Money and Glory Upstart machinists Worcester Reed Warner and Ambrose Swasey built the world’s largest telescopes, catapulting the name of the Warner & Swasey Company into worldwide prominence. by Trudy E. Bell WE GET OUR MONEY OUT OF MACHINERY and our glory out of tele- Despite their scopes,” declared Ambrose Swasey on October 12, 1920, during a dedication PR value, telescopes “ ceremony when he and his long-time business partner Worcester Reed didn’t pay the mort- Warner presented a fully outfitted astronomical observa- gage. Thus, in 1940 after tory with a 9.5-inch refracting (lens) telescope to both founders had died and the Case School of Applied Science (now Warner & Swasey converted Case Western Reserve University) in to a publicly owned company Cleveland, OH.1 beholden to stockholders, the firm That penetrating comment phased out of what had always es- effectively summed up the sentially amounted to astronomical distinguished career of philanthropy. Profits came from Warner and Swasey turret lathes, arms, and gun since they had shak- sights for both World Wars, en hands and gone earth-moving machinery, into partner- textile looms, and ship 40 years other specialized earlier. Only machine tools. By WARNER six years af- 1942, the 6,200- ter starting employee com- their firm in Chicago, they pany was the had landed a contract fourth-largest to build what was m a c h i n e - t o o l then the largest manufacturer in the astronomical nation and was selling 700 telescope Figure 1 machines a month; by 1966 it first in the The first appeared in Fortune magazine’s “world’s larg- est” telescope ranking of the country’s 500 larg- 2 was the 36-inch est corporations. refractor for the Lick Yet, telescopes played a pivotal Observatory on Mount role in first establishing Warner Hamilton, CA, mounted in and Swasey’s worldwide reputa- 1888 and still in use today. tion. Moreover, by approaching such massive precision instru- world [Fig. 1]. This achieve- ments as design engineers, rather ment—toward which Warner than as artists or craftsmen,3 may have been working even Warner and Swasey left an indel- before his formal partnership ible mark on both astronomy and with Swasey—focused world- mechanical engineering. wide attention on their fledg- ling (and yet unincorporated) NEW ENGLAND ORIGINS firm, and crowned them with Both men were born in 1846: an instant and indelible repu- Warner on May 16 in Cum- tation for precision engineer- mington, MA, and Swasey on ing. Four times the firm built December 19 in Exeter, NH. LL telescopes that were the Both grew up on farms, but lived E world’s largest in their class, near towns bustling with textile as well as other astronomical and other mills, and their families SwaseY equipment and accessories. encouraged reading and learn- B E. TRUDY ©2005 WINTER 2006 THE BENT OF TAU BETA PI 13 ing. Warner’s mother was an The 11 years that they spent avid amateur astronomer who with Pratt & Whitney were fun- eagerly read current popular damental to their success. astronomy books and observed Swasey, an inventive genius, at least one partial solar eclipse, worked his way up to head while Swasey’s father welcomed the gear-cutting shop; he care- the industrial revolution so en- fully studied the mathematics thusiastically that he allowed a of generating ideal theoretical railroad to build tracks across curves for gear teeth and solved his farm fields. the challenge of cutting metal As schoolboys, Warner and to produce gears that meshed Swasey were individually fas- with minimal backlash. In the cinated with the humming and 1870s, he received at least two thumping of machinery at local patents: one for an improved mills. At age 19, Swasey ap- protractor and another for an Figure 2 Ambrose Swasey (above prenticed himself to the Choate Manufactur- left) and Worcester Reed Warner epicycloidal engine, basically a rotary milling ing Company in Exeter (later the Exeter are shown as they appeared in machine that Pratt & Whitney added to its Foundry and Machine Company), which 1880 when they started their part- product line of machine tools. Warner, whose produced boilers for steam engines. He nership in Chicago; below is their flair lay in business and marketing, became joined around the time the firm was acquired factory in Cleveland as it looked a intimately familiar with the final assembly by American Safety and Engine Company, half century later. of the firm’s products and was sent to repre- whose Boston-based employees moved to sent them at major trade shows, beginning Exeter to take over the works. Among those with an exposition in Boston in 1873. There employees were George Brayton (who later Warner demonstrated machine tools, in- invented a continuous-ignition-combustion novatively entertaining judges and visitors engine that became the basis for today’s with running patter while turning out little turbojet and fanjet engines) and Brayton’s screws and gizmos that he handed out as new young assistant Warner. Warner and souvenirs—capturing for Pratt & Whitney Swasey met, becoming fast friends and the show’s gold medal. roommates. As their experience grew, Warner and In the spring of 1869, after their appren- Swasey also began bidding in a peculiar ticeships were finished, both young men ap- Figure 3 In the 1920s, Warner institution within the nineteenth-century (below left) and Swasey posed plied to four companies. The most attractive next to the first observatory-class machine-tool industry called inside con- offer to the pair came from the prospering telescope they built, a 9.5-inch tracting. When an order for a large number firearms manufacturer of Francis Pratt and refractor sold to Beloit College of tools would come into Pratt & Whitney, Amos Whitney in Hartford, CT. and decades later donated back to an enterprising employee could negotiate the company. a contract with the company’s owners to PRAtt & WhItnEY fulfill the order at a fixed price, FOUNDATIONS paying for all the raw materials Pratt & Whitney had mush- and time of the employees he’d roomed during the Civil War, use. If he astutely estimated having itself been started just unit production costs and was nine years earlier on $3,600 skilled in managing his work- capital by two former employ- men, he could make a tidy profit; ees of the Phoenix Iron Works the risk, of course, was that he and Colt’s armory and pistol also could end up eating losses. factory. Around the time that The company liked the system, Warner and Swasey were because it capped their costs; hired, Pratt & Whitney incor- and Warner and Swasey liked it, porated with five partners, 500 because they could explore run- employees, and a capitalization ning a business and working with of $300,000. When Warner customers while still employed. and Swasey walked into the Innovatively experimenting huge (to them) Hartford plant, with techniques for improving legend has it that one turned both efficiency and quality, inside to the other and muttered contracting honed their business something to the effect of “we’ll skills and allowed the frugal pair have to work hard to get to the to amass capital faster than they head of this crowd.”4 could just on salary. 14 WINTER 2006 THE BENT OF TAU BETA PI One large issue preoccu- their own firm. Chicago, then pying Pratt & Whitney was Figure 4 The design of the mount and controls of booming with rebuilding after the question of making inter- this portable 6.5-inch refractor for Lick Observa- the Great Fire of 1871 and a changeable parts a practical tory was what made the Lick trustees take serious nexus of rail service to both scheme for manufacturing. Not notice of Warner and Swasey as telescope designers. the East Coast and out West, a new concept, the interchange- For use on astronomical expeditions, the trustees seemed like a promising place ability of parts had been the specified that the mount had to be adjustable for any to start a new machine shop. subject of experiments by the geographic latitude; the result was the screw at the With a handful of employees cotton gin’s inventor, Eli Whit- base of the polar axis, which could adjust the (at least four from Pratt & ney, (Amos Whitney’s relative) axis for any latitude down to 10 degrees. Whitney), the pair rented a Moreover, it incorporated an innova- and pistol-maker Samuel Colt tive design for a self-correcting retail store front at 249 Canal (former employer of both Pratt falling-weight clock drive inside Street. In the cramped shop, and Whitney). One barrier to the pier, as well as control both partners donned aprons universal adoption of inter- rods (visible below the and operated machine tools changeable parts, however, lower half of the alongside their employees, was the fact that even in the tube) for adjusting frugally bundling up against 1870s there was no commer- the telescope’s the icy Chicago winter rather cial standard measure for the motions. than adding firewood to the inch. Thus, there was no way shop stove, and making lunch- of specifying standard—much time sport of throwing rocks at less tight—tolerances among the ubiquitous rats scurrying suppliers. across the floor.6 Pratt & Whitney partnered Their shop was an instant with Harvard professor Wil- success—so much so that by liam A. Rogers, who had co- December they had orders designed a special measuring three months in advance and engine and arranged to borrow by their first anniversary the precision metal bars from needed to seek larger quar- London and Paris that had ters.7 Meantime, they had established the British imperial begun to rethink their location yard and the standard meter.