20 THE DELAMATER IRON WORKS— 



I went there myself on my graduation from Lehigh University in 1878 when 

 I was twenty years old and spent four years there. As an example of the experi- 

 ence a boy could get there let me refer to my own case. I spent one year in the pattern 

 shop under Charles Van Wagenen with a follow-up under Fred Sibley in the foundry. 

 I was assigned to Joseph Robert-Shaw, than whom there was no better pattern- 

 maker in the country. Then came an introduction to metal working by several 

 weeks of chipping castings, during the first part of which I had to take a day off 

 once in a while to let my hands, which had become pulp from hammering them in- 

 stead of the chisel, heal up. Head Foreman James Miller used to stand over me and, 

 I imagine, with many an internal chuckle would encourage me to "keep at it, boy; 

 you won't be sorry some day,'' and I never was, for in after years there were times 

 when I have had pride in my prowess as a chipper when, taking the hammer and 

 chisel from a workman, I showed a gang that I could handle tools myself and thus 

 secured a respect which I might otherwise have missed. A year followed in the 

 machine shop finishing engine parts on machine tools and then a year in the erect- 

 ing gang, assembling machinery on the floor and on outside work, installing ma- 

 chinery in the holds of vessels and in industrial plants. Six months of this time 

 were spent at John Roach's shipyard at Chester, Pennsylvania, installing in the 

 Cromwell line steamer Louisiana the engines I had already helped to assemble in 

 the machine shop. John Baird was the designer and engineer and his daughter was 

 his draughtsman. She used to come to the shop and the shipyard and give directions 

 like a veteran. Then I spent a year in the draughting office, first under Roelker on 

 general work and later under Geo. F. Meyer on ice machines, and while with him 

 I prepared a paper on Mechanical Refrigeration and presented it in 1881 to the first 

 annual meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers at Hartford, Con- 

 necticut. Starting in at .03 cent per hour, the regular apprentice wage, my pay was 

 increased without solicitation, as I showed any qualification for advancement. Three 

 dollars and sixty cents seems an insignificant sum in these days to receive for six 

 days of ten hours each, but I would have considered myself fortunate to have been 

 permitted to work there for nothing, so valuable was the experience I was able to 

 gain, and I now regret that I accepted an offer to take a position as engineer for a 

 rolling mill instead of staying there longer. 



During my stay the works were a veritable nursery, from which inventors who 

 had had their ideas developed and made practical were started out in business for 

 themselves. Among the principal mechanisms that come to my mind as having been 

 developed while I was there are the Ingersoll rock drill, the Rand air compres- 

 sor and the Delavergne ice machine, but there were many others of minor note. 



The diversity of work performed may be indicated by comparing what I have 

 already enumerated with a few others which come to my recollection. For in- 

 stance, there was a wooden cannon of about 12-inch diameter, painted black to re- 

 semble iron, made in the pattern and machine shops for a vaudeville performer. A 

 cannon fire-cracker, exploded in the iron-lined breach, was to make the noise, while 

 a spring released by a string, pulled by the man who lighted the cracker, was" to 



