Caleb Wheeler Durham was an American engineer and inventor.
Background
Caleb Wheeler Durham was born on February 6, 1848, at Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Alpha Durham and his third wife, Elizabeth B. Riggs. His father was a Presbyterian minister who, two years after Caleb's birth, went alone to California to seek his fortune in the gold rush, was unsuccessful, and returned in 1852. He contracted fever at Panama on the way and died shortly thereafter in New York City. Subsequently, Mrs. Durham moved with her children to Reading, Pennsylvania.
Education
Caleb received his early education at Pennsylvania. In 1866, with the intention of preparing for college, he attended Williston Academy, Easthampton, Massachusetts, and in 1867 entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, to study civil engineering.
Career
The Civil War interrupted his high school work and he enlisted as a private, first, in Company C, 42nd Pennsylvania Militia, serving in the reserves at Gettysburg, and, second, in Company B, 195th Pennsylvania Volunteers, seeing active service in Maryland and Virginia. Discharged at the expiration of his two years' enlistment in 1864, he went home and entered the employ of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company.
Two years later he became engaged to marry, gave up college, and entered the engineering department of the New York Central Railroad. From 1869 to 1873 he continued in railroad work for several companies in the Middle West and Southwest, but after his marriage, he established himself in Chicago as a civil engineer specializing in sanitation.
About 1875 he devised an improved hot-air heater and undertook its manufacture and sale. It proved too costly. However, for general use, and the business was abandoned. Durham meanwhile had turned his attention to house drainage and after much experimentation invented in 1880 what is still known as the Durham System. This consists in the use of a wrought-iron or steel screw-jointed pipe, the specially threaded fittings being designed in such a way as to provide the inclinations necessary in house drainage as well as tight joints and a smooth inner channel. The whole installation, too, is sufficiently rigid to be self-supporting.
After obtaining patents, Durham organized the Durham House Drainage Company and carried on business in Chicago for several years. One of his largest contracts at this time was the entire house drainage system for the new city of Pullman.
In 1883 he moved with his family to New York, reorganized his company, and carried on the business there for the remainder of his life. Among the most important installations of his system were those in Carnegie Hall and the Hotel Majestic in New York and the National Capitol at Washington.
The last fifteen years of his life were fraught with difficulties induced both by the panic of 1893 and by the failure of the courts to sustain his original patent against various infringers.
He died at his home in Peekskill, New York, survived by four sons.
Achievements
Caleb Wheeler is remembered as an inventor of what is still known as the Durham System. He also successfully ruled his business enterprise, Durham House Drainage Company.
Membership
Durham was a member of the Civil Engineers' Club of the Northwest, Chicago, and the Engineers' Club, New York.
Connections
Durham was married on May 28, 1873, to Clarissa Safford Welles of Ann Arbor, and had 4 sons.
