US Patent: 1,257X
|
| Wheel wright's labor saving machine
|
|
Patentee:
|
|
| Mellen Battle (exact or similar names) - Albany, NY |
|
|
Patent Dates:
|
| Granted: |
Apr. 04, 1810 |
USPTO (New site tip)
Google Patents
Report data errors or omissions to steward
Jeff Joslin
Vintage Machinery entry for Mellen Battle
|
|
Description: |
| This is one of the relatively few early (pre-1822) patents whose drawing and specification survive intact. The 1877 book by M. M. Bagg, The Pioneers of Utica, has a few mentions of inventor Mellen Battle. "...a most ingenious and accomplished machinist, a Welshman, named Evan Thomas, who was much resorted to for advice and assistance... He aided Mellen Battle... in constructing a machine for the making of wagon wheels. ... Mellen Battle... advertised in December 1810, what he termed the American Wheelwright's Labor Saving Machine; it being a machine for making all kinds of carriage wheels, also also spokes, axe helves, &c. He obtained a patent in 1809. This Battle deserves to be remembered as the man who built the only steamboat that has ever traversed the Mohawk above the falls at Cohoes... Mellen Battle was building a steamboat for the Mohawk, designed to ply between between Schenectady and Little Falls. It was quite peculiar in construction, the steam being used not for the working of paddles, but to put in motion poles that were to reach the bottom of the river and push the boat onward. These poles, of which there were two on a side, were jointed to the upper extremity of upright beams, and were made by means of cranks to rise alternately out of the water, and to set themselves again on the bottom. The boat was a failure, and never made more than a single trip..."From "A Review of the First Fourteen Years of the Historical, Natural History and Library Society of South Natick, Mass.", 1884: "Mellen Battle, the next owner, bought the estate November 16, 1816. He was an ingenious mechanic, and invented some improvement in wheels, or a method of manufacturing them, which led to the erection of a factory at the southerly end of the dam in this village, for the purpose of supplying the market with his goods. But this enterprise proved a failure..." |
|
