USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, 1609-1909 > Part 49
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Colonel Astor received his education in St. Paul's School, Concord, and at Harvard University, being graduated in the Class of 1888, and afterward spent considerable time in travel. He then devoted his attention to business, becoming acquainted with the details of management of the great Astor Estate. Since the death of his father in 1892, he has continued to maintain executive supervision over the estate upon the principles which have through four gen- erations controlled the administrative policy of the Astors, who for a hundred years have been buyers and improvers, but seldom sellers, of city property. Colonel Astor has placed upon his properties many of the finest hotels, business properties, and residences in the city, to the symmetry and adornment of which he has been one of the foremost contributors. He has been especially a leader in the building of hotels; the first step made by him in this direc- tion being the erection of the Astoria, adjoining the Waldorf, which now, consolidated in management as the Waldorf-Astoria, enjoys world-wide fame. He also built the St. Regis and the Knickerbocker.
He was appointed a member of the staff of Governor Levi P. Morton, and served with ability; and later, when the Spanish-American War was declared, entered upon active military service. The day after war was pro- claimed, he offered his services to President Mckinley, in any capacity ; and he also tendered to the government the free use of his steam yacht, the Nour- mahal. The President declined the yacht as not exactly suited to the govern- ment's needs, but gladly accepted the offer of personal service, and he was appointed inspector general of United States Volunteers, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, for which his previous experience on Governor Morton's staff admirably qualified him. He was ordered to Tampa and Cuba with the first Army of Invasion. In the resulting campaign, and at the battles and siege of Santiago, he served with such efficiency that he was recommended for promotion by his chief, General Shafter. After the surrender of Santiago he was sent to Washington as bearer of important dispatches and other docu-
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ments to the President. When he was discharged from the army in Novem- ber, 1898, it was with the brevet rank of colonel, conferred upon him "for faithful and meritorious service."
Another most notable and patriotic service on the part of Colonel Astor, was the recruiting, equipping and giving to the government, of the famous Astor Battery of light artillery, the offer of which was officially accepted by the government May 26, 1898. Recruiting actively followed, and drill began May 30, and the following day the battery was complete with one hundred and two men and six twelve-pound Hotchkiss guns, imported from France at a cost to Colonel Astor of one hundred thousand dollars. After a season of drill- ing, the battery was sent, via San Francisco, to Manila, arriving in time to take part in the final capture of that city, August 13, 1898.
Colonel Astor's scientific education at Harvard has been followed up into practical lines of usefulness, and he has designed many inventions and improvements of great utility, which he has patented, the origination of which reveals the completeness of his engineering attainments. One of the earliest of these inventions was his Pneumatic Road Improver, invented in 1892. which received a first prize at the World's Columbian Exposition, in Chicago, in 1893. This machine is designed to facilitate the thorough and rapid re- moval of worn-out material, or detritus, from the roadbed by either blowing it into the bushes or over the fences at the side of the road, or laying it in windrows where it may be conveniently removed, as desired.
Another useful invention of Colonel Astor's is a brake for use on bicycles having solid tires. This brake is shaped like a fork with flat prongs, and is so designed that, with undiminished grip, it adapts itself to the changing shape of the tire as it becomes worn.
In 1902 Colonel Astor patented a marine turbine engine, which he gave to the public in November of that year. The turbine is shaped like a funnel, and comprises an outer shell or drum and an inner shaft running axially through it, these parts being relatively rotatable and each having oppositely- set spiral blades. It differs from the ordinary type of turbine in that it has no stationary parts other than the journals and foundation frames to carry it. The casing of the turbine revolves as well as the shaft, but in an opposite direction. This arrangement gives two tandem propellers. The spinning motion given to the water by the first propeller is neutralized by the second, so that but little power is wasted in imparting a rotary motion to the water, which, except for its backward motion, is left perfectly still. The invention corrects the disadvantage of the extremely high speed required in other tur- bines, reducing by one-half the speed at which the propellers are whirled with- out reducing the power at the propellers, with a theoretical gain in its effi- ciency. The turbine is also greatly reduced both in weight and size.
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COLONEL JOHN JACOB ASTOR
A recent and important invention of Colonel Astor's is the Vibratory Dis- integrator. The enormous peat deposits which are to be found in the tem- perate zone have presented a most baffling problem to the inventor. Peat is a valuable fuel, but the large amount of water it contains renders it necessary to subject it to a drying process so complicated and expensive that it cannot always successfully compete with coal. For that reason the attempt has been made, notably in Sweden, to manufacture producer gas from the peat. On the whole, the results obtained, although encouraging, have not been bril- liantly successful. Still this method of utilizing peat for power commends itself to the engineer because of the enormous amount of gas occluded in peat, and because of its poor heat-conducting qualities, as a result of which a portion of the peat can be burned without unduly heating other portions. This problem of practically utilizing peat bogs commercially by generating producer gas has been taken up by Colonel Astor. He has devised what he terms a vibratory disintegrator, an invention which utilizes the expansive force of the occluded air and gas to disrupt the peat so that it may be thor- oughly and uniformly heated, as well as the vibrations of a gas engine, which is driven by the very producer gas generated from the peat. The disinte- grating or disrupting effect is attained by means of a novel gas-engine muf- fler placed within the gas producer. The sides of the muffler are so thin that they can be distended and drawn inwardly in response to variations in pres- sure within the muffler. In order that this relative movement of the opposite sides may be facilitated, the muffler edges are fluted or accordion-plaited. The exhaust gases from the engine cylinder are discharged into the muffler to extend its sides. When they escape from the muffler the sides contract. These successive expansions and contractions of the muffler walls are com- municated to the gas within the gas producer, and likewise the gas occluded in the pores and interstices of the peat. Hence the peat is disrupted and broken up. In order to assist in this disrupting effect the peat chamber of the producer is supported from the gas-engine frame, so that the jarring and vibration of the engine is transmitted to the peat. The burned residue left in the producer can be utilized as a fertilizer. Besides devising a method of extracting a power gas from peat, Colonel Astor has invented, incidentally, a method of utilizing its fertilizing principle. He has given the patents cov- ering this device to the public.
Colonel Astor's latest invention is a steamship chair. It is a simple device by means of which a chair may be held firmly to the floor, no matter how much the ship pitches, and yet may be easily released and moved about, enabling its occupant to place the chair at any desired distance from a table, thus eliminating the discomfort often experienced by travelers who find the ordinary steamship chair, which is rigidly screwed to the floor, either too near
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or too far from the table. The scheme involves the use of a vacuum cup beneath the chair, so mounted that it may be pressed into engagement with the deck or floor to hold the chair by suction, or the vacuum may be broken, the cup lifted, and the chair released.
Besides these thoroughly utilitarian results of his scientific knowledge and inventive ability, Colonel Astor has made personal researches in speculative science, including astronomy and celestial mechanics; his wide reading in those sciences being made strongly apparent in his book which was published in 1894, and entitled, A Journey in Other Worlds; A Romance of the Future; a work of fiction based on science, dealing with supposititious life upon the planets Saturn and Jupiter. The literary merit of this volume secured for Colonel Astor election to the Authors' Club.
Colonel Astor is a director of the Astor Trust Company, Illinois Central Railroad Company, Mercantile Trust Company, National Park Bank, Plaza Bank, Niagara Falls Power Company, Western Union Telegraph Company, Long Island Motor Parkway (Inc.), Niagara Junction Railway Company, Niagara Development Company, and Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans Railroad Company ; trustee of the Title Guarantee and Trust Company, New York Life Insurance and Trust Company, and Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission ; member of the Board of Managers of The Delaware and Hudson Company ; Board of Governors of the Automobile Club of America, Turf and Field Club, Newport Casino, and Board of Founders of The New Theatre.
He is well known as a yachtsman, having made cruises in all parts of the world; and he is also fond of motoring and tennis. His club and society memberships include The Metropolitan Club, Union Club, Knickerbocker Club, City Club, Army and Navy Club, Automobile Club of America, Authors' Club, The Pilgrims, Church Club, Delta Phi Fraternity, The Strollers, the Pen Club, The Press Club, The Graduates' Association, New York Yacht Club, Racquet and Tennis Club, Turf and Field Club, City Lunch Club, City Midday Club, Down Town Association, Transportation Club, Railroad Club of New York, Riding Club, Brook Club, Tuxedo Club, Country Club, Westchester Polo Club, Aëro Clul, Newport Golf Club, Travellers' Club of Paris, Cocoa Tree Club of London, Society of Colonial Wars, Military Order of Foreign Wars, Chamber of Commerce, American Geographical Society, New York Zoological Society, New York Botanical Garden, Metro- politan Museum of Art, American Museum of Natural History, New York Academy of Sciences.
He maintains, besides his town house on Fifth Avenue, the beautiful estate of Ferncliff, at Rhinebeck-on-the-Hudson, at which he was born.
He married, in Philadelphia, February 17, 1891, Ava L. Willing, and has two children: William Vincent and Ava Alice Muriel.
CORNELIUS DU BOIS
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C ORNELIUS DU BOIS, insurance broker, was born in New 4 York, March 27, 1851, his father being Cornelius Du Bois, mer- chant, and his mother, Mary Ann (Delafield) Du Bois, was distinguished as the founder of the Nursery and Child's Hospital and originator of its Annual Charity Ball. His family, originally of Lille, France, being perse- cuted as Huguenots, fled to Leyden, Holland, whence his ancestor, Jacques Du Bois came to New York in 1654. His grandfather, Cornelius Du Bois, was director or officer in thir- teen prominent corporations and charitable organiza- tions, and his maternal grandfather, John Delafield, was president of the Phenix Bank and treasurer of the New York Historical Society and New York State Agricultural Society. Mr. Du Bois attended Churchill's Military Acad- emy, Ossining, New York, Columbia Grammar School, New York City, and the University of Leipzig, Ger- many. In 1872, with J. Sutherland Irving, he estab- lished the insurance brok- erage firm of Du Bois & Irving, which consolidated, May 1, 1874, with Irving & Frank, as Irving, Frank & Du Bois, who became United States managers CORNELIUS DU BOIS for the Phoenix Assurance Company. Later they separated, Mr. Irving taking the underwriting part, while Emil H. Frank and Mr. Du Bois formed the insurance brokerage firm of Frank & Du Bois, specialists in the insuring of railway property.
Mr. Du Bois is a member of the Holland Society, St. Nicholas Society, and Down Town Association. He married, April 22, 1874, Katharine B. Reading. They have had eight children, of whom five are living.
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THEODORE NEWTON VAIL
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THEODORE NEWTON L'AIL
T HEODORE NEWTON VAIL, president of the American Tele- phone and Telegraph Company, and head of the entire Bell Tele- phone system of the country, was born in Carroll County, Ohio, July 16, 1845, the son of Davis and Phoebe (Quinby) Vail. He is a descendant of John Vail, the Quaker preacher, who settled in New Jersey in 1710, the Vail family becoming prominent in Morris County, New Jersey. Mr. Vail's grand- father, Lewis Vail, who was a civil engineer, went in an early day to Ohio, and became prominent in that State as a builder of canals and highways. Stephen Vail, an uncle of Theodore Newton Vail, founded the Speedwell Iron Works near Morristown, New Jersey, at which was built most of the machinery for the first steamship which crossed the Atlantic Ocean, sailing from Savannah, Georgia. In these works Samuel F. B. Morse perfected and first successfully operated the magnetic telegraph. Stephen Vail and his sons supplied Morse with the money, and Alfred Vail, being the mechanical genius of the combination, contributed the machinery for the telegraph instrument, his mechanical ingenuity giving concrete form to the scientific theory of teleg- raphy which Morse had invented. It was Alfred Vail also, who devised the Dot and Dash Alphabet, which under the name of the Morse Alphabet has ever since been used in telegraphing.
Davis Vail, son of Lewis Vail and father of Theodore Newton Vail, was born in Ohio, but at an early age went to New Jersey and became con- nected with the Speedwell Iron Works. He married and afterward went back to Ohio for some years, during which time his son, Theodore Newton, was born. When the boy was about four years old, Davis Vail returned to New Jersey and resumed his connection with the Speedwell Iron Works until 1866, when he removed to Iowa and engaged in farming upon an extensive scale.
On his mother's side, Theodore Newton Vail is connected with the promi- nent Quinby family of Morris County, New Jersey, his mother being the daughter of Judge Isaac Quinby of that county, and a sister of General Quinby, who was graduated at West Point and became distinguished as a mathematician, was professor of mathematics in Rochester University, and was a general in the Civil War; and also sister of the doctors, William and Augustus Quinby. She was also connected with the DeHart family of Eliza- beth, who were prominent in the early struggles between the Colonies and the English.
Theodore Newton Vail received a thorough education in the old academy at Morristown, New Jersey, and after leaving school read medicine with his uncle, Doctor William Quinby, for two years. During that same period he learned telegraphy in a local telegraph office, and afterwards, when his father went west to Iowa, went with him. He remained in Iowa but a year or so, and went west of the Missouri River.
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The Union Pacific Railroad was then being built, and he became an agent and telegraph operator at a small station on that line until in the spring of 1869. Through the friendly offices of General Grenvile M. Dodge, chief engineer of the Union Pacific, he received appointment as a clerk in the Rail- way Mail Service, which was then in a very crude state of organization. At that time mail was not distributed on the cars, as it is now, but was gathered up and carried on to certain large post offices, where it was assorted and from there forwarded. This involved much delay, and the scheme of sorting the mail on the cars was begun, but each clerk was left to choose his own way of distribution. When railway clerks met they would discuss the question of methods, and Mr. Vail, for his own convenience, made a special study of the question of distribution and dispatch of the mails, and he made a map and charts of distribution for his own use and the use of others associated with him, the object being shortest and quickest routes to destination. After he had worked on this plan for some time, the authorities at Washington called him to that city and soon after he was appointed assistant superintendent of the Railway Mail Service, under George I. Bangs, who was one of the most progressive department officials ever known in Washington. The extensive political experience and acquaintance of Mr. Bangs helped him in the intro- duction of progressive ideas. A scientific plan for the distribution of the mail was put into operation all over the country and a practical civil service sys- tem was worked out. He took a leading part in the development of the fast Railway Mail Service, by means of which fast mail trains were given the right of way over all others. The mail was sent through from Chicago to New York in twenty-four hours. Its time has since been reduced to eighteen hours. In 1876 Mr. Vail was appointed general superintendent, although the youngest of the officers with the Railway Mail Service; this advancement to the highest position in the service being due to his demonstrated ability as an organizer. He strengthened the Civil Service idea established by Mr. Bangs, his prede- cessor in the office, and his service to the government in this office was of great value in establishing the railway mail system of this country in the high place it occupies in the confidence of the business world and the general public.
Mr. Vail, in his position as general superintendent of the Railway Mail Service, had gone as far in that direction as he could go without becoming an active politician, which he was not inclined to do, so in 1878 he had made up his mind to leave the service, and it happened that at that time Gardner G. Hubbard, a prominent lawyer of Boston and Washington, who was the father-in-law of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, asked Mr. Vail to take the place of general manager of the American Bell Tele- phone Company, the telephone being then of recent invention. Mr. Vail had
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been interested in the experiments which were being made with the telephone from its first public tests in the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, and was one of the few who believed that it had practical utility and could be made a commercial success, while nearly all of the rest of the world made light of the invention as, a mere scientific toy. When Mr. Vail accepted the position as general manager of the American. Bell Telephone Company, he found it a hard task to convince the public that it could be really used to talk over as a business or social convenience. He worked against many obstacles in putting the telephone on a permanent basis, devising the plan under which it has ever since been operated, and the relation of the local to the parent com- panies, and in nine years had put the business on a sound and substantial basis. At first it was thought that the telephone was only good for local purposes, but Mr. Vail established the long-distance telephone, not only in the face of general opinion that it would be a failure, but even over the oppo- sition of his own associates in the company, and it was also Mr. Vail who introduced the use of copper wire on telephone and telegraph lines, inducing Mr. Mason, of Bridgeport, to experiment in drawing copper wire in such a way as to impart to it the strength necessary to withstand the stretching from pole to pole. During his management of the American Bell Telephone Company, Mr. Vail had added to his burdens that of a fierce litigation estab- lished by the Western Union Telegraph Company, which denied that Bell was the inventor of the telephone. A settlement was afterward reached in which the Western Union Telegraph Company conceded practically every point of importance. By 1884 he had established the business on a sound basis and secured national recognition of the telephone as an institution of great pres- ent value and greater future possibilities. He had organized local companies in the principal cities, all related to the general system, and had established the means of working connection between them all by inaugurating the first long-distance telephone system in 1884. He was president of the Bell Tele- phone Company of New York from 1885 to 1890, having organized this com- pany in 1878. He resigned his position as general manager of the parent company and retired from the telephone business.
While he was at the head of the telephone business in Boston he had established a small farm near by, and when he left the telephone company he bought a farm of fifteen hundred acres in Vermont and established the Speed- well Farms and engaged in the raising of French coach horses, Welsh ponies, Jersey cattle, and Shropshire and Dorset horned sheep. Mr. Vail is still a farmer, but found it impossible to confine himself entirely to the farm. He spent much time abroad, and in 1893 he made a trip to South America, where he became very much impressed with the Argentine Republic and its oppor- tunities, and the need of that country for development of its resources. He
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obtained the government concession for building, near Cordoba, an electrical station to generate current which, carried by wires to the neighboring city, turns the machinery of factories, furnishes the city with light and supplies the power for its street railway. He bought a horse-car line in Buenos Ayres, organized a company, converted it into a trolley line, equipped it with the best cars that could be built in the United States, made it one of the finest of modern street railways, buying out all competing lines and extending the facilities of the road so as to cover completely the Argentine capital city. The company owning the road was organized as a British corporation, and Mr. Vail had his headquarters in London, but after he had the company in thorough working order, so that his personal work did not seem to be fur- ther needed to keep the enterprise in proper condition, he retired from the company's activities in 1904 and returned to his farm at Lyndon, Vermont, which had grown by accretions until it comprised four thousand acres.
Back in the early days, soon after he entered the Railway Mail Service as a clerk, he married, in August 1869, Miss Emma Righter, of Newark, New Jersey, with whom he led an ideal married life, during all the period of his working up to the success of his remarkable career, and they had a son, Davis R. Vail, a young lawyer of much promise. In 1905 the great sorrow of Mr. Vail's life came to him in the loss of both his wife and son. With this loss the incentives of a life of leisure disappeared, and he was induced to enter again the activities of the telephone field. In 1907 he took the presidency of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the cen- tral organization with which are affiliated the thirty Bell companies that operate the local service of their respective sections of the country, and under his supervision there has been a large extension of the long-distance service and many improvements in the fitting of the company for prompt response to the constantly enlarging demands upon its facilities.
Mr. Vail divides his time between the executive offices of his company in Boston, its New York headquarters, and his Vermont farm. He is a mem- ber of the leading clubs of New York and Boston, and lives amid the best social circles in the two cities. In 1907 he was married a second time, to Miss Mabel R. Sanderson, of Boston.
Mr. Vail possesses the ideal combination of qualities for the important position which he holds at the head of the telephone system of the country. No man knows more about the telephone as an institution; few in the coun- try have demonstrated to an equal degree the organizing ability requisite for the conducting of so great a business enterprise, while as a financier, Mr. Vail ranks with the foremost in the country, energetic, accurate in judgment, cul- tivated in manner, quick of decision, broadminded. Mr. Vail represents the highest type of the American corporation executive.
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WILLIAM GOODENOW WILLCOX
W ILLIAM GOODENOW WILLCOX was born in Reading, Massachusetts, February 8, 1859, son of Rev. William Henry Willcox, D.D., and Annie (Goodenow) Willcox; and descendant of the English emigrant William Willcoxson (1635), progenitor of many promi- nent American families variously named Willcox, Wilcox and Wilcoxson. He was educated in the Bridgewater (Massachusetts) State Normal School.
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