International Printing Telegraph Company signed by Jacob Hays Linville - New Jersey 1886

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Beautiful certificate from the International Printing Telegraph Company issued in 1886. This historic document was printed by the American Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of an allegorical woman leaning against an image of Benjamin Franklin. This item has the original signatures of the Company's V. President, Jacob H. Linville and Treasurer, and is over 133 years old.
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Certificate Vignette
The Electrical World, Volume 15 - 1890 The International Printing Telegraph Company gave an exhibition of its machine at the company's shops in Camden, N. J., on Thursday. Jan. 9. The system is the invention of Mr. J. H. Linvillc of this city, and is more familiarly known as the Linville system of printing telegraphy. It was on exhibition at the Equitable building. New York for several months in the early part of last year.
JACOB HAYS LINVILLE, M. Am. Soc. C. E.' Died August 4th, 1906. Jacob Hays Linville, of Pennsylvania Quaker ancestry, was born on September 23d, 1825, on the farm of his father, Arthur Linville, near the little village of Pequea, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His father, besides farming, was also engaged as a tanner and currier, at Gap, Pennsylvania. His mother, also a Pennsylvanian, was Elizabeth Haines. His primary education was obtained in the local public schools, and was followed by a course in the Academy of Dr. Duffield at Belleview, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he was prepared for his college entrance examination. He was matriculated at Union College, Schenectady, New York, in September, 1845, at the age of twenty, and was graduated, with the degree of B. A., in July, 1848. Nothing has been learned to indicate that he had any predilection for engineering as his future profession; in fact, shortly after his graduation, he engaged in teaching, in his home public schools, for a short term only, and then he seems to have decided to adopt the Law as his profession, and, with that in view, in 1851 or 1852, he entered, as a student, the law office of William M. Meredith, Attorney at Law, in Philadelphia. Evidently, however, he discovered very soon that the Law was not his vocation, for he terminated his studies in it in less than a year. Then, apparently, he determined to adopt Engineering, and his first employment was as a topographical assistant in the corps of engineers making the surveys for the Lancaster, Lebanon and Pine Grove Railroad, in his home county. This was followed by an engagement as Assistant Engineer in the corps of the late William Hasell Wilson, Hon. M. Am. Soc. C. E., then engaged upon the location and construction of the Philadelphia, Media and Westchester Railroad. In 1857 he was appointed Assistant Resident Engineer, under Mr. Wilson as Resident Engineer, on the Middle Division (Harrisburg to Altoona) of the Pennsylvania Railroad. On May 21st, 1857, Mr. Linville married Miss Celeste Virginia Rush, daughter of a Philadelphia merchant. Their union was blessed with only one child, a son, named Samuel Rush Linville, who in later life adopted as his profession that of "Electrician;" he died in Philadelphia on May 12th, 1899, in his forty-first year. In 1863 Mr. Linville was appointed Engineer of Bridges and Buildings for the Pennsylvania Railroad, with residence and office ·Memoir prepared by Walter Katte, M. Am. Hoc. C. E. in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the general headquarters and offices of that company's Operating and Construction Departments. This appointment seems to mark a singularly interesting and important turning point in Mr. Linville's professional career, and is apparently the initial one from which started his subsequent brilliant achievements in the specialties of design and construction of railroad bridges and buildings, remarkable for the reason that, as far as can be learned, he started with very little, if any, technical training or practice in those specialties. That he fully realized this, is disclosed by the following extract from a letter written by him to a close personal friend many years later: "I went to Altoona with a young wife, with everything new to me. The bridges on the line were nearly all a wreck; I knew nothing of bridges, and had at my disposal nothing but Haupt's old book, all wrong. Orders came in to build new iron bridges, and I had to hustle, with many sleepless nights, and days spent over old patterns and new plans and calculations involving many changes and improvements in the plans of the original cast-iron chord, arch, and posts of the old Pratt type." In 1863-64, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company having determined to prosecute the construction of the old Pittsburg and Steubenville Railroad, the question of bridging the Monongahela River at Pittsburg, and the Ohio River at Steubenville, at once became of very serious moment, as it was most energetically and violently objected to by the united coal and boating interests of those rivers. Tt was alleged, and not without a good deal of plausibility, that an5 piers placed in their boating channels would inevitably and utterly destroy their business, by rendering it impossible, or so dangerous as practically to make it impossible, to continue the old-fashioned "broadhorn" system of floating their coal to market, on which, to a great extent, it depended. This controversy was stubbornly maintained on both sides, and was fought with most virulent animosity, through no end of "Courts" and "Legislatures," until, finally, a compromise was arrived at when the Railroad Company agreed to construct, over the navigable channels of the rivers, spans of not less than 300 ft. in clear between the piers, on the water line. The river interests believed that the railroad company would find it impracticable to design and erect a span of that length to sustain safely the then prevailing weight of railroad trains, as, at that time, it was pretty generally believed, even by many technical experts, that 250 ft, was about the safe limit of spans of bridging to sustain the railroad "live loads" of that day. However, the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company at that time-- Mr. John Edgar Thomson--was far too astute, and too good an engineer himself, to have ever agreed to such terms, had he not previously assured himself of perfect ability to comply with them. He had been for some years well acquainted with Mr. Linville, and entertained a high opinion of his abilities as a bridge designer, and had accepted his assurance that it was practicable to design metallic spans, from 300 to 350 ft. in length, with entire safety. Mr. Linville made only one reservation, namely, that the railroad company should cause to be built for him a testing machine sufficiently powerful to "test to failure" full-sized bridge members. Mr. Linville had satisfied himself--as indeed had many other engineers of that day--that the old formulas and experiments of Hodgkinson, Fairbairn, Kircaldy, et al., could not be relied on to give absolutely safe standards of the ultimate strength and moduli of elasticity of full-sized members, as they were derived from the results of laboratory tests made upon samples of very small sectional area and length, and were entirely lacking in proof that the ratios would hold good when applied to the areas and lengths of fullsized members. Mr. Thomson, fully appreciating the value of this "proviso," at once gave Mr. Linville carte blanche to have Messrs. William Sellers and Company, of Philadelphia, build such a testing machine as would fulfill all his requirements. Such a machine was built by that firm, and was set up in the railroad company's shops at Altoona, and, in all probability, was the first testing machine ever built of sufficient power to demonstrate the actual limits of ultimate strength and elasticity of full-sized metallic members of framed structures. With this machine Mr. Linville conducted a series of tests fr,om which he derived reliable data from which to assign the necessary safe sectional areas for the members of "long-span" structures. This machine, having thus filled the requirements for which it was specially built, was subsequently bought by the Keystone Bridge Company, and re-erected in that company's Pittsburg shops. It is probably still in the service of the successors of that company, the American . Bridge Company, now merged into the United States Steel Company. Thus did this Steubenville span of 320 ft. become indeed the "pioneer" of long-span bridging in the United States, which fact is attested to in the following quotation from the admirable paper* on "American Railroad Bridges," by Theodore Cooper, M. Am. Soc. C. E.: "The era of long span truss bridges in America may be considered as dating from the building of the first bridge over the Ohio River at Steubenville, between 1863-64, by Mr. J. H. Linville. The channel span was 320 feet long and 28 feet deep. The top chord and posts were made of cast-iron. It was proportioned for a rolling load of 3 000 pounds per foot of track, a notable increase in the load heretofore in use." In the latter part of 1864, Mr. Andrew Carnegie procured the incorporation, under the laws of Pennsylvania, of the Keystone Bridge Company, to take over the shops and business of the bridge building firm of Piper and Shiftier, of Pittsburg, at that time engaged principally in manufacturing and erecting the reconstructed bridges of the Pennsylvania Railroad upon the plans and specifications of Mr. Linville. This new company was organized with Mr. Linville as President and Consulting Engineer; John L. Piper, General Manager; Aaron G. Shiftier, Treasurer and General Superintendent, and Walter Katte, Secretary and Engineer of Shops and Erection. Ample new capital being subscribed, the business scope and shop manufacturing facilities were at once largely augmented, resulting in this company speedily taking prominent rank among the leading bridge building organizations of the country. To this company the Pennsylvania Railroad Company awarded the contract for the manufacture and erection of the superstructures of the Steubenville and Monongahela Bridges, upon the plans and specifications previously prepared by Mr. Linville and accepted by the railroad company. The successful execution of this order, and the experience gained therefrom, so qualified this company and established its reputation as builders of long-span metallic bridges, that it at once entered the field as a very active competitor in the many bridging projects of the great western rivers, then being promulgated, all requiring exceptionally long spans. To this company were subsequently awarded the contracts for the manufacture and erection of the superstructures of the following notable long-span bridges, all of which were designed by Mr. Linville: Monongahela River, Pennsylvania Railroad, at Pittsburg, Pa.; Ohio River, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, at Bellaire, Ohio; Ohio River, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, at Parkereburg, W. Va.; Ohio River, Cincinnati and Newport Railroad, at Cincinnati, Ohio; Ohio River, Cincinnati Southern Railroad, at Cincinnati, Ohio; Missouri River, Draw Span, Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, at Kansas City, Mo.; Mississippi River, Illinois Central Railroad, at Dubuque, Iowa; Mississippi River, Keokuk and Hamilton Bridge Company, at Keokuk, Iowa; Mississippi River, Draw Span, Chicago and Alton Railroad, at Louisiana, Mo. The shop detailed working drawings of the great steel arch bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, designed by the late James B. Eads, M. Am. Soc. C. E., and manufactured and erected by the Keystone Bridge Company, were also reviewed and revised personally by Mr. Linville in order to insure the successful erection of that great and novel structure, upon the cantilever suspension system, for which the Keystone Bridge Company was under contract responsibility. During his service as Engineer of Bridges and Buildings of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, Mr. Linville designed and supervised the erection of the new wrought-iron bridges over the Schuylkill River, at the Arsenal, Philadelphia, on the Delaware River extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad. This was the first bridge built with wrought-iron posts, and "upset" head-link tension members, and, by its use of hollow wrought-iron columns, started the long legal contest between the Phoenix Iron Company and the Keystone Bridge Company et al., for alleged infringement of its patent rights. This was finally decided by Justice McKenna, in the United States District Court of Pittsburg, in favor of the defendant parties. At about this time Mr. Linville resigned from the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and removed to Philadelphia where he opened an office for private practice as Consulting and Designing Civil Engineer. He was immediately commissioned by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to prepare plans and specifications for the reconstruction in metal of many of its most important bridge structures, among which may be specially noted the following: "Dauphin Bridge," Susquehanna River, on the Northern Central Railroad; and the "Maryland's Creek" and "Ridley's Creek" Bridges, on the Media and Westchester Railroad; and as Engineer of Bridges, for the "Connecting Railway" of Philadelphia, extending from the main line (Pennsylvania Railroad) at Mantua, to the New York Division at Frankfort, he designed the double-track, under-grade bridge over the Schuylkill River, near Girard Avenue; and about the same time (1875) he designed for the City of Philadelphia the new Callowhill Street Bridge, or "Fairmount Bridge," over the Schuylkill River, replacing the old wire Suspension Bridge at that place. It is a double-deck, rectangular-truss structure, 348 ft. in length, between end posts, and provides for double-track electric street railway tracks, carriage roadways, and sidewalks, on both decks. He was also commissioned by the Lehigh and Delaware Railroad Company to prepare plans and specifications for the bridging of its line, including notable structures over the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers at Easton, Pennsylvania; and also by the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey for its long-span pivot draw-spans at Amboy and Newark, New Jersey. In addition to his high attainments as a bridge designer, Mr. Linville developed marked skill as an architect, notably in the specialty of industrial buildings. Having a finely cultivated artistic taste, his designs for such buildings, while skillfully adapted to the technical requirements, were always architecturally attractive in their treatment. He was commissioned by the Pennsylvania Steel Company as its Chief Engineer during its constructive period, 186365, and designed and supervised the erection of all its shops and buildings at Steelton, Pennsylvania. For the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad Companies he designed the shops at West Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Sunbury, Renovo, and Kane; also those at Uhrichsville for the Pittsburg, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad Company, and the new shops for William Sellers and Company, in Philadelphia. In the early days of elevated railroad projecting Mr. Linville was consulted by Dr. Gilbert (one of the original promoters of elevated railway projects) to revise and perfect his plans, which resulted in his designing the structure which was subsequently manufactured and erected for the Metropolitan Elevated Railroad Company (afterward the Manhattan Elevated Railway Company) on its Sixth Avenue line, between Canal and Fifty-ninth Streets, New York City. In 1876 Mr. Linville made a notable exhibit of engineering drawings and models at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, for which he was highly commended, and received a bronze medal. About the year 1880 Mr. Linville and A. P. Boiler, M. Am. Soc. C. E., were selected by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to act as arbitrators in the settlement of a controversy between that company and the Long Branch Railroad Company. Subsequent to this Mr. Linville was induced to assume the Presidency of a railroad company which had failed in its efforts to complete a railroad in the southwesterly peninsula of Maryland. He took hold of this moribund enterprise, and by his untiring energy was successful in clearing off all its old debts and judgments; he called in and cancelled all its old stock and bond liabilities, issued new stock, and effected a contract with a Boston syndicate to complete the construction and equipment of the road. His efforts in this field, however, were finally frustrated by the failure of the financial promotors of the enterprise to support it. In the latter days of his professional life, Mr. Linville was induced, by parties owning patents on an electro-magnetic printing telegraph device, to undertake to perfect their machine, as hitherto they had failed to make it work satisfactorily. He became most enthusiastically interested in it, and worked over it with such energy, that, in the end, his health was seriously affected, but finally he succeeded in perfecting the apparatus. It is claimed that his was the first machine, of this type of electrical telegraphic devices, that worked perfectly. In the end, however, it was a great loss and disappointment to him, owing to the failure of the promoting company to finance the enterprise adequately. For many years prior to his death, Mr. Linville was a most acute sufferer from chronic catarrhal bronchitis and neuralgia of the head, which affected his eyes. Toward the end, his sufferings from these causes became so intense that he was compelled to give up his professional practice. Personally, his disposition was singularly loving and sympathetic, and all with whom he came in contact were greatly attached to him. Mr. Linville was elected a Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers on March 3d, 1875.
Jacob Hays Linville was born in Pequea, Pennsylvania on 2 3 September 1825 to Arthur Linville and Elizabeth Haines. The son of a farmer and tanner, he attended local public schools in Pequea, Dr. Duffield's Academy at Belleview, and graduated Union College in 1848. He read Law at the offices of William Meredith, in Philadelphia, but soon ended these studies to become a "top assistant" in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under William Hassell Wilson. He helped survey the route for the Lancaster, Lebanon & Pine Grove Railroad, and later assisted surveyance and construction of the Philadelphia, Media & West Chester Railroad. In 1857, under Wilson, he became assistant resident engineer on the Harrisburg to Altoona section of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Linville later became an employee of the PRR as Engineer of Bridges and Buildings, specializing in the design and construction of wrought-iron bridges. He created the first span to included upset, head-link tension members, over the Schuylkill at Arsenal, in Philadelphia. An advocate of testing iron bridge members for tensile strength, he worked with William Sellers & Company of Philadelphia to build some of the first machines for this purpose. As chief engineer for the Pennsylvania Steel Company in the early 1860s, he designed shops for Sellers and other firms. By 1865, he had become president and chief engineer of the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh, a business begun by Andrew Carnegie to market bridges and building trusses using rolled iron beams and bars made at Carnegie's Union Iron Mills. During his tenure at Keystone, Linville built many bridges for the PRR, including an iron span over the Monongahela at Pittsburgh and the first long-span truss (320') over the Ohio River at steubenville. He designed superstructures for the Baltimore & Ohio at Bellarie, over the Ohio; for the Cincinnati & Newport at Cincinnati, also over the Ohio; for the Illinois Central at Dubuque, Iowa, over the Mississippi, and for the Hannibal & St. Joseph at Kansas City, Missouri, over the Missouri. Linville resigned from the Pennsylvania Railroad and from the Keystone Bridge Company in the late 1870s and moved to Philadelphia, where he designed railroad bridges. He became a member of the ASCE in 1875, and died on 4 August 1906.
Application filed October 4, 1886. Serial No. 215,224. (No model.) To all whom; it may concern.- Be it known that I, JACOB H. LINVILLE, of the city and county of Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsylvania, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Printing- Telegraphs; and I do hereby declare the following to be afull, clear, and exact description thereof, reference being had to the accom panying drawings, forming part hereof. My invention relates, especially,to that class of printing-telegraphs operating automatically, either as transmitters or receivers, by electrical pulsations sent from any instrument organized as a transmitter over a conductor con nected with one or more similar instruments organized as receivers when the type-wheel Shaft is driven by any suitable motive power. It relates, further, to the application of a motor to automatically wind a spring which rotates the typewheel shaft; in the use of two type wheels in page printing telegraphy whereby,through suitable shifting devices,the impressions upon the paper from either wheel may be made in the same continuous line; in improved apparatus for presenting the paper in page form from a continuous roll to the type-wheels, and in electromagnetic devices and circuits to operate the type-wheels to unison the type-wheels and papercarriages and to effect impressions. The general object of my invention is to diminish the cost, to increase the rapidityand certainty of such apparatus, to obviate the necessity ofwindingthe motive power byhand, and to provide improved means ofmaintaining synchronism between the pulsator and the type-wheels of the instrument employed as a transmitter and the type-wheels of the instruments employed as receivers, whereby their synchronous movement is automatically adj usted, when necessary, once in each revolution by an electro-magnet responding to pulsations of twice the ordinary length required to rotate the typewheels, without retarding the regular motion of the type-wheels of the transmitter, and to effect the requisite operations over a main conductor by the aid of local batteries, using in all the operations currents of similar polarity. My invention consists First, in the employment of an electrometor to automatically wind a spring interposed between a drum carrying a toothed gear-wheel engaging with a pinion on the type-wheel shaft and a shaft passing through the drum, around which aspring is continuously orinterniittently wound by means of a gear-wheel secured to said shaft through intermediary gearing driven by a pinion on the motor-shaft. Second, in the peculiar construction of a table of insulated segments equal in number to the divisions of the type-wheels placed concentric with the type-wheel shaft,over which segments traverses a brush secured to a metal lic hub on the type-wheel shaft and insulated therefrom. An insulated contactspring in electricalconnection with the main-line circuit bears on this metallic hub. In the table of contacts, usually termed a sunflower, the segments are alternately connected by con ductors to open and closed circuit springs operated by the stems of the keys on thekeyboard,cxcept in one instance,whcre three consecutive contacts are connected with closed circuitsprings of the key-board. The anvils of the circuit-sprin gs are electrically connected with one another and with one electrode of the line-battery. Third, in the use of a double-point relay with its coils in the main-line conductor, both in the transmitting and receiving instruments, the tongue of the double-point relay being connected with one electrode of a local battery, while its front and back contacts are respectively con nccted by conductors to the parallel coils of the escapement electrou'nagnets and to the other electrode of the local battery. Fourth, in the use of neutral escapement clectro-magnets wound with parallel coils, between the poles of which eloctro-magnets polarized armaturcs are caused to vibrate in response to currents of similar polarity traversing the parallel coils in reverse directions. Fifth, in the employment of two type wheels, one engraved with the letters of the alphabet, blanks, punctuation-marks, &c., and the other with numerals, fractions, conventional signs, blanks, &c., both being rigidly secured to a sleeve moving loosely on thctypewheel shaft, with means for shifting the type wheels vertically, and means for effecting the printing of letters, characters, and numerals in the same continuous lines and in page form on sheets of paper or from rolls of paper....