Background
Erasmus Darwin Leavitt, the son of Erasmus Darwin and Almira (Fay) Leavitt, was born in Lowell, Massachussets.
Erasmus Darwin Leavitt, the son of Erasmus Darwin and Almira (Fay) Leavitt, was born in Lowell, Massachussets.
He received the common-school education. He was honored with the degree of Doctor of Engineering by Stevens Institute of Technology in 1884.
Upon graduation from school Leavitt entered the Lowell Machine Shop as an apprentice at the age of sixteen. Here he served three years and then was employed for one year in the firm of Corliss & Nightingale in Providence, Rhode Island. He returned to Boston in 1856 and found employment at the City Point Works, becoming two years later an assistant foreman in charge of the construction of the engine of the United States flagship Hartford.
In 1859 he returned to Providence as chief draftsman for Thurston, Gardner & Company, builders of high-class steam-engines, and served until the beginning of the Civil War when he entered the United States navy. Between 1861 and 1863 he was attached to the gunboat Sagamore in the Eastern Gulf Squadron. Later he was promoted to second assistant engineer and assigned to construction duty at Baltimore, Boston, and Brooklyn. In 1865 he was detailed to the Naval Academy at Annapolis as an instructor in steam-engineering, but he resigned in 1867 to take up the practice of mechanical engineering, specializing in pumping and mining machinery.
He was recognized as an engineer of ability when, shortly thereafter, he installed the pumping engine at the waterworks of Lynn, Massachussets. This engine, which he designed, was of the beam compound type and its efficiency marked an advance in the economic operation of pumping engines. Following this work he designed and installed a pair of similar engines for the waterworks of Lawrence, Massachussets. In 1874 Leavitt was appointed consulting and mechanical engineer for the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company, which position he held until 1904.
During this connection he designed and superintended the building of the enormous equipment to be used at the company's mines in Michigan. This equipment included heavy machinery for pumping, air compression, hoisting, stamping, and general power purposes. While engaged in this work he was frequently called upon for assistance by other industrialists and municipalities as well. He advised Henry R. Worthington regarding the construction of high-duty, direct-acting pumping engines and the Bethlehem Steel Company in the introduction of the hydraulic forging process.
He designed the first engines used for the cable railway of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the three great sewage pumping engines for the city of Boston. The waterworks pumping engines for Louisville, Kentucky, New Bedford, Boston, and Cambridge, Massachussets, also were designed by him.
After 1888 he made frequent trips to Europe where his reputation as a consulting engineer had already spread. He was affiliated with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (president, 1883), the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, the American Society of Naval Engineers, the Boston Society of Civil Engineers, and the Institution of Civil Engineers and Institution of Mechanical Engineers of Great Britain. Outside of his consulting work his chief interest lay in the Y. M. C. A. of Cambridge. He died in Cambridge, Massachussets.
It is said that, as a machinery designer, Leavitt did more than any other engineer in the United States "to establish sound principles and propriety in design, " and that he was "among the very first engineers to appreciate the importance of weight in machinery. " He was best known for his steam engine designs. He designed more than 40 types of engines for a variety of uses.
Leavitt was married on June 5, 1867, to Annie Elizabeth Pettit of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He had three daughters.
