Elwood Haynes Inventions Information

Elwood Haynes (October 14, 1857 – April 13, 1925) was an American inventor, metallurgist, automotive pioneer, entrepreneur and industrialist. He invented the metal alloys stellite and martensitic stainless steel and designed one of the earliest automobiles made in the United States. He is recognized for having created the earliest American design that was feasible for mass production and, with the Apperson brothers, he formed the first company in the United States to produce automobiles profitably. He made many advances in the automotive industry.

Early in his career, while serving as a field superintendent at gas and oil companies during Indiana's gas boom, Haynes invented several devices important to the advance of the natural gas industry. When working for the Indiana Natural Gas and Oil Company, he oversaw the construction of the first long-distance natural gas pipeline in the United States, connecting Chicago with the Trenton Gas Field 150 miles (240 km) away. He began to formulate plans for a motorized vehicle in the early 1890s; he successfully road tested his first car, the Pioneer, on July 4, 1894—eight years after the first automobile was patented in Germany. He formed a partnership with Elmer and Edgar Apperson in 1896 to start Haynes-Apperson for the commercial production of automobiles. He renamed it Haynes Automobile Company in 1905, following the loss of his partners.

Working in his laboratory to develop new corrosion-resistant metals for auto parts, Haynes discovered that mixing tungsten with chromium, steel and iron resulted in the formation of strong and lightweight alloys that were impervious to corrosion, and could endure high temperatures. In 1912, he formed Haynes Stellite Company to produce one of the new alloys, and received lucrative contracts during World War I, making Haynes a millionaire in 1916. He sold his patent for stainless steel to the American Stainless Steel Company in exchange for enough stock to gain a seat at the company's board of directors, a position he held for 12 years. He merged the Haynes Stellite company with Union Carbide in 1920. After passing through different owners, the company was renamed and is now called Haynes International. Haynes returned his focus to his automotive company, but in the economic recession of the 1920s the business went bankrupt and was liquidated.

An outspoken advocate of prohibition, he made substantial donations to the Prohibition Party and Indiana's prohibitionist leader Frank Hanly. Haynes ran an unsuccessful campaign in Indiana for the U.S. Senate in 1916 as a prohibition candidate and remained active in the party until prohibition became law. Later, he became a philanthropist and served two terms as president of the YMCA, five years on the Indiana Board of Education, and was an active member of the Presbyterian church. After his death from complications arising from influenza, his Kokomo mansion was converted into the Elwood Haynes Museum and is open to the public where many of his original inventions and automobiles are on display.

Haynes was born on October 14, 1857, in Portland, Indiana, the fifth of ten children of Jacob M. Haynes and Hilinda S. Haines Haynes. His family was of English descent; he was a ninth-generation descendant of Walter Haynes who immigrated from Wiltshire, England to Sudbury, Massachusetts in 1638. His father was Jay County's school commissioner, a lawyer, Whig politician, and a judge of the Jay and Randolph County common pleas court. Both of Haynes' parents were dedicated Presbyterians and outspoken prohibitionists and educated their children from a young age to avoid liquor. His mother was the founder of a local Women's Temperance Movement Union. His paternal grandfather Henry Haynes was a gunsmith and mechanic, and tutored Haynes about metallurgy. In 1866, the family moved from their two-room house in Portland into the countryside outside of town where they purchased a larger home to better accommodate their growing number of children.

At age 12, Haynes built his first vehicle from scrap railroad car parts and operated it on the county's railroad tracks. The local railroad foreman did not approve and later seized the vehicle and destroyed it. As a child, Haynes had an interest in chemistry and metallurgy and when he was 15 he built a smelting furnace and began working with copper, bronze, and iron. Haynes was also interested in nature and spent considerable time in the forest cataloging and observing plants, insects, and animals. Because he spent so much time there, his family nicknamed him "Wood", a nickname they used for most of his life. As he grew older, he became an avid reader of books, including Principles of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry by William Wells. His early experiments and studies interested him in the fundamental properties of matter, and he was intrigued by how mixing compounds could create completely different alloys.

Haynes attended public schools through eighth grade and received a basic education. He had not determined a career path for himself and his parents often criticized him for lacking ambition; they insisted that he seek employment. He began by working as a custodian at a local church and later for the railroad, hauling ballast to construction sites. At the church, he joined the choir where he met and began to court Bertha Lanterman. When Portland's first public high school was opened in 1876, Haynes returned to school at age 19 and completed two more years. Bertha and her family moved to Alabama during the spring of 1877, and Haynes began a regular correspondence with her. During the summer of that year, a series of revival meetings were held in Indiana by Francis Murphy, a leader of a national temperance organization known as the Murphy Movement. Haynes attended the meetings, probably at his parents' urging, and became interested in temperance. He took two of Murphy's pledge cards and carried one for most of his life; the other he mailed to Bertha.

Haynes' father attended the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 where he learned of a school that would fit his son's interests. Using the money he had saved, Haynes decided to attend the college and enrolled in the Worcester Technical Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, in September 1878. The school was revolutionary for its time, combining technical training with a classical liberal arts education. Although he easily passed the difficult entrance exam, he found that he was ill-prepared for some of his college courses, and he struggled with mathematics. To earn an income while away from home, he worked as a custodian and night guard at the local public library. He cleaned the building overnight and used his spare time to read books and study. During his final year at the school, boarding rates were increased beyond what Haynes could afford so with no other option, he lived in the library for several months. He could not afford to return home during his stay at the institute, so during the holidays he spent time with his family and friends in New England.

During his first term, he was required to receive a grade of 60 to remain in the school. Although he only achieved a 59.2 after completing his final exams, he was permitted to remain because of his "recent progress." Older than the other students in his class, he often spoke out against their use of alcohol. In his final year he took courses in metallurgy, ore analysis and assaying, and participated in a research project developing razors. His graduation thesis was entitled "The effects of Tungsten on Iron and Steel". It laid out the basic principles of what would later become his two greatest advances in metallurgy. Haynes spent many hours in the institute's laboratory working with tungsten and other metals before graduating in 1881; he was fourteenth out of twenty-one graduates—twenty did not pass.

Haynes took a job teaching at the Jay County public school after returning home. Soon his income allowed him to buy a home near Portland High School where he worked and was promoted to principal in 1882. That summer he took a week-long trip to visit Bertha in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he became sick with a cold and spent most of his time in bed nursed by Bertha, learning that her family would be returning to live in Portland in 1883. After returning from the trip, he continued saving money and in 1884 he decided to continue his education by enrolling at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He chose the school because, as it was only eight years old, it had one of the most modern laboratories available. He took courses in chemistry and biology and learned advanced metallurgic techniques. His mother died in May 1885 and he decided to leave the university without completing his second year, as he was not working to attain a degree but only taking courses of interest. After he had returned home again, he took a position at the newly established Eastern Indiana Normal School and Commercial College (now Ball State University) and served as the head of the chemistry department.

Natural gas was first found in Indiana in 1876 but it was not until 1886 that the magnitude of the discovery was known; the Trenton Gas Field was the largest deposit of natural gas discovered in the 19th century and the first giant oil reserve found in the United States. As a professor at a university in the Trenton Field, Haynes offered his services to the drillers and worked to analyze soil samples, determine well pressure, and give estimates on the amount of energy that could be created by the gas. He delivered several lectures to large crowds about the importance of the gas discovery and the many possible applications of this new source of fuel. He began a petition to have the local citizens create a corporation to pump the fuel from the ground and pipe it to area homes and businesses. His promotion was successful and Portland Natural Gas and Oil Company was formed; Haynes' father was named to the new company's board of directors.

In the fall of 1886, the board hired Haynes as superintendent to manage the company and oversee the creation of wells and piping. The company was one of the first in the Trenton Field, and many of the others which soon followed modeled themselves on the Portland company. As a fuel and industry, natural gas was in its earliest stages. Haynes invented several devices that became important to the success of the industry. One of his first inventions was a device capable of measuring the amount of gas being pumped from wells. Haynes' reputation as an industry leader grew out of his operations at Portland and the Kokomo Democrat referred to him as "the only infallible authority on natural gas in eastern Indiana" in an 1889 article.

Haynes married Bertha Lanterman in October 1887 after a ten-year relationship. The ceremony was held at her parents' Portland home and the couple honeymooned in Cincinnati. Their first child, Marie, was born on January 28, 1889, but she soon succumbed to illness and died when six months old. Their second child, a son born in 1890, also died in infancy. The deaths saddened the family and caused them to turn more to their religion. Haynes became increasingly active in the Presbyterian church and became an elder. In December 1892, the Haynes' third child, Bernice, was born. A second son, March, was born 1896. The two children were well educated and grew up to assist their father in his enterprises.

A primary pipeline was laid between Portland and a neighboring town during 1889. Haynes oversaw construction of the ten-mile (16 km) long pipeline and the creation of the wells for pumping the gas. During his numerous buggy rides between the two towns, he first began to conceive of a novel form of motorized transportation. His thoughts on the topic were spurred by his need to regularly change horses because of their inability to endure the long distances and sandy roads he frequently traveled. He theorized that a motorized vehicle would be more economical than horse-and-buggy transportation, and could potentially move at a faster rate of speed.

The Indiana Natural Gas and Oil Company, headquartered in Chicago, hired Haynes as their field superintendent in 1890 after the company's board of directors "discovered that Elwood Haynes knew more about natural gas than anyone in the state". He and his wife moved to Greentown where he oversaw the construction of the company's first pumping wells. The company planned to construct a natural gas line from eastern Indiana to Chicago, a distance of over 150 miles (240 km), which would be the first long-distance natural gas pipeline built in the United States. Haynes supervised the design and construction phases of the project. Because of the length of the line and the temperature changes between the two points, moisture in the natural gas condensed on the pipe, and during colder times would freeze the pipes in some locations. The problem was a significant setback to the operation, which had to stop pumping during the winter months. Haynes solved the problem by creating a refrigeration device that would cause the moisture (which was a diluted form of gasoline) to condense, freeze, and fall into a reservoir. These devices were installed between the main lines and pumping stations and effectively removed all the moisture from the natural gas before it was pumped into the lines. This prevented water buildup in the pipes and allowed the pipes to be used year-round. The concept was a significant advance in early refrigeration technology and was further developed by others in later years.

Haynes was offered a higher ranking position within Indiana Gas at the Chicago headquarters, but by then he had become aware of the business's connection to the corrupt and disgraced monopolist Charles T. Yerkes. A deeply religious man who feared involvement in any corruption, Haynes entertained the offer only briefly; Bertha's advice to refuse the position persuaded him and he declined the offer and instead sought a position more removed from the company's Chicago leadership. After the pipeline became fully operational in 1892, Haynes moved to Kokomo where he was made a supervisor of the Indiana Gas's local operations. The Indiana General Assembly began attempts to regulate the gas industry and accused the field operations of various companies of gross waste; Indiana Gas became the primary target of scathing reports. Haynes helped the company compile reports and offered opinions on the validity of their claims. He was disturbed to find that many of the claims proved true, and advocated that the gas be used more conservatively. He specifically recommended that the flambeaus (the flames fed by natural gas to show that the gas was flowing) be extinguished, as they were found to be the largest source of waste. He calculated that the company daily wasted $10,000 ($240,000 in 2009 chained dollars) worth of gas by burning flambeaus, a figure that shocked the company's leaders. Despite his support of the governmental anti-waste regulations, he was steadfastly against other rules that regulated pressure and hindered productivity. He personally filed lawsuits against the regulations a month after their passage, claiming that the government had no right to regulate artificial increases in well pressure. The court case continued until 1896, when the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the regulations were unconstitutional. The entire set of regulations was repealed, including the anti-waste measures. The gross waste continued among other companies and the field's wells began to run dry by 1905—modern experts estimate as much as 90% of the one trillion cubic feet (30 km3) of natural gas in the field was lost into the atmosphere or misused.

According to Haynes, he began laying out "plans for the construction of a mechanically propelled vehicle for use on highways" in 1891. His first idea was for a steam-powered vehicle, but after careful consideration he decided the use of a furnace on the device would be too dangerous. His second plan was to use electrical power, but after research he found that no practical means existed to store the electricity required for operation. He continued to develop his plans until the summer of 1893 when he attended the Chicago World's Fair, where he first witnessed a gasoline engine. The demonstration of the newly invented engine inspired him to decide that an internal combustion engine would be the most practical method to propel his vehicle. A gasoline-powered European automobile built by German inventor Karl Benz (who patented the first automobile in 1886) also was on display during the fair, although it is unknown if Haynes witnessed this vehicle during his visit.

Haynes ordered a one-horsepower marine upright, two-cycle engine from Sintz Gas Engine Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan for $225. Although the engine was intended for use on a small boat, Haynes believed it could be adapted for his purposes. The 180 lb (82 kg) engine arrived in the fall of 1893. Haynes soon had the device attached to a carriage he built in his kitchen. He found when he started the engine that its vibrations were too severe for the harness it was in, and before he could stop the engine it had done considerable damage to the carriage and the floor of his kitchen, and filled the room with smoke.

Haynes decided he needed a different facility to continue the experiment after his wife told him she would not abide his destruction of the family kitchen. He contacted Elmer Apperson, the operator of the Riverside Machine Works, and arranged to use a space in his shop for the continued development. He agreed to work on his vehicle only after-hours, pay 40 cents per hour for the help of Elmer and his brother Edgar, and to not hold them responsible should his project fail. He started building a new carriage, this time with a heavier steel harness. He described the appearance of the vehicle as a "small truck". The wheel axles were also made of steel and the entire front axle was constructed to swivel. A central column was built of steel and laid across the axles in such a way as to allow it move in all directions within a small radius to accommodate any sudden movements by the motor or vehicle.

Because the traction of rubber tires was unknown, Haynes completed a series of tests with a bicycle on paved roads. He used a wagon built to the weight of his automobile and a horse to pull a device that would cause the wheels to turn, thereby providing traction. With this, he was able to determine the ratio of weight to gear sizes needed to enable the tires to provide sufficient traction for propulsion. Once completed, his vehicle weighed about 820 pounds (370 kg).

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