Ferracute Goes to China - 1897
When Oberlin Smith asked Ferracute engineer and press designer Henry
Janvier, to make a business trip to Wuchang and Chengtu China, Henry
needed little time to think about the offer. Janvier was to oversee the setup of
two new factories of coining presses and other equipment Ferracute had
shipped a year earlier. He eagerly packed his bags and his camera, and within a few days, set off
for a ten-month around the world trip of a life time. Over one hundred
years later, the story Henry Janvier's trip remains remarkable through his carefully
preserved letters and photographs. Janvier's trip to China was the topic of a
recent exhibit
at the Burton Showroom in Bridgeton New Jersey ...
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The Ferracute Plant Site
In 1896, Oberlin Smith wrote in the Scientific Machinist about a visionary factory
that would have "walls that were smooth clean with a permanently light color, and windows
clean and numerous assisted in their function by sky lights"
and "would provide uniform warmth and good ventilation" for the comfort
and health of its workers. After a devastating fire, that totally
destroyed his original plant on East Commerce St. in Bridgeton, New
Jersey, Smith set out to build the
plant of his dreams in 1904. Ferracute finally closed its doors in 1968, having been in business
for 105 years. After closing, the site was occupied only briefly by a few small
business tenants. In recent years, however, the buildings have largely
remained abandoned. The Ferracute site was listed on New Jersey’s top 10
most endangered historic sites in 2000.What has become of Oberlin
Smith’s visionary factory? ...
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Oberlin Smith and Magnetic Recording
Thomas Edison demonstrated his newly invented phonograph machine to Oberlin Smith when Smith visited Edison
in his Menlo Park laboratory in 1878. As a lover of music, Smith purchased an Edison phonograph, but soon found the audio quality of it to be “too scratchy” and the questioned the expense and precision of its mechanical parts. After nearly ten years of tinkering, Smith published the idea of storing a recording on a magnetic wire
in the English journal Electrical World , and became the father of all magnetic recording devices.
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Oberlin Smith - A Man of Many Parts
Oberlin Smith is most famous as one of the leaders of the mechanical engineering field in the late 1800's. Showing an
early interest in mechanics, he opened his own machine shop at the age of 23, with his cousin J. Burkett Webb. A year later Smith founded a new company called
The Ferracute Machine Co. which specialized in the manufacturing of large metal working presses, that were first used to stamp out cans for for the food processing
industries, and were later used for stamping out, among other things, parts for bicycles, fenders for automobiles, and coins. Holding at least
70 patents, his inventions were not limited to metal presses, but expanded to include looms, an automatic garage door opener, an automatic lock, and an automatic record
changer. Smith was member of several professional societies, and rose to President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 1899.
Oddly, he is most remembered, not for his mechanical achievements, but for his invention of magnetic recording, the technology used for audio and video recording and for computer
disc drives...
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