Background
Hunt was born in Fallsington, Pennsylvania, in 1838. He was the son of Robert A. Hunt, a physician, and Martha Lancaster (Woolston) Hunt.
engineer inventor metallurgist
Hunt was born in Fallsington, Pennsylvania, in 1838. He was the son of Robert A. Hunt, a physician, and Martha Lancaster (Woolston) Hunt.
After his father's death in 1855, young Hunt continued, for two years, the small drugstore in Covington, Ky. , which his father had established after his retirement from medical practice in Trenton, N. J. His mother then moved to Pottsville, Pa. , and Hunt found employment for several years at the iron rolling mill of John Burnish & Company, where he learned the practical side of the work. Upon the completion of a course in analytical chemistry in the laboratory of Booth, Garrett & Blair of Philadelphia, he established in 1860 at the plant of the Cambria Iron Company, Johnstown, Pa. , the first analytical laboratory to form an integral department of an iron works.
In 1861 he entered military service, at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, Pa. , and in 1864 he was instrumental in recruiting Lambert's Independent Company, with which he served. Upon being mustered out at the close of the war, he returned to the Cambria Iron Company, and was sent to their plant at Wyandotte, Mich. , where experiments were being made with the Bessemer steel process. He was in charge of this work until May 1866 when he was called back to Johnstown, where the erection of a Bessemer plant was then contemplated. Its construction was delayed, however, and Hunt rolled for the Pennsylvania Railroad, with Bessemer steel from the Pennsylvania Steel Company, the first commercial order for steel rails (1867). He then assisted John Fritz and Alexander Lyman Holley in the design and erection of the Cambria Bessemer steel plant, of which, upon its completion in July 1871, he assumed charge.
In September 1873 he moved to Troy, N. Y. , where he became superintendent of the Bessemer steel plant of John A. Griswold & Company and in 1875, general superintendent of the combination formed by this company and Erastus Corning & Company which resulted finally in the Troy Iron & Steel Company. Hunt remained in charge until 1888 when he established at Chicago the firm of Robert W. Hunt & Company, consulting engineers. He completely rebuilt various works and erected large blast-furnace plants. He also invented, and with Wendel and Suppis patented, the very widely adopted automatic rail mills. He inaugurated what was afterwards known as the "Special Inspection, " which involved thorough supervision both of the manufacture of the steel and of the rolling of the rails; and in 1921 he proposed a new rail section and the nick-and-break test for soundness of each ingot.
His death occurred in Chicago, and he was buried in Troy, N. Y.
He was a member of many technical societies in the United States and in England. He was the President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in the year 1891–92; and President of the Western Society of Engineers in 1893.
On December 5, 1866, he married Eleanor Clark of Ecorse, Mich. , who survived him. There were no children.