Use of Adsorbents for the Removal of Pollutants from Wastewater
(Use of Adsorbents for the Removal of Pollutants from Wast...)
Use of Adsorbents for the Removal of Pollutants from Wastewater describes the most commonly occurring industrial effluents, and presents direct means and methodologies for treating them. In addition to its excellent introduction to pollutants, this book contains all of the basics you need for understanding the characteristics and applications of adsorbent materials. With this book, you can choose from a wide variety of traditional and novel adsorbents, including alternative, relatively inexpensive adsorbents.
Gordon McKay was an American industrialist and inventor.
Background
Gordon McKay was born on May 4, 1821 in Pittsfield, Massachussets. He was the son of Samuel Michel and Catherine Gordon (Dexter) McKay. His father, the son of Samuel Mackay, a captain in the British army and afterwards professor of French in Williams College (1795 - 99), was a cotton manufacturer, amateur farmer, and a politician of some prominence in the western part of Massachusetts; his mother, the daughter of Samuel Dexter of Boston, an eminent lawyer who in 1800 served as secretary of war and afterwards as secretary of the treasury.
Education
McKay was a delicate youth and what little schooling he had was directed toward an outdoor occupation. He studied engineering and for eight years, beginning when he was sixteen, he worked with the engineer corps of the Boston & Albany Railroad and of the Erie Canal.
Career
At the age of twenty-four, McKay returned to Pittsfield and established a machine shop for the repair of paper and cotton mill machinery. This he operated profitably for seven years and then, in 1852, accepted the position of treasurer and general manager of the Lawrence Machine Shop at Lawrence, Massachussets. In 1859, he became interested in the machine recently invented by Lyman R. Blake for sewing the soles of shoes to the uppers. McKay bought the patent, paying Blake $70, 000 for it, $8, 000 in cash and $62, 000 to be paid from future profits. He then set to work to improve the machine so that it would stitch the soles around the toes and heels. With the great material assistance of R. H. Matthies, an expert machinist, the attempt succeeded after several years of effort, and on May 6, 1862, McKay obtained a patent for a "process of sewing soles of boots and shoes. " He immediately organized the McKay Association to manufacture the machine, and since the Civil War was creating a demand for army shoes, he experienced little difficulty in securing the necessary capital. Within a few months he was filling a government contract for 25, 000 pairs of army shoes in his two factories at Rayham and Farmington, North Hampshire, and was also manufacturing his shoe machine for other firms. The machines were not sold outright but leased to other manufacturers on a royalty basis. By the end of 1862, McKay was drawing royalties from over sixty shoe factories in the East and Middle West, and by 1876, he was receiving more than a half million dollars annually in royalties. During this time, he not only directed the business of his association and worked out the details for manufacturing the machine, but also kept in close touch with the experimental work for the further perfection and application of shoe machinery.
He was the joint patentee with Blake for five patents on sewing-machine improvements in 1864, and in 1865 on a machine for manufacturing shoes with turned soles. In 1874, he and Blake fought to secure the extension of the latter's patent, and upon the winning of this battle he paid Blake a large sum of money for the reassignment of the patent to the McKay Association. Meanwhile, the welt-shoe sewing machine controlled by Charles Goodyear, 1833-1896, was coming to the fore, and by 1876, the McKay and Goodyear interests were in bitter competition and for four years constantly involved in litigation. In 1880, however, they joined forces, McKay turning over his turned-shoe machinery patents to Goodyear, who, in turn, assigned his rights in welt-and-turned-shoe machinery to McKay. McKay then confined his attention to the development and manufacture of machinery for making the heavier grades of shoes, but fifteen years later, 1895, he sold all of his interests to the Goodyear Company. McKay was also interested in the perfection of machines for nailing and pegging soles on shoes, in improvements in metallic fastenings for shoes, and in machinery for the manufacture of the stouter grades of boots and shoes. In the course of his life, he was the patentee or joint patentee of more than forty inventions, which brought him wealth estimated at $40, 000, 000. Following his retirement in 1895, he lived quietly in Cambridge and Newport, devoting his time to philanthropic work.
(Use of Adsorbents for the Removal of Pollutants from Wast...)
Views
Quotations:
"I direct that the salaries attached to the professorships maintained from the Endowment be kept liberal, generation after generation, according to the standards of each successive generation, to the end that these professorships may always be attractive to able men and that their effect may be to raise, in some judicious measure, the general scale of compensation for the teachers of the universities …”
Connections
McKay was twice married: first, in 1845, to Agnes Jenkins, of Pittsfield, Massachussets, from whom he was divorced several years later; second, in 1878, to Marian Treat of Longwood, Massachussets, which marriage likewise terminated in a divorce (1890).