Stevens Institute of Technology - Link Yearbook (Hoboken, NJ)

Page 16 text:

1 E 2E introduced in the U. S. Navy the oval balanced gun turret in 1894, the then uni- versally used, circular unbalanced turret was rendered obsolete. By thus changing the shape of the turret and letting its rear armor overlap and extend out beyond the fixed cylindrical armor which protects the turret rollers and their supporting structure, he was enabled to balance the weight of the projecting guns by adjusting the weight of the overlap, and thus to make the center of gravity of the whole revolving portion of the turret coincide with its center of revolution. So great was the reduction in the power necessary for operation in a seaway that all the principal navies have adopted the oval turret. Until 1913 Commodore Stahl was in charge of the construction and repair of naval vessels at navy yards and private shipyards. He was on inspection duty, 1913-1917, and since then has been a member of the N avy's Board of Financial Control over the building of some five hundred naval vessels at private yards. In the person of Rear Admiral Frederick Robert Harris QM. E. '96g E. D. 'QU the Navy has another accomplished engineer. Upon graduating he immediately specialized on river and harbor works, drydocks, etc. His work is characterized by his success in building drydocks in the quicksands of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and on the lava and coral foundations of the Hawaiian Islands, where his prede- cessors had failed. On the latter dock he employed the floating caisson method of construction on which he has obtained a patent. He has served as a consulting engineer and advisory engineer for various shipping interests, succeeded General Goethals and Admiral Capps as General Manger of the Emergency Fleet Corpor- ation, and for his meritorious war service he was cited for the Distinguished Service Medal and the Distinguished Service Cross. Of special interest in connection with the subject of naval engineering is the work of Frank M. Leavitt QM. E. 75g E. D. 'Q1D, inventor of the Bliss-Leavitt Torpedo now used by the U. S. Navy. Fromi1881 to 1901 he was Chief Engineer of the E. W. Bliss Co. of Brooklyn, in whose behalf he undertook the introduction of the Whitehead Torpedo into the U. S. Navy in 1890. During the Spanish-Ameri- can War he installed the plant of the U. S. Projectile Co. for the manufacture of forged steel shells and shrapnel. In 1900 he improved the Whitehead Torpedo, increasing its efficiency 40 per cent. and its speed five knots. He has taken out many patents for sheet-metal working and other machinery, and is the inventor of an automatic can-making machine which has practically revolutionized the can- making industry. He is also the inventor of a press for producing all kinds of hollow pressed ware. Mr. Leavitt is still with the Bliss Company in Brooklyn. While in his Senior year at Stevens, George Meade Bond CM. E. '80g E. D. 'QD became interested in measurement standards. Upon graduation he became as- sistant to Professor Rogers, head of the Astronomy department at the Harvard College Observatory, and designed a comparator which enabled the professor to conduct his investigations in standards of length more efficiently. In the year of his graduation he entered the Pratt Sz Whitney Co. of Hartford to carry out the work of establishing standards for that company under the general direction of Professor Rogers, with whom he became the joint inventor of a comparator built When Commodore Albert William Stahl CM. E. '76g E. D. 'QU designed and 15 2

Page 15 text:

EIEQ 2525 nowhere comes in contact with sand or other injurious substances, and due to the mechanical conveying features employed with the machine, no labor is expended on the iron from the time it leaves the ladle until it is shipped in the car. This machine is a necessity in the use of the huge modern American blast furnaces. Mr. Uehling is now President of the Uehling Instrument Company, New York City. The manufacture of water-meters became the first interest of Lewis Hallock Nash CM. E. '77, E. D. '21D, who entered the employ of the National Meter Co., immediately upon graduating. Here he devoted himself to improving the exist- ing water meters, and shortly afterward produced the Crown', Meter, the first of a large class of single piston rotary meters which have since been on the market. Patents on other forms of water meters, such as the '6Empire,', the Improved Gem, and the Nash are included in his sixty or more U. S. patents on water meters. Mr. Nash took up the study of the gas engine in 1884-, and since then he has taken out for his company more than sixty patents covering its design and oper- ation. One of his patents is concerned with the starting of gas engines by means of compressed air, which feature is now employed by numerous gas engine manufacturers. Mr. Nash is now President of the Nash Engineering Co., South Norwalk, Conn. Power and lighting engineering has offered a broad field for Stevens Alumni. Aman who has planned and superintended the construction of numerous steam plants for electric light, power and railway companies in different sections of the country is Frank E. Idell CM. E. '77, E. D. '21J. He has also designed refrigerating plants and factory building and power equipment for various industries. Much of Mr. Idell's work has been pioneer, having been performed in the early days of the pro- fession of mechanical engineering. He has been connected in a professional way with a large number of industrial plants all over the country, has rendered expert engineering testimony in many legal cases, and has edited books on the subject of chimneys, boiler incrustation, theory of the gas engine, compressed air, triple ex- pansion engine, engine trials, etc. Mr. Idell is a consulting engineer, having offices in New York City. A The first electrical station in the United States supplying current for incan- descent lighting and power from an underground system, was the old Pearl Street Edison Station, New York City. Supervision of the electrical equipment of this station was given to John William Lieb CM. E. '80, E. D. 'QD upon his graduation from the Institute. Mr. Lieb did pioneer work as an associate of Mr. Edison in the development of a complete system of incandescent electric lighting. He installed the mechanical equipment of the Edison Station in Milan, Italy, in 1883, and ten years later obtained for the Milan Edison Co. the franchise for replacing the entire horse-car system of that city by an electric trolley system. He is now Vice-Presi- dent of the New York Edison Co. and Executive Head of the joint operation of the various electric enterprises affiliated with the Consolidated Gas Company of New York. Mr. Lieb has served in the capacity of President, Vice-President, and Chair- man of various engineering societies, and is a member of many other engineering societies and civic organizations. He is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Science. 14-

Page 17 text:

TF E 4. EF li I l E S' . in F. Q. if 9 25.1 , ii : if if 1 E 1 . ' E , if i. . by his company. Mr. Bond has devoted much time to establishing uniformity in sizes of bolts, units and threads, and to establishing num- erous other applications of standard inter- changeability in manufacturing and in railroad service. He was for many years Manager of the Standards and Gauge Department of the ' Pratt Sz Whitney Co., and has been called in in an advisory capacity by the Government and Engineering Society Committees in their work of standardizing weights, measures, etc. The iron and steel industry has likewise attracted its quota of adherents. Even before graduating, in 1892, William Cooper Cuntz Qde- ceased, 19165 had taken a position with the Pennsylvania Steel Company, at Steelton. Pa., where he wrote his thesis on Comparative De- signs of a 243-foot Railroad Bridge under Mini- mum and Maximum Loadingsn in conjunction with his classmate, FrederickW. Cohen. He obtained his drafting room and shop training in the bridge and construction department. The erection of a viaduct at Norwich, N. Y., was his first big job. After serving as resident engineer for his company in Boston, he became an Eu- ropean resident engineer with headquarters in London. During his travels in the British Isles and on the Continent he obtained first-hand knowledge of the Eu- ropean iron and steel industry. He also obtained for his company the contract for the building of the piers of the North German Lloyd at Hoboken, which replaced those destroyed by fire in 1900. In 1910 he resigned his position with the Pennsyl- vania Steel Co. in order to become General Manager and aDirector of the Gold- schmidt Thermit Co. of New York. Under his management great progress was made in the technical development of the Thermit process for welding heavy sec- tions, as crank shafts and locomotive frames, and for the production of special metals and alloys. In fact the increasing use of carbon-free metals and alloys is largely due to the initiative and perseverance of Mr. Cuntz in their manufacture. Another follower of the iron and steel industry is Alfred Rutgers Whitney, Jr. CM. E. '90, E. D. 'QU who entered the employ of the Portage Iron Co., Duncans- ville, Pa., as a laborer, and successively occupied the positions of machinist, mill- hand, shipping clerk and assistant manager. He designed and constructed a mill for this company, and in 1891 he superintended the designing and preparation ofthe plans and specifications of the buildings of the Puget Sound Wire Nail 8: Steel Co. at Everett, Wash., of which he became general manager. He also installed the machinery and took charge of operations, later becoming vice-president and largely increasing the plant. In 1894 he went to Japan as representative of the Carnegie Steel Company on armor plate during the China-Japanese War. Returning to New York City, in 1896, he joined the A. R. Whitney Co., iron and steel contractors and builders, and New York agents for the Carnegie Steel Co. While a member of this 16 im. FIIEDERICK TAYLOR ' ZE2