USA > Connecticut > Encyclopedia of Connecticut biography, genealogical-memorial; representative citizens, v. 8 > Part 36
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John Emery, founder of the American branch of the family, was born September 29, 1598, in Hampshire, England, and was the son of John and Agnes Emery. On April 3, 1635, John (2) Emery sailed in the "James," of London, for Boston, Mas- sachusetts, landing on June 3, 1635. Soon after, he removed to Newbury, Massachu- setts, where he received a grant; was made a freeman on June 2, 1641, and re- ceived a further grant on April 19, 1644. He served as selectman in 1661 ; as fence viewer in 1666; and as grand juryman in 1666. He married (first) in England, Mary - -, who died in April, 1649, in Newbury. He married (second) Mrs. Mary (Shatswell) Webster. His death occurred in Newbury, November 3, 1683, and he was survived by his widow until April 28, 1694.
Six generations later the father of Al- bert H. Emery was born and he was Samuel Emery, son of Joshua and Ruth
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(Nott) Emery, born July 14, 1792, and traveled in an ox-cart to Mexico, Oswego county, New York, at a time when there were but three houses in that settlement. Undeterred by this, however, he built the fourth house and made the place his home, following his calling, which was that of a farmer. He married (first) Jan- uary 2, 1820, Catherine Shepard, who was born August 19, 1795, in Alstead, New Hampshire, and died July 27, 1854. The death of Samuel Emery occurred January 24, 1876, in Mexico, New York. He and his wife were members of the Presby- terian church.
His son, Albert Hamilton Emery, was born June 21, 1834, in Mexico, New York, and was next to the youngest of eight children. He grew up accustomed to a farm environment, attending school dur- ing the summer and winter from the age of five years to that of ten, and also the two winters when he was eleven and twelve years old. From that time he at- tended school no more until the winter of 1851, when he studied for three months in the Mexico Academy, devoting special attention to surveying. He had been, meanwhile, employed on his father's farm.
After studying surveying during the winter of 1851, Mr. Emery worked at it throughout the following summer, and in the autumn of 1852 attended the acad- emy for another three months. In the winter of 1852-53 he taught a school in Union Settlement, and then engaged in surveying on a proposed Syracuse & Par- ishville railroad. He later worked at surveying on the proposed Oswego & Troy railroad. In the autumn of 1854 he returned home and made a copy of a map of Niagara Falls from the State Geologi- cal Survey. This map, which was a fine piece of draughtsmanship, was destined to play an important part in shaping Mr.
Emery's career. In the autumn of 1854, desiring to perfect his knowledge of civil engineering, he entered the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, studying for five or six weeks before the close of the winter session. The course covered a period of four years, but Mr. Emery was at the institute only a little over two years and a half, not in- cluding the year when he was absent on account of an attack of typhoid fever. In 1858 he graduated with the degree of Civil Engineer in the first section of a class of forty-eight. He defrayed part of the expense of his course by teaching topographical drawing in the school, his pupils including the graduating class.
The first professional work which en- gaged the attention of Mr. Emery was the erection of a church steeple in his native town of Mexico, New York. This was considered by local contractors almost impossible, but Mr. Emery did not find the task a difficult one. In the summer of 1859 Mr. Emery went to Washington and took out two patents on cheese presses. In the fall of 1859 he became acquainted with G. B. Lamar, of Savannah, Georgia, for whom he built a cotton packing press and also designed two compressors for compressing cotton. They had a capacity of two thousand bales in twenty hours with a pressure of five hundred tons on each bale, but Mr. Lamar's needs changed and the compressors were never built. Later Mr. Emery formed a partnership with Mr. Lamar, by the terms of which he was to furnish the patents and Mr. Lamar the money to build and sell cotton packing presses and compresses. This was in the autumn of 1859. The first press was built in Brooklyn, whence it was shipped South. They were planning to put one hundred agents in the field, but Mr. Lamar was conscious of the fast ap- proaching upheaval and desired to pro-
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ceed slowly with their enterprise until after the next presidential election. Mr. Emery, not being willing to wait a year for the turn of political events, returned home and during the summer built cheese presses on his own account.
In the autumn of 1861 Mr. Emery asked Professor Drown, of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, for a letter to the Secretary of War, Mr. Cameron. Edwin D. Morgan was then governor of New York and he also gave Mr. Emery a letter to Mr. Cameron. Mr. Emery was desir- ous of obtaining a position as engineer in the army, a position which could ordi- narily be held only by a West Point graduate. Mr. Emery obtained an inter- view with General Richard Delafield, who had charge of all the fortifications in the State of New York. General Delafield requested Mr. Emery to make copies of drawings of all these forts for him, which he did. He also made drawings of several batteries of field guns for the United States Government which were built un- der the superintendance of Mr. Emery and paid for by the State of New York. From 1861 for several years Mr. Emery spent much time experimenting on guns and projectiles for the War Department. Mr. Emery designed several sizes of pro- jectiles, submitted his plans to Admiral Dahlgren, and made a number of projec- tiles for several sizes of naval guns, Lieu- tenant Mitchell having charge of firing them. During this time Mr. Emery was also making cotton presses and had em- barked in a venture to extract materials from southern light wood or fat pine. He worked out and patented a process by which from one cord of that wood the following products were obtained : Forty- three gallons of turpentine, two barrels of tar, one barrel of pitch, twenty-five barrels of charcoal, five thousand cubic feet of illuminating gas, six hundred gal-
lons of crude pyroligneous acid. Before the enterprise could get well under way the works were burned and with no in- surance, so he was without funds to re- build them. This was an early attempt to utilize by-products which has since come into such general use in many industries, but at this time (1865) was much ahead of common practice.
The next important work undertaken by Mr. Emery was the designing of a new system of scales. Mr. Philo Reming- ton, of Ilion, New York, advanced the money to build the first three scales un- der this system, which, as has been most truly and forcibly observed, was one of the first great stones in the foundation of Mr. Emery's fame. These three scales were built in the Remington shops. One of them was set up and loaded with seven thousand pounds of iron. Its capacity was twenty thousand pounds and with a load of seven thousand pounds it was sen- sitive to one-half an ounce. In 1873 Mr. Emery met Mr. William Sellers, who was reputed to be one of the best mechanical engineers of his day. He saw him in Philadelphia and showed him his scale drawings. Mr. Sellers became much in- terested, especially in one feature of the invention, the absence of knife edges, these scales differing in this from the ordinary balance or scale which has knife edges which are rapidly injured by wear and rust. Mr. Sellers was a manufac- turer of machine tools and it was he who introduced Mr. Emery to Mr. J. H. Towne, father of Henry R. Towne, who later became famous as the head of the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company. Mr. Emery said it would require $800,000 to develop the manufacture of these scales in the way he contemplated.
Meanwhile, Mr. Emery had designed a great one-thousand-ton testing machine to go to Seller's bridge works. There was
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a delay in closing the negotiations, and Mr. Emery returned home. Mr. Sellers introduced Mr. Emery to Colonel Laid- ley, of the Ordnance Bureau of the War Department. He met him at the Reming- ton Armory in Ilion, New York, by ap- pointment and gave him a demonstration with the scales that he had there. As a result Mr. Emery was asked by the Ord- nance Department to design a large test- ing machine while Colonel Laidley was investigating the testing machines of this country and Europe. He then designed a system of testing machines, from little ones to big ones. While he was working on these designs, Colonel Laidley re- turned from Europe and gave him an order for a four-hundred-ton machine. This was on December 23, 1874.
In February, 1875, Mr. Emery was called to Washington and there met Gen- eral Benet, chief of the Ordnance Depart- ment. It was decided to try to get an increased appropriation from Congress, which was obtained to cover additional work, and President Grant appointed a board to take charge of the matter and to this board Mr. Emery's designs were sub- mitted. The supervision of the contract was turned over to the board, Colonel Laidley acting as its president. Parts of the machine were built in different places, the whole being assembled at the Water- town Arsenal. In order to build this test- ing machine it was necessary to design a number of new and novel machines, one of these being a twenty-ton scale to standardize some weights with which to calibrate the testing machine. When this was finally tested with a load of forty- five thousand pounds, it was found to be sensitive to half an ounce under all loads. This demonstration greatly delighted the board. The completion of the testing machine was delayed by various difficul- ties, but in 1879 it was finished, and in
1880 went into government use, constitut- ing a wonderful monument to the genius of the inventor.
When this machine was tested by the board for acceptance, a bar of iron, having a section of twenty square inches, was pulled in two with a tension load of 722,800 pounds, and immediately follow- ing, two horse hairs were tested, one breaking with a load of one pound and the other with a load of one and three- quarter pounds. This second hair was tested on a small dynamometer and broke with the same load of one and three- fourths pounds, showing the great sensi- tiveness of this large machine, which in 1920 was as sensitive as ever, and is still in service. The testing machine while in operation at the arsenal in 1881 was con- sidered part of the exhibits of the Massa- chusetts Charitable Mechanic Association Fair, held in Boston, on Huntington ave- nue, and as such was awarded a large gold medal of honor, which cost $500 and was awarded for "That exhibit most condu- cive to human welfare." A second gold medal was at the same time also awarded Mr. Emery on this same machine for "The best scientific apparatus."
In 1882 Mr. Emery moved from Chicopee, Massachusetts, to Stamford, Connecticut, and the Yale & Towne Man- ufacturing Company took up the manu- facture of his scales, gauges and testing machines, and three one-hundred-and- fifty-thousand-pound, and two three-hun- dred-thousand-pound testing machines, for tension, compression and transverse loads, were constructed. One of these went to the University of Toronto, an- other to McGill University of Montreal, and one to the University of Vienna. One of the large ones went to the Cambria Iron and Steel Works in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and the other to the Beth- lehem Steel Company.
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Later the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company, to whom Mr. Emery had sold his patents, disposed of them in turn to William Sellers & Company. Mr. Sellers designed a fifty-ton testing machine which was built under Mr. Emery's pat- ents and placed in the Watertown Arse- nal, Watertown, Massachusetts, where Mr. Emery's large machine was already in use. Under these patents machines were also built by William Sellers & Company for several of the technical schools and colleges in the United States and Europe. The War Department ex- hibited one of these machines in the Gov- ernment Building at the Columbia Expo- sition in Chicago in 1893, the machine afterward going to Sibley College, Cornell University.
After the Yale & Towne Manufactur- ing Company sold his patents to William Sellers & Company, Mr. Emery resigned his position with them and resumed the designing of cannon and projectiles in which he had been interested during the Civil War. He designed a gun carriage for a twelve-inch rifle for the War De- partment under the supervision of the Board of Ordnance and Fortifications. This design was never completed for the reason that its construction required more money than had been appropriated. While with the Yale & Towne Manufac- turing Company he designed and built a car dynamometer for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to make autographic records of the drawbar pull of locomo- tives, the dynamometer having a capacity of 28,000 pounds. Several years later, in 1902, he was asked by Mr. Vogt, me- chanical engineer of the Pennsylvania railroad, to consider designing and con- structing another dynamometer for them, as the old one was entirely inadequate to measure the loads given by the increased size of locomotives.
Mr. Emery was confined to his room with a broken knee cap at that time, but decided he could undertake the work, and he designed and built a car dynamometer of 100,000 pounds capacity, the Pennsyl- vania railroad designing and building the car therefor. The dynamometer was put into service in 1906 and is still in service. In the meantime the continued growth of locomotives and the introduction of the electric locomotive have made the ca- pacity of this instrument inadequate, and at present (1920) Mr. Emery is rebuilding certain parts of this machine to increase its capacity to measure 150,000 pounds drawbar pull instead of 100,000 pounds. In order to calibrate this instrument it was necessary to have a very accurate method of measuring hydraulic pressure, and he designed and constructed an ap- paratus for measuring hydraulic pressure up to 3,000 pounds per square inch, sensi- tive to 0.005 pound per square inch. In order to adjust the weights for this ma- chine a special scale, having very great accuracy and sensitiveness, was con- structed, using "Emery" plate fulcrums instead of knife edges. Later an im- proved form of this apparatus, having a capacity of 4,000 pounds per square inch, was built by him for the Bureau of Stand- ards.
The next important undertaking which engaged the attention of Mr. Emery was the construction of two testing machines for the Bureau of Standards in Washing- ton. One was for loads of 230,000 pounds tension and compression, and the other for loads of 1,150,000 pounds tension and 2,300,000 pounds compression, on speci- mens of any length up to thirty-three feet. While building these machines, Mr. Emery also constructed a machine to calibrate testing machines, which was in- stalled in his laboratory in Glenbrook, Connecticut. The calibrating machine is
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for loads of 4,000,000 pounds and it will show distinctly a variation of one pound in the load. The calibrating machine has eight twenty-five-hundred-pound stand- ard weights, each adjusted to a probable error of not more than one part in eight hundred thousand on the scale previously mentioned.
These testing machines embodied im- provements over his earlier testing ma- chines, and contained a new form of "Emery" plate fulcrum, and the E. & T. Fairbanks & Company, of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, saw the machine and believed that these fulcrums could be adapted to railroad track scale, and working in con- junction with them and with the Penn- sylvania railroad, Mr. Emery designed and built such a scale, which was installed in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, and was entirely successful in its operations. The scale was redesigned to embody certain fea- tures which were developed in the con- struction and test of the first scale, and this design was adopted by the Penn- sylvania railroad as their standard for track scales, and is built by them in their own shops and also by the E. & T. Fair- banks & Company in St. Johnsbury, Ver- mont.
During the first year of its use eighty million tons were weighed on this scale, which was located in Tyrone, Pennsyl- vania, without impairing in the least its sensitiveness or accuracy, whole trains passing over the scale at the rate of four miles an hour, each of the cars being weighed separately without stopping the train. Besides these trains which were weighed, many thousand more cars passed over that scale the first year for classification, and over seven thousand locomotives also passed over it. At the end of the year the scale was retested and pronounced as accurate as when first set up.
In the winter 1910-11 Mr. Emery de- signed a track scale testing car for the United States Bureau of Standards. That car carries 100,000 pounds of standard weights and goes all over the United States testing the track scales of the rail- roads and industries. Mr. Emery con- structed a model of it, one-twelfth of the regular size, for the United States Bureau of Standards, for them to exhibit at the San Francisco Exposition. A second car, also equipped with 100,000 pounds of standard weights, was built for the Bu- reau of Standards in 1915. Eight of these weights, each weighing 10,000 pounds, were adjusted to one part of 1,000,000. The Department of Agriculture had him design and build for them a scale that would weigh a hive of bees in one room, the weighing being done in another room. The temperature of the inner room be- ing maintained within one-tenth of a degree for long periods, to determine the temperature at which a colony of bees would eat the least honey. For the United States Bureau of Standards, Mr. Emery has built a set of test levers of 50,000 pounds capacity for calibrating testing machines.
Very early in his study of the construc- tion of ordnance, Mr. Emery conceived the idea of constructing guns by hydrau- licly expanding either a single forging or a series of concentric forgings, by the use of hydraulic pressure on the interior, thus putting the required initial strains into the metal instead of by the method of shrinking one part onto another. This also raises the elastic limit of the metal, and guns so made are much stronger than when the parts are shrunk together. These ideas were embodied in patents taken out by him both in this country and in many foreign countries. He tried many times to interest the gun manufac- turers and the War and Navy depart-
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ments in this process, but was unable to do so until in 1918 the Navy Department authorized the construction by him of a four-inch gun. This was hydraulicly ex- panded, using hydraulic pressures up to 107,000 pounds per square inch, and tests of this gun have fully proved the value of his process. A pressure of 40,000 pounds per square inch gave the original forging a permanent deformation, but after the process was completed it re- quired 75,000 pounds per square inch to give an additional permanent deforma- tion. This process has been adopted by the Navy Department for small guns (3" to 6") and in time will probably be adopted for large guns also. This process will enable the gun builder to construct a gun which will be lighter and stronger than the present gun, in less time, from very much less ingot metal, and with very much less machinery, reducing the cost 20% to 30%. Eventually the government will probably save large amounts of money by this invention, but unfortun- ately for Mr. Emery his patents will have expired before any considerable applica- tion can be made.
During the World War Mr. Emery spent a large portion of his time in trying to get this process of gun construction adopted, and at the same time his labor- atory was building tools and various mechanisms for the government. While in Washington, in June, 1919, Mr. Emery was run over by an automobile, shattering one bone of his right arm, telescoping his left wrist, and badly breaking his ankle, but fortunately all the breaks healed well in spite of his advanced age, eighty-five years, and at present he spends some time at his office almost every day.
Mr. Emery married, March 3, 1875, in Westmoreland, Oneida county, New York, Mrs. Fannie B. Myers, a widow, born September 1, 1838. By her first
marriage Mrs. Myers became the mother of a daughter, Margaret King, now the wife of George A. Clyde, of Rome, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Emery were the par- ents of a son, Albert Hamilton, Jr., born August 25, 1876, who was prepared for college in King's School, Stamford, and in 1898 graduated from Cornell Univer- sity with the degree of Mechanical Engi- neer. Since then he has been associated with his father in the latter's scientific work. Mr. Emery, Jr., married Julia E. McClune, of Ithaca, New York, and they have two children, Louise, born October 7, 1905, and Albert Hamilton (3), born December 26, 1910. Mrs. Emery, Sr., passed away on April 28, 1907.
It would seem from a study of his career that the predominant trait in the character of Albert Hamilton Emery, apart from his mechanical genius, has al- ways been a perseverance which never relaxed its efforts and a courage which refused to be daunted by any difficulties or disappointments, however great. We see this in the narrative of his earlier life, which shows how the various inventions on which he was then engaged formed a basis for the brilliant achievements of his later years, and how the obstacles which he encountered and the repeated discour- agements which it was his lot to endure did but stimulate him to renewed and larger efforts. In the States of New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, the one his birthplace and the scene of his early endeavors, and the others for many years the centers of his greatest renown, his fame is and always will be most inti- mately cherished. In a larger sense his native land feels that he belongs to her, but even by her he cannot be wholly claimed. His name will go down in his- tory as that of one of the world's in- ventors.
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ALLEN, Lauren M.,
Physician.
A physician who for twenty-seven years has practiced successfully in the same community becomes so inseparably asso- ciated with its most vital interests as to render the narrative of his career almost identical with a history of his home town. This is especially true of Dr. Allen, whose professional reputation, high as it is, is almost equalled by that which he enjoys as a public-spirited citizen of South Nor- walk.
The name of Allen, or Allin, is derived from the British, and is thought to be a corruption of Aelianus, which signifies sun-bright. It is also said to come from the root word Al, meaning mountainous, high and bright. In the Gaelic it signifies fair, handsome, the word being Aliune, and the Irish Alun has the same meaning. The English Allan, or Allen, said to have been first spelled Alan, means all-con- quering. As a personal name it was first borne by the Bard of Britain, an uncle of Caractacus, who had a long line of kings for ancestors. The name came into prom- inence after the Conquest, the chief gen- eral of William's army at the battle of Hastings having been Alan, Duke of Brittany, who made England his home and became the third richest man in the kingdom. Thenceforth the name grew in number and importance.
(I) George Allen, born in 1568, in Eng- land, came to America in 1635 and settled in Saugus, Lynn, Massachusetts. In 1637 he joined with Edmund Freeman and others in the purchase of the town- ship of Sandwich, and settled there in the same year. When the town of Sandwich was incorporated he was chosen deputy, the first office in the town, and served in that capacity for several years. He is rep-
resented by Bowden as having been an anti-Baptist in England, but be that as it may, he was a member of the church in Sandwich, and Rev. Benjamin Fessenden reports both George and Ralph Allen as having been previously members of the church in Roxbury. George, Allen was the father of ten sons, some of whom pre- ceded him to America and settled near Boston. After the purchase of Sandwich, most of them with their families moved thither, and settled near their father's residence. George Allen died in Sand- wich, May 2, 1648. In his will, naming his wife, Catherine, as executrix, with Ralph Allen and Richard Brown as over- seers, he named his five sons, Matthew, Henry, Samuel, George, Jr., and William ; and also made provision for his "five least children" without naming them.
In 1774 the Rev. Joseph Thaxter, of Edgartown, Massachusetts, whose wife was Mary Allen, a descendant of George Allen, obtained from England the de- scription of the coat-of-arms borne by the Allens in the old country, which is as fol- lows:
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