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1896 Portrait-William Sellers |
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Cassier's Magazine Jul 1896 pg 162; 231-233 |
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7/21/2011 11:09:31 AM |
WILLIAM SELLERS — The name of Sellers has become almost a by-word for excellence among engineers and machinery users not in the United States alone, but wherever machine tools are employed, for at the Vienna Exhibition in 1873, the recommendation for the award of the Grand Diploma of Honour to Wm. Sellers & Co., was "for pre-eminent achievements in the invention and construction of machine tools, many of
which have been adopted as models by the constructors of tools in all countries."
The ancestors of William Sellers have had a long and memorable connection with science. From the organization of the American Philosophical Society, some one of his family has always been a member of it, and William Sellers is now a member. His paternal great grandfather, John Sellers, then a member of the Assembly of Pennsylvania, was appointed by this society, in connection with three other members, to observe the transit of Venus in 1769, and his maternal great grandfather, William Poole, came from England to observe the same transit and remained here.
Mr. Sellers was educated at a private school maintained by his relatives for the education of their children, acquired the machinist's trade with his uncle, and at the age of twenty-one took charge of the large machine shops of Bancroft, Nightingale & Co., manufacturers of steam engines and mill gearing at Providence, R. I. In 1848, in connection with the Mr. Bancroft of that firm, he commenced the manufacture of machinists' tools and mill gearing, under the firm name of Bancroft & Sellers. In 1853, his brother, John Sellers, Jr., became a member of this firm, and in 1855, when Mr. Bancroft died, the firm became William Sellers & Co. In 1886, the corporation of William Sellers & Co., Incorporated, was established, with William Sellers as president and engineer.
Prior to 1857 bolts and nuts could not be made commercially interchangeable. In that year a bolt machine, the first of its kind, was devised by Wm. Sellers, and constructed by his firm, in which dies, to cut the thread at one pass, and adjustable to size, could be opened and closed while running continuously in one direction, and thereafter ordinary screw bolts and nuts were made interchangeable.
Prior to 1867 the teeth of wheels were cut for special purposes alone. The only power used was that required to rotate the cutter, the movement against the cutter, and its reverse, and the division for the next tooth were all performed by the workman. The cost of such work was so great that the teeth of nearly all wheels, even for fine machines, were cast. In that year the first automatic gear cutting machine was devised by Wm. Sellers, constructed by his firm and exhibited at Paris in the same year, in which the work of the operative was limited to adjusting the
wheel for the first cut. The machine then proceeded to cut a tooth, retract the cutter, turn the wheel for the next tooth, and so on until the wheel was cut in less time than it could be done before, and as one man could easily attend several machines, the cost of this work was so greatly reduced that cast teeth were no longer admissible in good machines.
In 1864, Mr. Sellers was elected president of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, and in the same year his paper giving the first formula ever offered for screw threads and nuts, was read before that institute, and the formula then offered has since become the standard for the United States. In 1873, Mr. Sellers became president of the Midvale Steel Co., at Nicetown, which he subsequently reorganized, and under his management it became the first successful producer of the material required by the United States Government for its ordnance and small arms.
Prior to this date, in 1868, he had established the Edge Moor Iron Company, for the manufacture of iron and steel structures, and has ever since been its president. This company made all the iron work for the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, and the steel and iron structural work for the great Brooklyn Bridge at New York. It has now one of the largest plants in the United States, or in the world, for building iron bridges and other structures of iron and steel.
Mr. Sellers was for several years a director of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, and since 1866 has held a similar office in the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad Company. In 1868 he was elected a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, —a position which he still holds. He is a member of the Union Club of Philadelphia, of which the Union League is an outgrowth. Of the latter he is one of the corporators, and was for several years a vice-president.
Indefatigable in his exertions to create the Centennial Exhibition, he bore no small share in carrying the project in the direction of assured success, and was elected vice-president of the Centennial Board of Finance at its organisation, but declined on account of the pressure of business. In 1873 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, at Washington, and in 1875 a corresponding member of the Societe d'Encouragement pour 1' Industrie National, at Paris, and in 1889 the honour was conferred of Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur.ingfrom the stopping of the heavy reciprocating mass at each end of the stroke, and expressed the opinion that the use of the fly-wheel would be a greater encumbrance to a mill than a waterwheel, to be supplied with water pumped up by an engine. There is nothing, therefore, in the history of the development of the steam engine, or in the brilliant career of Watt, to lend support to the theory that the progress of mankind is dependent upon the periodic appearance on the stage of some actor of inspired genius; but, on the contrary, many illustrations are afforded of the fact that men of the highest ability and experience are as apt to be wrong in their forecast of events, and in their estimates of the relative importance of their own or other person's investigations or inventions, as are those of humbler powers.
At the Exposition Universelle, at Paris, in 1867, Mr. Sellers' firm received a gold medal, and at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, in Philadelphia, the judges reported that '' this collection of machine tools was without a parallel
in the history of exhibitions, either for extent, or money value, or for originality and mechanical perfection." At the Vienna Exposition in 1873, the Grand Diploma of Honour and five bronze medals were conferred upon the firm. At the Paris Exposition of 1889, the highest award, the Grand Prix, was given to William Sellers & Co., Incorporated, together with several medals, and at the close of the exposition, the names of three collaborateurs were requested, to whom, as individuals, diplomas were sent, and to William Sellers in addition, as already stated, the honour was conferred of Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur. |
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1896 Portrait-William Sellers
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