Edward Sabine Renwick

Background

Edward Sabine Renwick was bornon January 3, 1823 in New York City, son of the elder James Renwick and Margaret Anne (Brevoort); the younger James and Henry Brevoort were his brothers.

Education

Edward attended New York schools and when he was thirteen years of age entered Columbia College, the youngest member of his class. After receiving the degree of A. B. in 1839 he did graduate work at Columbia, receiving the degree of A. M. in 1842.

Career

His first employment was as assistant and bookkeeper to the superintendent of the New Jersey Iron Company at Boonton, New Jersey. Next, he was privately employed to examine and report on some mining properties in Maryland, and then went to England to attend to matters pertaining to this report. Although abroad only a short time, he visited the best iron works in both England and Wales, and upon his return to America late in 1845 accepted the superintendency of the Wyoming Iron Works at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

He was successful in operating this plant, to which he added a small blast furnace for the manufacture of pig-iron. Resigning this position in 1849, he went to Washington, D. C. , where with Peter H. Watson, subsequently assistant secretary of war in the Lincoln administration, he established himself as patent expert. After six years, this association was dissolved and Renwick removed to New York. Here he opened his own office as patent expert and consulting engineer. Although most of his time was occupied with patent cases he engaged in varied engineering work as well. He was consultant to Harrison Gray Dyer while the latter was acting as president of the New York & New Haven Railroad.

In 1862 he accomplished the remarkable engineering feat of repairing the steamer Great Eastern while it was afloat. The operation consisted in covering with iron plating a fracture in the bilge, eighty feet long and more than ten feet wide, twenty-seven feet beneath the water. In this work he was assisted by his brother Henry. As a witness in patent cases he was "probably subjected to the longest cross-examinations of any expert".

One of his early cases lasted twenty-one days, with the result that the United States circuit court and afterward the United States Supreme Court adopted the construction of the patent given by him.

Renwick himself possessed marked inventive talent and in the course of his life secured in the neighborhood of twenty-five patents, the first in 1850 for an iron railroad rail chair. He also invented a steam valve, a tumbler lock, a domestic furnace grate, and a breech-loading firearm.

One of his most important inventions, however, was a grain harvester and binder, patented and improved in 1851 and 1853 respectively. Although he never profited personally from this invention, being ahead of his time, his ideas were widely used by many manufacturers of harvesting machinery after his patents expired. Of far greater value was his series of ten inventions on incubators and chicken brooders, perfected between 1877 and 1886, and it is said that it was largely owing to his efforts that the raising of young chickens was made a paying industry.

He was the originator, also, of the system, patented by him in England in 1868, by which that portion of the shaft of a twin-propeller steamboat which extends beyond the vessel may be surrounded with a casing of sufficient size to permit this portion of the shaft to be inspected to the stern bearing. Although busy with so many and varied concerns, Renwick found time to write two books: The Thermostatic Incubator. Its Construction and Management (1883); and Patentable Invention (1893).

He died in Short Hills, New Jersey.

Achievements

• One of his greatest achievements was the designing and supervising, with his brother Henry, of a repairing of a break in the bilge of the Great Eastern steamship with a floating caisson, clamped to the hull. He formulated at least 25 inventions over his lifetime, including a combination chicken brooder and incubator, and a self-binding reaping machine.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Thermostatic Incubator: Its construction and management, together with descriptions of brooders, nurseries

    (The Thermostatic Incubator - Its construction and managem...)

  • Patentable Invention

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Thermostatic Incubator, Its Construction and Management, Together with Descriptions of Brooders, Nurseries

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Patentable Invention (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Patentable Invention Various decisions of t...)

  • Patentable Invention (1893 )

    (Originally published in 1893. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • book

Connections

He married Elizabeth Alice Brevoort on June 4, 1862. They had three children.

Father:

James Renwick

Mother:

Margaret Anne (Brevoort)

Spouse:

Elizabeth Alice Brevoort

sibling:

Henry Brevoort

sibling:

James Brevoort