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Henry Burden and the Question of Anglo-American Technological Transfer in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Paul J. Uselding
Paul J. Uselding
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
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Extract

My object in this article is to use the historical evidence of one man's life to raise questions concerning the way we have come to understand our technological history. Inventors and mechanicians have long occupied a prominent place in American history. However, the bases for selecting and certifying these national heroes have resulted in a curious record of achievement and considerable distortion in our understanding of the development of American manufacturing technology. The principal historical perspective that enshrined the names of Evans, Whitney, Perkins, etc. has been first, the emphasis on originality of invention or “dramatic newness,” and, secondly, the attempt by historians to confine mechanical genius or creativity within national boundaries—Slater and DuPont, of course, being the exceptions to this generalization. Thus we speak quite naturally of American inventors, British inventors, and so on.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , June 1970 , pp. 312 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1970

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References

1 A notable exception is the enlightening and amusing account of Henri Mogeme, the son of a German Duke, a graduate of Heidelberg Polytechnic who instructed the young Sellers in techniques for brazing iron and steel, copper to copper, copper to brass, and other hot-working techniques at the Sellers and Pennock Fire Engine Works around 1823, contained in Ferguson, Eugene S., ed., Early Engineering Reminiscences (1815–40) of George Escol Sellers, Smithsonian Institution, Bulletin No. 238 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1965), pp. 43–51Google Scholar.

2 The correspondence referred to in this article can be found in the Springfield Armory Records, U.S. National Archives, Record Group 1351, “Letters Sent,” and R.G. 1352, “Miscellaneous Letters Received.”

3 Latrobe, Benjamin Henry, First Report to the American Philosophical Society, held in Philadelphia; in answer to the enquiry of the Society of Rotterdam, “whether any, and what improvements have been made in the construction of Steam Engines in America?” (May 20, 1803)Google Scholar, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, VI (1809), 91Google Scholar. “Steam-engines, on the old construction, were introduced in America about 40 years ago. Two, I believe, were put up in New-England before the revolutionary war; and one, (which I have seen) at the copper-mine on the river Passaick, in New-Jersey, known by the name of the Schuyler-mine. All the principle parts of these engines were imported from England.”

4 National Archives, Record Group 217, Second Auditor's Accounts with the Second Comptroller of the Treasury. According to the Secretary of the Treasury's Report on Steam Engines, House Doc. 21, 25th Cong., 3d Sess. (1838), p. 376, there were an estimated 1,860 stationary steam engines in place by 1838. Stationary steam was not introduced into Massachusetts until 1827 and into Connecticut until 1830. These dates are representative of most Northern states with the exception of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Deyrup, Felicia, “Arms Makers of the Connecticut Valley,” Smith College Studies in History, XXXIII (1948), 147–48Google Scholar, gives a good account of the difficulties attending the attempt to introduce steam power at the Springfield Armory.

5 Springfield Armory, “Letters Sent.”

6 Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's and Sons, 1929) III, 272Google Scholar.

7 The significance of Burden's immigration is enhanced when we consider the stature of these men. John C. Calhoun was Secretary of War from 1817–1825, thus the Ordnance Office and the whole of the American arms industry was under his purview. Stephen Van Rensselaer was one of the leading men in New York at this time in terms of wealth and social standing. In 1810 and again in 1816 he was a member of the State's canal commission, in 1819 he was elected to the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, and in 1820 he was President of New York State's first agricultural board. In addition to other attainments he was the founder of a school for mechanics in Troy in 1824, later to be known as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The introduction to Thomas H. Benton remains somewhat of a mystery as Benton was a stormy border-state politician prior to becoming the U.S. Senator from Missouri in 1820.

8 National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White & Co., 1899) II, 333Google Scholar.

9 Henry Burden: His Life and a History of His Inventions, by his daughter Proudfit, Margaret Burden (Troy, New York: Pafraets Press, 1904)Google Scholar. The Proudfit memoir states that the first patent he took out was in 1822 for the hemp and flax machine, while the National Cyclopedia of American Biography lists the cultivator as his first patent in 1820. Unfortunately, the fire in the United States Patent Office in 1836 has destroyed many of the designs, specifications, and models originating prior to this date. While some of these patents have been reconstructed by sworn affidavits taken after 1836, there are huge gaps in our knowledge of this period in American history, necessitating the use of correspondence, memoirs, and other source material that can shed light on this subject. The reconstructed patents are now on deposit in the United States National Archives. However, neither the hemp and flax machine nor the cultivator can be found among these records.

10 Oliver Wolcott was the Governor of Connecticut at this time. He had been Secretary of the Treasury from 1795 to 1801. In this capacity he heard Eli Whitney's petition for his first contract of arms from the U.S. Government, and approved the articles of agreement for 10,000 stand of arms between Whitney and the U.S., dated June 14, 1798. After leaving Washington, D.C. in 1801 Wolcott was engaged in merchant banking in New York City until 1815 when he returned to Litchfield, Connecticut, and entered into the manufacture of woolens. At this time he was active in promoting manufacturing enterprises in his home state.

11 Constance Green, McLaughlin, Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1956)Google Scholar.

12 Woodbury, Robert S., “The Legend of Eli Whitney and Interchangeable Parts,” Technology and Culture, I (Summer 1960), 247Google Scholar.

13 Fitch, Charles, “Report on the Manufacture of Interchangeable Mechanism” (Part I, Firearms), Tenth Census of the United States, II (1880), 3Google Scholar. I have personally seen entries in the Springfield Armory payroll records for “putting up locks, soft” as late as 1846.

14 Fitch, p. 2.

15 Harper's New Monthly Magazine, V (July 1852), 148Google Scholar.

16 Springfield Armory, “Letters Sent.”

17 Springfield Armory, “Letters Received.”

18 Springfield Armory, “Letters Sent.”

19 ibid.

20 Springfield Armory, “Letters Received.”

21 Burke, Edmund, List of Patents for Inventions and Designs from 1790 to 1847, Commissioner of Patents (Washington, D.C.: J. & G. S. Gideon, 1847)Google Scholar.

22 Springfield Armory, “Letters Sent.”

23 Journal of the Franklin Institute, XX (1835), 102Google Scholar. For an improvement in the “mode of manufacturing of Plates for Gun Barrels”; Harvey Mills, Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts, July 12, 1834. “The plates are to be prepared for welding, by rolling, instead of by forging, as has been usually done. The rollers are to be somewhat more in circumference than the length of the barrel to be formed, and are to be geared together in the ordinary way.

“Flat bars are to be employed, of about three-fourths of an inch thick, and wide enough to form the butt of the plate by rolling longitudinally; and in order to give the taper required, both in width and thickness, the bar is first rolled edgewise through eccentric grooves, wide enough to receive it, and is thus reduced to the proper width. It is then rolled flatwise through another groove, or grooves, so formed as to give it the required thickness at the butt, the muzzle, and the intermediate parts. The scarfing is performed in the same way, in suitable grooves, as is likewise the grooving by which it is finally prepared for welding. The mode of proceeding so as to commence the operation upon each bar at the proper moment, is fully described, and the subjoined claim is then made.

“What I claim as my invention or improvement, is the above described method and process of manufacturing plates for gun barrels, and the manner of engaging and disengaging the rollers, as herein fully set forth and described.”

24 Deyrup, “Arms Makers,” p. 152, gives a brief account of Burden's relationship with the Springfield Armory and gives a further example of the diffusion ironworking techniques. “In 1841 Joseph C. Vaughn of Oswego, N.Y. claimed to have invented a barrel rolling machine which would turn out tapered barrels, smooth both within and without. He had worked with Burden on Lee's machine, and had great hopes of his own, especially as a similar machine, recently patented in England, had proved fairly successful.”

25 From the Encyclopedia of Mechanics, quoted in Fuller, Claude E., The Whitney Firearms (Huntington, W.Va.: Standard Publications, Inc., 1946), p. 101Google Scholar.

26 National Archives, Record Group 217, Second Auditor's Accounts with the Second Comptroller. The abstracts of the quarterly returns from the Springfield Armory show that on August 12, 1828, Burden was paid $250 for “drawing a plan for the rolling and slitting mill.” On March 31, 1829, he was paid $300 for “100 days work as engineer in constructing rolling and slitting mill for the U.S. @ $3.00 per day.” For those who place some degree of belief in the proposition that labor receives the value of its marginal product it may be instructive to note that in 1819 Thomas Blanchard was paid at the rate of $1.50 per day by the Armory; subsequently, of course, he was paid on a royalty basis. In 1829 Cyrus Buckland, a firstrate mechanic, was paid $1.67 per day; and Joseph Weatherhead, the Master Armorer, received about $2.50 per day. Consider the cost-of-living index reports in Historical Statistics of the United States, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1961Google Scholar, Series E 157–160, Cost-of-living Index (Rees, Burgess, and Douglas), Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 1820–1926, p. 157Google Scholar. In 1820 the index is 65, for 1829 it is 58—a decline of around 11 percent. While Burden's real wage was more than double Blanchard's, it should be remembered that in 1819 Blanchard's reputation as a mechanic still lay ahead of him. Blanchard was not a complete unknown at his time of coming to Springfield, however, for according to Howe's, HenryMemoirs of the Most Eminent American Mechanics (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1846), p. 201Google Scholar, prior to 1819 Blanchard had sold the patent right for a tack machine for $5,000.

27 Deyrup, “Arms Makers,” p. 152, quoted from Burden to Lee, January 1, 1831.

28 Fitch, “Report,” p. 10.

29 Springfield Armory, “Letters Sent.”

30 Executive Documents, Vol. I, Doc. 1, 31st Cong., 2d Sess., p. 473.

31 Steam, Charles, The National Armories (Springfield, Mass.: G. W. Wilson Co., 1852), pp. 37–38Google Scholar.

32 Executive Documents, Report from the Ordnance Department, Doc. 8, 30th Cong., 1st Sess. (November 20, 1847), p. 693Google Scholar.

33 Deyrup, “Arms Makers,” p. 152, states that James T. Ames made the rollers for the experiments at Springfield.

34 Senate Executive Documents, Military Commission to Europe in 1855 and 1856, Report of Major Alfred Mordecai, Doc. 60, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 107.

35 Fitch, “Report,” p. 5.

36 Ibid.

37 Senate Documents, Vol. 3, 36th Cong., 1st Sess. (1859–1860)Google Scholar.

38 Fitch, “Report,” p. 8; James T. Ames was the brother of Nathan P. Ames, the founder of the Ames Manufacturing Co. of Chicopee, Massachusetts. James had taken over the management of the firm upon the death of his brother in 1847. Rosenberg, Nathan, The American System of Manufacture (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1969), pp. 64–65Google Scholar, gives a full account of this episode and also provides some crucial insights into the technological differences between England and America in this period.

39 Fitch, “Report,” p. 8.

40 The production of gun barrels by rolling was used where the volume of output justified the expense of the rolling mill. The technique of drilling a rod full length is associated with the use of steel barrels and was then essentially the technique employed in producing barrels for sporting arms and small lot production. Fitch, p. 8, notes, “It is also stated that some time about 1848 Thomas Warner, at the Whitneyville works, incurred so much loss in the skelp-welding of iron barrels that he voluntarily substituted steel-drilled barrels in his contract, making them of decarbonized steel, which was believed by him to be a novel expedient.” In drilling, the quality of the barrel depends less upon the method of forming than the quality of the material.

In 1880 some American armories employed both techniques side by side. Two plausible conjectures on the reversion to drilling in England would be a reduced demand for military arms following the termination of the Crimean War, coupled with a design change, or a period of experimentation and small lot production attending the introduction of steel barrels.

41 Dictionary of American Biography. After twenty years of litigation, the United States Supreme Court sustained Burden's invention and patent of the machine for making hook-headed spikes. This contest involved some of the most distinguished lawyers in the United States: William H. Seward, Nicholas Hill, Chancellor Walworth, David T. Seymour, and—it is believed—Daniel Webster. Over the period from 1840 to 1860, these spikes were manufactured either at the Burden plant or elsewhere in contempt of the subsequent Supreme Court decision.

42 Swank, James M., History of the Manufacture of Iron in All Ages (2d ed.; Philadelphia: The American Iron and Steel Association, 1892), pp. 438–39Google Scholar. The pattern most used in Britain was the double-headed or “H” rail which was set in a cast iron chair.

43 Quoted from Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents, 1843, in Hunt's Merchants Magazine, X (June 1844), 558Google Scholar. In 1847, the Mexican War had advanced the price of horseshoes to 50 cents a pound, and Burden, no doubt, was enjoying substantial monopoly profits. Subsequent price reductions awaited the diffusion of the technique upon the break-up of Burden's monopoly of the horseshoe trade based on his patents.

44 Proudfit, Henry Burden, p. 51, quoted from the New York Times, June 3, 1876.

45 Proudfit, Henry Burden, p. 2, quoted from the Troy Daily Times, January 20, 1871.

46 Proudfit, Henry Burden, p. 65, quoted from the Troy Press, August 10, 1903.

47 National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White & Co., 1899) II, 333Google Scholar.

48 Proudfit, Henry Burden, p. 67, quoted from the Troy Press, August 10, 1903.

48 Bishop, J. L., A History of American Manufacturers from 1608–1860 (3d. ed.; Philadelphia: Edward Young & Co., 1868) II, 251Google Scholar, makes the following reference to J. F. Winslow, Esq., the principal manager of the Albany Iron Works, and a highly regarded ironmaster: “He is also a man of genius, and the inventor of several highly valuable improvements to facilitate the working of iron. His rotary squeezers (is) a most effective machine, as one will do all the shingling for forty puddling furnaces, with but a trifle of expense for attendance, a small consumption of power, no waste of iron, and turning out the blooms very hot it facilitates rolling.…” No doubt Winslow had made some modifications of the Burden squeezer, but the original invention should properly be credited to Burden. In 1842 Burden initiated a suit against Corning and Winslow for infringement on his patent for the “rotary squeezer.” This litigation extended until 1867. For thirteen years the matter was in the hands of a referee whose charges totaled $60,000, and the lawyer's fees must have been substantial. The total amount of damages awarded Burden was small, though his patent was sustained.

50 French, B. F., History of the Rise and Progress of the Iron Trade from 1621 to 1857 (New York: Wiley & Halsted, 1858), p. 69Google Scholar.

51 Ibid., p. 129.

52 Lesley, J. P., The Iron Manufacturers Guide to the Furnaces, Forges and Rolling Mills of the United States (New York: John Wiley, 1859), p. 767Google Scholar.

53 French, History, p. 176.

54 Ibid., p. 177.

55 Other notable establishments were the Southwark Foundry and Bement & Dougherty, both of Philadelphia, with 300–350 and 325 men employed, respectively. The famed Allaire Works, builders of marine engines in New York, employed 1,000 men; Providence Tool Company, 800 men; Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Company, 1,500 men; Ames Manufacturing Company, machine builders, 500 men; and E. Remington & Sons Armory, 800–900 men. The Globe Works of Boston engaged in general engineering and construction of heavy machinery and employed 400–600 men.

56 Eighth Census of the United States, Manufactures (Washington, D.C., 1865) III, 180Google Scholar.

57 These percentages overstate the size of Burden's establishment because they are formed from 1864 estimates of Burden's plant in the numerator and 1860 census figures in the denominator. Further, Burden's establishment no doubt benefited significantly due to the swollen demand for horseshoes during the Civil War. However, whether Burden benefited proportionately more than the other ironmasters is not known.

58 Bishop, American Manufacturers, p. 252.

59 Proudfit, Henry Burden, p. 39.

60 J. R. T. Hughes, The Modern World and the Rise of Industry. Hughes's forthcoming book includes accounts of American, European, Japanese, and Russian entrepreneurs. McKay, John, “John Cockerill in Southern Russia, 1885–1905: A Study of Aggressive Foreign Entrepreneurship,” Business History Review, XLI (Autumn 1967)Google Scholar. Also McKay's forthcoming book on the role of foreign entrepreneurs in diffusing technology, to be published by the University of Chicago Press, is most illuminating. Henderson, W. O., Britain and Industrial Europe 1750–1870 (2d. ed.; Leicester, England: Leicester University Press, 1965)Google Scholar. Cameron, Rondo, France and the Economic Development of Europe, 1900–1914 (2d. ed.; Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1965)Google Scholar, particularly ch. iii. Scoville, Warren, “The Huguenots and the Diffusion of Technology,” Journal of Political Economy, LX (1952), 392–411CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Minority, Migration and the Diffusion of Technology,” Journal of Economic History, XI (1951), 347–60Google Scholar.

61 Only one recent writer, to my knowledge, has alluded to Burden's contributions to iron-working technology. See E. S. Ferguson, “Metallurgical and Machine Tool Developments,” in M. Kranzberg and C. Pursell Jr., eds., Technology and Western Civilization (New York: Oxford University Press), Vol. I, Part III, No. 16, p. 270.