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

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."

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.

It was in that same building on Geddes Street that Henry H. Franklin worked on his air-cooled engines for the Franklin automobile, which boasted four cylinders and an in-head valve, and was the most successful air-cooled automobile of the era. In 1906, the Franklin automobile ranked third in sales of all automobiles sold in the United States. In the mid-1920s, 15.000 cars were being made a year, but by 1934, due to the Depression, the Franklin plant was closed.

Three years later, Willis Carrier, who was a fan of the Franklin car and wanted to expand his company, the Carrier Corporation, out of New Jersey, moved into the abandoned Franklin plant in Syracuse and began manufacturing air conditioners. The company now distributes its air-conditioning products worldwide.

Today, the tradition of engineering automobiles in Central New York has moved into a new era. Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation is developing electric cars using electric motors designed and made at Syracuse-based Advanced D.C. Electric Motors, Inc. New Venture Gear in Syracuse has also designed and produced a manual-drive unit for Chrysler Corporation's electric car, and they now have a program in electric-car technology. New Venture Gear is also the world leader in four-wheel drive technology.

Another engineering soul who decided to take the plunge into the risky area of inventions was Edwin A. Link of Broome County. In the 1930s he wanted to learn how to fly but couldn't afford flight lessons, so he developed a pilot trainer that enabled pilots to learn how to fly without leaving the ground. Link's initial goal was to provide flight instruction at an affordable rate, but World War II increased the need for trained pilots, and orders for the trainers came from American and Allied governments. Binghamton-based Link Aviation, Inc., eventually became a major manufacturer of aviation equipment.

Over half a century later, the CAE-Link Corporation, as it is now called after it was bought by a Canadian company, continues to provide simulation training systems and technical support services, mostly to military establishments.

"Our capability has been expanded," says Robert Goerlich, community-affairs manager at CAE-Link, "but our basic thrust hasn't really changed in 65 years."

World War I made Theodore Case of Auburn famous for his signalling system that allowed ships and convoys to communicate secretly. The system used what he called the "thalofide cell." which was able to receive beams of infrared rays. These rays are invisible to the human eye but still capable of producing sounds, according to a predetermined code, at a distant point. Case applied this technology to film and by 1923 invented the first successful sound film system. Three years later, William Fox of Fox Films purchased the patent ad, in 1927, Sunrise, the first feature-length motion picture with a soundtrack, was released. Within two decades, new technology eclipsed Case's inventions, but many of the standards he developed for sound production, such as the perforated motion-picture screen, which allows the sound to emanate directly from the action, are still in effect.

Another Auburn native struck by the innovative spirit was Willard Bundy, whose invention of a time-recording clock ultimately laid the foundation of a billion-dollar company. The clock was the basis for the Bundy Time Recording Company of Binghamton, which Bundy created in 1890 with his brother Harlow. By 1900, the company, which was seeing tremendous growth, merged with another time-recorder manufacturer and renamed itself the International Time Recording Company of New York. Harlow was the general head of operations, and Willard continued to invent and design new products. In 191 1 the company consolidated with two other companies to become the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. One of its patents was for cards punched with holes that activated accounting machines; this turned out to be one of the greatest money-makers of all time.

Three years later, Thomas J. Watson took over as general manager of the company, and 10 years later the company was renamed the international Business Machines Corporation. Today, IBM is one of the largest corporations in the world. The time-recording business, which was sold in the 1960s to Simplex, is way behind them, but it was the income from the punched-card business that enabled the company to move ahead with computer technology.

Unfortunately, Willard Bundy split with his brother because of a problem with his patents, which he wanted to give to his son rather than to the company. He moved his family to Syracuse, where he bought out the Dey Time Recording Company and set up the International Time Recording Company, which eventually went out of business. The Dey brothers went into the retail business in Syracuse. That store, too, eventually ceased operations, but not until it had given the city one of its landmark buildings near the comer of South Salina and West Jefferson streets.

The engineering spirit continued when Earl O'Brien met William Gere at high school in Solvay. Their design of the running track there led them both into the field of engineering, which Gere studied at Syracuse University and O'Brien at Cornell. After three attempts at putting together a company, the two finally succeeded in creating O'Brien and Gere in 1945. Their work on the Metropolitan Sewage Treatment Facilities in Syracuse quickly brought them a reputation in the field of wastewater management. One of their most important innovations in wastewater management was the Venturi flume, a screening device for sewage. The company also developed treatments that are still running today, combining textile and municipal waste. Their Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) treatment plant that stands next to the RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., was the largest in the world at the time that O'Brien and Gere designed and built it in the 1980s.

Environmental awareness and new legislation in the 1970s pushed the company in the direction of environmental engineering, which remains a focus to this day. One of their newest projects involves renovating buildings that have been declared environmentally hazardous.

While they were leading engineering in new directions over the past 50 years, O'Brien and Gere also inadvertently bequeathed to Central New York many other engineering firms, whose engineers started out working at O'Brien and Gere. Among those are Syracuse-based Blasland, Bouck and Lee, which also specializes in environmental engineering, and Steams and Wheler Environmental Engineers and Scientists in Cazenovia.

One of the indications that a new era was dawning in engineering was the opening of the Computer Applications and Software Engineering (CASE) Center at Syracuse University in 1984. From the outset, this state-sponsored program emphasized the application of computer technology to problems of interest to industry, and the Center has served as a vehicle for transferring academic research more quickly to the commercial sector. Examples of CASE work with Central New York firms include the development of utility applications for Niagara Mohawk and Utica-based Kaman Sciences, as well as design and manufacturing systems for Carrier Corporation. The Center has also led to the formation of over two dozen high-tech companies, such as Coherent Research, Inc., in East Syracuse, Sonnet Software in Liverpool, and TextWise, Inc., which is located in the CASE incubator.

Current research focuses on software engineering, computer-aided design, distributed (multimedia) information systems, and scientific modeling. Recently, a CASE research team developed a memory architecture that allows data to be stored in three dimensions. Such 3-D optical memories, which use light instead of electrical signals to store and process data, represent a new generation of ultra-high-density random-access storage that can enhance storage capacities a thousandfold over current technologies. A small company in the Center's incubator is investigating commercialization of this novel volumetric memory.

"We have a ready supply of well-educated engineering people." says Stephen J. Miller, P.E., president of the Central New York chapter of the New York State Society of Professional Engineers. "That encourages manufacturers to come here, which ultimately requires additional support of engineering services."

And then there is that other, less tangible, reason: the innovative spirit that seems to have touched so many Central New York engineers. As the region's engineering history reveals, it's a safe bet that the spirit's work is no yet finished.

Copyright Central New York Business Journal Feb 20, 1995
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