Background
William Robinson was born in Coal Island, County Tyrone, Ulster, Ireland, the son of Scotch-Irish and English parents. When he was four years old the family emigrated to the United States, settling in Brooklyn, New York
William Robinson was born in Coal Island, County Tyrone, Ulster, Ireland, the son of Scotch-Irish and English parents. When he was four years old the family emigrated to the United States, settling in Brooklyn, New York
William received his early schooling and prepared for college. He graduated from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, in 1865 and during the school term following was principal of the high school in Ansonia, Connecticut Part of the year 1866 he spent in the Pennsylvania oil fields, but in 1867 resumed teaching, serving as principal of Spring Valley Academy, New York, for two years.
In 1906 he published History of Automatic Electric and Electrically Controlled Fluid Pressure Signal Systems for Railroads and the following year, at the age of sixty-seven, completed a post-graduate course in electrical and mechanical engineering at Boston University and received the degree of Ph. D. He was a fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and an honorary member of the American Railway Association.
In 1869 he returned to western Pennsylvania and for three years was engaged in the oil business, making his headquarters in St. Petersburg, Clarion County. Meanwhile his attention had been given for some time to the development of an automatic signal system as a means of preventing accidents of various kinds on railroads. Choosing electricity as the active agent, he had devised what is now known as a "wire" or "open circuit" system of signalling, and in 1869 he constructed an elaborate model illustrating a road-crossing gong signal operated by trains approaching in either direction. He exhibited his model at the American Institute Fair in New York in 1870, and the same year installed a practical automatic block signal of this character on a section of the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad at Kinzua, Pa. It worked perfectly, but Robinson, dissatisfied with its inherent limitations, immediately undertook to correct them and after much study devised the closed track circuit system of automatic electric signalling which he patented both in the United States and France, his United States patent being No. 130, 661, dated August 20, 1872. This invention is conceded to be the basis of every block signalling system used on the railroads of the world today, and "perhaps no single invention in the history of the development of railway transportation has contributed more toward safety and dispatch in that field than the track circuit" (Third Annual Report of the Block Signal and Train Control Board to the Interstate Commerce Commission, November 22, 1910, 1911, p. 177). After receiving his patents and exhibiting his signal at the State Fair in Erie, Pa. , Robinson made his first installation of the system on the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad at Kinzua and Irvine, Pa. In 1873 he organized the Robinson Electric Railway Signal Company in St. Petersburg, Pa. , and as president and general manager made a number of installations on railroads in Pennsylvania and Maryland. In 1875 he transferred his headquarters to Boston, Massachussets, and in the course of the next six years installed his signalling system on many railroads of New England. In 1878, having received by this time nine signal patents, he reorganized his company as the Union Electric Signal Company, but in 1881 sold his entire holdings to George Westinghouse, who reorganized the concern as the Union Switch & Signal Company. After two years of foreign travel, Robinson settled in Brooklyn, New York where he resided for the balance of his life, practising electrical engineering and continuing to exercise his inventive talent. He devised the bond wire system of connecting adjacent rails electrically which has made modern electric railroading possible; he developed the use of fiber for insulated rail joints; he invented the wireless electric railway signal system; he patented the radial car truck now extensively used on electric railways, and made some important improvements in steam turbines. He also invented a bicycle coasterbrake and roller-bearing skates.
He never married, but had nine nieces and nephews.
He died in his eighty-first year and was buried in Brooklyn, New York, United States