GASKILL

GASKILL 19.01. 1845 Royalton NY/USA 01.04. 1889 Lockport NY/USA Harvey Freeman Gaskill moved in 1861 with his parents to Lockport NY, where he studied for two years at the College and then entered a Commercial College, from where he graduated in 1866. He then joined his uncle’s law office to study business law, and was engaged with the manufacture of clocks. Later he was interested in a planning-mill combined with a sash-and-blind factory. In both branches he applied his inventive genius mainly to improve the mechanical equipment. In 1873 he joined a firm at Lockport as a draftsman where pumping machinery for waterworks was manufactured. He immediately turned attention to steam-pumps. At that time, water-works pumping machinery was made in the United States principally at his and another firm. Competition between the two for the supremacy and business was keen. Gaskill attempted for higher steam economy and larger pumping capacity, launching in 1882 the Gaskill pumping engine. It was the first crank and fly-wheel high duty engine built as a standard for waterwork service. It gave a fairly high steam economy, had a large pumping capacity, was extremely compact and convenient, and was lower in the cost than the preceding types. This engine was quickly accepted nationally and gave his firm advantage, until the Worthington high-duty engine of Henry Rossiter Worthington (1817-1880) appeared. Gaskill was superintendent of his company from 1877, vicepresident from 1885, and would eventually have become president but for his untimely death. The automatic cut-off gear of the Holly pumping engine, by which the point of cut-off was varied by the pressure, was also his invention. He was a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers ASME. Anonymous (1889). Harvey F. Gaskill. Trans. ASME 10: 833. Anonymous (1931). Gaskill, Harvey Freeman. Dictionary of American biography 6.1: 177-178. Scribner’s: New York. Anonymous (1996). Gaskill, Harvey Freeman. Biographical dictionary of the history of technology: 282, L. Day, I. McNeil, eds. Routledge: London. Gaskill, H.F. (1882). Vertical pumping engine. US Patent Office: Washington DC. Gaskill, H.F. (1884). Steam and hydraulic pumping engine. US Patent Office: Washington DC. Gaskill, H.F. (1888). Patent of Duplex engine. Canada Patent CA 29859. Hague, C.A. (1907). Pumping engines for water works. McGraw-Hill: New York. P https://jerseyman-historynowandthen.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html

GAUSMANN 01.09. 1882 Brooklyn NY/USA 01.06. 1974 Newtown CT/USA Roy Warner Gausmann was educated at Columbia University, New York NY, as a civil engineer. He was from 1902 to 1925 in charge of the New York water supply up to division engineer, except for the war period. He also served from assistant to section engineer on the construction of dams, dikes, bridges and other appurtenances of the Ashokan and Gilboa Reservoirs, New York. He was further engaged with the construction of the lower half Shandaken Tunnel, New York State. From 1925 he was general manager of all construction of the new water supply of the Greek capital Athens, and the final completion of reclamation works in Macedonia. From 1941 he was assistant general manager of the US Overseas Division, organizing a repair and maintenance force for the Ordnance Department in the Near East. He was further involved in hydraulic works at Aruba Island, at Lake Ontario, harbour studies in Liberia, and hydro-electric plants in Ecuador, Columbia, and Turkey. He was member of the American Society of Civil Engineers ASCE, the US Military Engineers and the American Water Works Association AWWA. He was awarded the title Commander of the Saviour, Greece. The 1923 paper is concerned with notable hydraulic model experiments of the Gilboa Dam in Schoharie County NY. Of particular importance was the determination of the spillway capacity using a stepped spillway. To test the hydraulic similitude, models of scales between 1:50 and 1:8 were considered, thereby representing one of the very first scale family. Special gauges were developed to measure both the lower and upper jet surfaces. Another point of relevance was the proper crest section as the transition from the reservoir to the spillway of constant bottom slope. The best results were obtained by smaller steps from the crest to the tangency point, from where the spillway had constant bottom slope and constant step height, as is often adopted presently. A primitive scaling according to the current Froude law served as scale family indicator. This outstanding paper was awarded the 1923 ASCE James Laurie Prize. Anonymous (1924). Roy W. Gausmann. Engineering News-Record 92(3): 130. P Anonymous (1948). Gausmann, Roy W. Who’s who in engineering 6: 713. Lewis: New York. Gausmann, R.W., Madden, C.M. (1923). Experiments with models of the Gilboa Dam and spillway. Trans. ASCE 86: 280-319. Gausmann, R.W. (1927). Shandaken Tunnel. Proc. ASCE 53(5): 681-706. Gausmann, R.W. (1933). Athens builds modern water works. Civil Engineering 3(1): 1-5.