Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Whitney, Asa (manufacturer)

WHITNEY, Asa, manufacturer, b. in Townsend, Mass., 1 Dec., 1791; d. in Philadelphia, 4 June, 1874. His opportunities for education were meagre, and, after spending several years in his father's blacksmith-shop, he went in 1812 to New Hampshire, and soon became so capable as a machinist that his employer sent him to Brownsville, N. Y., to superintend the erection of machinery in a cotton-factory. Here he remained till 1830, carrying on a business in machine- and forge-works, when he was appointed assistant superintendent of the Mohawk and Hudson railroad, and became superintendent the following year. Resigning this post in 1839, he was elected canal commissioner of New York state, and for two years superintended the enlargement and management of the Erie canal and its branches. In 1842 he removed to Philadelphia and entered into the manufacture of locomotives with Matthew W. Baldwin, but withdrew from the partnership in two years. Soon afterward he became president of the Morris canal company, for which he applied special machinery to a series of inclined planes worked by steam, by which means its boats could pass elevations. He took out patents on 22 May, 1847, for the corrugated plate car-wheel, and the curved corrugated plate wheel, and began their manufacture with his son George as partner. On 25 April, 1848, he patented his process for annealing car-wheels. It consisted in placing the wheels, soon after they were cast, in a heated furnace, where they were subjected to a further gradual increase of temperature, and were then slowly cooled for three days. The discovery of this process of annealing, as applied to chilled cast-iron wheels, marked an era in the history of railroads. It enabled them with safety to increase both loads and speed. Previous to this discovery it was impossible to cast wheels with solid hubs, and therefore impossible to secure them rigidly to the axle. Now the whole wheel was easily cast in one piece, and capable of being forced securely upon the axle at a pressure of forty tons. Over ten million car-wheels are now in use in this country, and this principle of annealing is applied in some form to every wheel that is made of chilled cast-iron. On 19 March, 1850, he patented the tapered and ribbed corrugated wheel. For many years he made from 50,000 to 75,000 car-wheels per annum. The business is still carried on by the firm of A. Whitney and Sons. In 1860 Mr. Whitney was made president of the Reading railroad, but he resigned in a year from failing health, after contributing largely to the success of the road. He gave liberally during his life, and among other public bequests he gave $50,000 to found a professorship of dynamical engineering in the University of Pennsylvania, $12,500 to the Franklin institute, and $20,000 to the Old men's home in Philadelphia.