John George Leyner was an American inventor and manufacturer.
Background
John George Leyner was born on August 26, 1860, on his father's ranch in Left Hand Creek Canyon, Boulder County, Colorado, United States. He was the eldest son of Peter A. Leyner, of German birth, and Maria A. Dock, of Dutch ancestry, who as bride and groom "went West" by ox-team from Des Moines, Iowa.
Education
His education was limited to that afforded by the public school in his district.
Career
Until Leyner was nineteen years old he remained on his father's ranch, always more interested in machinery than in tilling the soil. After engaging for four years, 1879-1883, in threshing grain for the farmers in his neighborhood and working for two more as engineer, first for a mining and milling company in Jackson, and then for a flour-milling company in Canfield, Colorado, he established in 1886 a machine shop and foundry in Longmont, Colorado.
After a year or two, however, he sold this business and purchased an interest in a machine shop in Denver, of which he later acquired full ownership. The experience gained in repairing mining machinery here gave Leyner an insight into the mechanical needs of the mining industry and the opportunity to exercise his inventive talents. Accordingly he devised many improvements in the machinery then used, and in 1893 perfected a compressed air rock-drilling machine of the piston type in which the drilling steel is attached to and oscillates with the piston.
In an endeavor to improve on this first machine he developed a means of supporting the drill loosely in the rock-drilling engine in position to be struck by a rapidly oscillating piston of light weight. After nine years of constant effort the new engine was perfected and patented June 13, 1899 (patent no. 626, 761). It was far superior to any rock-drilling machine then made, for it not only increased by 100 per cent the number of blows struck by the piston but also reduced the weight of the latter from sixty to sixteen pounds. Not content with this achievement, Leyner next devised the hollow drill, through which he forced air and water to the bottom of the drill hole to expel the rock cuttings while drilling. The resulting Water Leyner Rock Drill or "jackhammer, " as it is popularly called, was adopted the world over, and in 1902, to supply the demand, Leyner organized the J. George Leyner Engineering Works Company and erected an extensive manufacturing plant at Littleton, Colorado.
Continuing his inventive work, he perfected, after seven years of effort, a drill-sharpening machine incorporating many radical improvements. He secured patent 917, 777 for this invention, engaged in its manufacture. He also made many novel improvements in the air compressor, for the most important of which he received patent no. 938, 004, dated October 26, 1909. All of his patented machines and other mining machinery were manufactured in his plant at Littleton until 1911, when he disposed of the entire establishment to the Ingersoll-Rand Company of New York.
Instead of retiring, he began working in 1913 on a farm tractor of the caterpillar type. Receiving a patent for this device on January 29, 1918, he organized a manufacturing company and had constructed two experimental machines when he was injured in an automobile accident and died, at Littleton.
Achievements
Connections
Leyner was married twice: first, in 1883 to Fanny Batterson; and after her death, to Lina M. Brooks, on June 3, 1912. His widow survived him.