Hayward Augustus Harvey was an American inventor and businessman. He was president of the Harvey Steel Company where, by his method, file and tool steels were made from cheap grades of steel.
Background
Hayward Harvey was born on January 17, 1824, at Jamestown, New York, United States, the son of Thomas William and Melinda (Hayward) Harvey. He was a descendant of William Harvey who settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, about 1636.
Both his parents were natives of Vermont; his father, a blacksmith by trade and a skilled mechanic, went to western New York under contract to put up the machinery in a cotton-mill erected at Jamestown. He settled there as the village blacksmith and remained until his son was nine years old, when he moved to Ramapo, New York, to supervise the building of his newly invented screw-making machinery. In 1836 he took his family to Poughkeepsie, where he built up a flourishing screwmaking industry and devised many inventions.
Education
In Ramapo, New York young Harvey completed his schooling at the Poughkeepsie Academy and at the academy at New Paltz, New York, and then entered his father’s factory to learn drafting.
Career
When the New York Screw Company was organized in New York City, about 1840, with the elder Harvey as president, Hayward Harvey became a draftsman in its service. In 1849 he resigned from the New York Screw Company to take charge of a wire mill at Somerville, New Jersey, but within a year he was back in New York, where he established a wire mill of his own. Before this business was fairly under way, however, the factory was completely burned out, whereupon he joined the Harvey Steel & Iron Company at Mott Haven, New York, organized by his father in 1852. After the death of the latter in 1854, Harvey won several lawsuits which he brought against a number of screw companies for infringement of his father’s patents awarded May 30, 1846, on the automatic screw machinery.
He made a number of inventions, including a railway chair patented December 25, 1859. About 1865 he organized a new screw company, the Continental, which was entirely successful. After selling this company to the American Screw Company of Providence in 1870, he devoted his attention for the next six years to wire nails and bolts, and in 1874 patented a “peripheral grip bolt” with a varying pitch of thread. He organized a company for its manufacture in 1876, but after a few years’ operation sold it to a Western manufacturer. About 1880 he designed a machine for rolling instead of cutting the thread upon the screw blank. The company organized in 1881 to manufacture screws by this process was absorbed six years later by the American Screw Company. The cold-forged screw is now standard and Harvey is recognized as the original inventor.
In 1885-1886 Harvey had a shop in Brooklyn where he conducted experiments with bolts and nuts, including the hardening of threads on bolts made of soft steel. Applying his peculiar process to other problems, he made, from a cheap grade of Bessemer steel, razor blades which were in all respects equal to those of the best refined steel. With friends, he organized the Harvey Steel Company in 1886 and the following year erected a plant in Jersey City. A large variety of commercial articles were treated, such as bicycle parts, punches and dies, railroad frogs, and plates for safes and vaults. In this connection Harvey started experimenting with thick blocks of steel in an endeavor to secure the greater resistance to blows and strains which armor plate must possess. As a result of these experiments he received patents Nos. 376, 194 (January 10, 1888) and 460, 262 (September 29, 1891) for treating armor plate.
Achievements
Hayward Harvey is famous for inventing the Harvey process for case hardening the front surface of steel armor plate. His treatment was brought to the attention of the Navy Department in May 1889, and after a large number of tests the Harvey Process was formally adopted by the United States government and by most European governments as well. He made lots of other inventions, including a corrugated blind staple and a hay-cutter for which he received a silver medal at the American Institute Fair in New York in 1847.
Interests
Harvey was extremely fond of music and could play almost any musical instrument, although he preferred the piano and the organ.
Connections
Harvey was twice married: on December 29, 1849, to Mary Matilda Winant of New York, who died June 26, 1857, leaving one son; and on June 21, 1865, to Emily Alice Halsey of Bridgehampton, New York. They also had one son.
