Robert Dunbar was an American engineer and inventor. During his sixty years’ continuous connection with the grain-handling business, Dunbar built up a world-wide reputation as an expert in the design and construction of elevators.
Background
Robert Dunbar was born on December 13, 1812 in Carnbee, a short distance inland from the coast of Fifeshire, Scotland. About the beginning of the nineteenth century his grandfather, also Robert Dunbar, emigrated from Scotland and settled in Pickering Township, about twenty miles east of Toronto, Canada, where he purchased a farm and built up around it a warehouse, tannery, wagon shop and blacksmith shop. Around this little group of industries there grew the village of Dunbarton. When young Dunbar was twelve years old his father, William, a mechanical engineer, left Scotland with his family to join his father in Dunbarton.
Education
In Dunbarton Robert prepared for college and was educated as a mechanical engineer.
He completed his course at the age of twenty and had the immediate opportunity of demonstrating his engineering skill in designing and building the mechanical equipment for a new shipyard dock at Niagara, Ontario.
Career
Shortly after the successful completion of this task, Dunbar decided to branch out for himself and in 1834, when just twenty-two years old, he went to Buffalo, New York. His first jobs here were rebuilding old flourmills, incorporating in them his ideas for improvements, especially in mechanical handling. From this he progressed until he effected a partnership with C. W. Evans to engage in the design and erection of grain elevators and warehouses. Little is known of the extent of the activities of this partnership during the approximate fifteen years of its existence.
Upon its dissolution in 1853, however, Dunbar immediately, with a group of friends, organized the Eagle Iron Works Company in Buffalo to conduct a similar business. In the course of the succeeding fifteen years practically all of the grain elevators in the vicinity of Buffalo were either newly designed by Dunbar or improved by him in the name of the company.
During the period of the financial panic of the early seventies the Eagle Iron Works was dissolved, but Dunbar and another partner bought out the establishment and carried on as Dunbar & Howell for a few years. With Howell’s retirement the business was conducted as R. Dunbar & Son. Through the almost exclusive employment of his services, Buffalo gained the position of one of the largest grain markets in the United States. Elevators of his design were also constructed by him in Liverpool and Hull, England, as well as in Odessa, Russia. He apparently did not attempt to patent any of his ideas until toward the close of his career, when in the early eighties four patents were granted him for both fixed and portable elevators and conveyors, as well as the operating machinery for them.
Achievements
Dunbar designed the first steam-powered grain elevator in the world.
Connections
Dunbar married Sarah M. Howell of Buffalo on August 26, 1840; she with a son and daughter survived him at the time of his death in Buffalo.
