Background
Washington Irving Babcock was born September 26, 1858 at Stonington.
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Washington Irving Babcock
Edit ProfileEducation
When he was seven, his parents moved to Brooklyn, where in 1876 he graduated from the Polytechnic Institute. He studied for two years in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and on graduation, in 1878, secured a position with the Morgan Iron Works, New York.
Career
A year later he joined the staff of the Tehuantepec Interocean Railroad Company. More valuable than this experience was the training which he received at the Delaware Iron Shipbuilding and Engine Works, Chester, during 1880-85.
In the latter year he became assistant superintendent of the Providence and Stonington Steamship Company and, in 1887, superintendent of the Union Drydock Company, Buffalo. He then turned promoter. The result was the organization, in 1889, of the Chicago Shipbuilding Company, of which he became manager and later president. When it was absorbed by the American Shipbuilding Company in 1900, he began practise as a naval architect in New York, forming a partnership with Henry Penton in 1907.
He made notable advances in naval design and construction. Incited by recurrent difficulties with the riveters in the yards at Chicago, he invented a mechanism which made it possible to employ pneumatic tools. He also introduced the mould system of construction, which has since become universal. His most important innovations, however, were connected with lake carriers. Since the eight steel vessels on the St. Lawrence route in 1886 were Clyde-built and unsuited for inland traffic, he constructed the Owego, a typical freighter, in 1887, and in 1895 designed and launched the first lake vessel 400 feet over all.
He was the author of various technical papers on naval architecture. He died at his home in New York, August 7, 1917.
