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Buick, David Dunbar (1854-1929), inventor and businessman  

Ronald Edsforth

Buick, David Dunbar (17 September 1854–06 March 1929), inventor and businessman, was born in Arbroath, Scotland, the son of Alexander Buick and Jane Roger. The family emigrated from Scotland to Detroit, Michigan, two years after Buick was born; his father died three years later. Buick attended elementary school, but the poverty of his single-parent family forced him to find full-time employment when he was just eleven years old. By the time he was fifteen, he had delivered newspapers, worked on a farm, and served as a machinist’s apprentice at the James Flower & Brothers Machine Shop (the same firm where ...

Article

Bushnell, David (1740-1826), inventor  

Evelyn M. Cherpak

Bushnell, David (30 August 1740–1826), inventor, was born in Saybrook, Connecticut, the son of Nehemiah Bushnell and Sarah Ingham, farmers. By the time Bushnell entered Yale, he had developed concepts for both a submarine and an underwater explosive. At college, he experimented with gunpowder and proved that it could explode underwater. During the summer of 1775, the year he graduated, the thirteen colonies were in the throes of revolt against Great Britain, and Bushnell felt that an offensive weapon would be a useful tool against the Royal Navy in the ensuing conflict. With that in mind, he constructed his submarine in Saybrook during the spring and summer of 1775. Although he was secretive about his work, several colonial notables knew of it, including ...

Article

Cass, George Washington (1810-1888), engineer and business leader  

Maureen A. Bridges

Cass, George Washington (12 March 1810–21 March 1888), engineer and business leader, was born near Dresden, Muskingum County, Ohio, the son of George W. Cass and Sophia Lord, farmers.

Cass received a good education. His parents sent him to Detroit at the age of fourteen, and from 1824 to 1827 he attended the highly regarded Detroit Academy while living with his uncle, ...

Article

Champion, Albert (1878-1927), inventor and businessman  

Richard P. Scharchburg

Champion, Albert (02 April 1878–27 October 1927), inventor and businessman, was born in Paris, France, the son of Alexander Champion. Available sources reveal no other information about his family or his early life. No doubt he received an early education in Paris. When he was about twelve years old, he obtained employment as an errand boy for a bicycle manufacturer....

Article

Colley, Russell (1897-1996), inventor, designer, and aeronautical engineer  

Lillian D. Kozloski

Colley, Russell (22 July 1897–04 February 1996), inventor, designer, and aeronautical engineer, was born Russell Sidney Colley in Stoneham, Mass., the son of Frank S. Colley, a druggist, and Florence Vesta Hopkins Colley. Russell spent several summers in high school serving as an apprentice electrician. After he revealed his desire to become a women's fashion designer, his art teacher directed him out of her freehand drawing class into what she considered more appropriate, a mechanical drawing class. He was accepted into Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts, and in 1918 completed the two-year machine construction and tool design course....

Article

Curtiss, Glenn Hammond (1878-1930), aeronautical inventor and manufacturer  

William M. Leary

Curtiss, Glenn Hammond (21 May 1878–23 July 1930), aeronautical inventor and manufacturer, was born in Hammondsport, New York, the son of Frank R. Curtiss, the owner of a harness shop, and Lua Andrews. After the death of his father in 1883, Curtiss was raised by his mother and his strong-willed grandmother Ruth Curtiss in the bucolic Finger Lake region of western New York. After graduating from the eighth grade in 1892, Curtiss secured a job stenciling numbers on the backing of photographic film for the Eastman Dry Plant and Film Company (later Eastman Kodak Company) of Rochester. The next year he purchased a bicycle and found employment as a messenger for Western Union....

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Cover Curtiss, Glenn Hammond (1878-1930)
Glenn H. Curtiss. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-106325).

Article

Duryea, Charles Edgar (1861-1938), inventor and manufacturer of bicycles and automobiles  

George W. May

Duryea, Charles Edgar (15 December 1861–28 September 1938), inventor and manufacturer of bicycles and automobiles, was born near Canton, Fulton County, Illinois, the son of George Washington Duryea and Louisa Melvina Turner, farmers. From Canton the family moved successively to farms in Woodford and Stark counties, Illinois, where Duryea grew up with a bent toward mechanics. At the age of eighteen his first inventive effort was a bicycle....

Article

Duryea, Frank (1869-1967), inventor and manufacturer of automobiles  

George W. May

Duryea, Frank (08 October 1869–15 February 1967), inventor and manufacturer of automobiles, was born James Frank Duryea near Washburn, Illinois, the son of George Washington Duryea and Louisa Melvina Turner, farmers. From Washburn the family moved to a farm near Wyoming, Illinois, where Frank grew up and graduated from Wyoming High School. Frank Duryea’s career was linked closely with that of his brother ...

Article

Ericsson, John (1803-1889), inventor and engineer  

Michael A. Cavanaugh

Ericsson, John (31 July 1803–08 March 1889), inventor and engineer, was born in Langbanshyttan, province of Wermland, Sweden, the son of Olof Ericsson, a mine proprietor and inspector, and Brita Sophia Yngstrom. His earliest education was instruction by his parents and private tutors. John often spent his days drawing and building models of the machinery in his father’s mine. His father was well educated, but John’s strong character traits were attributed to the influence of his mother. Sweden’s war with Russia ruined John’s father financially, but he was able to secure a position as an inspector on a canal project and to obtain appointments for his two sons as cadets in the Corps of Mechanical Engineers. Thus at age thirteen John began his first formal education, and his natural aptitudes for mechanical drawing and solving engineering problems were encouraged and developed....

Article

Fink, Albert (1827-1897), railway engineer and executive  

E. Dale Odom

Fink, Albert (27 October 1827–03 April 1897), railway engineer and executive, was born in Lauterbach, in what is now Germany, the son of Andres S. Fink, an architect, and Margaret Jacob. Albert studied architecture and engineering at the Darmstadt Politechnikum and graduated in 1848. Like many other young urban professionals, Fink left for the United States after the 1848 revolutions in central Europe. He settled in Baltimore and began work as an assistant in the engineering department of the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad. He also married, but his young wife died, childless, soon afterward. Fink advanced in the engineering department of the B&O and also became a consulting engineer for the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad. During his tenure at the Baltimore and Ohio, he invented and patented a bridge truss that brought him income for the remainder of his life....

Article

Fitch, John (21 January 1743–June or July 1798), inventor and craftsman  

Neil L. York

Fitch, John (21 January 1743–June or July 1798), inventor and craftsman, was born in Windsor, Connecticut, the son of Joseph Fitch and Sarah Shaler, farmers. His father came from neighboring Hartford and his mother from Bolton. His mother died before he was five; his father married Abigail Church of Hartford two years later. Most of what is known about Fitch comes from an autobiographical sketch written between 1790 and 1792, when he was alone and embittered, convinced that he had been cheated by life. Although he had by then put aside the Calvinistic Presbyterianism of his upbringing and replaced it with a rationalistic deism, he still tended to pass judgment on those he felt had failed him. His memories of childhood were few and unhappy. He described his father as uncaring, even tyrannical. Unjust treatment by an older brother “forbode” his “future rewards,” he reminisced—with the irony intended ( ...

Article

Fulton, Robert (1765-1815), artist, engineer, and entrepreneur  

C. M. Harris

Fulton, Robert (14 November 1765–23 February 1815), artist, engineer, and entrepreneur, was born on a farm in Little Britain (later Fulton) Township, south of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the son of Robert Fulton, a Scotch-Irish tailor and tradesman, and Mary Smith. Fulton’s father had left the prosperous market town of Lancaster to establish his family on the land, but like so many others with the same goal, he failed. The farm and the dwelling were sold at sheriff’s sale in 1772, and he took his family back to Lancaster. He died two years later....

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Cover Fulton, Robert (1765-1815)
Robert Fulton. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-102509).

Article

Gorrell, Edgar Staley (1891-1945), aviator and industrialist  

James J. Cooke

Gorrell, Edgar Staley (03 February 1891–05 March 1945), aviator and industrialist, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Charles Edgar Gorrell, a carpenter, and Pamelia Smith. He entered the U.S. Military Academy in 1908, graduating in 1912 with a commission as a second lieutenant of infantry. In 1915 he attended the army’s Signal Corps Aviation School in Coronado, California, where he became a pilot. While serving with the First Aero Squadron during the Mexican Punitive Operation in 1916, he came to the attention of Brigadier General ...

Article

Hall, Thomas Seavey (1827-1880), inventor and manufacturer  

Larry N. Sypolt

Hall, Thomas Seavey (01 April 1827–01 December 1880), inventor and manufacturer, was born in Upper Bartlett, New Hampshire, the son of Elias Hall, a clergyman, and Hannah Seavey. Hall attended Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. He then established a textile company in Stamford, Connecticut, specializing in woolen products. Being very successful in this enterprise, Hall retired in 1866. That year Hall was traveling on a train that wrecked because a switch was misplaced. Although he was not injured, the event impelled him to find a better method for warning trains of other trains on the same track. His interest expanded from signaling devices to prevent accidents caused by misplaced switches and came to include prevention of mishaps at open drawbridges and highway crossings....

Article

Haupt, Herman (1817-1905), railway engineer, inventor, author, and administrator  

Keir B. Sterling

Haupt, Herman (26 March 1817–14 December 1905), railway engineer, inventor, author, and administrator, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Jacob Haupt, a businessman of modest attainments, and Anna Margaretta Wiall, the proprietor of a small dry goods store. Herman attended several private schools in Philadelphia, but in 1827 his father, suffering from poor health, gave up the grocery store he then owned and moved to Woodville, New Jersey. Jacob Haupt died the next year, leaving his widow in straitened circumstances; Herman, the eldest of six children, was only eleven years of age. Two years later Herman Haupt’s congressman, John B. Sterigere, offered to help the boy gain admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He received a presidential appointment in 1830, but his entry was deferred for a year because of his youth. Unhappy with the strict upbringing he had received from his father, he was very uncertain about subjecting himself to the hard discipline of the academy, but his mother prevailed....

Article

Haynes, Elwood (1857-1925), inventor, metallurgist, and automobile manufacturer  

William E. Worthington

Haynes, Elwood (14 October 1857–13 April 1925), inventor, metallurgist, and automobile manufacturer, was born in Portland, Indiana, the son of Jacob March Haynes, a judge and banker, and Hilinda Sophia Haines. Haynes graduated from the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science (now Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1881 with a B.S. in chemistry. He returned to Portland and taught in the local public schools. To further his knowledge of chemistry, he began in 1884 a year of study at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. His efforts to secure a fellowship that would enable him to complete a graduate degree were unsuccessful, forcing him to resume teaching in the Portland schools in 1885. In 1887 he married Bertha Lanterman; they had two children....

Article

Heineman, Daniel Webster (1872-1962), engineer and corporate executive  

Edward L. Lach, Jr.

Heineman, Daniel Webster (23 November 1872–31 January 1962), engineer and corporate executive, was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, the son of James Heineman, a businessman engaged in the chewing tobacco trade, and Minna Hertz. After attending elementary school in his hometown, Heineman relocated with his mother to her native Germany following his father’s death in 1880. He became interested in the newly emerging field of electrical engineering and studied the subject upon entering the Technical College of Hannover. After graduating from the college in 1895, he went to work at Union-Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft in Berlin. The firm, which was associated with General Electric, soon had Heineman out in the field directing the conversion of city transit systems from horsepower to electricity. Over the course of the next ten years, he oversaw the conversion process in a number of cities, including Liège, Naples, Brussels, and Koblenz....

Article

Holland, John Philip (1841-1914), inventor  

Jeffrey R. Yost

Holland, John Philip (24 February 1841–12 August 1914), inventor, was born in Liscannor, County Clare, Ireland, the son of John Holland, a coast guard officer, and Mary Scanlon. The Hollands lived in a small coast guard cottage, and though they had greater economic security than many residents of the village, the poverty, famine, and disease that surrounded them and that led to the death of John’s younger brother Robert and two of his uncles had a profound impact on him, initiating a strong anti-British sentiment that influenced much of his life. In 1853 Holland’s father died and the family moved to Limerick, where Holland entered the monastery school. He was very committed to his studies and rapidly excelled in the physical sciences. The hardship caused by his father’s death, along with Holland’s strong interest in education, prompted his entrance into the teaching order of the Irish Christian Brothers in 1858. He was sent to the North Monastery School in Cork for further training and apprentice teaching. Over the next fifteen years Holland moved to various teaching posts throughout Ireland and taught a variety of subjects ranging from the physical sciences to music. However, his poor health forced him to take periodic breaks from his teaching duties and, along with his interest in designing submarines, influenced his decision to move to the United States in 1873 to join his mother and two brothers, who had moved to Boston several years earlier....