Background
Charles Brinckerhoff Richards, the son of Thomas Fanning and Harriet Howland (Brinckerhoff) Richards, was born on December 23, 1833 in Brooklyn, New York.
Charles Brinckerhoff Richards, the son of Thomas Fanning and Harriet Howland (Brinckerhoff) Richards, was born on December 23, 1833 in Brooklyn, New York.
He received his preliminary education in private schools in the vicinity of his birthplace and gained his theoretical engineering education by broad reading and diligent study while he was engaged in practical daily work at Colt's Armory, Hartford, Connecticut. Here his mechanical genius was soon recognized.
In 1860, he opened an office in New York as consulting engineer. In this capacity he helped Charles T. Porter develop the design of the first high-speed engine, and under Porter's urging, in order to study its action, devised the steam-engine indicator "which has made high-speed engineering possible". "Indicators more or less crude had been in use from the time of Watt, but the Richards' indicator was the first one accurate enough and delicate enough to meet the demands of modern engine practice; and its influence has been farreaching".
For this achievement he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France and received medals from the London Exposition in 1862, the American Institute of the City of New York in 1869, and the French Exposition in 1878. After the beginning of the Civil War, he returned to the Colt Armory as assistant superintendent and consulting engineer, and retained that position for nearly two decades.
During this period he devised the platform-scale testing machine for testing the strength of metals, became a recognized authority on heating and ventilation and was consulting engineer for the Connecticut state capitol at Hartford and several buildings for Yale University, and was responsible for several improvements in the microscope. In 1880 he left Colt's to become superintendent of the Southwark Foundry & Machine Company of Philadelphia and while there patented an exhaust valve and two cut-off governors for steam engines.
In 1884 he accepted an invitation to become Higgin Professor of Dynamic Engineering (later Mechanical Engineering) at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, thus entering upon an entirely new phase of his career. He was fitted for the position not only because of his native talent and his experience as an engineer but also because of his scholarly tastes and point of view, and he continued as head of his department until his retirement in 1909, when he became professor emeritus.
As a teacher, he set a high standard for the work of his students.
In addition to his teaching, he served as United States commissioner at the Paris Exposition of 1889 and edited the report on machinery and apparatus adapted for general use in mechanical engineering. He was an associate editor for technical words and terms in two editions of Webster's International Dictionary (1890, 1900).
He died at New Haven after a long illness, in his eighty-sixth year.
He was a charter member (1880) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a member of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences, Société Industrielle de Mulhouse, and Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Shy and modest by nature, he considered lecturing an ordeal, but thoroughly enjoyed his contact with individuals in the drafting room. He gained the respect and affection of his colleagues and of a generation of students, who, upon his retirement, presented a portrait of him to the Sheffield Scientific School.
Richards married Agnes Edwards Goodwin at Hartford, Connecticut, on September 15, 1858, and they had four daughters and a son, all of whom survived their father.