Asa Whitney (December 1, 1791

Townsend Townsend (pronounced tounʹ-zənd) or Townshend may refer to: Places United States *Camp Townsend, National Guard training base in Peekskill, New York *Townsend, Delaware *Townsend, Georgia *Townsend, Massachusetts, a New England town ** Townsend ...

Middlesex County, Massachusetts Middlesex County is located in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,632,002, making it the most populous county in both Massachusetts and New England and the 22nd most populous cou ...

- June 4, 1874

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

) was an American manufacturer, inventor, railroad executive and politician.

Life

He became a

blacksmith A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such as gates, gr ...

like his father. In 1812, he moved to

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the nor ...

. After a short time, his employer sent him to Brownsville, New York, to supervise the installation of machinery at a cotton factory, and Whitney remained in New York. About 1830, he was hired by the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad to make machinery and railway carriages, and after a few years became superintendent of the line. In February 1840, he was elected by the

New York State Legislature The New York State Legislature consists of the two houses that act as the state legislature of the U.S. state of New York: The New York State Senate and the New York State Assembly. The Constitution of New York does not designate an officia ...

as one of the

Erie Canal commissioners Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 a ...

, and remained in office until 1842 when the Democratic majority removed the Whig commissioners. In 1842, he formed a partnership with Matthias W. Baldwin to manufacture steam locomotives in Philadelphia. Two years later he left Baldwin, and worked for the reorganized

Morris Canal The Morris Canal (1829–1924) was a common carrier anthracite coal canal across northern New Jersey that connected the two industrial canals at Easton, Pennsylvania across the Delaware River from its western terminus at Phillipsburg, New Jers ...

Company. In 1846, he opened his own factory to manufacture wheels for railway carriages. In 1847, he took out

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

s for the corrugated-plate carriage wheel and the curved corrugated-plate carriage wheel, and the following year for the process of annealing carriage wheels. This consisted of placing the wheels, soon after they were cast, in a heated furnace, where they were subjected to a further gradual increase of temperature, and were then slowly cooled for three days. The discovery of this process of annealing, as applied to chilled cast-iron wheels, marked an era in the history of railroads. It enabled trains to safely increase both loads and speed. Previous to this discovery it was impossible to cast wheels with solid hubs, and therefore impossible to secure them rigidly to the axle. Now the whole wheel was easily cast in one piece, and capable of being forced securely upon the axle at a pressure of 40 tons. In 1850, he patented the tapered and ribbed corrugated wheel. Whitney was for a short time president of the

Philadelphia and Reading Railroad The Reading Company ( ) was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and commercial rail transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states that operated from 1924 until its 1976 acquisition by Conrail. Commonly called ...

, but retired in 1861 because of ill health. He gave $50,000 to found a professorship of dynamical engineering in the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, $12,500 to the

Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memori ...

, and $20,000 to the old men's home in Philadelphia. He died in Philadelphia and is interred at

The Woodlands Cemetery The Woodlands is a National Historic Landmark District on the west bank of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. It includes a Federal-style mansion, a matching carriage house and stable, and a garden landscape that in 1840 was transformed into ...

. After Whitney's death, the factory, which had been once the largest carriage-wheel manufacturer in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, was taken over by his three sons: George Whitney (d. 1885), John R. Whitney and James S. Whitney. In 1891, the company was in financial trouble and going bankrupt.

Notes

Sources

* *Franklin Benjamin Hough, comp.
''The New York Civil List''
Weed, Parsons and Co., 1858, p. 42.
"A. Whitney & Sons Fail"
''New York Times'', March 26, 1891 Attribution *

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Whitney, Asa 1791 births 1874 deaths Burials at The Woodlands Cemetery People from Townsend, Massachusetts Erie Canal Commissioners 19th-century American railroad executives Politicians from Philadelphia 19th-century American inventors