USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, 1609-1909 > Part 61
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In all of this work Colonel Mckinney was preeminent; he had gained while with this company the title of Colonel through his service on the staff of Governor Bushnell, of Ohio. It was realized soon after the reorganization that it was essential to secure additional property if the Niles Works were to be wisely expanded. For that purpose the plant and the business of the Cope & Maxwell Manufacturing Company, whose products were steam pumps, were purchased. Later the machinery and business of the Cope & Maxwell
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COLONEL ROBERT COCHRAN MCKINNEY
Company as bought by the Niles Tool Works Company was sold to another corporation, and became a part of the International Steam Pump Company. Colonel Mckinney perceived that even with the large organization and facili- ties which the new Niles Tool Works Company represented there could not be the higher development and the acceptance of the magnificent opportunities which he saw opening without much greater expansion. Colonel Mckinney also realized that this expansion should be of a kind which involved reason- able combination and far-reaching cooperation. To accomplish this was to do the work of the higher order of constructive business genius.
In 1898 the first step was taken through the purchase of the control of the widely known Pond Machine Tool Company, of Plainfield, New Jersey, this purchase being supplemented by the obtaining of options on the works of Bement, Miles & Company, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well as the Philadelphia Engineering Works.
Here then was organization, combination and cooperation along great lines and based upon the sound economic principle, which is the real basis of true and honorable combinations. It meant of course the organization of one great and sponsoring corporation, capable of taking over the various proper- ties, of harmonizing the plants, and perfecting production and marketing. The company thus created is now known the world over as Niles-Bement- Pond Company, organized eleven years ago.
Colonel Mckinney's achievement in creating this great company and per- fecting its organization was recognized by his election as president of it. Other opportunities came, and if they were to be met, and the company able to handle the great business that came to it, it was found necessary to secure other properties. For that reason the great Pratt & Whitney Company, of Hartford, the Bertram Company, of Canada, and the Ridgway Machine Com- pany, of Ridgway, Pennsylvania, were bought. Here then was a gigantic combination, achieving its triumphs by business methods for which there has never been reproach either business or political, which has now become the largest manufacturing corporation in the world, whose products are machin- ery, tools, electric traveling cranes, gun machinery, small tools.
Colonel Mckinney is a member of the Union League Club, Lotos, Engi- neers', and Cornell Clubs, of New York; the Hartford Club, of Hartford, and Queen City Club, of Cincinnati; a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a leading organization of engineers of the United States, and is president of the Machinery Club of New York. In politics he is a Republican ; his domestic and home life is ideal. His wife, whom he mar- ried at Hamilton, Ohio, in 1879, whose maiden name was Eleanor Becket, and their daughter, compose his family, whose summer residence is a beautiful villa overlooking the sea at Belle Haven, Connecticut.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
FERDINAND A. W. KIECKHEFER
681
FERDINAND A. W. KIECKHEFER
F ERDINAND A. W. KIECKHEFER, president of The National Enameling and Stamping Company, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was born in that city February 10, 1852, the son of Carl and Justine Kieckhefer. His parents were of German birth and came to this country in 1851.
Mr. Kieckhefer received his education in the parochial school connected with St. John's Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, of which his father had been one of the founders, and after his graduation from that institution, he took the course of the Spencerian Business College of Milwaukee. He had earned the funds for his business college course in an errand boy's position in a notion store, but after leaving the business college he became assistant bookkeeper in the extensive wholesale hardware house of John Pritzlaff, of Milwaukee, which was one of the leading houses of its kind in the West. He advanced to the position of cashier, and after being with that house for five years, he established a hardware business of his own in Milwaukee, which soon grew to be an important establishment in that line. In 1878, he formed a partner- ship with his brother William, and together they planned to enter upon a manufacturing enterprise which they established in 1880, in the manufacture of tinware, to which they afterward added complete lines of galvanized, japanned and enameled tinware, sheet steel and iron goods, building up the business to such proportions that they employed more than twelve hundred hands. In the organization of the National Enameling and Stamping Company, the Kieck- hefer plant was the largest and most profitable, and Mr. Kieckhefer became first vice president, and later president of that company.
Mr. Kieckhefer is affiliated politically with the Republican party and an active supporter of its policies and candidates, although he has never sought office. He is an active member of St. John's Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, and still has his residence there, and a country residence at Pewaukee Lake, Wisconsin, although his business connections cause him to spend much of his time in New York City.
The success that has been attained by Mr. Kieckhefer is one of the most remarkable in the history of American industry, and he has made it prac- tically unaided, and although this success has been very great and remarkably rapid, it has been attained along legitimate and conservative business lines and upon the most straightforward and honorable commercial methods, which have earned for him respect as a man, as well as the admiration which be- longs to one who has attained success in the face of great obstacles.
He is a member of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, The Deutscher Club, and the Milwaukee Club, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and of the Fulton Club in New York City.
Mr. Kieckhefer married, in Milwaukee, May 13, 1875, Minnie Kuete- meyer, and he has five children : Clara, Louise, Alfred, Minnie and Ferdinand.
682
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
JOHN J. CARTY
683
JOHN J. CARTY
JOHN J. CARTY was born at Cambridge, Mass., April 14, 1861. His early education was obtained in the schools of his native city. At the time he had about finished his preparatory studies for entrance to college he was obliged, on account of a serious trouble with his eyesight, to abandon his school work indefinitely.
The telephone having just been invented and being one of the first to appreciate its possibilities, Mr. Carty entered the service of the Bell Telephone Company, for which concern he has been at work ever since, having to his credit more than thirty years of continuous service in its behalf.
His first work was at Boston, and while there he made a number of con- tributions to the art of telephony which were of unusual value and have since become a permanent part of the art. Under his direction was installed the first multiple switchboard at Boston, which was at that time the largest ever put into use. For the "express" telephone system, peculiar to that city, he designed and installed a switchboard which was the first metallic circuit mul- tiple board to go into service. The fundamental features of this board are at present in all of the boards of to-day.
In 1887 Mr. Carty took charge of the cable department of the Western Electric Company in the East, with headquarters at New York. In this capacity he studied cable manufacture and laying, and introduced a number of improvements, having charge of all of the important cable-laying projects which were carried on for some time in the East. One of his engineering developments resulted in cutting in half the cost of cable manufacture. He then took charge of the switchboard department of the Western Electric Company, for the East, and under his direction were installed most of the large switchboards of that period, among which was the original Cortlandt Street multiple board. During this time he made a number of important im- provements in switchboards, which have since become standard practice.
He was the first to practically demonstrate how to operate two or more telephone circuits connected directly with a common battery, and about 1888 installed, for the supply of operators' telephones, common battery systems in a number of central offices. From these early experiments have grown the modern system now generally employed.
Although charged with serious practical engineering problems, Mr. Carty has found time to follow to some extent his strong natural inclination for orig- inal research. He made an exhaustive investigation into the nature of the disturbances to which telephone lines are subjected and gave the first public account of his work in a paper entitled "A New View of Telephone Induc- tion," read before the Electric Club on November 21, 1889. The view put forth in the paper was revolutionary, but, nevertheless, after being checked by numbers of experimenters in this country and Europe, received universal
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
acceptance, and is the one now adopted in all works dealing with the subject. In this paper he showed the overwhelming preponderance of electrostatic in- duction as a factor in producing cross-talk, and proved that there is in a tele- phone line a particular point in the circuit at which, if a telephone is inserted, no cross-talk will be heard. The paper gave directions for determining this silent or neutral point, and described original experiments showing how to dis- tinguish between electrostatic and electro-magnetic induction in telephone lines.
On March 17, 1891, Mr. Carty made additional contributions to the knowledge of this subject in a paper before the American Institute of Elec- trical Engineers, entitled "Inductive Disturbances in Telephone Circuits." This paper might better have been called "The Theory of Transpositions," because in it was first made known precisely why twisting or transposing tele- phone lines renders them free from inductive disturbances.
In 1889 he entered the service of the Metropolitan Telephone and Tele- graph Company, now the New York Telephone Company, for the purpose of organizing all of the technical departments, building up its staff, and recon- structing the entire plant of the company-converting it from grounded cir- cuits overhead and series switchboards to metallic circuits placed underground and to the then new bridging switchboards. In carrying out this work he selected and trained a large staff of young men fresh from college, many of whom have since attained positions of prominence in the telephone field. In the development of the personnel of his department, Mr. Carty has taken a particular pride, looking to the welfare of those already engaged, and through his touch with prominent technical educators, adding each year to his staff, from the graduating classes of our principal technical schools.
Mr. Carty's work in connection with the development of the plant of the New York Telephone Company has been most successful and far-reaching in its consequences. Based upon his plans and under his direction, there has been constructed a telephone system which, according to the foremost author- ities in the world, is without a parallel in its efficiency and scope. His work has been studied and approved by all of the technical administrations of Europe and even of Asia, and to a large extent what he has done for the tele- phone art in the United States has contributed to the preeminent standing which the American telephone industry holds in all foreign countries.
In recognition of his achievements as an engineer and in view of the services which he rendered to the Japanese Government in connection with electrical engineering matters, he was decorated by the Emperor of Japan with the Order of the Rising Sun, and even in China, where a commission has- recently investigated the telephone systems of the world, that of New York was selected as the model for Pekin and as a consequence the first great order for a telephone system in China was given to American manufacturers.
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JOHN J. CARTY
While for many years Mr. Carty's work was more particularly directed to the extraordinary problems of telephony presented by the great centres of population, it remained for him to accomplish a revolution in telephony of the greatest social and economic value to rural communities in all parts of the world. Prior to his work upon the subject, the number of telephone stations which could be operated upon one line was limited and the service was im- perfect. As a result of his solution of a problem presented by the New York Central Railroad in the city of New York, he devised a mechanism known as the "bridging bell," whereby any number of stations, even as many as a hun- dred, might be placed upon a line without in any way impairing the trans- mission of speech. This made possible the farmers' line, which is found by the hundreds of thousands in farmers' houses in America and is now being extended abroad. For this achievement there was conferred upon him by the Franklin Institute the Edward Longstreth Medal of Merit.
Mr. Carty is chief engineer of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, in which capacity he is responsible for the standardizing of meth- ods of construction and operation of its vast plant, which extends into every community of the United States, and which, through its long-distance wires, extends into Canada and Mexico.
He has been active in matters pertaining to the improvement of engi- neering education in its higher branches, and is a memebr of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education. In connection with the technical or what might be called the "trade school" feature of educational work, he has taken a lively interest and is an active member of the Society for the Promo- tion of Industrial Education and is a member of the Millburn Board of Edu- cation in New Jersey.
Mr. Carty has been prominent in the affairs of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, of which he is a vice president and director. He is past president of the New York Electrical Society; member of the Society of Arts and honorary member of the American Electro-Therapeutic Association, the Telephone Society of Pennsylvania, the Telephone Society of New Eng- land, and the Telephone Society of New York.
He is a member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the Ameri- can-Irish Historical Society; belongs to the Baltusrol and the Casino Clubs of Short Hills, and to the Engineers', Electric and Railroad Clubs of New York. .
In 1891 he married Miss Marion Mount Russell, of the Irish family of Russells and the English Mounts, which has been distinguished in the annals of the stage, the only present representative of which now upon the stage is Miss Annie Russell. He lives at Short Hills, New Jersey, and has one son, John Russell Carty, a youth of eighteen.
686
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
HENRY R. TOWNE
687
HENRY R. TOWNE
H ENRY R. TOWNE, president of the Yale & Towne Manufac- turing Company, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1844, son of John Henry Towne, who was a partner of the firm of I. P. Morris, Towne & Company, owning and operating the Port Rich- mond Iron Works.
After completing an academic course of study he attended the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania during the college years of 1861-1862, but because of the Civil War, he interrupted his studies to enter the drafting room of the Port Richmond Iron Works, where he remained nearly two years. In 1863 he was given charge of the government work in the shops con- nected with repairs on the gunboat Massachusetts. He was sent in 1864 to the Charlestown (Massachusetts) Navy Yard to assemble and erect in the vessel there the engines built by the Port Richmond Iron Works for the monitor Monadnock, and later to the Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Navy Yard to erect and test the machinery of the monitor Agementicus, and later that of the cruiser Pushmataha at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. At the age of twenty-one he was acting superintendent of the Port Richmond Iron Works.
After the war he accompanied the late Robert Briggs on an engineer- ing tour through Great Britain, Belgium and France, and took a special course in physics at the Sorbonne in Paris, and afterward entered the shops of William Sellers & Company, of Philadelphia, for further studies in the designing and use of special machinery. In 1868 he became associated with Linus Yale, Jr., inventor of locks, and organized at Stamford, Connec- ticut, what is now the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company. Three months later, in 1868, Mr. Yale died, and since then Mr. Towne as president has controlled and directed the enterprise which, beginning with Mr. Yale's invention, has greatly amplified his original ideas until from an organization employing thirty men the business has increased to one employing three thou- sand people.
The methods of production established by the Yale & Towne Manufac- turing Company have become the accepted standards of the trade, and from the present daily output of twenty-five thousand locks, almost every improve- ment in locks and lockmaking machinery has come from the Stamford Works. What Mr. Towne has accomplished in useful results is shown in the many volumes of the company's catalogue, in which over ten thousand separate articles of manufacture are illustrated and described.
Mr. Towne, who has long been a resident of New York City, is presi- dent of the Merchants' Association of New York, and in 1888 was president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He has written exten- sively on engineering and industrial subjects.
688
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
EDWARD HUBBARD WELLS
689
EDWARD HUBBARD WELLS
E DWARD HUBBARD WELLS, the president of the Babcock & Wilcox Company, is a native of Rhode Island, having been born at Dorrville in that State, April 7, 1859, the son of Solomon Perry and Elizabeth Sherman (Greene) Wells. He is a descendant of Nathaniel Wells, who came to America from Colchester, England, in 1629, landing at Salem, Massachusetts, and afterwards settling in Rhode Island, near what is now the village of Wickford, about 1640. In the maternal line he is a descendant of that John Greene, surgeon, of Salisbury, England, who came over in the next company after Roger Williams, and followed Williams to Providence, afterwards settling in Warwick, Rhode Island, and found- ing the family in Rhode Island of which General Nathanael Greene was fifth in descent.
Edward Hubbard Wells moved with his parents, in 1866, to Burning Springs, in the oil regions in West Virginia, and in 1869 to Parkersburg, West Virginia, where he received a common school education.
At the age of sixteen he went into his father's office as an accountant and continued there for twelve years, until his father went out of active business. During the latter part of his service there he assisted in or- ganizing a local electric lighting company in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and had the management of that company in connection with his other busi- ness.
Mr. Wells went to Pittsburgh in 1888, as manager of the Keystone Construction Company, and later continued there as the general agent of the North American Construction Company, engaged in electrical con- struction work. From there he came to New York in 1892 to take charge of the New York sales office of the Babcock & Wilcox Company. In 1897 he was elected a director and second vice president of that company, and a year later was elected president, which position he has since occupied. During the twelve years of his executive relation to the com- pany, its success as the leading enterprise of the country engaged in the manufacture of water-tube boilers has been very great, the business increasing steadily every year. Mr. Wells gives the business the benefit of technical and practical experience gained in his long period of active service, beginning in the ranks. The offices of the company are at 85 Liberty Street.
Mr. Wells is a member of the Engineers', Machinery, and Railroad Clubs of New York City, the Automobile Club of America, the Essex County Country Club of New Jersey, and the Montclair Golf Club of Montclair, New Jersey, where he has his residence; also of the Duquesne Club of Pittsburgh. Mr. Wells was married, in 1900, to Serra Christy Bennett.
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690
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
DAVID SCHENCK JACOBUS
691
DAVID SCHENCK JACOBUS
D AVID SCHENCK JACOBUS, distinguished as one of the fore- most American mechanical engineers, was born in Ridgefield, Ber- gen County, New Jersey, January 20, 1862, the son of Nicholas Jacobus, manufacturer of sash, doors and blinds, and Sarah C. (Carpenter ) Jacobus, and a descendant of a Dutch family, settled in America about 1675.
He was educated first in the private school of Rev. A. B. Taylor, in Ridgefield, then in the Stevens High School, at Hoboken, where he won, by competitive examination, a free scholarship in the Stevens Institute of Tech- nology. He was graduated from the latter institution in 1884, with the de- gree of mechanical engineer, and was appointed assistant professor of experi- mental mechanics, serving in that capacity until 1897, when he was appointed professor of experimental mechanics and engineering physics in the Stevens Institute. He held that chair until 1906, and from 1900 to 1906 was in charge of the Carnegie Laboratory of Engineering.
At Stevens Institute Dr. Jacobus developed original apparatus for the illustration of physical laws and for the testing of various mechanical devices, and brought to perfection the course of experimental mechanics by intro- ducing a much larger participation by the students in practical experimen- tation than had ever before been attached to such courses. The machinery and apparatus for this course are installed in the Carnegie Laboratory erected specially for that purpose with funds supplied by Mr. Andrew Carnegie. Dr. Jacobus is still connected with the Institute as a trustee and special lec- turer in experimental engineering. He received the honorary degree of Doc- tor of Engineering in 1906.
Since 1906 he has been actively associated with The Babcock & Wilcox Company at the head of its engineering department in the position of advisory engineer, and in the specialty of steam engineering no one in this country is of higher authority. He is the author of many scientific papers relating to that branch of engineering, and also on general topics in engineering physics and experimental mechanics.
Dr. Jacobus is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engi- neers (of which he was manager in 1900 and vice president in 1903), the American Institute of Mining Engineers, American Society of Refrigerating Engineers (director 1904 and president 1907), Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, American Institute of Electrical Engineers, American Mathematical Society, fellow of the American Association for the Advance- ment of Science (secretary of Section D, 1903, vice president 1904), Frank- lin Institute of Philadelphia, and The New York Railroad Club. He is also a member of the Engineers' Club and the Holland Society of New York.
He married, in Jersey City, New Jersey, April 5, 1899, Laura Dinkel, and they have two children: David D. and Laura.
692
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
BENJAMIN ARROWSMITH HEGEMAN, JR.
693
BENJAMIN ARROWSMITH HEGEMAN, JR.
B ENJAMIN ARROWSMITH HEGEMAN, JR., who is now the president of the U. S. Metal and Manufacturing Company, is a native of the City of New York; having been born at 262 West Twenty- fourth Street, July 14, 1860. His father, Benjamin Arrowsmith Hegeman, was for twenty-nine years engaged as general freight agent and traffic man- ager of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad; and his mother was Jane (Roome) Hegeman. In both lines of ancestry he dates back to Americans of colonial days. On his father's side he is of Dutch ancestry, Benjamin Hegeman having been one of the early Dutch settlers of New Jersey; while on his mother's side he is of English extraction. The Hegeman family has been prominent in business and in public affairs in New Jersey and New York through many generations.
Mr. Hegeman received his education in private schools in early life, and afterward attended the public schools of New York City, finishing at The Mount Washington Collegiate Institute, in New York City, in 1877. He entered railway service in the passenger department of the Delaware, Lacka- wanna and Western Railroad, in 1878, and was afterward connected with the treasurer's office of the same company until 1888. He was general manager of the Lackawanna Live Stock Transportation Company, 1888 to 1899.
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