Woodruff and Beach Steam Engine
(Page 4 of 4)
March/April 1992
John Bowditch
Samuel Woodruff lived to 1882, when he was 68 years old, and it
would appear from an advertisement of 1874 that the Woodruff Iron
Works was very much in business at that time advertising mill work,
all kinds of machinery and castings of any size or style. The
engine illustrated in this advertisement is a new engine not shown
in the advertising as late as 1869. It has a girder bed and is
elevated from its foundation on short legs. The valve gear is also
different, the intake valves being arranged vertically and operated
by a long shaft controlled endwise by the governor. In all an
engine of more modern design and appearance, but apparently using
the same valves.
RELATED CONTENT
Our engine was moved from the site of an old woodworking factory
in Deep River, Connecticut to the museum in the early autumn of
1990, and is presently outside waiting for the preparation of the
site for it inside.
'The Woodruff Iron Works, known also as the Woodruff
& Beach works, stood very high among the makers of heavy and
complicated machinery, especially such as required skill and
ingenuity in designing.11'
We regret not having information at this time about the outfit
of machine tools so necessary to the manufacture of all these
complex and high-grade engines.
If anyone knows of the existence of early machines which have
been abandoned at their original sites, please contact the American
Precision Museum, P.O. Box 679, Windsor, VT 05089, and John
Bow-ditch, Curator of Industry, Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, MI
48121.
FOOTNOTES
1Richard Everett.
2Given to the APM in 1983 by Robert Garthwaite.
3POWER, August 22, 1911, and Woodruff & Beach
catalog of gear patterns, 1868, at Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC.
4No. 4182, issued Sept 9, 1845.
5 A History of American Manufacturers from 1608 to
1860, by J. Leander Bishop, Philadelphia, Edward Young & Co.,
1864, Vol. II, p. 747.
6 The Memorial History of Hartford County,
Connecticut 1633-1884, ed. by J. Hammond Trumbull, Boston, Edward
L. Os-good, Publ., 1886, Vol. 1, p. 570.
7Full page illustrated advertisement. Webb's
N.E. Railway and Manufacturers Statistical Gazetteer,
Providence, 1869, p. 595.
8P0WER, March 7, 1922, Vol. 55, No. 10.
9See Footnote 6.
10Ibid.
11Ibid.
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