable to weather the depression followingthe general financial panic of 1837. Within littlemore than a decade after their commencement,the Cardington shops were sold by the sheriff.According to George Escol Sellers, the propertywas bought by John Wiltbank, a Philadelphiabrass founder. 200 In the year 1834, the foundry and machine shopsthen carried on by my brother and myself, weremostly engaged on work for iron furnaces, rolling- mills, flour-mills and machinery for paper making.To turn the drying cylinders for the latter, we hadconstructed what at that time was considered amammoth engine lathe that would turn 9 feet inlength and 4 feet 10 inches diameter; also for finishingthe housings for paper-press rolls and calenders, wehad built and put in operation the first iron planingmachine in the State of Pennsvlvania. If I recollect 200 Memoirs, book 1, pp. 14-15, 34, and book 4, pp. 66-67.160 right, there were then only two others in the UnitedStates, one in West Point, N.Y., shops, and theother in Dr. Nott's Novelty Works. 201 This primitivemachine had a capacity for 8 feet length by 4 feetwide and 3 feet high. The bedplate was driven by 201 The West Point Foundry of Gouverneur Kemble hadshops in New York City at the foot of Beach Street, from 18 17until 1838 when all operations were consolidated at ColdSpring, near West Point, New York (Kemble, cited in note 71above). The Novelty Works, named for the steamboatdesigned by Dr. Nott, president of Union College in Schenec-tady, was operated by James Stillman, who was joined in 1842by Horatio Allen (see note 100 above). M/57 Hj\-Jj'DW?!?B ILOSOlMU'-C'Xrji iS'i'JiinYI ll!H5Ja': MOSES STARR & SOJY. SHACKAMAXON ABOVE FRANKLIN STREET,KENSINGTON, PHILADELPHIA.Manufacturers of BOILERS for Steam Boats, Locomotives and Stationary SteamEngines, Boilers for Baths and Kitchen Rangers. TANKS for Locomotive Tenders. (Ship's Water Tanks, &c, &c. ????^>??>?>??eK3^>?'??>?xS^>??> ?><= W Figure 68.?Advertisement in A. M'Elroy's PhiladelphiaDirectory for 1840. Library of Congress photograph. we ordered from Low Moor works, England, givingthe outside diameter 4% feet, the thickness to be asheavy as they rolled. They came in straight bars soshort as to take two bars for each tire, and not ex-ceeding l?s inches thick. We had expected to havereceived them bent and welded. This was anotherunexpected operation to prepare for, but having goodsmiths we did not meet with any serious difficulty.The driving wheels were a subject of much dis-cussion. The rigid manner the road was laid ? T-iron secured in cast-iron chairs bolted and leadedto alternate stone blocks and stone cross-ties; in-tended for an everlasting roadway on which thefarmers could haul their produce to market withtheir own teams at slow speeds; every cast-ironchair on its stone foundation being an anvil on whicha quick moving wheel would hammer out the rails;this rigidity of road must be overcome by a certain elasticity in the locomotive; the commissioners seemedto have been carried away by Baldwin's combinedwheel center and spokes of cast-iron with deep woodenfelloes. This, it was argued, gave the required elasticity. I proposed slightly recessing a cast-ironrim under the tread, letting the tire have its bearingunder the flange and about one inch of its outeredge. Objections were raised to this, but led tomaking the cast rim of the wheel sufficiently deep toadmit of recessing to take in well seasoned segmentsof white oak forming a bottom, and side-supportedfelloes of about 2 inches deep within the rim. Thesesegment-felloes, when secured in place, were turned,leaving just so much fullness that the shrinking tirewould compress them and have its bearing on boththe wood and the cast-iron rim of the wheel.The spokes or arms were flat, with ribbed edges.The spans between the spokes opposite the crank-pin,at Mr. Brandt's suggestion, were provided with bossesto receive bolts to secure in place counter-weightswhich we proposed putting on after the engine was in service. This he did about two years in advance ofthe Rogers hollow-spoke counter-balanced wheel,which has been frequently referred to as the first effort at counter-balancing. After our wheel pat-terns were ready for the foundry I became so appre-165 hensive that the wood felloes, subjected to the heatof the tire, after it had shrunk and seated on the ironrims so as to prevent the escape of the gases, wouldlose their tenacity, in fact, be converted into redcharcoal, that I had the core boxes and joints altered,to so narrow the recess for the felloes that the tirewould have sufficient bearing on the iron rim, evenif the wood was left out; in fact coming to my originalproposition of simply recessing; to lessen as much aspossible the injurious effects of the confined heated gases on the wood, the holes for the tire-fasteningbolts were drilled as escape holes. Years afterwardsI was shown a section of one of these tires that hadbeen worn and turned down to about %-inch inthickness.It showed a very perceptible setting or sinking intothe recess; as to the wooden felloes, I was informedthat very little of them was left, and what was, was inloose pieces falling about, the greatest bulk havingescaped in dust through a bolt hole. [59] 23. John Brandt,Master Mechanic Sellers was some 20 years junior to John Brandt,the Lancaster blacksmith who, after a sojourn inPhiladelphia, became well known in his day as abuilder of locomotives.As a partner in Sellers, Brandt, & Company,formed in 1828 to exploit his card machine,Brandt went to live in the "first stone mill put upat Cardington the east end of which was finishedas a dwelling for Brandt and his family . . . ."George Escol and his brother Charles boardedwith the Brandts while the mill was getting underway. 213As related below, Brandt stayed in Philadelphiaonly about a year. He was with the Philadelphiaand Columbia Railroad in the Parkesburg shopsfrom 1833 until 1838, at least. 214 He went fromthe Philadelphia and Columbia to the New Yorkand Erie Railroad, but the dates are uncertain.In 1854, he was superintendent of the New Jersey Locomotive and Machine Company, in Paterson,and while there built locomotives for the Phila-delphia and Columbia, New York Central, andother railroads. 215 In 1857, he was back inLancaster. According to the Lancaster Whig,the "celebrated locomotive works" of that townwere "under the supervision of Mr. J. Brandt,one of the widest known and most successfulconstructors of engines in this country." 2leIn the view of the present editor, who is amember of the generation that has seen thepassing of the steam locomotive, Mr. Brandt isrepresentative of the hundreds of lesser-knownmen who helped raise the impressive giants of the rails to their zenith. The boldness and audacityof these men, tempered by a finely developedintuitive sense of fitness, are aspects of theAmerican character that we would do well tohold onto. 213 Memoirs, book 4, pp. 66-67, ar|d book 1, p. 14.214 American Railroad Journal (August 15, 1838), vol. 7, pp.134-136.215 American Railroad Journal (January 7, 1854), vol. 27, p. 2.216 Quoted in American Railroad Journal (April 4, 1857), vol.30, p. 217. The Lancaster Locomotive Works built some 8 or 10 locomotives a year from its founding in 1853 to 1857.John Brandt apparently had two sons, John, Jr., and Abe.See M. Luther Heisey, "Locomotives?Made in Lancaster,"Papers of the Lancaster County Historical Society (1940), vol. 44,no. 1, pp. 1-10. 166 In the fall of 1834, about the time we hadundertaken to build engines for the State road, Iwas called to Lancaster to advise with the canalcommissioners. Mr. John Brandt being there, askedme to ride with him on the "Lancaster" with afreight train, as far as to where it would side trackto allow the passenger train to pass, and then totake it to the city; but it was ordered otherwise, forwe had not gone over fourteen or fifteen miles withthe "Lancaster," before it, with the train, came toa standstill. We were on the foot-board at the time,and Brandt held the throttle lever. The cause ofthe stop was soon evident. The center loose spindleof the hand lever rock-shaft was placed back of thedome of the boiler above the fire-door; this spindleextended into a hollow portion of the rock-shaftsome 10 or 12 inches, and was lubricated throughseveral small holes drilled in the upper side of therock-shaft. This spindle had become fastened inits socket, causing the breaking of one eccentric-rodand the bending of the other.Brandt at once commenced taking off the rock- shaft, saying if he could get the spindle loose, hethought he could run the engine and train to theside track that was not over a mile ahead, workingthe valves by the hand levers. Considerable timewas lost in the effort to loosen the spindle and getthe rock-shaft apart by heating the hollow portionand cooling the spindle end, but with the appliancesat hand it resisted all efforts. The nearest blacksmithshop was on a country road over a mile away. Aflag-man was sent back to stop the passenger train,with directions to cut its engine loose from the train,and push the disabled engine and train to the sidetrack. This arranged, the fire was drawn from theLancaster.Mr. Brandt, myself and two others started forthe blacksmith shop, each carrying his portion. Ourcourse was over fences, and across fields. On risingground, in full sight of the railroad and not over aquarter of a mile from it, we came to a farm house,at which a hog-killing frolic was going on. Brandtwas acquainted with the German farmer, who offeredto hitch up his team and take us to the smithshop.He said he had some tools in a little repair shop, thatBrandt was welcome to the use of?a good strong vise, blacksmith's bellows, anvil and tools, but nocoal. "If the bellows and hearth are in order," saidBrandt, "I can straighten these rods and make theweld with brands from under the hog-scaldingkettle," which was then in full blast. It was not long before he was at work with greatearnestness. My portion of the job was to loosenthe spindle, by stretching the outer shell of the rock-shaft with a hand hammer. A pretty long and tire-some job, but successful. When the spindle was gotout, it did not show signs of either heating or cutting,it was simply dry blue cemented for about fourinches of its length between the oil holes, whichseemed to have been stopped by a thin scale incontact with the spindle, a case of dry sticking, suchas is often experienced with ground glass bottle-stoppers; the original fit had been a little too niceto admit the oil.From our elevated position we saw the four-wheelEnglish locomotive cut loose from its train of a four-wheel box baggage car and five four-wheel passengercars, that could seat twenty-six passengers each. 217For over an hour the English engine was puffing awayin a vain effort to push the "Lancaster" and train tothe siding. She could start the train back on a downgrade, slack the connecting links and bump the carstogether again; but as to going ahead, it was the oldstory of one step forward and two back. The accidenthappened about 4 p.m. on a short fall day; it was longafter dark when the repairs were completed. Brandt,with the brands from the hog-scalding fire, with poortools and improvised helpers, had made a good weld.It was near eight o'clock when the engine started ingood running order.While these repairs were going on in the little work-shop or stable lean-to, the farmer's wife was not back-ward with her true German hospitality, for she camewith a jug of pure water and a square quart bottle ofhomemade bitters, pressing it on us with the assur-ance that "she is nice, she is goot." The daughtersand guests at the lard rendering and sausage making,came with coffee, hot corn-cakes, and other nicethings, which we ate standing without stopping ourwork, using the hands of the fair ones to put the foodin our mouths in a manner that caused much merri-ment and many Pennsylvania Dutch jokes.The passenger engine with its train, felt its way tothe city, with a couple of common lanterns hung onthe front bumpers, for it was before the day of cow-catchers, now called pilots, or headlights. This wasrailroading fifty-one years ago, on what is now thegreat Pennsylvania Central .... [60] 217 Again, there is the difficulty with the English locomotiveas mentioned in notes 186 and 205 above. I can only assumethat this trip occurred after the English engines arrived, in thespring of 1835. 167 John Brandt is best known to the engineers andmaster mechanics of the present time as an earlymaster mechanic of the New York and Erie Railroad,in charge of the shops at Piermont, and by the loco-motives afterwards built lay him at his shops in Pater-son, N.J., but little is generally known of the earlyhistory of this self-taught inventive mechanic.My acquaintance with Mr. Brandt dates back to theyear 1826; he at that time was carrying on a commonjobbing blacksmith shop in Lancaster, Pa.; at the sametime my father and elder brother were engaged inmanufacturing card clothing for wool and cotton card-Lng machines, also in drawing fine brass and copperwire and weaving wire cloth for facing paper moulds,and for covering paper cylinders, this being about thecommencement of the transition from hand tomachine-made paper. The business of wire drawingand making paper moulds was commenced by mygrandfather, Nathan Sellers, during the early part ofthe revolutionary war. He was in the service fromwhich he was honorably discharged by special act ofCongress in order that he might make moulds forpaper making. He was sent under military escort toYork, Pa., where, under guard, he made the first pairof paper moulds made on this continent, and on whichthe paper for congressional use and for printing thecontinental currency was made.About the close of the war, the manufactory of handcards for cotton and wool, and the clothing for cardingmachines was established in connection with the wireworks. The cards were all hand set; that is, thesheets of leather were pierced with holes to receivethe wire card teeth on a machine for that purpose.The wire was cut into uniform lengths and formedinto the teeth on other machines invented and con-structed by my grandfather. I will here note thatthese machines were so perfect in plan and construc-tion that they continued in use without alteration orimprovement for nearly half a century, until super-seded by machine set cards. In hand-setting whenevery tooth had to be separately picked up. and, bynimble fingers, put in the holes pierced to receivethem, it gave employment to many hundred children.and often to women, at pick-up work as their aid tobread winning. The work was taken home, and re-turned when finished. The register of names andresidences of those employed exceeded 3,000; thenumber having work out ranging between 300 and500.Some time previous to the time I am writing of.a machine had been invented for doina; the entire168 work, and was in use to some extent, but owing to theshape and largeness of the pierced holes in the leatherand consequent looseness of the teeth, had not thensupplanted the more costly hand process. 213Early in the year 1826 Mr. James Humes of Lan-caster, Pa., who at that time was carrying on a cottonfactory, came to us for new clothing for some of hismachines, bringing with him a sample of machine-made fillet or ribbon card that had the teeth morefirmly set in the leather than the best hand-made. Herepresented it as the outcome of the brain and work-manship of an ordinary jobbing blacksmith who hadnever seen any of the machinery then in use for doingany part of the work of card manufacturing.My father was so well pleased with the sample that,learning from Mr. Humes that John Brandt, the in-ventor and maker of the machine, had offered it for sale, he went to Lancaster and found points in themachine of great merit, but it was not constructed ina thoroughly workman-like manner. But as an inven-tion of a man with the few opportunities Brandt had,my father considered it wonderful. I think it probable that had Brandt seen the ma-chines then in use, he would not have struck on a newtrack and worked out what he had done, the greatmerit of which was, so firmly holding and supportingthe wire staple tooth that without bending it could beforced through the leather without it being pierced,but not without leading as it passed through theleather and making irregular work, but would withaccuracy follow a puncture no larger than the wire,thus the teeth could be as firmly set as required. Thishe accomplished by so shaping the end of the die orformer on which the wire staple was bent by sidebenders grooved to the size of the wire being used,that as the die was drawn down and out the pusherfollowing the shape of its end, both die and bendersbeing in contact with the leather, there was no possi-bility of bending the staple as it was thrust home.The second bend or hook of the tooth was then madeand the leather moved into position to be pierced toreceive the next tooth.Feeding in the wire, cutting it into proper lengths,seizing and holding to the die, bending into staple,piercing the leather, thrusting in the tooth, drawingout the die as the pusher advanced, making the secondbend or hook of the tooth, moving the leather into 218 Oliver Evans reportedly designed and built before 1 780a card machine that set teeth at the rate of 3,000 per minute.Sec Bathe and Bathe (cited in note 46 above), p. 8. position for the next tooth, were nine distinct move-ments, requiring certainty and great accuracy, mostof them concentrating to a single point. This firstmachine he ran at a speed of about ioo teeth perminute, or say, 900 distinct operations.All these movements he got from cam studs on abrass barrel, not unlike the barrel of a hand organ ormusical box. My father explained to him the sepa- rate cams on a single shaft that gave all the motionsto our old card tooth-making machines, and showedhim that steadier and less jerky motions could be gotin that way with increased speed than from his shortstud cams on his brass barrel.It was proposed that he should go to Philadelphiaand see the old card-teeth machines, before commenc-ing others which he had undertaken to make for us.His original machine was purchased, though not ex-pected to be of much use. After making some altera-tions on it he brought it to the city. When he sawthe old machines he was struck with their simplicity,and at once proposed radical changes in making newones.He asked to be left alone with the old machine thathe might study the cams. Soon after this I found himwith an old machine taken to pieces. He was busywith his pocketknife carving out of shingles the formsof the various cams. I offered to make for him draw-ings of any parts he wanted, and then discovered thathe did not understand the simplest plain drawings.His pocketknife was his pencil, and his habit was tocarve models out of wood, and to adjust parts bytrial, a kind of rule of thumb.After he had undertaken to build the machines for us, it was decided that my elder brother, Charles, whowas a superior worker in metals, should go to Lan-caster and remain there working on the new machineswith Mr. Brandt. For this purpose he went to Lancas-ter in 1827. Early in 1828 the first machines werecompleted, and Mr. Brandt, with his family, removedto Philadelphia, and the firm of Sellers & Brandt wasformed for the manufactory of machine cards.It was in the winter of that year while Mr. Brandt,with the assistance of my brother and myself, wereengaged in constructing more card machines, he mak-ing all the forgings, that he came to me with a propo- sition. He said no man could be a good workingmechanic without being able to make his own forgings,at any rate so far as to forge his own tools and temperthem. He proposed to take me as a scholar, if Iwould, in return, give him some instruction in ma-chine drawing. He went on to say, that with proper attention and desire on the part of the apprentice tolearn, a few weeks would make a better smith thanthe customary four or five years' apprenticeship. Hesaid he had given over three years of his life to doingthe work of the commonest laborer for what littleinstruction he got.He proposed that I should be helper, blow andstrike for him, for a week; then take the hand hammer,and he would blow and strike for me the next week;that at the end of two or three such terms he wouldguarantee that I could handle iron and steel as wellas he could. There was something so original andnovel in his proposition, that I at once accededto it. The work to be done was mostly light steelforgings and he had enough of his wooden patternsready for some six or eight weeks' work.The second week, when my turn had come to takethe hand-hammer, he handed me a sheet-iron template,giving size and form for a breast-brace of about 3%inches crank, or swing of 7 inches. He wanted meto try my hand at forging one, saying I would alwaysfind it a useful tool. With the template he gave mea piece of wire bent to the shape, showing he hadmarked on it the portions to be forged 8 square, andthe round for hand grip; also a wooden model of thesocket end. He told me to straighten the wire, andit would help in forging, giving the proper lengthof each part. Then, to my surprise, he handed mea bar 1% inches square, of charcoal forged hammerediron, to forge a brace whose 8-square portions werebut %-inch and the round ^s-inch, and the spindleend about %-inch diameter. I asked why not forge the socket-end, drill andsquare the taper hole for the bits, and weld this toa bar nearer the size?To this he replied that no good smith would drillthe socket end, he would punch and work it on a steel mandrel; then for the brace no rolled iron willhave sufficient stiffness without making it too heavy.This charcoal iron is free from flaws, is the right size, and when drawn down it will have great stiffness. I tried to induce him to take the hand-hammer,but he reminded me that it was my turn, and that Imust remember our bargain. If I was afraid to takethe "bull by the horns I could never learn how tohold him." Although I expected failure, the bracewas forged, and the steel end of spindle successfullywelded.This was my first job in that line, and now as Iwrite, that brace lies before me, having stood theservice of 57 years, and is as good now as the day it169 was made. It has always been one of my favoritetools. As I look back over that long period. I can seeBrandt as helper doing more towards its productionthan the head hammerman. I thought it would be an easy task to make a goodmechanical draughtsman of a man who, with suchfacility, carved with his pocket-knife the forms hewanted to produce with his hammer, but I was mis-taken. He took hold with great earnestness, handledhis instruments well, and soon learned to copy linedrawings with neatness and accuracy, but it waspurely mechanical, for he did not understand thesimplest drawings. He said he was often mortifiedby not being able to understand sketches. A verbalexplanation of any portion of a machine was clear tohim, but the moment a sketch in illustration was made all was confusion. It was by mere accident that I discovered his mentaldifficulty. All his thinking was, if I may so express it,full size. The trouble was in reducing to a given scaleand carrying both in his mind at the same time. Upto the point of this discovery it would take pages todescribe the various devices I resorted to, but now allwas plain sailing. By working him on full-size draw-ings, it was not long before he understood them andbecame quite proficient.But some ludicrous things occurred. I will cite butone, premising that he was full of a dry kind of humor,that, at times, was difficult to distinguish from earnest.He showed me a full-size drawing of a crank, made onthin sheet iron and asked me to reduce it to half size. "Why don't you do it?" I asked. "You have twocenters on a line." "Yes, I know, and I have done it, but it don't look right. I want you to do it." I did so, and he took it, remarking that it looked toosmall. I said: "Measure from center to center, and you will find it right." "Yes, but"?and away he walked, and soon cameback with both cut out, saying: "I have weighed both.There is something wrong. The half-size does notweight one-fourth as much as the full-size!" - 1 ' 1 Tables of areas and superfices only perplexed him.It was evident that the books I gave him to study onlyconfused him. At one time he became very despond- ent. He said he felt his own ignorance; that he wastoo old to begin, too old to go to school, but if Icould find him a private teacher, that could be trustedand keep his secret, he would make a trial, althoughover 40 years of age. If he could only be taught howto learn, he thought he could do the rest; but he wassensitive on the subject, and did not want it knownthat at his time of life he was beginning.My friend, John C. Trautwine, at that time inStrickland's office, became much interested in Brandt,and together we consulted Prof. James P. Espy, 220 whohad been Mr. Trautwine's mathematical preceptor,who, after an interview or two with Brandt, withouthis knowing the object, agreed with us that the firststep in instruction must be entirely oral. He thoughtamong his pupils he could find a capable one thatwould devote two or three evenings a week to thework. This was done. Brandt remained in Philadel-phia from the fall of 1828 until the spring of 1829.During these months his studies were privately andprofitably pursued. In the spring he moved to ourcard works in Delaware county, 221 but his wife wasdiscontented. They were what is known as Pennsyl-vania Dutch. In October 1829 the partnership wasdissolved, and he returned to Lancaster and resumedhis old business of blacksmith.When, in the fall of 1833, I learned that he hadtaken the position of foreman of the PennsylvaniaRailroad shops at Parkesburg, I went to see him. Hethen said he was afraid he had given way to the per-suasion of Mr. James Cameron, at that time chairmanof the board of Canal Commissioners, and feared hewould not succeed. I found his office walls coveredwith working models of eccentrics, rock shafts andsteam valves, all full size. When I rallied him on ad-hering to full size, he replied: "It is best, I think, thatway."After showing me his models, he called my atten-tion to the exhaust of the English locomotive I had 21!) The reader who does not immediately see the point of thistale is reminded that when all dimensions of a plane figure arereduced by one-half, the area becomes one-fourth of the originalarea. 220 James Pollard Espy (1 785-1860) was employed in Wash-ington as a meteorologist from 1842 until his death. In collab-oration with the Smithsonian Institution he collected tele-graphic information on weather data at various stations, makingpossible the mapping and forecasting of weather conditions.Sec Dictionary of American Biography. The Smithsonian Institu-tion owns an oil portrait of Espy.221 Cardington. 170 come up on. 222 He said it was al) wrong, a g-inch cyl-inder with only 3-inch length of valve ports. It al-ways went by screaming, pish, pish, pish, like boysthrowing gravel against a board fence, and he declaredthat if he ever built an engine, the ports should be atleast as long as two-thirds the diameter of the cylinder. I relate this to show the bent of his thoughts at thatearly day. He did not prove a failure. He was soonfound by other railroad managers, and we next knowhim as master mechanic of the New York and Erie. I visited him at Piermont, spending several dayswith him in the shops and on the road, but have nomemorandum to fix the date. He, at that time,shewed me his plans for a 10-wheel locomotive, withthree pairs of drivers, and a 4-wheel truck, whichhe had designed for the central or heavy gradedivision of the Erie Railroad. He had tried withoutsuccess to get permission to build some at the Pier-mont shops. He was directed to exhibit his plansand get bids from locomotive builders, and hadtaken them to Baldwin, who raised many objections,and declined bidding, but the Norris works lookedmore favorably on his plans. He left his drawingswith them, which were returned with their bid.Previous to this he had shown his drawings to Mr.Millholland, 223 of the Reading Railroad, who was 222 Again, the English locomotive before 1835.?s James Millholland (181 2-1875). See Railway Gazette(August 28, 1875), vol. 7, p. 362, for obituary. Millhollandwas "master of machinery" of the Philadelphia and ReadingRailroad from 1848 to 1864. enthusiastic, and expressed his opinion that theywould be particularly adapted to the heavy coaltraffic of the Reading.At the time of my visit he had not got authority toorder any for the Erie. He said he understood thatMillholland was having a 10-wheeler built by Norrisand he (Brandt) had no doubt it would prove to bethe most effective freight engine. He was veryparticular in calling my attention to the details ofhis drawings, saying, if I should ever see the Norrisengine, he would like me to note how nearly itconformed to his drawings.Some time after this, on meeting Mr. Millh jlland, Ilearned that the 10-wheeler was in service, and itsperformance was even better than he had anticipated.I rode over part of the road with him on the "Susque-hanna." In detail the engine differed considerablyfrom Brandt's drawings, as I recollected then, andMillholland remarked, "that after the engine wasput on the road some alterations had to be madethat would not have been required had Mr. Brandt'splans been closer adhered to." I have related the abovein order to award Mr. Brandt credit he richly deservesas one of the pioneers in advancing the Americanlocomotive to its present perfection.We next find him located at Paterson, N.J., carryingon locomotive works. The engines he there turnedout are known to most of the present master me-chanics. At Paterson he and his family were asrestless as when at Philadelphia. He sold out andreturned to his old home at Lancaster, where heerected shops and started locomotive works, but didnot live to see them in successful operation. [61] 171 24. The Sellers Locomotive The America, first of the two Sellers locomotives,was delivered to the Philadelphia and ColumbiaRailroad in the late summer of 1835. 224In order to reinforce his own memory as to theexact date, the author wrote to his brother Charlesand asked him for evidence that would fix thedate. Charles replied: 225Our first locomotive was put on the Rail Rd. in1835. I ran it for one week before we asked theCommissioners to take a trial trip to Lancasterand back.The nearest date I can fix on was when field cornwas in the milk in good condition for roasting ears. I know this because one of the two shop hands I had with me went into a field, when I stopped thetrain to do something to the engine, and roastedthem in the ash box.The second and last Sellers locomotive, calledSampson, probably was delivered during the sameyear. Soon surpassed in performance by loco-motives from the shops of Matthias Baldwin andWilliam Norris, however, the Sellers locomotiveswere within a year or two placed in ordinary.Eventually they joined the hundreds of otherlocomotives that have, in some detailed way,helped to point the direction of advance, but thathave not possessed the total excellence that wouldhave made them leaders of the procession. li,ARLY in august, 1 835. when our first engine wasabout ready to be placed on the road, Mr. Cameron,accompanied by Mr. Brandt, came to our works toinspect it. Mr. Cameron brought with him drawingsof an attachment invented and patented 2M by Mr.Edgar L. Miller of the Charleston and Hamburg R. R.of South Carolina, by which a part of the weight of 221 The chronological table of locomotives on the Philadelphiaand Columbia that is perhaps most widely circulated is the onein the annual report of the railroad for 1837, reproduced inWatkins (cited in note 177 above), vol. 1, pp. I37a-I37b.However, when this report is compared with others submittedby various Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad officials, anumber of errors are at once apparent. The date given herefor the Sellers locomotive is confirmed in a report dated Octo-ber 30, 1835, reproduced in Watkins, p. 129. The U.S.Treasury's "Report on Steam Engines" (cited in note 173above), p. 169, lists both Sellers locomotives as having beenbuilt in 1835.225 Letter from Charles Sellers to George Escol Sellers datedat Woodstock, July 23, 1884, copy in Paul T. Warner papers,division of transportation, Smithsonian Institution.226 U.S. patent of June 19, 1834. the tender could be thrown on the driving-wheelswhen an increased adhesion was required, directingus to put it on our engine, they paying the additionalexpense as well as for the patent right.Anticipating this, or rather doubting the traction ofthe drivers, as placed back of the fire-box, beingequal to the steam-power, I had devised and applieda lever arrangement, the fulcrum of which was theaxle of the driving-wheels. 227 The attachment of thetender to the engine was so made that at all times whendrawing a train a portion of the weight of the frontof the engine was removed from the truck and thrownon the driving-wheels; this increased with the draftin ascending grades, as additional traction was re-quired, being automatic in its action. This devicewas approved of and applied to our early engines, aswas the Miller arrangement to the Baldwin engines, until the better distribution of weight on two pairof drivers was adopted. 227 U.S. patent of May 22, 1835, by Charles Sellers andGeorge Escol Sellers.172 Figure 69.?Charles and GeorgeEscol Sellers's device for "Increasingthe adhesion of the Wheels of Loco-motives." A lever arrangement,terminating in the draw bar (G, at right in lower view) has its pivot nearthe axle of the driving wheels, butneither the drawing nor the specifi-cation is entirely clear. In the wordsof the patent specification, the loadbeing hauled "shall tend to raise thefore end of the Locomotive in anydesired degree, and thus to lessen thepressure upon the fore, and transferthe same to the behind wheels."The draw bar is adjustable up anddown to change the leverage. FromU.S. patent, May 22, 1835, restoreddrawing. National Archives photo-graph. About this time we had a visit from Mr. Rogers, 228the founder of the Rogers Locomotive Works, of Pater-son, N.J. He was accompanied by Mr. Danforth 229 ofthe same place. Our business connection with Mr.Rogers was of long standing, having furnished himwith card-clothing for cotton machinery. As he ex-pressed a desire to visit our works, I drove him and hisfriend out to them. The locomotive then in the handsof the painter preparative for delivery, seemed to bethe chief attraction, particularly the iron frame,outside connections, and the driving-wheels. The ar-rangement for securing counter-weights was com-mented on by Mr. Rogers, he asking why they werenot cast solid with the wheel? During this visit Mr.Rogers said his friends John B. Jervis and HoratioAllen had long been urging him to try his hand at 228 Thomas Rogers (1792-1856). The Rogers, Ketchum &Grosvrnor Machine Works of Paterson, New Jersey, made rail-road car wheels and fittings at this time. See Dictionary ofAmerican Biography. A Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor adver-tisement was carried in nearly every issue of vol. 4 of AmericanRailroad Journal (1835). The first Rogers locomotive wascompleted in 1837.229 Charles Danforth (1797-1876), inventor and builder ofcotton spinning machinery, entered the locomotive business in1852. See Dictionary of American Biography. locomotive building, and that he had serious thoughtsof doing so. I have related this as evidence that coun-terbalancing was not only under discussion but inactual course of experiment prior to Mr. Rogerscommencing locomotive building.As I was at that time residing at the works, 230 I didnot return to the city with these gentlemen, but. in theevening sent them with a trusty and intelligent driver,who on his return seemed to have been much amusedat the conversation between Mr. Rogers and hisfriend; he said they both spoke in praise of the char-acter of the workmanship on the engine; that Mr.Rogers had remarked that he had noticed a strong,broad-wheel truck that he supposed was intended tomove the locomotive over the country roads to the railroad. He had also noticed that the engine was set up opposite the widest door in a substantial stonebuilding; he had measured the doorway, and theengine across the cylinders, and found it some twofeet or more wider than the opening after taking outthe wooden door-frame, and the way the engine was 230 "After Fred was born [February 26, 1834] and I wasadding to the little house at Cardington ... I was withRachel, the baby and nurse boarded with Bonsall . . . ."(Memoirs, book 1, p. 39.) 173 Figure 70.?Thomas Rogers (1792-1856).From J. Leander Bishop, A History of AmericanManufactures from 1608 to i860, 3d ed., 3 vols.(Philadelphia, 1868). put together it would be impossible to take the cyl-inders off. He feared that when the Messrs. Sellersundertook to move the engine, they would find it likeRobinson Crusoe's boat. William the driver said hecould not help saying, "maybe the stone-mason'shammer and chisel will soon make the door right."This trivial matter must have made a lasting impressionon Mr. Rogers, for twenty or more years later heasked me how we had got the engine out of the houseit was set up in, adding, "I have always been curiousto know."Fifty years ago, the time I am now writing of, themechanical engineer was no more exempt from diffi- culties in the introduction of anything new and un-tried than he has been at any subsequent period.All our arrangements had been made to deliver ourfirst locomotive "America" from our shops to the headof the incline plane over a hilly country road of about six miles, when we received a note from the canalcommissioners stating that they had become satisfiedthat our outside connected engine, with the spread of its cylinders, would produce so much oscillation asnot only to be injurious to the engine but to the track,if the engine could be made to keep it, but this mightbe partially remedied by placing side bearings on thetruck; that unless they were put on, the engine wouldnot be allowed to run on the road even for a trial.Here was a serious dilemma.Having had a full understanding with Mr. Brandtas to carrying the weight on the center-pin, and to satisfy the commissioners, having adopted outsideframe and bearings for the truck axles, with separatespring to each journal, there was nothing above thisoutside truck-frame to which a support could beapplied. Baldwin's springs over the outside woodenframes with its center-pin passing through them,resting on a cast-iron grease-box on the truck-frame,admitted the truck to turn as much as required inrunning the curves. The J. B. Jervis truck whichwe had seen on the Hudson and Mohawk had abetter arrangement for turning, each axle-bearinghaving separate springs; the side supports were rollersor wheels having their bearings in boxes attachedto the engine-frame, with flat iron plates on thewooden truck frame. I had so much confidence inthe steady running with the bearing on the center-pin without side supports, that in hopes of gettingpermission from the commissioners to allow the trial,agreeing in case the engine was found unsteady to Figure 7 1 .?Side support for trial of Sellerslocomotive, showing slotted hole used to provethat the device was unnecessary. See text.From American Machinist (November 7, 1885), vol. 8.174 put inside frames to the truck and supports to theiron frame, I at once went to Parkesburg to seeBrandt, and, if possible, get his influence with thecommissioners to allow the trial. He was greatly-surprised on reading the note, and could not imaginewhat influence had been brought to bear; he re-turned with me to the city and said all he could toinduce the commissioners to allow the trial. No;they had laid the subject before their engineersand several reliable mechanics; the verdict wasunanimous that at any speed beyond a walk the enginewould certainly jump the track.Mr. Brandt in his characteristic way asked Mr.Cameron if he could not sit steadier on a three-legthan a four-leg chair on an uneven floor.Mr. Cameron replied, "that is not the question; itis the oscillation caused by the alternate action of thepistons in the widespread cylinders that we fear." I urged that the inequalities of the road would onlybe felt half as much with the weight carried on thecenter of the truck; that the weight would always beequally divided among all four wheels; that theengine would run steadier and be less liable to leavethe track.They would not yield; side supports must be appliedbefore the engine would be allowed to go on the road.The position of the cradle carrying the center-pinsocket or step where it passed under the iron frame ofthe engine was about 10 inches distant from it, and it was only about 5 inches wide. It would not beimpossible to build on this, and to the frame so as toadopt the Jervis roller; but I was bent on having atrial without any side support, and this could not bedone without connivance with Brandt.After hours had been wasted in these discussions Isuggested suspending from the frame of the engine akind of pendulum in the shape of a segment of awheel that would represent about 14 inches diameter,with sufficient length of its periphery, which was to rest in a grooved box secured to the cradle to allowthe truck to turn the shortest curves, in fact the Jervisroller or wheel enlarged from about 2 to 14 inchesdiameter. Gravity would always keep it in position.This plan was approved; it could be applied withoutdelaying the delivery of the engine, only requiringtwo holes to be drilled in each iron frame to securethe joint or axle, and a like number in the cradle tofasten the grooved step; these wheel segment supportswere forged of wrought iron about 1 inch thick,[figure 71.] Figure 72.?Matthias W. Baldwin (1795-1866). From Memorial of Matthias II'. Baldwin(Philadelphia, 1867), frontispiece. I have spoken of connivance with Brandt; when Itold him of my intention of slotting the axle-hole soas to allow a play up and down of about 1% incheshe was much amused, but insisted on having atemplate sent him, that he could have an extra pairmade without slotting the holes, saying he wouldbe on the engine when first steamed up, and if theengineers and wise mechanics were right, he wouldhave a solid pair ready to put in; the slots were hidby large washers, and to keep these sham supportsfirmly in place the spaces above and below the axiswere filled with soft white pine. I have no memorandum at hand of the date theengine was put on the road, but it was not later thanthe first of September, 1835. Supposing all dif-ficulties in the way of a fair trial of the engine hadbeen overcome, and while my brother was engagedin loading the engine on to the truck and removingit to the railroad, I was surprised at finding in ourcity office a note from Mr. Charles Chauncey, who at that time was one of the most prominent of Phila-delphia counselors-at-law in patent cases, a>king animmediate interview, stating that Matthias W, 175 Baldwin had instructed him to commence an actionby injunction to prevent the running of our locomo-tive then being placed on the railroad, on the groundof infringement of two of his patent claims; thathe, Mr. Chauncey, had declined taking the case,and that he had assured Mr. Baldwin that if we wereinfringing, it was without knowledge, and he hadno doubt as to our making it right without recourseto law; that he had induced Mr. Baldwin to allowhim to act as umpire between us; he therefore re-quested an immediate interview.Our position with Mr. Chauncey was one of long-standing family intimacy and friendship. At thetime of our father's death, which occurred in May,1834, we received a letter of condolence from him, inwhich he said it was his wish to extend his friendshipfor our father to his sons, and although he was re-tiring from active practice at the bar, occasions mightoccur in our business transactions requiring legalcounsel and advice; in that case he hoped we wouldfreely call on him as a friend. From that time ourintercourse was of the most friendly character, andmore than once we were indebted to him for valuablecounsel and advice.When I considered our previous friendly relationswith Mr. Baldwin, I was completely taken aback.His shop in Minor street was but half a block fromour office, and after his removal to Lodge Alley buttwo blocks away; a single week had never passedwithout our meeting either at his shop, or at theFranklin Institute, or in our own office, where hefrequently came in company with his friend, ouruncle, Franklin Peale, whose position as manager ofthe Philadelphia museum required frequent consulta-tions with me as chairman of the executive committeeof that institution. These meetings apparently-friendly, the locomotive we were building was fre-quently a subject of conversation. Mr. Baldwin ex-pressed great interest in what he called the experi-ment of iron frames and outside connections; I do notremember his ever expressing a decided opinion ofthem, but as to carrying the weight on the center ofthe truck, he was very decided, predicting failure anda necessity of side supports. The nearest he ever cameto expressing an opinion as to outside connectionswas that he should watch with great interest the oscilla-tive or vibrative effect on the engine, and incidentallyasking if I had ever considered the difficulty in keepingthe inside bearing-journals of the driving-axles lubri- cated. From this I inferred that he was somewhat skeptical. I felt greatly aggrieved at Mr. Baldwin's course, for he had never made any allusion to hispatent claims. I hastened to Mr. Chauncey's office, no doubt show-ing some nervous excitement, for on entering, Mr.Chauncey opened the business in his mild way by as-suring me that his note was dictated by friendship;that he had fully impressed Mr. Baldwin with thedanger of commencing action by injunction requiringsecurity, and in case of defeat subjecting him to dam-ages; that on his declining to take the case against us,Mr. Baldwin had asked if he was to understand thathe would act as counsel for us against him? He repliedthat he would act for both parties as far as lay in hispower to prevent needless litigation, but if it wasforced on us he should certainly give us the advantageof his advice, but he would not take an active part oneither side. Mr. Baldwin had finally left with him hispatent specification and claims, pointing out whereinhe considered us infringing, and had consented to hiswriting to us.He then handed me the specification, 231 requestingme to read it and the claims with care; after I haddone so he stated that Baldwin in the first placeclaimed that we were infringing his combined woodand cast-iron wheel; I made a sketch and explainedour continuous box rim filled with wood, with suffi-cient bearing on the cast-iron for the tire in case thewood should be destroyed by heat in shrinking on thetire. To his question as to how we had prevented theunequal contraction of the cast wheel that Baldwinclaimed to have done by the separate or non-con-nected flanges on the ends of his cast-iron spokes, I replied, only proportioning the thickness of the parts,casting under considerable head with gates of ample size to feed metal as long as the casting in coolingwould take it, and by leaving the casting in the sandfor twenty-four or more hours with a charcoal fire onit for some twelve hours, slow cooling or annealing asfar as practicable without an annealing furnace.Mr. Chauncey's practice in patent cases and theattention he had paid to mechanics made him veryprompt in expressing his opinion that there was noinfringement, saying wooden felloes are not patent-able; they having been in use from the time of theEgyptians, the only sustainable claim could be for apeculiar combination. He then added: "Mr. Baldwindid not seem very confident as to his claim being in-fringed, but he laid great stress on his claim for groundmetallic joints for steam and water pipes." 232 231 U.S. patent of June 29, 1833.232 U.S. patent of September 10, 1834.176 t I. ... i Jt*"'-/' Figure 73.?Baldwin's locomotive wheel, showing woodenfelloes (d) between spokes and rim. From U.S. patent, April 3,1835, restored drawing. National Archives photograph. To this I replied, that appears to be a claim forprotection in doing good work, and that any one shouldmake it was astounding; that in the practice of myfather's shop from my earliest recollection, well-fitted metallic joints was the rule, canvass and redlead a rare exception. Mr. Chauncey asked me toreduce to writing what I had to say on that subject,and let him have it that evening; that he had an earlyappointment with Baldwin for the next morning,and named the hour he would see me.In drawing this paper I referred to the custom ofour shop, and our manner of making metallic steamor water-joints; that we had long known by experiencethat a lump or fullness could not be ground offwithout making a corresponding depression in theopposite; that the joints on the locomotive steam-pipes were as they came from the lathe, having beentried under direct pressure, with Venetian red finely-ground in oil: that care and little practice showedwhere the scraper, if required, was needed; also,when it had done its work, the joints were not ground. I referred to the gunbarrel steam-pipes of the oldHawkins engine, one barrel coned into the otherand drawn together with clamp-bolts that hadcarried steam of 8oo? temperature, and where thesepipes, then in existence, could be seen. I also re-ferred to Jacob Perkins' English patent of 1824, as published in Newton's journal, 233 claiming the unitingof steam-pipes by a short double-cone section drawninto the ends of the steam-pipes reamed out conicallyto receive them, drawn together by bolts throughflanges on the steam pipes, said to have carried steamof 1,000? Fahrenheit; also, to the account of steam-heating the house of Sir J. Sloan, London, which Ibelieve was the first published account of heatingby steam-pipes, the joints of these pipes being metalto metal, as described in the Perkins patent.At the time appointed, as I went into Mr. Chauncey's office, I met Mr. Baldwin coming out; his passing-greeting was hurried and excited; what had passedbetween him and Mr. Chauncey I never knew, nordid I inquire, for Mr. Chauncey said to me, "Youput your engine on the road; you will never hear moreof these patent claims." This episode did not produceany estrangement; after-meetings were always pleas-ant; neither of us ever reverted to it.As I have before stated, this our first locomotive wasput on the State road early in September, 1835, myelder brother Charles and Mr. Brandt handling thethrotde on its first trip to Columbia and back with afreight train; after this, my brother made other tripswith the runner having charge. 333 British patent 4732, December 10, 1822. 177 f-i i Figure 74.?Baldwin's conical steam joint.Compression pipe joint as shown in U.S.patent, September 10, 1834. National Archivesphotograph.When satisfied that all was ready for a publicexhibition, a round-trip to Lancaster was made,accompanied by the canal commissioners, the civilengineers of the road, and a number of invited guests,Mr. Brandt being on the foot-board with my brother.During the trip to Lancaster the commissioners andengineers took turns in riding on the engine. Amongthe invited guests were Dr. R. M. Patterson, directorof the U.S. Mint, Adam Eckfeldt, chief coiner, ouruncle, Franklin Peale, then assayer, melter and refiner, afterwards chief coiner and inventor of thesteam-coining press on which the first steam coinagewas struck, March 23, 1836, Mr. Thomas Chaunceyand a number of others. M. W. Baldwin was theonly invited guest that did not accompany us.William Norris, though a rival builder, was sincerein his congratulations, and made himself the life ofthe party. At our dinner at Lancaster he spoke withenthusiasm of the success and unexpected steadinesswith outside connections, saying that from it he dateda new era in locomotive building; he could clearly see the time would come for increasing the number ofdriving-wheels, heavier engines, with a better distri-bution of weight on the road, making available andusing more effectively the steam-power of the enginewith less injury to the roadway; he called on thecommissioners for their opinion of our engine.Mr. Jas. Cameron replied that they had been veryreluctant in consenting that an outside-connectedengine should be built; that they had given way toMessrs. Sellers backed as they were lay John Brandt in whom he had great confidence; that he must con-fess to being very agreeably disappointed, as all whohad seen the performance could bear witness to thegreat steadiness of the engine on the road; he hadridden on all their engines, and this was certainly thesteadiest; then turning to me he said: "You now seethe wisdom of our insisting on the outside supportsfrom the truck frame. Where would we have beenleft if the engine had been allowed to rock on itscenter-pin with every stroke of the pistons?"When about taking the cars for the return trip, Icrawled all around the engine; then standing on alevel track, directing Mr. Cameron's attention to theside supports, I took hold of one and raised it clearof its bed groove. "What," asked Mr. Cameron, "is the axle broken?We must have a new one put in before we start; Ifeared they were too light to bear the thrust."Going to the other side, and taking hold of the otherone I found it jambed, and was obliged to jar it witha hammer before I could raise it. "What," asked Mr.Cameron, "is this one also broken?" I directed the pins to be taken out to show the slots.As this was being done Brandt came to my assistance,with the duplicates he had made in hand; showingthem to Mr. Cameron with the ones that had been slotted, he said, "With your positive order I couldnot let the engine go on trial without having these incase they were required." "Ah! Johnnie, Johnnie," said Mr. C, "you are asad man, I see you believe in the old Scotch adagethat the proof of the pudding is in chewing the string. I think this time you have chewed it pretty fine. Iwas going to say take off the things, but on secondthought they had better be left on as a safeguard incase of rocking too far on a sudden lurch." Theother engine went out without any side supports.On our way back to Philadelphia my brother camefrom the engine into the car, and asked the commis-sioners how they liked the performance of the engine;the answer was, that it was perfectly satisfactory, and if we would call at their office, an order on the treas-urer would be ready for us. We had no written con-tract; the understanding was if the engine performed satisfactorily we were to be paid 85,000. When I called I was handed a draft for $5,500, Mr. Cameronexplaining that the $500 had been added for the leverattachment to throw part of the weight of the forwardend of the engine on the drivers instead of applyingthe Miller attachment. [62]178 mw mmMmmmmmmmmmzmmmmiimCOLEMAN, SELLERS k SONS, |g Engineers, Machinists, &, Ironfounders,|jgm> m$8 CaY&inalon Iron Wovks. ^%& Office No. 8 North Sixth street, above Market, ^, PHILADELPHIA. ** Locomotive and other Steamt Engines, ** Rollins; Mills, and all kinds of Mill Gearing ; alsofljg = =>Ua?tr #jm Jttactjeim'k,MANUFACTURED IN THE BEST MANNER.Foundry work in general. Oik atem **&9& ?K?te3temmm%mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Figure 75.?Advertisement in A. M'Elrofs PhiladelphiaDirectory for 1839, showing the Sellers locomotive as describedby George Escol Sellers in the present chapter. Library ofCongress photograph. 179 25. Phineas Davisand the Arabian Another of Sellers's friends who had an importantinfluence upon the design of early railroad loco-motives was Phineas Davis. In 1 83 1 Davis builtthe York, a locomotive with vertical boiler and vertical steam cylinder, with which he won acompetition staged by the Baltimore and OhioRailroad. Shortly afterward he accepted a posi-tion as manager of that railroad's Mount Clareshops. His successful career with the Baltimoreand Ohio Railroad was cut short in 1835, when, at the age of 35, he was killed in the derailment ofone of his locomotives. 234It is interesting to learn here how Davis'sthinking may have been influenced by a visit tothe Peale Museum, where he found a steam trac-tion engine model built many years earlier byOliver Evans, and by talking with MatthiasBaldwin, who had not yet become involved withlocomotive building but who had just completedhis vertical stationary steam engine to drive theshop machinery of the firm of Baldwin and Mason. At the Chicago National Railway Exposition [of1883] there was exhibited, by the Baltimore and OhioRailroad Company, an old relic of the most interestingcharacter, the old locomotive "Arabian," an enginethat went into service on that road in June, 1834, andhas been well preserved, and was still doing goodservice in the yards of the Mount Clare workshops after a lifetime lacking but one year of a half century;undoubtedly the oldest effective locomotive in theworld. I remember this engine on its first trial onthe tracks at the machine shops, and as exhibited it isthe same engine; 235 the only change I noticed wasdispensing with the fan blowers that urged the fireand substituting the draft made by the exhauststeam. 236Seeing this old relic brought vividly to mind myfirst acquaintance with Phineas Davis, its designer 231 The sketch on Davis in Dictionary of American Biographyrefers to further biographical information.235 The latest positive date that I have seen for existence ofthe Arabian is 1850, in the 24th Annual Report . . . of the Balti-more and Ohio Rail Road Company ( 1850), table c, opposite p. 54.Before the 1893 exhibition certainly, and perhaps before the1883 exhibition, the identity of the various grasshopper loco-motives had been thrown into utter confusion by the renaming and constructor, and incidents that occurred at thetime of our first meeting, that I have no doubt hadan influence in directing his mind in the bent thatproduced his first small 2^-ton engine built at York,Pa., and afterwards the "Arabian" built in the shopsof the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company.Peter Cooper's little engine, that was tried on theBaltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1830, has the creditof drawing the first passenger cars in America.If my recollection is not entirely at fault, it onlymade a few trips from Baltimore to the Relay House, 237 and "restoring" done for one of the exhibitions. On the otherhand, I have seen no specific account of the Arabian's loss orscrapping. It was known as "No. 1" in i860. See Lawrence W.Sagle, A Picture History oj B & Motive Power (New York:Simmons-Boardman, 1952).236 The fan blowers, intended to promote the burning ofanthracite coal, were patented by Phineas Davis on July 2g,1834. Two "fan wheels" (conventional forward-curving bladecentrifugal blower fans) were directly driven by a "steamwheel," built "in the same manner nearly as the wind wheels," all mounted on a common shaft. The steam wheel was turnedby exhaust steam. See figure 77, on page 183.237 The Peter Cooper locomotive experiments were made in1830 on the line to Ellicott's Mills. See J. Snowden Bell,180 Figure 76. ? Arabian, as displayed at the Chicago Exposition of Rail-way Appliances, 1883. Photo courtesy of Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. and was followed by two attempts by Reeder, ofBaltimore, neither of which was successful; then cameDavis's little engine that took the place of horses,but was found too light for the increasing trafficeven for the short distance to the Relay House andEllicott's Mills, and Davis, who had become foremanof the shops or master mechanic of the road, designedthe "Arabian," taking a bold leap for the time froma 2%-ton engine to one of 13 tons, 238 and that for astrap-bar rail on wooden stringers.When George King, of York, Pa., a paper maker,would come to us for paper moulds (it was the timeof hand-made paper), he always had something tosay about Phineas Davis, a young man of York,whom he considered a prodigy in mechanics; hecould turn his hand to anything; he could reface papermoulds with wire cloth, form the letters and devicesin wire for water marks and sew them on the mouldsas well as the most experienced hand; he told us of apatent lever watch that Davis had made, and so small The Early Motive Power oj the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (NewYork, 191 2), pp. 5-8.238 Thc Arabian was the third locomotive to be built by Davisafter the York. The weight of the Arabian was given in anannual report as 7'j tons. See Bell (cited in preceding foot-note), pp. 1 7~i9. that he could cover it with a levy, the old Spanishcoin, the % of a dollar, in Philadelphia called elevenpenny-bit or levy for short, and in New York a shilling. The next time Mr. King came to the cityhe brought the watch to show us: as I recollect it, itwas about the size of our 20-cent piece. It was abeautiful piece of workmanship considering the toolsDavis had at his command. Mr. King representedthat he [Davis] had never had an opportunity ofseeing how work was done outside of the watchrepairers, blacksmith and gunsmith shops of York,that he was very anxious to see how work was doneon a larger scale.My father sent an invitation to him to pay us a visit, saying that my brother and myself would showhim what we could among the shops. The littlewatch was left with me, and remained in my possessionfor some weeks until Phineas made his appearance.His stay was only a few days, but no time was lost,for a more eager one to see all that was to be seen Inever met. I cannot, with certainty, fix the date of this visit. It was either 1828 or 1829. Mason & Baldwin hadjust put in operation a small novel and ingeniouslyconstructed vertical steam-engine in their works formanufacturing bookbinders' tools and calico-printing181 cylinders. 239 This was particularly attractive toDavis, and Mr. Baldwin had much to say as to theimportance of vertical cylinders not being subject tothe wear of the piston and cylinder as in the horizontalengines, even going so far as to predict that, at nodistant time, a horizontal steam engine would notbe known, and as for water pumping engines, thatare always subject more or less to sand and grit, thewearing was so serious on the lower side of horizontalcylinder that, although Mr. Frederick Graff had soarranged the cylinders of the great pumping engines at Fairmount dam, which supplied Philadelphia withwater, that they could be taken out and rebored orreplaced by new ones without disturbing the rest ofthe machinery, they would have to give way to verticalpumps. This evidently made a strong impression onyoung Davis. It must not be forgotten that this wasbefore the time of efficient tools, and that the littlecylinder of Baldwin's vertical engine was bored byhand by bits set in a wooden boring block.From Mason & Baldwin's shop I took Davis to thePhiladelphia Museum, which at that time was underthe management of my uncle, Franklin Peale, withhis brother Titian R. Peale as naturalist. I intro-duced Davis to the latter, whom we found in the taxi-dermic room busy among animal and bird skins,mounting specimens; this I thought would interesthim, but I was mistaken, for as we passed through thelittle workshop of my Uncle Franklin, his eye hadcaught sight of a model steam-engine on wheels.This stood on a shelf nearly hidden by a heterogene-ous mass of gimcracks piled over it, essays at perpetualmotion, model churns, plows and such like, that hadfound their way to the museum and were not con-sidered as worth being put on exhibition.It was soon evident that Davis' mind was not on thework of the naturalist, for he began asking questionsas to the steam-engine on wheels that he had onlycaught a glimpse of as he passed through the ante-room. My uncle took him back into the shop, andwhile removing some trumpery, to get a better viewof the model, my Uncle Franklin came in and wasmuch amused at Davis' eagerness and the questionshe asked about it. He explained the model, and gaveits history as being the joint work of his father, Charles 239 This engine, preserved in the U.S. National Museum, waspartially described by Franklin Peale in his obituary of Mat-thias Baldwin in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society(December 1866), vol. 10, pp. 279-288. A complete accountof the engine in its original state has not yet been found. Willson Peale, and Oliver Evans to produce a tractionengine for agricultural purposes. I do not recollectthat any date was named; I somehow got the impres-sion that it was about the time that Oliver Evansmoved the dredging scow from the works to theSchuylkill river by steam-power; this was in the year1804. I cannot look back to a time that I did notknow this model, for when a small boy I had beenallowed to play with it and push it about on the floorof my grandfather's play-shop, as he called his, at hisplace near Germantown, and on one occasion I hadseen it steamed up and running around in an irregular circle on a flat piece of ground, with a great propensityto turn on its side on meeting any trifling obstructionor enough steam given to accelerate its speed beyonda slow walk and to burn the fingers of the one attempt-ing to right it. This was my experience on thatoccasion; it was very top-heavy.Davis was so much interested that he asked permis-sion to remove it to the work bench, finding it inbetter condition than expected; the remainder of theday into the night, was spent in overhauling it, andthe next morning, in the presence of a crowd, thatsoon collected, it was started from the back steps ofIndependence Hall (the old State House), and madethe trip the length of the square to Walnut street andreturn to the place of starting; on the back trip it raninto the side gutter and twice turned on its side. I have no reason to doubt my uncle's statement thatthe miniature working model was the joint work of hisfather and Oliver Evans, and I cannot be far wrong infixing its date as not later than 1805. In fact, since Icommenced writing this article little circumstances asrelated to me by my grandfather in connection withthe removal of the dredge boat from the works to theSchuylkill, its launching and its trip down the Schuyl-kill to the Delaware and up it to the foot of Market street on that river front, propelled by little paddle-wheels driven by the small steam-engine on board,convince me that the working model dates back tonear that date, which was 1804. Previous to thedeath of my uncles I learned from them that at thetime of the last removal of the Philadelphia Museumthe model was in the store-room and in good preserva-tion, and the supposition is that it was destroyed atthe time that collection was burned. My hopes werethat my Uncle Franklin, as a mechanic, had takenpossession of and preserved it. I believe that the conversation with Baldwin, on thevalue of vertical cylinders, and the day with the Evansand Peale working model gave the bent to Davis' mind182 w/z/ua.) Ward*j JTtf./. Ml r/rIBfi?, tflr~MM . 1 I , - . Figure 77.?Phineas Davis's device for "promoting combustion &c" in theburning of anthracite coal. Two "fan wheels or vanes revolving within drums[A] in a manner well known to machinists . . ." were turned by a "steamwheel" [B] built "in the same manner nearly as the wind wheels." From U.S.patent, July 29, 1834, restored drawing. National Archives photograph. that he worked out so successfully in his "Arabian,"as to make it the type of the engines that for severalyears effectively did the work on the Washingtonbranch as well as the main line of the Baltimore andOhio Railroad.-40 It is to be hoped the company willso dispose of the "Arabian" that it shall be perpetuallypreserved. I cannot give a detailed description of the workingmodel, but so much that its general character can beunderstood. The boiler was a wrought iron mercurybottle, say about 4 inches diameter and 12 incheslong; holes were cut in the ends and through themi%-inch inside diameter copper tube brazed to theheads, so that when placed horizontal, as it was inthe model, it represented a single-flue cylinder boiler.The steam-engine was a single vertical cylinder,which was placed on a frame extending from one endof the boiler, its piston-rod connected directly to alever beam, which had its long end journaled to apair of straddle legs secured by rock joints to the topof the boiler; there were no guides to piston-rods,parallel bars being used instead, the connecting-rod working from the short end of the lever beam gave alonger sweep to the crank than the length of thepiston stroke. 241 The crank was central on a shafthung on the frame that carried the steam cylinder, afly-wheel on each end of the shaft; to the arms ofthese fly-wheels were deeply grooved stud pulleys,from each of which chain belts ran to correspondingpulleys of a greater diameter on the axle of the carry-ing or driving wheels at or near the other end of theboiler; about the center of this driving axle was asingle pulley from which a chain belt ran to one onthe front axle, so that all the wheels were connectedand the entire weight of the engine made availablefor traction, with the exception of what was carriedon a pair of narrow-tread and narrow-tired guidewheels; they were hung on a lever arrangement sothat the driver, with his foot on a treadle, couldincrease or decrease the pressure on the road. Theseguide wheels were governed by the driver through apinion working in a segment of a tooth wheel; on the 210 The Peter Cooper locomotive also had a vertical steamcylinder. 2,1 This is a description of the Evans straight-line linkage.However, I have not found a positive attribution of it to Evansbefore the widely circulated engraved plate of the "Columbian"engine of about 181 3. 183 model a screw clamp was arranged to secure theguide wheels in position as set. This was done in thecase I have referred to when running in an irregular circle; the steam valves were revolving stop-cock plugsdriven by bevel gearing from the crank shaft. Thethrottle valve was an ordinary brass stop-cock, nowater feed pump; a funnel and stop-cock on top ofthe boiler to fill it, a stop-cock in the bottom toempty it.The boiler was first filled with hot water to heat it,this was then drawn off and it was again filled withboiling water to a taper screw plug representing agauge cock. To generate the steam a highly heatedround iron rod, nearly filling the copper flue, wasthrust into it . . . . I have referred to having seen the "Arabian," on itsfirst trial. The intimacy with Davis had been keptup from the time of his first visit to Philadelphia,and before he commenced building the "Arabian"he showed me his drawings. I chanced to be passingthrough Baltimore and stopped over to see Mr. Davis,and found him at the shops steaming up the "Arabian" for its first trial on the road, and I thenrode with him on its open platform, for it was beforethe day cf cabs. He spent the evening with me inBaltimore, and I have a very distinct recollectionof many of the reasons he gave for having adoptedthe style of engine.In the first place he had a light strap railroad to dealwith, with many short curves; he must have weightto give adhesion; he must turn the curves withoutdanger of running off, and with the least possiblefriction; to accomplish this the bearing on the roadmust be short; three-foot wheels, close together, metthis; to carry the weight central, the upright boilerbecame a necessity. Trucks, if they had been con-ceived cf, had not been successfully tried within hisknowledge. Six tons at that time was the utmostadmissible weight on four driving wheels; he wasmore than doubling this, and was afraid to takedirect hold cf the driving axle by crank; that nocounterbalancing could prevent injurious hammeringon the light rails. He believed this was greatlyneutralized by the independent crank-shaft; thestrain being within the machine, he did not think it would be injuriously transmitted through thecog-wheels. He considered the independent crank- shaft much safer than a carrying axle cranked: theoutside connection cf one pair of wheels to the othercould be counterbalanced. He did not calculate on fast running. That he saidwas further along. The problem he had to solvewas an effective engine on light rails and shortcurves; the time would come when both these wouldbe remedied. He certainly did produce the firsteffective engine on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,more than answering his own expectations. It foryears drew the passenger trains on both the mainroad and the Washington branch, and was the modelfrom which many others were built, and successfullylifted the company out of a state of great depression.No one can overestimate the value of the preserva-tion of early efforts in all branches of mechanical and civil engineering, relics, as landmarks in progress. I cannot better close this paper than by a quotationfrom a letter recently received from a well-knownengineer, W. W. Evans, on the subject of preservationof models; he says: "No one knows the value ofmodels of useful inventions until many years afterthey are made. John Stevens' first screw propeller,with its engine and boiler as it stands in the StevensInstitute, at Hoboken, 242 is to me a most interestingand invaluable model, and so would be the little loco-motive made by Peter Cooper, if it had been pre-served, as I understand that it actually did more whentried in proportion to weight and dimensions than didthe celebrated 'Rocket' of Stephenson, which engine,now standing in the Patent Office in England, 243 I goto see everytime I go to England, and also to seeanother engine standing by it called 'Puffing Billy,'which engine preceded the 'Rocket,' in time, eight-een years. I take people to see it so they can judge ofthe improvements we have made in seventy-threeyears, as 'Puffing Billy' was built in 1812. Its axleshave square ends, and the driving wheels are fastenedon with wooden wedges; the frame is made of wood,and it is trued up only at such spots where an attach-ment was to be made; it is a 'rummey' looking affair,but it is very interesting to see it and then turn to thevery splendid machines of the present day." [63I I have heard Mr. B. H. Latrobe say that the "Arabian" never met with but one serious accident,and that caused the death of its designer and construc-tor. It was but a few days after our last evening to-gether that the sad accident occurred. Mr. Daviswas treating the workmen of the Mount Clare shops, 2? Now in the U.S. National Museum.243 Now in the Science Museum, London.184 with their families, to a trip to Washington and re-turn. The road was then only opened as far asBladensburg, from there to Washington in coaches.The trip was made, they dined in Washington, andon the return, when within fourteen miles of Balti-more, the engine left the track, turned on its side,killing Mr. Davis who was sitting on the platform; noone else was hurt. I believe the cause of the engine leaving the track was never discovered. By this oneaccident the world lost a mechanic who had provedhimself to have been in advance of the age, and whosename should be remembered among the original menof the time, and a man who, had he lived, would nothave been left behind in the race. It is to be hopedthat the "Arabian" will be perpetually preserved asan undying monument to his memory. 26. Seth Boyden's Locomotives Seth Boyden (i 788-1870) was one of the most versatile inventors in America. Making signifi-cant contributions in several diverse fields, he hadalready applied his talents to the production ofpatent leather and malleable cast iron when, in1837, he turned to the building of locomotives.He built only three locomotives, the first twobeing the Essex and Orange for the Morris andEssex Railroad, which later became the Delaware,Lackawanna and Western. The third locomotive is accounted for in this chapter. Boyden's locomotives had an exceptionally long stroke,bearing a ratio to cylinder diameter of 3 to 1 , inorder to take advantage of the expansion of steamafter an early cut off.Bishop 244 relates that after building his threelocomotives Boyden turned to the developmentof a stationary steam engine with variable cut off.While he did not patent a governor-connectedcut-off valve gear, he was an early contender inthe race that was won eventually by GeorgeCorliss of Providence. IYLy earliest recollection of Mr. Boyden wasabout the time he was introducing his patent leather. 245At that time he came to Philadelphia to see a leather-splitting machine that my father had invented, andhad in daily use. 246 I do not know when theiracquaintance and intimacy commenced, but I doknow that it lasted until my father's death, whichoccurred in 1834. I recollect that my father fre-quently spoke cf Mr. Boyden as a sound mechanic;a man cf original thought, a most prolific inventor. 244 J. Leander Bishop, History of American Manufactures from1608 to i860, 3 vols., 3d. ed. (Philadelphia, 1868), vol. 2, pp.546-548. Boyden's valve-gear, a modification of the ordinaryslide-valve, is illustrated in Gustavus Weissenborn, AmericanEngineering (New York, 1861), pi. 42.245 This was about 181 9, when Sellers was 1 1 and Boyden was20 years older. See Dictionary of American Biography. The leather-splitting machine that I refer to was forequalizing the thickness of calf or kip skin for machinecards, without torturing and twisting it out of shapeas was the case when drawn against the edge of thesplitting knife by being wound on a small roller. Thismy father accomplished by a solid cylinder or rollermade of marble, having a circumference greater thanthe longest leather to be equalized. The wet leather,in strips a little wider than required for the card toallow of trimming, was secured to the cylinder bypoints in a groove set sufficiendy below its surface topass under the splitting knife without interfering; as 246 Boyden's father, also named Seth Boyden, had patentedhis leather-splitting machine in i8og (figure 79), and theyounger Boyden had brought an improved machine to Newark,New Jersey, when he moved there about 18 13 from Foxborough,Massachusetts. 185 Figure 78.?Baldwin's stationary steam engine, 1829, shownafter retirement, about 1920. The governor drive, originallyconsisting of friction wheels, had been modified and the flywheelhad been replaced. The engine is now in the U.S. NationalMuseum. Photograph courtesy of Association of AmericanRailroads.186 ""*%/?/// /{/>//, //7/.\ ?.?./,,?,J Suae" i // , . . //Oft . I,',./. Atttfr, /" f Figure 79.?Leather-splitting machine of Seth Boyden theelder, father of the Seth Boyden of this chapter. From U.S.patent, January 7, 1809, restored drawing. National Archivesphotograph. the marble cylinder was turned under the knife, thewet leather pressed to it immediately in front of theknife by the ordinary spring straight-edge would hugto the cylinder, and pass through perfectly straight; aconsiderable portion of the shavings or splits, werevaluable for boot stiffeners and other uses, that pre-viously were lost by the usual currier's shaving. Withthis Mr. Boyden was much pleased, for he believed itwould be practicable to get two sheets out of the com-mon kip skin thick enough for japanning. It was notmany months before he sent specimens The whole size of the skins less the skirtings, had been split intothree, all beautifully japanned and highly finished. The idea of japanning [varnishing] leather was notoriginal with Mr. Boyden, for at the time of smallclothes and fair top boots, it was as common to see theexquisites of the day claying their boot tops, as it wasto have an immaculate black polish to the feet andlegs, until there came from London patent white orbuff-japanned leather for boot tops on which a dampsponge and soft dry cloth took the place of the claycleaning. Mr. Boyden's invention, or rather dis-covery, was in the japan that would give the intenseblack hardness with high polish and sufficient elastic-ity at so low a temperature of the ovens as not to in-jure the leather. Years later he explained this fully 187 Figure 80.?Seth Boyden (1788- 1870)From J. Leander Bishop, A History of Ameri-can Manufactures from 1608 to i860, 3d ed.,3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1868). to me, and showed the memoranda of the immensenumber of experiments he had made before he hadsucceeded.This leather-splitting machine I never saw, but hisletters to my father at the time explained his substi-tuting a moving table for the cylinder, various experi-ments as to the mode of holding the leather firmly toit, and to the edge of a quickly vibrating splitting knife.Mr. Boyden is well known as the father of malleableiron castings, of which he made an entire success, andafterwards his great invention of manufacturing felthat bodies by machinery, over which patent there wasa long and bitter contest against a powerful combina-tion. He resorted to the novel expedient of exhibitinghis machine at work in the presence of judge and jury,and finally sustained his rights. I have made this digression to show the versatilityof Mr. Boyden as an inventor. I have heard him saythe hardest work of an inventor, was to discover whatwas wanted: that once established all was easy, or,as he expressed it, "plain sailing."To return to the locomotive "Essex," and its mates.Previous to his entering into the contract to buildthe two engines above referred to he came to Phila- delphia, bringing with him a movable card modelof his proposed valve gear, in which he took themotion from the crosshead. He laid great stress onthe importance of quick opening and closing of steamports, so adjustable as to take the greatest advantageof using the steam expansively. I do not recollectthe details of his arrangement. It was in a measureanticipating the present link motion. This modelwas so made that by moving the piston the positionof the valve was shown. Baldwin at that time wasconfined to engine cylinders of from 10% to 12 inchesdiameter and 16-inch stroke. My brother and myselfwere using 10-inch cylinders by 18-inch stroke.Boyden proposed using 8-inch diameter cylinder by30-inch stroke with his adjustable cut-off, and heinsisted on it that we were all wrong in the short stroke. He had made drawings to use Baldwin'shalf-crank to get width of fire-box. He had beento Messrs. Vail & Son, Morristown, N.J., to inquireabout tires, and some heavy iron work, and hadlearned from them that the half crank was patented,and at the same time that we had outside attachmentengines successfully running on the PennsylvaniaState road; this brought him to Philadelphia.He stated to me that before calling on us he hadseen Mr. Baldwin, had tried to interest him in long-stroke engines, with his valve arrangement, and thatMr. Baldwin had declined to sell the right to usehis half-cranks on the engines he [Boyden] had agreedto build for the Morris and Essex Railroad. Hehad many questions to ask about steadiness of theoutside connected engines on the road. We at thattime had two on the State road, one of which hadbeen in daily service over a year. One of his questionswas as to patents covering any portion of our engines,saying he would rather abandon building, and demon-strating the value of his hobb\?expansive steam inlong-stroke cylinders. I took him to our shops, showedhim two engines then on the floor, 247 that but littlewas being done on, as we were driven to our fullcapacity on the contracts we had taken to buildthe steam engines, rolling mills, milling machines,ingot moulds, and melting and refining furnaces forthe branch mints at Charlotte, N.C., and Dahlonega,Ga.; also remodeling the melting and refining de-partments of the mints at Philadelphia and NewOrleans. 247 The author seems to refer to two locomotives, in additionto the two already completed. No further information onthese later locomotives has been found.188 Figure 8i.?Orange, 1837, built by Seth Boyden for theMorris & Essex Railroad. From Angus Sinclair, Development of the Locomotive Engine (New York, 1907). I could not take the time to go with Mr. Boyden tothe shops of the State road. I gave him a letter toJohn Brandt, who took him over the road on the plat-form of one cf our outside connected engines. On hisreturn he expressed himself as perfectly satisfied as tosafety and steadiness of running. He had much to say as to the advantage he should gain in adhesion byplacing his driving-wheel axle close to the fire-box. Ido not know what took place between him and Brandt,but I was surprised at his saying, he had decided on8-by-24-inch cylinders, and he laughingly said, that 6inches over us and 10 inches over Baldwin was prob-ably as much as it was safe to venture, but he believedthe time would come, when the economy of fuel woulddemand it; that three feet stroke even if gearing had tobe used, would be adopted; such was his faith in cut- offs and expansive use of steam, and when he hadwi irked out a problem to his own satisfaction in hismind, there was no changing him. All the three en-gines he built had cvlinders 8 inches by '->4 inchesstroke.The third engine he built was not taken by the rail-road that the two first were built for. and he took it toCuba. The last time I saw Mr. Boyden was shortlyafter his return from Cuba. He then spoke hopefullvof the success cf what had taken him there. He had invented and used for a long time a system of furnacesfor burning wet tan, the heat of one chamber dryingthe tan in the adjoining one, the escaping gases fromwhich were ignited in a combustion chamber commonto all the separate tan chambers. There were nogrates, the tan being burned from the top. Mr. Boy-den had, through a Mr. Hollibird, of Cincinnati, es-sayed to introduce his system of furnaces for burningand generating steam by the wet bagasse, as it camefrom the rolls of the sugar mill (the same as he hadburned wet tan) in Louisiana. Mr. H. had only madeit practically successful; hence his experiments in Cubawere under his own management.If Mr. Boyden was now living he would be the lastman to claim outside-connected engines as his system.As I have stated in a previous paper, 248 I never claimed it as an invention, but the battle for the practical intro-duction in our American system of locomotives de-volved mainly on me, all of which Mr. Boyden wasfully aware of, and having ridden on an engine thathad been in successful use for over two years beforehis first engine was turned out, he was perfectly safein assuring the experts "that it would not jump thetrack; if it did, the sooner the better." [64] 248 Chapters 22 and 24 of the present work. 189 27. George Escol SellersTakes Leave of His Friends Although this paper was only the i ith of the 40-odd published papers of George Escol Sellers, itmakes an appropriate closing chapter because itranges widely in time and geographical location,epitomizing the author's thorough, first-handknowledge of more than 60 years of engineeringin America.The sharply etched vignette of an evening inthe city cf Washington during the Civil War gives the reader a glimpse of as distinguished a groupof men as he is likely to encounter anywhere or atany time?Joseph Henry, omnierudite first Secre-tary of the Smithsonian Institution; JosephSaxton; Stephen H. Long, explorer and engineer;Alexander Dallas Bache, guiding light of theCoast Survey; and John A. B. Dahlgren, of navalordnance fame. At the same time that the Pennsylvania workswere progressing, Major Stephen H. Long, afterwardsColonel in the U.S. Army, and who, in his old age,succeeded Col. John J. Abert as head of the topo-graphical department, was making the surveys andlocation of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, whichwork he continued until some time in 1830; I believethat during the last year Major George W. Whistler w.as associated with him, and he continued the workfor a year or more after Col. Long left it. Col. Longwas a New Englander, born in Hopkinton, NewHampshire, in 1 784. He lived to the age of 80,dying in Alton, 111., in 1864. His whole life was oneof great usefulness. In the year 1829, while engagedon the Baltimore & Ohio, he published his "RailroadManual" that became the text-book in the hands of all young engineers, it being the first work of the kindpublished in America. It was through him duringthe last year of his work on the Baltimore & Ohio,that I became acquainted with his assistant, BenjaminH. Latrobe, which acquaintance ripened into a lifelong friendship.My acquaintance with Colonel Long dates back tothe time he was a frequent visitor at my father's houseprevious to his expedition to the Rocky Mountains. 249About the time of his leaving the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad he took great interest in the questionof locomotive power, and made a design and workingdrawings for a locomotive. He induced WilliamNorris, then a merchant of Baltimore, to go into thebusiness of locomotive building, and what was solong and favorably known as the Norris LocomotiveWorks, of Philadelphia, was established in 1832, 250and the first engine built was from Col. Long'sdesigns, and could not be called an entire success,but the second or third engine was eminently so.It was a six wheel engine, two drivers, and a fourwheel truck. The drivers were in front of the fire-box and carried a large portion of the weight of theengine. It climbed the incline plane at Peters Island,on the old State road with a loaded tender and asmany people as could hang on to it.On one occasion, after Mr. Norris' return fromVienna, 251 where he had been building locomotives 249 The expedition during which Long's Peak was named,occurred in 1819-1820. See Dictionary of American Biography.250 The firm was organized in 1832 as the American SteamCarriage Company, with Long as president and Norris assecretary. Norris bought out Long's interest in 1834 or 1835.2S ' William Norris returned from Vienna in 1848, went toPanama to work on the eastern division of the Panama Railroad,and returned again to the United States in 1855.190 for the Austrian Government, in speaking of thisfirst engine as the "Long" engine, and the vast strides that had been made in locomotives since itwas built, he appealed to me to vouch as one whowas present at its first trial for the truth of what hewas about to state.The trial was on the Columbia Railroad. I willuse his own words as nearly as I can recollect them: "Gentlemen, I can, on my honor, assure you thatwe ran four miles and a-half in seven hours and aquarter, and running all the time at that." Theengine was not so bad as he made it appear. It wasdeficient in its steaming, and primed badly. Thegreat trouble came from not allowing play on the rails between the flanges of the wheels, between thecast iron chairs which were rigidly secured to stoneblocks. The light T rails would spring so as to allowthe tire to rest on the rail, but in passing the chairsthe flanges would jam. cften so much as to raise theface cf the wheels from the rail, and the entire fourand a-half miles were run by the almost constantuse of the pinch bar. After this fault was corrected,and the priming partially prevented by the use of awove wire diaphragm, the engine did pretty fairservice.From 1837 to 1844 Col. Long was chief engineer ofthe Western & Atlantic Railroad, of Georgia. It waswhen on this work that he displayed not only greatengineering skill, but mechanical ingenuity in accom-plishing a work with the limited means that wereavailable. He crossed great ravines on trestle-work;in some cases series of bents or trestles one above the other, narrowing from the base to the road track,every timber so arranged as to be taken out and re-placed in case of decay or any defect without inter-fering with the traffic on the road. Short spans were successfully crossed on his simple and cheap latticebridges. 1'32 After he was recalled from his work in Figure 82.?Stephen Harriman Long (1784-1864). Portrait by Charles Willson Peale, 1 81 9. Photo courtesy of Independence Na-tional Historical Park Collection. Georgia, he, for many years, had charge of snag re-moval and improvements of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. He designed and had built the efficient snagboats, substantially as used at the present time. 253 Hewas then located at Louisville, Ky., and during thattime my intercourse with him was frequent and of amost pleasing character. His leisure was employedon an elaborate series of experiments with models ofwooden railroad bridges. It was a wooden invertedsuspension arch, in one of these, I have been told, that set Remington off on his wooden suspension bridge,that for a time attracted considerable attention.It was about the second year of the civil war thatbusiness called me to Washington. Learning Col.Long had succeeded Col. Abert, 254 and was then the 252 The Long truss, patented March 6, 1830. A specificationand a restored patent drawing are in the National Archives.253 He shared with Henry M. Shreve and others the credit forthe snag boat. See Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the WesternRivers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949), pp. '93-195-2ii A sketch of John J. Abert (1788-1863) appears in the firstsupplementary volume of Dictionary of American Biography. 191 Figure 83.?Joseph Saxton (1799-1873).From original photograph in National Acad-emy of Sciences Library. head of the Topographical Department. I called onhim at his office. It had been over two years since wehad met, and I was shocked at his evident failure andrapid aging during that short period. He said he wasoverwhelmed with work, but it was not that which waswearing him out; he had his duty to perform and wasdoing it to the best of his ability. He said many yearsof his life had been spent in the South. He had warm friendship for some of those then engaged in "thisfratricidal war," and it was the horror of the thoughtof that, and not the work that was killing him. Hefelt he was not fit for the place he was filling, andwould gladly retire and relinquish it to some youngerman.Night was coming on; it was after the hour forclosing his office. I waited for him and together wewalked from the department towards Willard's Hotel.He talked of old times, and gave a graphic descriptionof the experiments which led to his efficient snagboats. We dined together, and then went to thehouse of Prof. A. D. Bache, then at the head of theCoast Survey, where we met Prof. Henry, CommodoreDahlgren and Joseph Saxton, my old schoolmate andfriend. It was a most enjoyable evening, and I neversaw Col. Long more animated than he was, whenProf. Bache read a letter just received from Com-mander Farragut on the great value of the work ofthe Coast Survey, which had enabled him to so placehis gun boats under the banks and out of sight andrange of the guns of the forts for protection of theharbor of New Orleans; that by calulation they couldso handle the guns and mortars as to drop almostevery shell within the forts. It was a most interestingsight to see Col. Long and Commodore Dahlgren,with maps, scale and compass locating these gun boats.This was the last time I enjoyed the company ofeither Long or Dahlgren. The letters that for years I had been receiving from the Colonel dropped off.This I attributed to the heavy duties during the war, as head of the engineering department of the army.Some time in September 1864, scarce two years afterthe pleasant evening at Prof. Bache's, I saw a notice ofthe death of Col. Long at Alton, 111., on the 4th ofSeptember of that year. No doubt his life wasshortened by the cares and anxieties of the first years of the war. I have always considered him the lead-ing engineer of his time, and I am not alone in that,for B. H. Latrobe referred to him as the father of theengineers of his day .... [65] 192 Appendix Sources of Sellers' Text The bracketed numbers in the following list corre-spond to those at end of quoted sections in the text.In this list "Volume" numbers refer to AmericanMachinist; "Book" numbers refer to the George E.Sellers memoirs in Peale-Sellers papers at AmericanPhilosophical Society Library. In Part I [i], Vol. 9, May 29, 1886, pp. 4-5.[2], Vol. 9, July 3, 1886, pp. 2-3.[3], Vol. 7, October 11, 1884, p. 6.[4], Book 20, pp. 1-3, 12.[5], Vol. 7, October 11, 1884, p. 6.[6], Book 20, p. 6.[7], Vol. 7, October 11, 1884, pp. 6-7.[8], Vol. 7, October 25, 1884, pp. 2-3.[9], Vol. 7, November 1, 1884, p. 6.[10], Book 20, p. 5.[n], Vol. 7, November 1, 1884, p. 6.[12], Book 4, pp. 1-5.[13], Vol. 7, June 7, 1884, pp. 2-3.[14], Vol. 7, June 14, 1884, pp. 1-2.[15], Vol. 7, July 12, 1884, pp. 3-4.[16], Book 4, pp. 31-34.[17], Book 4, pp. 63-64.[18], Book 4, pp. 37-50, 61-62.[19], Vol. 7, August 9, 1884, p. 6.[20], Vol. 7, August 23, 1884, p. 2.[21], Vol. 7, August 9, 1884, p. 6.[22], Vol. 7, August 23, 1884, p. 2.[23], Vol. 16, May 4, 1893, pp. 2-3.[24], Vol. 16, May 18, 1893, PP- 4~5-[25], Vol. 16, June 8, 1893, p. 2.[26], Book 4, pp. 54-55.[27], Vol. 16, June 8, 1893, p. 2.[28], Vol. 10, January 15, 1887, p. 1[29], Vol. 16, June 8, 1893, p. 2. [3?[31[32 [33[34[35[36(37[38[39[40[41[42[43[44[45[46[47[48[49[5?[51[52[53(54 t55[56[57[58[59[60[6,[62[63[64[65 , Vol. 10, January 15, 1887, p. 1. , Vol. 16, June 8, 1893, pp. 2-3. , Vol. 14, July 23, 1891, pp. 3-4. In Part II Vol. 9, August 7, 1886, pp. 1-2.Vol. 9, August 14, 1886, pp. 2-3.Vol. 9, September 4, 1886, p. 2.Vol. 10, January 15, 1887, pp. 1-2.Vol. 10, February 12, 1887, pp. 2-3.Book 1, pp. 61-65.Book 1, pp. 13-16.Vol. 10, February 12, 1887, p. 3.Vol. 10, April 16, 1887, p. 4.Book 4, p. 37.Vol. 10, April 16, 1887, p. 4.Vol. 10, April 30, 1887, p. 4.Vol. 10, April 30, 1887, pp. 4-5.Vol. 10, May 28, 1887, pp. 2-3.Vol. 10, August 27, 1887, p. 2.Vol. 10, August 27, 1887, pp. 2-4.Book 4, pp. 13-14.Vol. 10, February 12, 1887, p. 3.Book 4, pp. 14-18.Vol. 7, December 13, 1884, p. 3.Vol. 9, September 4, 1886, pp. 2-3.Vol. 9, September 11, 1886, pp. 2-3. In Part III , Vol. 7, December 20, 1884, p. 2. , Vol. 8, March 14, 1885, p. 5. , Vol. 8, August 22, 1885, pp. 1-2. , Vol. 8, April 11, 1885, pp. 1-2. , Vol. 8, October 31, 1885, pp. 4-5. , Vol. 8, December 12, 1885, p. 2. , Vol. 8, September 12, 1885, pp. 5-6. , Vol. 8, November 7, 1885, pp. 1-3. , Vol. 9, February 6, 1886, pp. 1-2. , Vol. 9, February 13, 1886, p. 3. , Vol. 8, February 28, 1885, p. 2. 193 American Machinist Articles Following is a complete listing of American Machinistissues in which articles by George Escol Sellers werepublished. The footnoted references represent articlesnot included in this book. Vol. 7 (1884): Vol. 8 (1885): Vol. 9 (1886): June 7, pp. 2-3June 14, pp. 1-2July 12, pp. 3-4August 9, pp. 6-7August 23, p. 2October 1 1, pp. 6-7October 25, pp. 2-3November 1 , p. 6December 1 3, pp. 3-4December 20, pp. 1-2February 28, p. 2March 14, pp. 4-5April 1 1, pp. 1-2August 22, pp. 1-2September 12, pp. 5-6October 31, pp. 4-5November 7, pp. 1-2December 12, pp. 1-2February 6, pp. 1-2February 13, p. 3May 29, pp. 4-5July 3, pp. 2-3August 7, pp. 1-2August 14, pp. 2-3 Vol. 10 (1887) Vol. 11 (1888) Vol. 12 (1889)Vol. 13 (1890) Vol. 14 (1891) Vol. 16 (1893) Vol. 18 (1895) September 4, pp. 2-3September 11, pp. 2-3December 4, pp. 4-5 aJanuary 15, pp. 1-2February 12, pp. 2-3April 1 6, p. 4April 30, pp. 4-5May 28, pp. 2-3August 27, pp. 2-4January 28, pp. 2-3 bFebruary 11, pp. 2-3 bFebruary 18, pp. 6-7 bMarch 10, pp. 4-5 bDecember 19, pp. 1-2 cJanuary 2, pp. 4-5 cJanuary 9, pp. 2-3 cJanuary 23, p. 4 ?July 23, pp. 2-4July 30, pp. 1-2 dMay 4, pp. 2-3May 18, pp. 4-5June 8, pp. 2-3August 15, pp. 643-644August 29, pp. 684-685 a On the history of papermaking machinery.b On papermaking from swamp cane. c On builders of steam fire engines in Cincinnati.A On Horatio Gates Spafford's perpetual motion. ' Retelling of the Perkins and Commodore Murray incidents. 1 Experiences in Cincinnati. 194 Index(GES= George Escol Sellers, the author) Abert, John J., 190, 191 -192Ackermann, Rudolph, 123, 124Adelaide Gallery, London, 12, 52, 88, 131-134 (See also Perkins, Jacob)Agnew, John, rebuilds Diligent, 9; partner of Merrick,16, 54n; mentioned, 53Algonquin (ship), 134Allaire, James P., 46Allen, Horatio, i6on, 173America (See locomotive, Sellers)American Machinist (source of articles), 194, xi, xviiiAmes, John, paper cylinder, 96, 100annealing of steel, 13-15; of wire, 91-94Arabian (See locomotive, Davis)Assistance Fire Company, 4, 44Aurora (newspaper), 79Bache, Alexander D., 57; in Washington, 190, 192Bacon (son-in-law of Perkins), 12Bacon, Richard M., printing press of, ii7nBaldwin, Matthias W., 53, 71, 77, 172, 188; partnerof Mason, i5n; slide rest, 59 (illustr.); buildsmodel locomotive, 70; builds locomotive forPenna., 151; portrait, 175; patent infringe-ments, 175-177: his shops, 176; his conicaljoint, 178 (illustr.); and America trial, 178;his steam engine, 180, 181-182, 186 (illustr.)(See also locomotive, Baldwin)Baldwin and Mason (firm), i5n, 112, 122, 180, 181-182Baltimore and Ohio railroad, 180-185, '9?banknotes, engraving plates for, 12, 13-15, 17, 28;counterfeiting of, 135-141Bank of the U.S. of Pennsylvania, 135Barclay, Perkins & Company (brewers), 114Barlow knife, 31Barnum, Phineas T., 86Barron, James, 1 2 nBarton (director of Royal Mint), r 1 1, 114Barton, Rice & Co. (paper machine builders), 101Beatie, Robert (journeyman), 107Beatty (axe maker), 30Belmont inclined plane, 155 (illustr.) (See alsoPhiladelphia & Columbia Railroad) Bentham, Samuel, and block machinery, 108Biddle, Nicholas, 51, 89 n; and counterfeiting, 1 35-1 41Birmingham, England, 108, 110; rivets from, 11;planchets from, 66 and n; screws from, 126Black Ball line, 108block machinery for Royal Navy, 108blower fan for locomotive, 180, 183 (illustr.)boiler, high pressure, of Perkins and Hawkins, 26-28;for burning bagasse, 189boring, bar, 34, 1 82 ; mill, 40 n, 112Boulton and Watt, 36, 38, supply planchets, 66 nBoyden, Seth, biogr. notes, 185; leather-splitting,185-188; portrait, 188; and locomotives, 188-189Boyle's smith shop, 107Bramah, Joseph, 108, 123Brandt, John, and Cardington, xvii, 107; in-vents card machine, 160, 168-169; with Phila-delphia & Columbia Railroad, 160, 161 -162,166, 170, 172; and Sellers locomotive, 161 -164;biogr. notes, 166; with GES in Lancaster, 167;teaches blacksmithing to GES, 169-1 70; studiesdrafting, 170; on locomotive design, 1 70-1 71;at America trial, 1 74-1 75, 1 77-1 78; Boyden visits,189Brandywine Creek, industrial center on (See underdu Pont; Gilpin; Hodgson; Youngbrazing (See under coppersmithing)Breining, George, (screw maker), 31 nbridge, Long truss, 191Brougham, Lord, ill, 112, 114Brunei, Isambard Kingdom, 109Brunei. Marc Isambard, 88, 133; and block machinery,108; and Thames tunnel, 109, 11 4-1 15, 117Burgess, W. H. (landscape painter), 128calico printing, cylinder for, 70Camden & Amboy Railroad, 162 n, 163Cameron, James (canal commissioner), 161; onlocomotive design, 162-164, 175; at Cardington,172; at America trial, 178Cameron, Simon, 161Campbell, Henry R. (railway engineer), 151; andlocomotive, 152 195 canal (See under Pennsylvania works)Erie, 143, 147canal boats, sectional, 153-154, 156, 158 (illustr.);on Pennsylvania canals, 157, 159canned foods, 1 1 7capstan, of Murray, 16, 20-21card, handmade, 46, 51, 168card machine of John Brandt, 160, 168-169 (See alsoBrandt, John)card wire, 91Cardington Locomotive Works, 43, 76, 89, 179;location, xvii; lathe in, 112; and paper ma-chinery, 107; shops described, 160Carey and Lea (booksellers), 40casting and rolling in U.S. Mint, 66 (See alsofoundry work)Caulkins (millwright), 107Centennial Exhibition, coining press in, 76Charleston (ship), 26Charleston & Hamburg Railroad, 150, 172Charlotte, N. C, branch mint, 62, 71, 74Chauncey, Charles, 175-177Chauncey, Thomas, 1 78Cheverton, Benjamin (of London), 131Childes' slide valve, 73Cincinnati, Ohio, GES in, xviiCitizens' Steamboat Line, 145Civil War, Washington during, 190, 191-192Clark, B. & E. (Philadelphia watchmakers), 125Clement, Joseph, 108, 116Clymer, George, 79coining in first U.S. Mint, 62, 63 (illustr.), 64; insecond U.S. Mint, 68-69 ar>d 7 1 (illustr.), 77;press exhibited at Centennial, 76 coins, new patterns, 74, 76Conestoga wagons, in Philadelphia, 144Contamin lathe, 74 nCooper, Peter, 180-184, passimcopper, drawing of, 15, 16, 122-123copper planchets for pennies, 66coppersmithing, by Joseph Oat, 43; in Sellers & Pen-nock shops, 48^49Corliss, George, 73 n, 185counterfeiting, 1 35-1 41Covington & Lexington Railroad, 154Cullom, Daniel (woodworker), 49cylinder paper machine (See under papermaking)Dahlgren, John, schoolmate of GES, xv, 54; inWashington, 190, 192 Dahlonega, Ga., branch mint, 62, 71, 74Danforth, Charles (machinery builder), 173Davis, Phineas, his Arabian, 180-181, 183, 184-185, visits Philadelphia, 181-182De la Rue & Co., (stationers), 127, 128, 129Dickens, Charles, on Pennsylvania works, 159Dickinson, John, identified, 87; cylinder machine of,96, 97 (illustr.), 104; copied by Gilpin, 98; anddrying cylinders, 101, 123-124; biogr. notes,102; GES visits, 106, 123; portrait, 123; hiswarehouse, 124; safety paper, 140Didot, Leger (See Robert and Didot)Diligent (fire engine), 3 and n, 9 (illustr.), 22, 24, 44;vs. Assistance Fire Company engine, 44Diligent Fire Company, 3 and n, 4, 8dividing engine, screws for, 117, 121Dobbs (stationers), 127, 128, 129Donkin, Bryan, 111,114; identified, 87; and drying cyiinders, 101, 118,123-124; develops Fourdriniermachine, 104, 116; works closed to foreigners,109; on pulp dressers, no, 118, 119, 122, 127-128,130; biogr. notes, 1 1 6-1 1 7 ; his printing press, 1 1 6-1 1 7; food preservation, 117; portrait, 117;GES visits shops, 1 17-127; on Sir Walter Scott,119; on screw threads, 121 ; on American tools,125-126; and interchangeable parts, 126-127;GES opinion of, 130drawing, mechanical (See under mechanical)Dromedary (fire engine), 24-25Du Pont de Nemours, E. Irenee: powder works, 96;GES visits, 98Eagle Works (foundry and machine shop,) 40Eckfeldt, Adam, 15, 63, 77, 178; folding fire-enginehandles, 3, 4, 19 (illustr.), 23, 70, 71; buildsscrew press, 31 n; on gold importation, 35; givesGES penny, 64; his mint improvements, 70-71 ; new machinery specifications, 71-74; on Frank-lin Peale, 76; retires, 78; and Redheffer, 79Eckstein, Frederick, 38Eckstein, John, 38Ellicott's Mills, 181engine, fire (See fire engine; "Hydraulion")internal combustion (See Morey, Samuel)steam (See steam engine)engraving, of bank notes, 13, 15, 17, 28; counterfeit-ing, I36" 1 -! 1Ericsson, John, and Novelty locomotive, 70Erie Canal, 143, 147Espy, James P., 54, 1 70196 Evans, Cadwallader, 32, 35Evans, Oliver, high-pressure steam engine, 26,36; cast-ings of, 30; lathe of, 32; flour mill of, 35, 37-38,96; account of, by GES, 36-42; portrait, 37;and fire engine parts, 43-44; mint engine, 72and n; card machine of, 168 n; traction en-gine, 180, 182-184Evans, W. W., 184Fairman, Gideon, 13 n, 28Faraday, Michael, 52Farragut, David, 192Fawcet, Preston & Co., 114Field, Joshua, 109, 111, 112,114 (See also MaudslaySons & Field)fire companies in Philadelphia, 3-8 passim, 44fire engine of Newsham, 3; Philadelphia type, 3, 7 and19 (illustr.); Diligent, 3 and n, 9 (illustr.), 22,24, 44; by Perkins, 12, 15, 22-25; Sellers &Pennock, 43-51 (See also "Hydraulion")fire hose, leather, 2, 3; construction, 6, 8-1 1 ; 10(illustr.); mentioned, 89fire signals, in Independence Hall, 4Fisher, Meirs, 96Fitch, John, 79flour mill (See Evans, Oliver)forging of bars for press screws, 32foundry work, cannon and water pipe, 40 n; mintmedallions, 74-77Fourdrinier, Henry and Scaly (stationers), 104 and nFourdrinier machines, GES visits, 110; development of, 101, 104, 116; 119 (illustr.); interchangeableparts in, 1 26-1 27 (See also papermaking machin-ery)Foxall, Samuel (foundryman), 40 nFranklin Furnace, 48-49Franklin Institute, 84, 86, 176; Journal, 12 n, 79, 96;formed, 36; early days of, 52, 53-54; lecturesin, 54, 70 nFriends' School, xv, 54Garrett, Eastwick, and Harrison (firm), 4 nGarrett, Philip (watchmaker, fireman), 4, 7-8Gallatin, Albert, 143Gamble, John, 104 nGavatt, Nelson, 101genealogy. Sellers family, xixGibbons' Steamboat Line, 145Gibbs (riflemaker), 59Gilpin, Joshua, European travels, 96 and nGilpin, Thomas, 124, 125; first American paper ma-chine, 87; GES visits, 96, 97-100; description ofmachine, 98 Girard, Stephen, xviiGlobe Rolling Mill and Wire Works, xviiGobrecht, Charles, 62 n, 77Godfrey, Thomas, 79Good Will Fire Company, 3 nGraff, Frederick, 39, 63, 182Greatrake, Eliza, 106, 124Greatrake, Lawrence, in England, 96, 97 n; atGilpin Mill, 97-98; employed by Dickinson, 98,104, 124, 125Hall, John, machine works, 116, 117Hallock, John, oil press, 33 (illustr.)Hanlon, John, 129-130Hansell, Thomas (turner), 44Hare, Robert, 27 nHarrison, Joseph, Jr., 4 nHarrold, Alfred, 108Hartley, Jesse, 1 1 4 Haviland, John, xv, 65Havre de Grace, Md., 146Hawkins, John Isaac, biogr. notes, 1 10, 1 1 1 ; on Sax-ton's differential pulley, 131; on U.S., 114Hawkins, Joseph (blind), ijn, uon, 132, 133, 177;biogr. notes, 26; and steam engine, 26-28Hayes, Jesse (millwright), 107Hazard, Erskine, 20Heath (partner of Perkins and Fairman), 1 7 (illustr.) , 28heat-treatment of steel, 13-15Henry, Joseph, on Joseph Saxton, 53 and n, 58 n,59 n, 60 n, 131 ; during Civil War, 190, 192Hiberma (ship), 108, 109Hodgson brothers (machinists), 70, 96Hollibird, of Cincinnati, 189Hopkins, John Henry, 42hose, fire (See fire hose, leather)hose companies in Philadelphia, 3-8 passim, 44Humes, James, 168 "Hydraulion," in Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, 2; design of,6 and n; 10 (illustr.); drawings of, 43, 51 (Seealso fire engine)Ibotson, Richard, 126; on Sellers pulp dresser, 127;with GES, 127-128 (See also papermaking ma-chinery, pulp dresser)inclined plane, Belmont, 155 (illustr.) (See alsoPhildelphia & Columbia Railroad)Independence Hall, 7, fire signals in, 4; new clockfor, 52; Redheffer machine in, 79 (See alsoPeale's Museum)Institution of Civil Engineers, 117instrument, furnace temperature indicator, 93-94interchangeable parts, 126-127 197 internal improvements, 143 (See also railroads;roads; Pennsylvania works)Jamieson, Alexander, 40Jervis, John B., 173, 174; locomotive of, 164John Bull (locomotive), 163 (illustr.)Jones, David, tools of, 29; mold maker, 107Jones, Thomas P., 15, 54; partner of Perkins, 12 andn, 16, 22, 24; lectures in Peale Museum 16, 54;on perpetual motion, 79-80Joule, James P., 66Kelter (papermaker), 95Kemble, Gouverneur, 46 n (See also West PointFoundry)King, George, 106, 181King, Philip Jacob, 106 nKneass, William, 38Lancaster (locomotive), 162Lancaster & Harrisburg Railroad, 163Lancaster Locomotive Works, 166, 171lathe, Spencer's, 13, 14 (illustr.), 136, 138; of ColemanSellers, 29-30; John White's screw-cutting,3 I-35) 35 (illustr.); of D. Wilkinson, 31;of C. and O. Evans, 32; great wheel and springpole, 44, 45 (illustr.), 54; of Lukens, Mason& Tyler, 15 n, 54, 57; copying (die sinking)for mint, 71, 74, 77; unable to cut scrollthread, 99; accident with, 107; at Cardington,112, 160; in Maudslay shops, 112 (See also slide rest)Latrobe, Benjamin H. (1 764-1820), 63; steam enginereport, 6 n; Evans on, 37, 38; drawing of, 41Latrobe, Benjamin H. (1806-1878), 37, 184, 190, 192Lawrenceburg & Indianapolis Railroad, 150leather fire hose (See fire hose)leather splitting machine, 185, 187Leslie, Charles, 110, 111, 124Linkfelter, Andrew, and hose, 8lithontriptor of Lukens, 52, 55 (illustr.)Liverpool &? Manchester railroad, 70, 134; 150locomotive (See also Rogers, Thomas)adhesion increaser, 172, 173 (illustr.), 178Baldwin, 164, 174, 188; on Philadelphia & Co-lumbia, 151, 156, 161, (illustr.), 172; half-crank,162 (illustr.), 163; Lancaster, 162: wheel design,165, 176, 177 (See also Baldwin, Matthias)Boyden, Essex and Orange, 188-189Campbell, 8-wheel, 152Davis, York, 180; Arabian, 180-181, 183, 184-185;blower fan, 180 and n, 183 (illustr.)De Witt Clinton, i64nHackworth, 163 locomotive?ContinuedJohn Bull, 163 (illustr.)Norris, on Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad,151, 156, 172; climbs Belmont incline, 152;10-wheeler, 171 ; his first, 1 90-1 91Novelty, in Peale's Museum, 70 and nPuffing Billy, 1 84Sellers, grade-climbing, xvii; and mint work, 71 ;in 1835, 151 n; design of, 162-166; boilers for,164; tires for, 164-166; Sampson, 172; Americadescribed, 172-175, 179 (illustr.); trial of.177-178Stephenson, 70 n, 163, 167, 184; in 1832, 134; in '835, ?5*> : 57, 162London, 104, 106, 109-133 passimLong, Stephen H., 190-192, 191 (portrait.)Low Moor Iron Works, 165Lukens, Isaiah, xvi, 15, 30; biogr. notes, 52; por-trait, 53; his shop, 54-57; his slide rest, 54-55*57, 58 (illustr.); introduces flat belt, 54; GESon skill of, 55 n; and apprentices, 60; andperpetual motion machine, 79, 81 (illustr.),84-86; winds scroll-screw, 99; on screws, 121Lungren, William (millwright), 107Lyon, Patrick, biogr. notes, 2 and n; portrait, 3 and5; and Philadelphia fire engine, 3, 7 (illustr.);office of, 4; and Eckfeldt folding levers, 4, 19,23, 70; and Diligent, 9 (illustr.), 22, 24, 44;boring cylinders, 35; on Sellers and Pennockengines, 44machine tools (See under boring; lathe; planingmachine; punch press)Maidstone, Kent, GES visits paper mill in, 128-130Market Street store, xvi, xvii, 28 (illustr.), 29, 30, 43,46, 5 1 . 89Marshall saw mill, L'pper Darby, Pa., 107, 160Mason, William, xvi, 77; teaches drawing, xv, 40,54; on annealing, 15; biogr. notes, 15 n;GES on, 55 n; slide rest 59 (illustr.); andRedheffer, 84 (See also Baldwin and Mason)Mason and Tyler (firm), 40, 55 nMathews of London (wire worker), 104; introducesGES to Dickinson, 106; mentioned, 94 n, 107Maudslay, Henry, 74; slide rest, 44, 54, 56(illustr.), 107; milling cutter, 100 n; biogr.notes, 108-109; his tools, 1 1 1 ; and screw stand-ards, 1 2 1 Maudslay Sons and Field (firm), 88; origin, 108-109;GES visits, 1 1 1-1 12, 114Mease, James, 15, 40 n198 mechanical drawing, Oliver Evans on, 38; full size,38, 49, 170; instruction by Mason, xv, 40, 54Meredith, Samuel, builds fire-engine bodies, 44, 49;mold maker, 107Merrick, Samuel V., 16, 53, 71, 77Merrick, Agnew and Tyler (firm), 74, 76Merrick and Agnew (fire-engine builders), 3, 16, 19,54 nMerrick and Towne (firm), 74 nMerrill & Co. (paper machine builders), 101metalworking (See under boring; casting; coining;copper, drawing; coppersmithing; forging;foundry work; heat-treatment; lathe; planingmachine; punch press; welding; wire)Millbank, xvii, 29, 89 (See also Cardington)Miller, Edward, of portage railroad, 154, 159Miller,' Edgar L., 172, 178Miller's pottery works, 14, 93Millholland, James, 171Mint, Royal, in London, 76, 1 1 1 United States, xvii, 3, u, 15, 32 n, 53, 57, 160;screws for coining press, 31; gold imported inscrews, 35; descr. and illustr., 61-78; firstmint, 61 , 62; second mint, 62, 67; branch mints,62, 71, 74Mitchell, John K. (lecturer at Franklin Institute), 54Mogeme, Henri, xvi, 74; in Sellers & Pennock shops,43 , 46-51Mohawk & Hudson Railroad, 164, 174mold (See papermaking)Mont Cenis Pass, 153Montreal, Quebec, counterfeiters near, 135, 137, ?39Moore, Samuel (mint director), 68, 70Morey, Samuel, turpentine engine, 43, 45-46; 47(illustr.)Morris, Edward [Elwood?], 54Morris, Elwood, 148, 150Morris, Henry, 53, 54 nMorris, Israel, 43Morris, J., and hose, 8Morris, Stephen P., 53. 54 n, 77 and nMorris, William P., and "Hydraulion," 6 nMorris & Essex Railroad, 185, 189Moses (See Williams, Moses)Mount Clare shops, 180, 184Murray, Alexander, commandant Philadelphia NavyYard, 12; and ship pump, 16, 18, 20; capstan of, 16, 20-21Murray, George (engraver), 13 nMurray, John (publisher), 123 Murray, Draper, Fairman & Co. (engravers), 13Museum (See under Peak's Museum) nails, English and American, 125-126Nasmyth, James, 22 and n; on Maudslay, 108-109National Road, 143Neagle, John, portrait of Pat Lyon, 2, 5, 22New Castle & Frenchtown Railroad, 144New Orleans Mint, 73New York, fire engines, 3 (See also Novelty Works:West Point Foundry)New York and Erie Railroad, 168, 171Newsham fire engine, 3Newton and Son (patent firm), 1 18Newton's London Journal of Arts and Sciences, 125Nicholson, John, Operative Mechanic, 19, 22, 23, 40, 91Nortis, William, locomotive on Philadelphia &Columbia, 151, 156, 172; locomotive on Belmontincline, 152; builds 10-wheel locomotive, 171;at America trial, 178; first locomotive, 190-191Nott, Eliphalet, 74, 160Novelty Works, New York, 160; planer in, 74Oat, Joseph (brazier), 43, 48 oil press, 33 (illustr.)Owen (clockmaker), baits Redheffer, 82Oxford, England, GES visits printery, 1 1 oPage, Charles, electric engine, 132paper cutter, guillotine, 1 20-1 21papermaking, 87-141, passim: mold-making, 89,90-95; hand, techniques, 102-104; straw paper,106; bleaching, 128; and counterfeiting, 135-141papermaking machinery, Ames-type cylinder, 96,99-100, 107beating engine, English, 110cylinder machine development, 96, 98-101, 104(See also Dickinson, John; Gilpin, Thomas)drying cylinders, 101, 118, 123-124Fourdrinier machine development, 101, 104, 116(See also Donkin, Bryan)Phelps & Spafford, 101, 119pulp dresser, Ibotson, GES sees, 110; described,ii8n, 122; infringement on, 128-130; Sellers,no, 118; 120 (illustr.), 122, 129 (See alsoDonkin, Bryan)Sellers builds, 100-101, 107, 160Park's Foundry, Kensington, 107Parrish, Rachel B., xvii, 1 73 nPaschall, John, 89Paterson, N. J., Brandt in, 171 (See also Rogers.Thomas) 199 Patterson, Prof. Robert (i 743-1824), 63, 68 n; mintdirector, 15, 70; supports Evans, 37; and Red-heffer, 79Patterson, Robert M. (son of Prof. Robert), 53, 68 n,77, 178; mint director, 70, 71-74Peale, Charles Willson, 27 n, 55n, 82, 124, 182;grandfather of GES, xiv; portraits by, xiv, xv,53> 89, 191 ; gold rolling, 15; supports Evans, 37;and Rumford,66; and Redheffer machine, 79,80Peale, Edmond, daughter adopted by GES, xviiPeale, Franklin, 53, 96, 176, 178; manager of museum,4, 70; to Europe on mint business, 62 and n,68, 70, 76; overhauls melting in mint, 62; earlytraining, 69-70; improves refining, assaying,coining, 71-78, passim; Eckfeldt's opinion of,76; coining press of, 76-77; steam engine, 67(illustr.), 77; balance, 77, 78 (illustr.); marriesEliza Greatrake, 106, 124; with Davis inmuseum, 182Peale, Louisa Stockton, adopted by GES, xvii, xviiiPeale, Rembrandt, xiv; iog-110, 119Peale, Rubens, xiv; lecturer in museum, 16; and Red-heffer, 84Peale, Titian, xiv; designs coin, 74, 77; in museum, 182Peak's Museum, xiv, 4, 55 n, 176; lectures in, 16,65 (illustr.), 70 and n; Redheffer machine in,79, 81 (illustr.), 84-85; Evans traction enginemodel, 180, 182-184Pearce, Jacob, teacher of GES, 30Pennock, Abraham L., 51; and hose, 2, 8 (See alsoSellers and Pennock)Pennsylvania Central Railroad, 150, 167Pennsylvania Railroad, 154Pennsylvania works, commenced, 143, 147, 153;map of, 145; description of, 147-148; planeseliminated, 150 (See also Philadelphia & Co-lumbia Railroad; portage railroad)Perkins, Jacob, 43, 46, 52, 53 n, 63, 88, 109, 110, 1 1 1,122, 123; on GES, xv; in Philadelphia, 12-27;portrait, 13; tack machine, 13; heat-treatmentof steel, 13-15; engraving techniques, 13, 14,17, 28; builds fire engines, 15, 16, 22-25;ship pump, 16, 18, 20, 25 (illustr.); and Murray'scapstan, 20-21; steam gun, 27-28, 132; andsteam boiler and engine, 26-28, 132; in AdelaideGallery, 1 31-133; GES opinion of, 133Perkins and Bacon (firm), 12, 16 nPerkins and Jones (firm), 12, 16 nPerkins and Sellers (firm), 15-16, 24; mentioned, 27,43, 63 Perkins, Fairman & Heath (firm), illustr. of engrav-ing by, 1 7perpetual motion machine, 79-86 (See also Red-heffer, Charles)Peters Island incline (See Philadelphia & ColumbiaRailroad)Phelps and Spafford paper machine, 101, 119Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad, 160; route, 147-148; inclined planes on, 148, 150, 151, 155; railtypes on, 148, 149, 151; grade crossing 156(illustr.); "Long" locomotive on, 1 90-1 91 (Seealso locomotive; Pennsylvania works; portagerailroad)Philadelphia fire companies, 3-8 passim, 44Philadelphia Germantown & Norristown Railroad, Philadelphia Museum (See under Peak's Museum)Philadelphia navy yard, 12, 21Philadelphia water works, 6, 15, 37-42 passimPhoenix Fire Company, 4, 6, 44Pickering, Timothy, xviplanchets, copper, for pennies, 66planing machine, 116; at Cardington, 74, 160-161;in New York, 74, 160; in Providence, 74 n;of Sharp & Roberts, 1 1 2 Plantou, Anthony, 27 nportage railroad, engineers of, 143; planned, 147,148; safety on, 152; described, 153-156, 159;roadbed, 157 (illustr.) (See also Philadelphia &Columbia Railroad)Portsmouth, England, block machinery, 108Poulson's American Daily Advertiser, 79press, coining (See under coining)press, punch (See under punch)press, toggle, for copper drawing, 16press, screw (See under screw)printing press, polygonal, 1 16-1 17; of R. Hoe, 11 6-1 17Providence, R.I., 31 ; fire engines for, 6, 44; planer in,74npulp dresser (See under papermaking machinery; also Donkin, Bryan)pump (See Perkins, Jacob; fire engine)punch press, for rivets and washers, 9, 1 1 Railroad (See also Pennsylvania works)Baltimore & Ohio, 180-185, 190Camden & Amboy, 162 n, 163Charleston & Hamburg, 150, 172Covington & Lexington, 154Lancaster & Harrisburg, 163Lawrenceburg & Indianapolis, 150Liverpool & Manchester, 70, 134, 150200 Railroad-^ContinuedMohawk & Hudson, 164, 174Morris & Essex, 185, 189New Castle & Frenchtown, 144New York & Erie, 1 68, 171Pennsylvania, 154Pennsylvania Central, 150, 167Philadelphia, Germantown & Norristown, 151Philadelphia & Columbia, 147-148, 149, 150, '5 1 , 155) >56 , l6?, 190-19'portage railroad, 143, 147, 148, 152, 153-155, '57, '59Richmond & Fredericksburg, 134Western & Atlantic, 191railroad rail types, 148, 149, 151Railway Exposition of 1883, 180Rainhill trials, 70Rawlings, George, builds fire engine bodies, 44, 49;makes molds, 107Redheffer, Charles, h's perpetual motion machine,79-86; shows machine, 79-80, 82; committeecondemns, 79; Fulton exposes, 79 n; GES de-scribes, 80-83; Coleman Sellers exposes, 84;views Lukens' model, 85Reeder of Baltimore, 181Reese, commissioner, of Barbadoes, 1 1 1 , 114Reeside, James (mail contractor), 144 n, 145-146Resolution Fire Company, 4, 8Reynold and Sharpless (screw makers), 31 nRichards, Samuel (foundryman), 40 nRichmond, \*a., fire engines for, 6, 44, 49Richmond & Fredericksburg Railroad, 134Rittenhouse, David, xvi, 37, 82, 121rivets, 8-1 1 roads, condition in 1808, 143; Philadelphia to Pitts-burgh, 144Robert, Nicholas Louis {See under Robert and Didot)Robert and Didot (paper makers), 104, 116, 130Roberts, Joseph (schoolmaster), xv, 54Roberts, Richard, planing machine of, 108, 1 12, 116Roberts, Solomon W., 54, 147 n, 153; schoolmate ofGES, xv, on portage railroad, 143, 154Roberts. William Milnor, 54, 147 n, 153; schoolmateof GES, xv; on portage railroad, 143, 154; onlocomotives for portage, 152, 155Robinson (paper maker), 95, 129Robinson, Moncure (engineer), 134Robinson, Wirt, in England, 134Roebling, John, wire rope of, 154 nRogers, Thomas, counterbalanced wheel, 165; visitsCardington, 173-174; portrait, 174 rolling mill, for gold, 15; in mint, 66, 67-68, 73Roosevelt, Nicholas, 38n; engine of, 39 and 41 (illustr.)Rowntree fire engine, 18, 23Royal Society of Arts, 20 n, 117Royal Society of London, 102, 117Rubican's restaurant, 20Rumford, Count, 66Rush and Muhlenberg, 53, 112; works, 32 and n,67 n; mint engine, 72, 75 (illustr.)Sampson, 1 72 {See also locomotive, Sellers)Saul, Mrs. (schoolmistress), xvSaxton, Joseph, 77, 88, 109, 121, 133; biogr. notes,52-53; and Lukens, 57, 60; mint balance, 57,62 n, 78 (illustr.); and rifle incident, 58-60;at Maudslay works, 1 1 1 ; locomotive differentialpulley, 131, 132; electric generator, 131, 134(illustr.); motor, 132; during Civil War, 190,192; portrait, 192Scott, Sir Walter, and Donkin, 109-110, 119; death of, 1 10screw, press, 31-35; for dividing engine, 117, 121;American and English, 126Sellers, Ann, xix, 89Sellers, Anna, keeps house for GES, xviiiSellers, Charles (brother of GES), 29, 70, 87, 143; inPhiladelphia, xvii; loses tooth, 30; in Sellers &Pennock shops, 43, 46, 50; and mint machinery,73; makes watermarks, 95; marriage of, 107;at Cardington, 160; and John Brandt, 169; attrial of America, 172, 177, 178 {See also loco-motive, Sellers)Sellers, Coleman (1781-1834; father of GES), 70, 87,131; biogr. notes, xiv, xvii; portrait, xiv; at fire, 7;designs "Hydraulion," 6; and leather hose, 2,8;and Perkins, 12, 13, 22-24; and Murray'scapstan, 21 ; home workshop, 29-30; in Sellers &Pennock shops, 43, 46-48; to Richmond, 49-50;and Redheffer, 80, 82, 83, 84; visits Gilpins,97-98; card and paper machinery, 160, 169;and Brandt, 169; and Davis, 181; leather-splitting, 185Sellers, Coleman (1827-1907), 55 n, 79 nSellers, David, 8, 89Sellers, Elizabeth, sister of GES, 108, 141Sellers, George Escol, portrait, iv (fronds.); biogr.notes, xiv-xviii; genealogy, xix; boyhood shoppractice, 29-30; mint machinery, 62, 71-74; visits England in 1832, 87-88; on Portage rail-road, 159; runs Cardington Locomotive Works,160; with Brandt on Lancaster, 167 {See alsolocomotive, Sellers) 201 Sellers, James, and Sellers & Pennock, 2, 43, 50; and "Hydraulion," 6 n; and leather hose, 8Sellers, John, xix, 89Sellers, Nathan, xiv, xvii, 87, 106; and firm of N. & D.Sellers, 8; his Market Street store, 28, 29, 30;and John White, 34; on Philadelphia waterworks, 37, 38, 40; and Redheffer, 79, 80, 82;portrait. 89; biogr. notes, 89; his wire and moldwork, 89-95, '68; at Cardington, 107Sellers, Rachel B. Parrish, xvii, 173 nSellers, Samuel, 2, 8, 43Sellers, Sophonisba, xiv, xviii; portrait, xvSellers, N. & D. (firm), 8, 70; formed, 89; annealingfurnace of, 94; faces paper cylinder, 89; moldmakers, 106Sellers and Brandt (firm), 166, 169Sellers and Pennock (firm), 53, 160; formed, 2;description of shops, 43-51 (See also "Hydrau-lion"; Pennock, Abraham)Sellers & Sons, Coleman (firm), advertisement, 179Sellers family genealogy, xixSevers, I. L., 10 1 Sharp, attorney-general of Barbadoes, in, 114Sharp and Roberts, planer of, 1 12Sheer, E. R. (pianoforte maker), 126Shryock, George (paper maker), 101, 106 slide rest: Maudslay, 44, 56 (illustr.), 107; Lukens,54~55> 57) 58 (illustr.); Baldwin and Mason,59 (illustr.), 1 12 (See also lathe)Sloan, J., and house heating, 133, 177Smith, Francis Gurney, 52 nSmith and Winchester (paper machine builders), 101Smithsonian Institution, publication of GES, xviii(See also Henry, Joseph)snag boats, 191Society of Arts, London, 1 1 7 Southwark Foundry, 74 nSpencer, Asa, 136, 138; biogr. notes, 13; his lathe,14 (illustr.); to England, 28stage lines, 144-146Starr, Moses (boilermaker), 164, 165State House (See Independence Hall)steamboats, 144, 145, 146steam engine, high pressure, 26-28; of Oliver Evans,36, 37, 38 and n, 72, 180, 182-184; Boulton andWatt type, 36, 38, 39; at U.S. Mint, 62, 67,75 (illustr.), 77; Rush and Muhlenberg, 72;horizontal, of GES, 73-74; cut-off valves, 73,185; Baldwin, vertical, 181-182, 186 (illustr.)(See also Evans, Oliver)steam gun, 27-28, 132 steel, hardening and annealing, 13-15Stephenson, George, 70 n, 149 n, 163, 184; GES inter-views, 134Stephenson, Robert, 163Stevens, John, and screw propeller, 184Stevens, Robert L., 149 nStevens & Stockton Steamboat Line, 145Stevenson, David, on portage railroad, 147 n, 148 n, '53Stevenson, Robert Louis, nephew of David Stevenson,153Stewart, Frank H., and U.S. Mint, 61Stillman, James, 160 nStrickland, William, 54; on architecture, 40; designsmint building, 61 (illustr.), 62, 67Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens, 40 and nStubs, Peter (toolmaker), 125Sully, Thomas, designs coin, 74, 77Swann, James (paper maker), 110-111, 117, 119temperature indicator, furnace, 93_94textile machinery (See card; Brandt, John)Thames tunnel (See under tunnel)Thompson, Benjamin, Count Rumford, 66Thornton, William, 16toggle, press, 16; capstan, 16,20-21 (See also coining)tools, hand, early tools of GES, 29-30; American andEnglish, 112, 125; hand-forged bit-stock of GES,169Trautwine, John C, 170; schooling, xv, 54; and 2ndU.S. Mint, 67, on Philadelphia & Columbia,148-149, 150Troughton, John (instrument maker), 121tunnel, Lancaster & Harrisburg Railroad, 163portage railroad, 1 54Thames, 113 (illustr.); GES visits, 114-115, 117;mentioned, 109Tyler, Rufus, 77, 112; biogr. notes, 15 and n; sliderest of, 54; GES on, 55 n; lathe of 57 (illustr.);and Redheffer, 84Tyndall, John, 66Union Steamboat line, 145United States Bank, notes of, counterfeited, 135,137-138United States Mint (See under Mint)Ure, Andrew, 1 16Vail and Son, Morristown, N.J., 188Washington, D.C., fire engines for, 6, 44; GES in,191-192Washington, George, President, xviwatermarks, 95, 138-139water works, Philadelphia, 6, 1 5, 37-42 passim202 Welch, Sylvester, chief engineer of portage railroad; '53, '54welding of fire-engine levers, 49-51West Point Foundry: planing machine in, 74;mentioned, 46, 112, 160, 164 nWestern & Atlantic railroad, 191Whistler, George W., 190White, John, screw-turning shop, 31-35; on workmen,34; his lathe, 35 (illustr.); mentioned, 121White, Josiah, and Perkins' ship pump, 20; and wiredrawing, 92White, William, Bishop, 42Whitworth, Joseph, 108Wilkinson, David, 31Willard's Hotel, 192Willcox paper mill, 90Williams, Moses, silhouette cutter, 85 Wilson, John, locates Philadelphia & ColumbiaRailroad, 147; on locating principles, 149-151Wilson, W. Hassell, i47n, 149 n, 151 n, 156Wiltbank, John (brass founder), 43; buys CardingtonLocomotive Works, 43 n, 160Wiltberger foundry, 107Windsor and Newton (engravers), 123wire, straightening, drawing, annealing, 90-94wire rope on portage railroad, I54nWood, Samuel R., nail machine, 125; penitentiarywarden, 136-140Woodhouse, Joseph (paper cutter), 121 nWoodside, John A., 44 and nYork, Pa., molds made in, 106, 168Young, William, owns cotton mill, 69, 70 n, 96;GES visits, 98 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1964 O 660-358 ' Q K D