inventors - The Cambridge Historical Commission Blog

National Inventor’s Day

Posted on February 11, 2021February 12, 2021 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

DEWEY AND ALMY CHEMICAL CO.

Today we are celebrating Inventor’s Day with a look at two Cambridge inventors who founded the Dewey & Almy Chemical Co. on Harvey Street in North Cambridge: Bradley Dewey and Charles Almy.

Dewey and Almy met on their first day as freshman at Harvard in 1905. They remained friends throughout their years at Harvard and then at MIT, where they studied chemical engineering. After graduation, they went their separate ways until WWI found them assigned to the Chemical Warfare Service. There, both holding the rank of Colonel, they helped supervise the development and production of gas masks. Dewey was in charge of the Gas Production Defense Division, for which he received the Army Distinguished Service medal. Discharged from the army in 1919, the two men went into business together with an aim to provide chemical research that would lead to useful products for industry.

BRADLEY DEWEY

Bradley Dewey was born in Vermont in 1887, the son of Davis Rich Dewey (who became a Professor of Economics at MIT) and Mary Cornelia Hopkins. He received his Harvard B.A. (cum laude) in 1908 then went on to MIT, receiving his second bachelor’s degree, this time in chemical engineering, in 1909. After MIT and until the start of WWI, he worked for the American and Tin Plate company and U.S. Steel.

CHARLES ALMY

Charles Almy was born in 1888 to the Cambridge judge Charles Almy and Mary Ann Cummings. After receiving his A.B. in chemical engineering from Harvard in 1908, he became a research assistant in applied chemistry at MIT. He received his degree in chemical engineering from MIT in 1910. Following graduation, he worked for the American Vulcanized Fibre Co. of Wilmington, Delaware, and the Virginia Red Oil Products Corporation in Baltimore. After establishing Dewey & Almy, he moved away the chemical engineering aspects of the company to become its sales manager. He was described as “a quiet young man with a subdued but absorbing enthusiasm for his business.”

THE DEWEY & ALMY CHEMICAL COMPANY

Their efforts began in a tin shack at 235 Harvey Street in North Cambridge and, literally, at Dewey’s mother’s kitchen stove at 2 Berkeley Street.

Presaging future concerns about the site, neighbors were worried about the possible stink of “rendering grease” and reclaimed rubber, as well as acid production and “similar offensive operations” on the site. (Cambridge Chronicle, 16 August 1919)

Dewey & Almy developed gas masks, synthetic rubber, and rubber-based products, as well as fishing line, latex sealants, plastic bags, and adhesives. During their first decade, the chief product was a water-based compound useful for sealing tin cans and affixing their labels:

Gold Seal Tin Paste: Advertisement from *Canning Age*, 1922

Later, recognizing the needs of the growing frozen foods industry, they developed latex films used for packaging grocery products. A 1939 Life Magazine featured a demonstration of “Cry-O-Vac,” their protective packaging for meats:

“Demonstration of Cryovac Latex Balloon,
Developed by Dewey and Almy Chemical Co. of Cambridge, Massachusetts”

Another invention was an adhesive for gluing cork to the inside of bottle caps. One of their biggest hits was “Grippt,” which they advertised as “One adhesive for every use.” Grippit “cannot wrinkle paper” and is “clean … everlasting.” Smears and excess product “are easily cleaned off with the fingers without soiling them” (Cambridge Sentinel 9 April 1921).

Other products included:

“Multibestos” railroad car brake linings. (Multibestos is a form of asbestos.)

Model train advertising Multibestos (image from eBay)

1943 Signal Corps, U. S. Army Balloon M-278A

U.S. Army Signal Corps balloon via Ehive

“Darex” meteorological balloons

And then, amid all the chemical dispersants, latex and rubber vulcanizing cement, and safe-food packaging, came “Thickit” for use in whipping cream!

Advertisement from *American Stationer And Office Management*, 1921

JERRY’S PIT

In 1942 Dewey & Almy purchased a lot immediately adjacent to Jerry’s Pit. Originally a 19th century clay pit for area brickworks (and probably named for the owner of the pit), the area had become a popular swimming hole. The following year the company donated $5,000 to the city to build bathhouses and toilets on the site, which it agreed to manage. This was no doubt in part to assuage community concerns over possible contaminants from the company. After the W.R. Grace Co. bought Dewey & Almy, these concerns eventually led to the closing of the swimming hole in 1961.

Jerry’s Pond, aka “Jerry’s Pit,” in the 1950s. Near Alewife. (CHC photo)

In 1944 Dewey & Almy received its second Army-Navy Production Award for meritorious services. Charles Almy noted, “This is a tribute to the men and women of our Cambridge plant…I am proud of their determined efforts.”

Preferred Stock of the Dewey and Almy Company dated 20 April 1945.

AFTERWARD

Dewey & Almy opened plants around the world, and the list of its inventions and products is long. In 1954 it was purchased by the W.R. Grace company, which expanded the site to include properties on Whittemore Avenue. After Grace emerged from bankruptcy in 2014, it spun off a separate company, GCP Applied Technologies, which now occupies the site.

During WWII, Bradley Dewey had become Federal Rubber Administrator. He received the medal of the Society of the Chemical Industry in 1944 and was awarded several honorary doctor degrees. He retired as president of Dewey & Almy in 1952 and became chair of the Board of Directors. In the mid-1950s, he formed the Bradley Container Corp., a joint venture with Olin Mathiesen for producing plastic food containers. He sold out to the American Can Company three years later. While in Cambridge he had served two terms on the Cambridge School Committee. He moved to Concord, New Hampshire, in 1968 and died there in 1974 at the age of 98.

Charles Almy died in 1954 at the age of 65. He had been a civic leader in Cambridge, on the Advisory Council of the Cambridge Civic Association, and a Trustee of the Foundation for Vision. He was a director of the Cambridge Trust Co; Vice President of the Cambridge Savings Bank; and President of the Corporation of the Brown & Nichols School, his alma mater. After his death, the Cambridge City Council passed a resolution “attesting to the inspiration and support which he brought to the public officials of Cambridge and to his contributions to the progress which the city has attained …”

Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer, Kathleen Fox.

SOURCES

Cambridge Library digital newspapers online

American Stationer and Office Management Vol. 88, 1921

Cambridge Sentinel 11 June 1921

Canning Age, Vol. 3 1922

Newspapers.com

Genealogybank.com

T.J. Flynn Metal Works Inc.

Posted on November 18, 2019May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

Today we are highlighting some archival photographs that we recently digitized. In our archive’s stacks there is a flat box housing seven mounted photographs associated with the T.J. Flynn Metal Works Inc., a 20^th century Cambridge business.

Life raft metal cross-section. T.J. Flynn Metal Works Collection, CHC.

The earliest reference to the company was in 1914, when Thaddeus J. Flynn’s T.J. & Sons Co., Sheetmetal Works, was located on Albany Street in Cambridgeport. This family company witnessed many location changes from 1914 to the 1930s. In 1918 it was at 37 Albany Street, then it moved to 18-20 Portland Street in 1925, and in 1930 it was located at 49 Albany Street. By 1918, the name of the company changed to its more well-known version, T.J. Flynn Metal Works Inc.

Associated with this larger business was Flynn Roofing and Metal Co., run by Flynn’s son, Edmund T. Flynn. It also moved around the neighborhood – residing at 37 Albany Street in 1917, 8 Portland in 1920, then 35 Albany Street between 1921-1922, and subsequently 49 Albany Street in 1937. Unfortunately, none of the original buildings have photographic references in the CHC files and the larger company was officially unincorporated by 1968-1972, although its final locations are unknown.

During the heyday of the T.J. Flynn Metal Works Inc., Thaddeus married Mary A. Flynn. Their son Edmund invented a life-raft design in the early 1900s. The photographs in the CHC’s archival box are accounts of his work.

A polygonal-shaped testing model raft created by Edmund T. Flynn. T.J. Flynn Metal Works Collection, CHC.

It is unknown when these images were taken since they do not reflect Edmund’s patent approved by the U.S. Patent Office on July 16, 1918. His final design notes emphasize how the official raft was “substantially pointed” at each end and that the “buoyant member is non-circular in cross-section.” The polygon version reflected in the photographic images could have been an earlier design Edmund scrapped during his tests at Scituate Harbor. Or, it could have been a later revision since his patent was updated in 1941.

Two unidentified men standing in a raft to demonstrate the submerged section. T.J. Flynn Metal Works Collection, CHC.

Nevertheless, Edmund’s patented life-raft was a success. It was used in both World Wars and it was officially approved for use on ocean, coast, bay, lake and sound vessels by the Department of Commerce.

E.T. Flynn’s patent design authorized by the U.S. Patent Office on July 16, 1918. Patent # 1,272,412. Source: USPTO PatFT database.

Thaddeus also gained a patent in 1929 for a roof drain. A year later, on September 9, 1930, Thaddeus died, and his wife Mary became president of the company. She was assisted by J. Henry Flynn and his wife Belinda S. Flynn, who were first referenced as additional owners of the company in 1925. However, by 1968-1972 the family business had dwindled out. Edmund’s son, Jonathan, opened European Engineering in Belmont, MA in 1958 but it was ultimately a failed venture. Jonathan’s son, Nick, recounts his father’s subsequent journey in “The Button Man,” published in The New Yorker in 2004.

Torn Down Tuesday: The Shoe and Leather Exposition Building

Posted on September 24, 2019May 13, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

In 1907, shoe and leather interests in Boston and Cambridge, began to envision a trade exhibition building for the marketing and sale of goods made in the area. Led by Oran McCormick, the group canvassed the two cities, looking for prime real estate on which to construct a venue worthy of the world’s first Shoe and Leather Exposition. McCormick purchased land from property owners along the under-developed Charles River Road (now Memorial Drive). At the time of the sale, Cambridge restricted heights of buildings along the river. Fearing that the deal would fall through and the building and its revenue would be lost to Boston, the Board of Aldermen called a special meeting with the Common Council and removed the restriction, and permitted the exposition building for construction.

Memorial Dr 100_Construction — Shoe and Leather Expo Building during construction. CHC Archives photo from Chamber of Commerce.

Plans for the development — already in the works — were drawn by Edward T. P. Graham, a prominent local architect best known for his many Roman Catholic church designs in and around Cambridge. The white building was constructed of wood, concrete and steel, measured 500 feet long and was Classical Revival in the grandest sense, evoking memories of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Memorial Drive 100_Exterior1 — Shoe and Leather Expo Building, circa 1909. CHC Archives photo from Chamber of Commerce.

Memorial Drive 100_Exterior — Shoe and Leather Expo Building. CHC Archives photo from Chamber of Commerce.

The building featured five domes: a large central dome to represent America capped with an American flag, and four smaller ones to represent Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe with respective labeled flags. The main dome measured 125 feet from the ground floor. Under the large dome, a circular theater, an entirely new concept for exhibition buildings, with seating for upwards of 3,000 people on the upper tier anchored the two exhibition wings. A round bandstand on the ground floor was arranged for a large band, which performed every hour while the fair was open.

Memorial Drive 100_Interior dome_Cambridge Room CPL — 1909 photo of interior showing performance arena under central dome, courtesy of Cambridge Public Library-Cambridge Room.

Two interior corridors ran the length of the building and were lined with mahogany and glass display cases that were electrically lit to display exhibitor’s leather shoes and goods. Flanking the exhibits, 6’x14′ sample rooms showcased the finest products, and dealers staffed pop-up shops and fittings for patrons where they could be measured and order directly from the companies.

Memorial Drive 100_Interior booths_Cambridge Room CPL — 1909 photo of interior showing displays and sample rooms, courtesy of Cambridge Public Library-Cambridge Room.

On the ground floor at one end, a 10,000 square foot working exhibit served as a functioning shoe factory and was sponsored by the United Shoe Machinery Company, which educated visitors on every step in the manufacture of leather shoes from assembling of materials to the finishing shine.

Balconies on the building’s upper level overlooked the displays on the ground floor as well and housed displays for retailers’ exhibits which showed local and international dealers just what styles are in demand in other parts of the country, the displays were organized by state. A promenade on the roof of the building encircled the entirety of the structure and offered views of landmark buildings in Cambridge and Boston, as well as a front-row seat to the booming industrial development along the Charles River and nearby Kendall Square.

Memorial Dr 100_Roof dome detail — Shoe and Leather Expo Building central dome, before 1920. CHC Archives Photo from Chamber of Commerce.

The World’s First Shoe and Leather Exposition was held the entire month of July 1909 and an estimated 30,000 visitors attended the opening night. Attendance later dwindled due to the closing of the Harvard Bridge for repairs coupled with limited places to stay in Cambridge. By the end of the month, fair organizers were over $150,000 in debt. They failed to recruit other industries for trade shows and the building’s future was uncertain. The group, which had feared bankruptcy and demolition of the building were saved when Frederic Fisk, the man who initially owned the land, and his business parner William S. Youngman purchased the complex for redevelopment.

Memorial Drive 100_Interior dome group posing_Cambridge Room CPL — Circa 1910 photo of interior, courtesy of Cambridge Public Library-Cambridge Room.

Half of the building was leased to the J. Frank Cutter Automobile Company. Mr. Cutter had been in the carriage and automobile business for about 25 years. His company was one of the most active builders of limousines and landaulet car bodies as well as automobile tops and slip covers. The other half of the building was occupied by the Velie Motor Vehicle Co.’s Boston factory branch.

Memorial Dr 100_Interior stairs — Shoe and Leather Expo Building interior, circa 1948. CHC Archives Photo from Chamber of Commerce.

Memorial Dr 100_Under dome — Shoe and Leather Expo Building, circa 1948. CHC Archives Photo from Chamber of Commerce.

Memorial Dr 100_East Elevation — Shoe and Leather Expo Building. CHC Archives Photo from Chamber of Commerce.

The building, with its large central dome, suffered from deferred maintenance and seemed small and inadequate compared to the Great Dome at MIT’s new campus next door. The Shoe and Leather exposition building was demolished in phases beginning in the 1920s before the site was completely cleared in 1948 for the Eastgate Apartments at 100 Memorial Drive.

Memorial Drive 100_Fire Damage_1940s (2) — Shoe and Leather Expo Building, circa 1948 photo. CHC Archives Photo from Chamber of Commerce.

1916 Sanborn Map of 100 Memorial Dr.

1947 Aerial view of 100 Memorial Dr.

Polaroid and the Land Camera

Posted on November 27, 2018November 28, 2018 by Meta Partenheimer

On this day in 1948, the Land Camera first went on sale. Developed by the Polaroid Corporation, and named for its co-founder Edwin H. Land, this mechanism was the first of its kind—a camera with instant film.

Polaroid Land Camera Catalog (cover)

Polaroid Land Camera Catalog (price list) — Images from a Polaroid Land Camera catalog, ca. 1950s

Polaroid was co-founded in 1937 by scientist and inventor Edwin H. Land and Harvard physics professor George W. Wheelwright III. The company was originally known for its polarizing sunglasses, a product Land had invented following his self-guided research in light polarization. The name “Polaroid” was coined by Professor Clarence Kennedy of Smith College, a mutual friend of Land and Wheelwright.

CambChron_11July1940 — Advertisement for Polaroid “sun goggles” and sunglasses appearing in the Cambridge Chronicle, 11 July 1940

Pair of Polaroid sunglasses from the CHC Objects Collection with case and informational insert, ca. 1930s-1940s

Land studied chemistry at Harvard but left without a degree and moved to New York City in the late 1920s. Without the backing of an educational institution and laboratory, he invented a system of instant in-camera photography—Polaroid film.

1442503498662 — Land, shown here with an early instant photograph, first demonstrated Polaroid’s instant photography system to the public in 1947. Bettman/CORBIS

The Land Camera was constructed in a similar way to traditional film cameras: light entered a lens and was reflected onto light-sensitive film, recording a negative image. Where the system differed was in its delivery of the print. Land’s system contained both the negative film and a positive receiving sheet joined by a reservoir. This pack held a small amount of chemical reagents that started and stopped film development. Rather than sending the exposed film off to a laboratory to be developed, consumers could produce a developed photograph in one minute or less.

Edwin Land 30008 — Edwin Land at the Polaroid Corporation in 1940

Polaroid originally manufactured sixty units of the Land Camera to be sold during the 1948 holiday season. Fifty-seven were put up for sale at the Jordan Marsh department store in Boston, all of which were sold on the first day.

Jordan_Marsh_1957 — Christmas decorations on Jordan Marsh store, photographed by Leslie Jones, December 1957. (Boston Public Library Print Department © Leslie Jones)

Land ran the company successfully until the late 1970s. Land died on March 1, 1991 in Cambridge and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

770-790 Memorial Dr001 — The Polaroid building at 784 Memorial Drive, originally built for the B B Chemical Company in 1938, was occupied by Polaroid from 1966-1996.

For more information on Polaroid or Edwin Land in Cambridge, contact the CHC at histcomm@cambridgema.gov.

Resources:

“Invention of Polaroid Instant Photography.” Edwin Land and Polaroid Photography. 2015. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/land-instant-photography.html#invention_of_instant_photography.
American Chemical Society’s National Historic Chemical Landmarks program.

Meigs Elevated Railway

Posted on November 16, 2018May 14, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

An unusual and widely unknown transit experiment took place right here in Cambridge, known as the Meigs Elevated Railway. Born in Tennessee in 1840, Josiah Vincent Meigs was an inventor; spending most of his life inventing and patenting devices from furniture to guns. Throughout his life, he was interested in making public transportation better and more efficient and wanted to remove the “clutter” of elevated railways in cities. From this, he came up with his proposal, the Meigs Elevated Railway.

Meigs Elevated_Drawing004

With an emphasis on safety, comfort and convenience, the track structure consisted of two rails, one mounted above the other on a line of supports. The single post system would remove roughly four fifths of the structure that darkened streets under other elevated systems of the time. One pair of wheels were angled at 45 degrees and carried the weight of the train; while the other pair, mounted horizontally inside the locomotive, gripped the upper rail and provided driving power. The cars were designed cylindrical to diminish wind resistance and the interiors lined with fireproof material.

Meigs Elevated_Interior006

In 1881, to encourage capital investment and fulfill terms of an earlier charter (which had over 64,000 signatures), Meigs and his friends headquartered at 225 Bridge Street (now Monsignor O’Brien Hwy) and raised $200,000 to build an experimental track. A 227’ line of elevated track was built parallel to Bridge Street with varied elevation changes and curves to test the new system. In 1886, engineers deemed the elevated system “practical and safe”.

Meigs Elevated_Rail Detail and House005

Sadly, it was neither capital nor legislation which finally sank the Meigs Elevated, it was the coming of electricity. While the Meigs system could be fitted to run on electrical power, Josiah believed that electric-powered trains were too expensive and could not provide the speed the system needed. Further setbacks occurred when vandalism and the West End Elevated Railway became direct competition and the Meigs took its final run in 1894. Meigs later sold his charter rights in 1896 and his dreams for were disbanded. In failing health from his Civil War injuries, Josiah Vincent Meigs died from a stroke on November 14, 1907 in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

Meigs Elevated_Philly City Council003

Much more information and photographs are in our collections!