(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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inventor officer Soldier artillerist
Thomas Jackson Rodman was born on a farm near Salem, Indiana, United States. His father, James Rodman, was a descendant of Thomas Rodman, a Quaker physician, who came to Newport, Rhode island from Barbados in 1675. His mother was Elizabeth (Burton) Rodman of Virginia.
Although his early educational advantages were quite limited, he entered the United States Military Academy in 1837 and was graduated four years later, seventh in a class of fifty-two members.
He was commissioned in the ordnance department, and was promoted through all grades to the rank of captain in 1855, and lieutenant-colonel in 1867. From the first, he demonstrated marked gifts as an inventor, with a decided bent towards mechanics and the details of practical shop construction--his earlier service having been spent with government arsenals at the Alleghany Arsenal, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Richmond, Virginia, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. During the Mexican War, he served as ordnance officer at Camargo and Point Isabel. After studying closely the heavy ordnance devised by George Bomford and used by Americans in the War of 1812, and the improvements in manufacture developed by Henri Joseph Paixhans of the French army and Dahlgren of the American navy, Rodman conceived the original idea of casting guns upon a hollow core, cooling the inner surface by a flow of water so that each successive layer of metal was compressed by the shrinkage of outer layers. He received little or no encouragement from the ordnance department, which rejected the offer of his invention and refused him an opportunity to develop his ideas, so the manufacture of ordnance under Rodman's patented processes was begun by private enterprise. The results demonstrated a marked increase in strength and endurance for heavy ordnance and much greater resistance to gas erosion in the bore. About the same time, his experiments resulted in the successful manufacture of so-called mammoth and perforated-cake or prismatic gunpowder, both types being used by him in the testing of his large-bore cannon. A detailed description of his work is contained in his admirable book, Reports of Experiments on the Properties of Metals for Cannon, and the Qualities of Cannon Powder, published in 1861. His inventions were finally approved and adopted by the government in 1859, about fourteen years after their conception, and his methods were promptly utilized by the governments of Russia, Great Britain, and Prussia. Rodman was placed in command of the arsenal at Watertown, Massachussets, and during the Civil War, supervised the casting of twelve-inch, fifteen-inch, and twenty-inch smooth-bores, and of twelve-inch rifled guns. He applied his methods to the casting of projectiles, and greatly increased the capacity of his plant for making field and sea-coast artillery carriages. His guns were mounted by Captain Ericsson in the newly constructed monitors of the navy and many military authorities of the period held that Rodman's inventions had a pronounced deterrent effect in staying foreign intervention during a critical period of the Civil War. His personal application and his interest in the success of his labors were so constant at this time that he suffered a severe illness as a result in the summer of 1864, recovering only with difficulty. In 1865, he was honored with the brevets of lieutenant-colonel, colonel, and brigadier-general, for faithful, meritorious, and distinguished services in the ordnance department. At the close of the war he was transferred to the command of Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, where, with characteristic energy, he perfected elaborate plans for the construction on a large scale of a combined armory and arsenal. Adequate Congressional appropriations were secured and the work was started when Rodman's health, already impaired, broke down under the strain of responsibility, and he died at his post after a prolonged illness.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
He was survived by his widow, Martha Ann (Black) Rodman, daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to whom he had been married in 1843, and by five sons and two daughters.
