Amos Whittemore was an American inventor and gunsmith.
Background
Amos Whittemore was the son of Thomas and Anna (Cutter) Whittemore, and a descendant of Thomas Whittemore who emigrated from England and settled in Charlestown, Massachussets, between 1639 and 1645. He was born on April 19, 1759 on his father's farm at Cambridge, Massachussets. During his boyhood he worked on the farm.
Education
In winter he attended the district school. Upon completing school he apprenticed himself to a gunsmith.
Career
At the end of his apprenticeship set up a shop of his own. The gunsmithing business was poor, however, and for years he was variously and unprofitably employed in and about Boston. About 1795 he entered into a gentleman's agreement with his brother William, Giles Richards, and a number of other producers in the manufacture of brushes for carding cotton and wool. This group, which furnished nearly all the cards then used in the colonies, had three factories in Boston, employed sixty men and two thousand children, and produced about twelve thousand dozen cards a year. Whittemore was in charge of the mechanical equipment which consisted of two types of machines, one for cutting and bending card wire, and one for piercing leather with holes into which the bent wire was placed. Apparently these simple machines did not require much attention, and Whittemore had an opportunity to apply himself to invention, in which he had been interested for years. At all events, in November 1796 he was granted three United States patents, one for a machine for cutting nails, another for a loom for weaving duck, and a third for a "nautical preambulator, " which was a form of mechanical ship's log. Encouraged by the acquisition of these patents, he turned his attention to the problem of devising a machine that would eliminate all hand labor in making cotton and wool cards. A patent was issued to him on June 5, 1797, for a machine which reduced to a series of rapid, precise, and entirely automatic movements all the successive operations of holding and piercing the leather, cutting and binding the wire, and inserting and bending the wire to the proper angle. Early in 1799, after working eighteen months on improving his crude machine, Whittemore went to England to obtain a British patent. His efforts to introduce his machine in England were unsuccessful, and after a year abroad he returned to Boston, where he formed a partnership with his brother William and Robert Williams, under the firm name of William Whittemore and Company, to manufacture both the card-making machine and cotton and wool cards. The partners in the course of the succeeding nine years experienced little success in selling the machines and practically failed. A petition to Congress in 1809, however, yielded an extension of the patent from 1811. Armed with this, they were successful on July 20, 1812, in selling to the newly incorporated New York Manufacturing Company of New York City their patent right and entire stock of machinery for $150, 000. Whittemore then retired to his home in West Cambridge (later Arlington), Massachussets, where he lived until his death. His brother Samuel and his son Timothy purchased the patent and machinery from the New York company in 1818, and Samuel conducted a successful business in West Cambridge for many years.
Achievements
Connections
Whittemore married Helen Weston of Cambridge on June 18, 1781. They had twelve children.