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Central New York home to some of America's most famous engineers

CNY Business Journal (1994-95), Feb 20, 1995 by Grossman, Naomi

SYRACUSE--From the Erie Canal to wastewater treatment, from the Franklin automobile to the electric car, engineering has had a long, innovative history here in Central New York.

"This area is a hotbed of inventors and innovators," says Samuel P. Clemence, an assistant dean at the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University. "It is a tradition up here."

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Exactly when this tradition started is hard to say, but many point to the building of the Erie Canal, one of the first engineering projects in this region. The building of the canal encouraged local engineering talent by providing a "school" of engineering training for those involved in the project. Central New Yorkers developed some well-known engineering innovations in support of the waterway. James Geddes, a local lawyer, salt manufacturer, and budding engineer, was appointed one of the project engineers. He went on to become one of Syracuse's pioneer surveyors and laid out many of the roads that today are busy Syracuse streets. Geddes Street in Syracuse was named after him in 1848.

Canvass White, who was from Oneida County, developed and eventually patented hydraulic cement, which was successfully used in building stronger retaining walls and more impermeable locks and aqueducts. Nathan Roberts, from Madison County, designed a flight of five locks, which lifted the canal into Lake Erie and overcame the Niagara Escarpment--a 60-foot wall of solid rock.

The opening of the Erie Canal allowed industry and the accompanying engineering research to develop and thrive in Central New York by providing cheap, efficient transportation for manufactured goods. By 1917 the canal was closed, but many people insist that its impact on engineering is still being felt today. It gave companies a reason to locate here, and the reputation of Central New York as the crossroads of the state stuck even without the canal.

The canal era saw another engineering innovation in Central New York, when Alexander Brown, a mechanic in Syracuse, showed Lyman Cornelius Smith, of Geneva, the large office typewriter he had invented, with its famous double keyboard. The machine, called the Smith Premier, became the basis for the Smith Premier Typewriter Company, organized in 1888 with Smith as president. Five years later the company became part of the Union Typewriter Company, which was a merger of Smith Premier and other typewriter companies with names like Remington, Caligraph, and Densmore. Within 10 years Smith withdrew from this company to form the L C Smith and Brothers Typewriter Company, which came out with a new typewriter. The company eventually merged with the Corona Typewriter Company of Groton, and Smith-Corona went on to become a household name for American typewriters.

Smith also manufactured the L.C. Smith gun, a shotgun used by sportsmen for firing at game and clay pigeons, which is still being made today in Fulton.

But possibly the greatest engineering gift Smith bestowed upon Central New York evolved out of his difficulty in finding skilled workers. He decided this region needed an educational facility for engineers and in 1901 donated funds to Syracuse University to create the L.C. Smith College of Applied Science.

It wasn't until World War II, when the entire country required vast quantities of skilled engineers for the war effort, that the college experienced significant growth. It also shifted its focus from an undergraduate institution with an emphasis on civil engineering to an institution of graduate study in different disciplines of engineering and a research center.

The engineering achievements of the post-war years at the college include analysis of electrical networks and a now well-known formulation in 1968 by Roger Harrington, a graduate of Syracuse University and a professor of engineering there. Harrington's work facilitated the use of computers as aids in solutions to electromagnetic field problems, a theory the reverberations of which are still being felt in the field today.

Reflecting the changes the industry itself has undergone during the life of the college, its name has undergone many revisions. Today its longer, more inclusive name--L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science--reflects the importance of computers to modem industry.

The road from applied science to engineering and computer science might seem obvious in retrospect, but traveling it required vision and courage. The innovative spirit seems to have struck a good number of Central New York engineers over the past century, enabling them to take that route.

One of these engineers was John Sweet, an instructor of engineering at Cornell University who, in the 1890s, invented the Straight Line Steam Engine. He shared manufacturing space on Geddes Street in Syracuse with Charles E. Lipe, who was working on his universal milling machine, his broom-sewing machine, motion-picture equipment, milking machines, and automatic looms.

Lipe also invented variable-speed bicycle gears, forerunners of the automotive transmissions manufactured by the Lipe-Rollway Corporation, the company that was formed when Lipe merged his company, the Lipe Company, with his brother Willard's Rollway Bearing Company. The firm also invented machines for use in the manufacture of auto parts and designed auto parts that were used in early Ford models. Today the company, still based in Syracuse, continues to design and manufacture cylindrical roller bearings for all types of heavy machinery.

Central New York home to some of America's most famous engineers

CNY Business Journal (1994-95), Feb 20, 1995 by Grossman, Naomi

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