Charles A. Otis
One day the superintendent came into the office and told me he had tried my machine for facing nuts and it would not work. I felt disappointed, because I had confidence in it. I went out to see what the matter was, and at a glance I saw that it had been ingeniously arranged not to work. The feed had been made rapid and the cutting motion very slow, so that the tools could not take their cuts and the slow-moving belt ran off the pulleys. I did not reduce the feed-motion, but increased the speed of the cutters and the belt some eight or ten-fold, when the trouble vanished. I never knew anything to work better than that tool did.
Porter-Allen Engine 40″×48″ #207
Dash pot for Governor.
The burning anxiety of the superintendent was to show up my ignorance. A first-rate chance to do so soon seemed to present itself. The counterpoise of the governor of the Otis engine dropped instantly to its seat when a plate struck the rolls and as instantly rose to the top of its range of action when it left them. This made a noisy blow which was disagreeable and might in time cause an accident. Mr. Wellman sent me a sketch of a device he had thought of for arresting this motion by air-cushions. I told the superintendent to have that apparatus made and make the air-cushions four inches in diameter. He said four inches diameter would not answer; they must be eight inches. “No,” said I, “four inches diameter is ample; make them four inches.” A few days after he called me into the shop to try my four-inch air-cushions. I found the apparatus secured in a vise in a vertical position. I took hold of the lever and lifted the piston; it met with no resistance until it struck sharply against the end of the chamber. For a moment I was stunned by the man’s audacity, and threw the piston up and down again to make sure it was not a dream. I then turned my back on the superintendent and called to a boy to find Mr. Fulmer, the foreman of the second floor, and tell him I wanted him here. In a moment he appeared, and I said to him: “Mr. Fulmer, I want you to make a new piston for this apparatus and make it a proper fit; you understand.” Mr. Fulmer bowed assent. I added: “There will be time to-day to get it into the sand, and it can be finished early to-morrow. When it is ready for my inspection come yourself to the office and let me know.” About the middle of the next forenoon Mr. Fulmer called for me. I went in and found the piston arrested at each end of its motion by a perfect air-cushion. “All right,” said I, “see that it is shipped to-day.”
Mr. Fulmer was an excellent mechanic and a man of good general intelligence; he would have made the piston a proper fit in the first place if he had not been expressly ordered to make it loose and useless. The superintendent, on his persistent assumption that I was a fool, had actually expected me to say when I tried the apparatus: “Oh, I see, four inches diameter will not do. You will have to make it eight.”
Some time in 1881 or 1882 I had a queer experience with an engine for the New York Post Office. It was to take the place of an engine then running. The engineer of the Post Office informed me that this engine had a cylinder twelve inches in diameter. I told him it looked to me from the external dimensions that the diameter must be fourteen inches and asked him to take off the back head and measure it for me. He wrote me a few days after that he found that he could not get the back head off, but I might rely upon it being twelve inches. So I did rely upon it being fourteen inches, furnished an engine accordingly, and found it to be the size needed.
Daniel J. Morrell
Some time after the engine was started I received a line from the Postmaster saying they were much disappointed in it. They expected a gain in economy, but they were burning more coal than before, also that the engine pounded badly. I went to New York to see what the matter was. The engine seemed to be working all right except for the knock, so I made my way down to the sub-cellar. There was nothing there but the boilers and the engineer’s desk. On the cellar stairs, after I had shut the door behind me, I heard a loud sound of escaping steam. The boilers were under the middle of the building; a four-inch steam-pipe ran from them a distance of about eighty feet, suspended from the ceiling, to a point under the engine, then turned up through the floor to the under side of the steam-chest. The exhaust pipe, of the same size, came from the engine through the floor and was carried parallel with the steam-pipe to the middle of the building and upward through the roof. The two pipes were about eighteen inches apart, and in the vertical portions under the ceiling they had been connected by a half-inch pipe having a globe valve in the middle of its length. The valve-stem was downward and the valve set wide open. The noise I heard was caused by the steam rushing through this pipe. I computed that about as much steam was being thus blown away as was used by the engine. My first impulse was to call upon the Postmaster and tell him what I had found, but I decided not to bother him. I could not reach the valve to close it, but discovered a box used for a step to an opening in the wall, so I brought that out and standing upon it was able to close the valve; then the noise ceased and I put the box back.