On the Construction of Improved Ordinance: As Proposed in a Letter to the Secretaries of War, and of the Navy, and the Chiefs of the Bureaus of ... of the United States (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from On the Construction of Improved Ordinance: A...)
Excerpt from On the Construction of Improved Ordinance: As Proposed in a Letter to the Secretaries of War, and of the Navy, and the Chiefs of the Bureaus of Engineers, and of Ordnance, of the United States
IN the year 1840, I determined to attempt the con struction of cannon of wrought-iron, following cer tain theoretical principles which I had long held under consideration. I then had under my control a small forge and machine-shop, and several skilled.
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On the Construction of Hooped Cannon: Being a Sequel to a Memoir "On the Practicability of constructing cannon of great caliber, etc''
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Daniel was descended from Thomas Treadwell who settled at Ipswich, Massachussets, in 1638. Born on October 10, 1791, on his father's farm at Ipswich, the son of Capt. Jabez and Elizabeth (Dodge) Treadwell, Daniel was left motherless at two and orphaned at eleven.
Education
Living with a guardian, he attended school until he was fourteen, and was then apprenticed to his eldest brother, who had just set up as a silversmith.
After the failure of this brother two years later, Treadwell completed his apprenticeship in Boston with Capt. Jesse Churchill and continued as Churchill's partner for four years. A youth of studious tastes, as soon as he moved to Boston, where a library was available, he commenced a course of reading in history and the English poets.
Then he studied medicine for a year and a half with Dr. John Ware.
He was awarded the honorary degree of A. M. by Harvard College in 1829.
Career
Although Treadwell became an able silversmith, he cared less for his trade than for experimenting with machinery. Accordingly, when the War of 1812 ruined his business, he zealously went to work with a friend to devise a screw-making machine. Completed in about a year, although in imperfect form, it was put into successful operation in a mill at Saugus, Massachussets, but with the return of imported screws to the market at the close of the war, this business declined.
Treadwell next devised a successful nail-making machine, but was compelled by ill health to seek a less strenuous occupation.
Returning to his mechanical experiments, he centered his attention on the printing press, and by an ingenious application of levers and the "toggle joint" he produced a press in which a treadle operated by the weight of the printer took the place of the laborious hand-lever.
He also invented a means of printing on both sides of paper without shifting the sheet. He was unsuccessful in his effort to introduce his press into England in 1819-20, but on his return to Boston, with the financial aid of friends, began to manufacture his presses.
Later he applied steam power to the operation of his press, patenting a power printing press on March 2, 1826. "Treadwell's Power Press" was soon installed in all the larger cities of the Atlantic Coast. It was at first used wholly in book printing, but in 1829 was introduced into newspaper work by the Boston Daily Advertiser.
In this year Treadwell relinquished the business, having made a profit of some $70, 000.
Meanwhile, he had made a study of rope making and in 1828 completed a machine for spinning hemp. For the greater part of the next eight years he devoted his time to developing machines for this purpose, securing four basic patents between 1831 and 1835. In 1833, after it had successfully demonstrated his method of manufacturing rope, the company which he organized was merged in a larger corporation. The "Gypsey, " as his machine was called, attained worldwide use, and seventy-six of the machines were still in operation fifty years after they were built.
Until 1826, with his preceptor and Dr. John W. Webster, he edited the Boston Journal of Philosophy and the Arts.
Chosen vice-president of the Boston Mechanics' Institute in 1827, he began to give a course of lectures on the steam engine and other practical subjects, adapted to the needs of the working man. He became president of the Institute, and in May of that year presented a report "On the Practicability of Conducting Transportation on a Single Set of Tracks" to the Massachusetts Railroad Association, describing a system of turnouts he had devised; this system was later adopted by three New England railroads.
In 1834 he accepted the call of Harvard College to the post of Rumford Professor and Lecturer on the Application of Science to the Useful Arts, and in 1835 went to England to observe processes and gather equipment for his lectures, of which he gave about two a week for the next ten years. He served on two commissions (1825; 1837) appointed to investigate the practicability of a water supply for Boston, and on one (1835 - 36) to examine the state standards of weights and measures; in 1837 he supervised the construction of Gore Hall, to house the Harvard library, and devised a method of heating that building.
The Cambridge Scientific Club was organized at his house in 1842. From 1833 to 1839 he was recording secretary of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and from 1852 to 1863 a vice-president.
In the later thirties Treadwell turned his attention to an improved cannon. In 1841 he filed in the United States Patent Office a caveat which described a method of cannon construction consisting of building up a series of steel rings welded together and reinforced by bands, and in 1842 organized the Steel Cannon Company to manufacture four small pieces ordered by the United States. He was unsuccessful, however, in seriously interesting any government in his product, and this disappointment, together with his conviction, evidenced in a lawsuit against Robert P. Parrott about 1863, that the latter had appropriated his idea, so preyed on his mind that he never regained interest in his earlier activities and for the last ten years of his life lived more or less in retirement in his home in Cambridge, Massachussets.
In his will he made generous gifts to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and other educational institutions of Boston and provided liberally for the public library of Ipswich.
Achievements
Daniel Treadwell most important inventions are a hemp-spinning machine for the production of cordage, and a method of constructing cannon from wrought iron and steel.
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Membership
Treadwell's brief period of medical study with Dr. Ware had brought him into a group of Boston's scientific men; in 1823 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Connections
He was survived by his wife, Adeline (Lincoln), daughter of Dr. Levi Lincoln of Hingham, whom he married on October 6, 1831; they had no children.