Ross Winans
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Ross Winans (1796-1877) was an American inventor, mechanic, and builder of locomotives and railroad machinery. He is also noted for design of pioneering cigar-hulled ships. Winans was one of the United States' first multi-millionaires, and was related to James McNeill Whistler through marriage (Whistler's brother George married Winans' daughter Julia).
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[edit] Railroad Work
In 1828 he developed a friction wheel with outside bearings which established a "distinctive pattern for railroad wheels for the next one hundred years or so. In the late 1820s also he became associated with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, eventually entering their service as an engineer. One of his first and more important tasks was to help Peter Cooper build the Tom Thumb locomotive. By 1831 he was appointed assistant engineer of machinery on the B&O. He invented and patented an improvement in the construction of axles, or bearings on July 20th. Also in this productive year he built the "Columbus", his first double-truck car, which he immediately patented, even though he was not the first individual to build one.
In 1835 Winans went into partnership with George Gillingham and in 1836 they succeeded to the 1834 lease of Phineas Davis & Israel Gardner of the B&O's company shops at Mt. Clare and continued the manufacture of locomotives and railroad machinery. "As far back perhaps as the year 1836, the firm of Gillingham and Winans, and, after the dissolution of that firm, I myself, down to 1841 or 1842, manufactured a Rail Road Wheel..." (letter #322).
Winans' next important development in locomotive design was an 8-wheel connected freight locomotive in the early 1840s. In 1843 Gillingham and Winans built their own shop to maximize their profits. Winans quit the locomotive business in 1857 after a dispute with Henry Tyson, then head of motive power for the B&O, over the use of leading bogies on his locomotives. Winans generated a great many patents and was heavily engaged in litigation over ideas he claimed as his own.
[edit] Civil War politics
During the Civil War Winans was a member of the Maryland state legislature, and was arrested twice due to his anti-Federal activities and speeches. On the day before the Baltimore riot of 1861, Winans moved a resolution "protest[ing] in the name of the people of Maryland against the garrisoning of Southern forts by militia drawn from the free States" and 'calling upon citizens of the state unite "to repel, if need be, any invader who may come to establish a military despotism over us." He was arrested shortly after the riot, was released, and elected again on April 24 as part of a States Rights ticket. His firm is also recorded as supplying munitions to Confederate forces during the war.
[edit] The Cigar Ship
In the mid 1800s Winans and his son Thomas designed and built a series of spindle-shaped boats, usually referred to as the "cigar ships". The first was constructed in 1858 and featured an unprecedented (and in the end, technically unfeasible) midship propeller, enclosed in a shroud. This propeller was driven by steam engines located in each hull section. The intent was to allow the ship to progress with less disturbance from weather and waves. This ship was discussed at length in the pages of Scientific American, and in the end remained tied up at the Winans docks for many years, after a series of trials and modifications. It was never subjected to a sea trial.
After the Civil War (during which Winans was held for a time as a Confederate sympathizer) Winans and his son took their enterprise to Europe, and several boats were built in England and in St. Petersburg, Russia. None of there were put to full sea trials, though press reports survive of trips in the Solent and the English Channel. The boats themselves remained tied up in Southampton into the 1880s, but inspired no imitators.
[edit] References
- The Winans Cigar Ships by Michael Crisafulli
- Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861; A Study of the War, Brown, George William, Johns Hopkins University, 1887 (from Rootsweb)
[edit] External link
- Ross Winans' Letterbook, 1850-51 Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
