BABCOCK G.H.

BABCOCK G.H. 17.06. 1832 Unadilla Forks NY/USA 16.12. 1893 Plainfield NJ/USA George Herman Babcock was born into a family with prolific inventors. He followed the mechanical family tradition, gaining practical experience during the Civil War as draftsman and ship builder. His friendship with the talented mechanical engineer Stephen Wilcox (1830-1893) evolved into a fruitful and long business relationship between the two. In 1857 Wilcox introduced the water-tube boiler, a safe and efficient step in boiler technology. External combustion gases heat thereby tubes through which flowing water is converted into steam and collected in a drum. Because this design permitted higherpressure operation than earlier versions, the water-tube boiler was readily accepted by the industry. Boiler explosions were tragically common in the early 19th century. One of the worst occurred in 1850 devastating a manufacturing company in Manhattan. More than 60 workers were killed and 70 injured. Babcock and Wilcox established the firm B&W in 1867 to commercialize boilers based on Wilcox’s earlier water-tube principle. The Babcock & Wilcox Non-Explosive Boiler used a sectional tubular design. Whereas firetube boilers contain long steel tubes through which the hot gases from the furnace pass and around which the water to be changed to steam circulates, the water-tube boilers use reversed conditions. The company was incorporated in 1881, with Babcock as president and Wilcox as vice-president. B&W boilers were soon powering the nation’s first central electrical stations in Philadelphia and New York City. Babcock was active in addition within the American Society of Mechanical Engineers ASME, particularly by issuing the ASME Boiler Testing Code in 1884, providing one of the first standards for the industry. He died only few weeks after his lifelong friend and partner. Today, B&W remains world leader in the power generation industry. In 2012 it was listed the company as one of the nation’s 50 most innovative technology companies. Anonymous (1893). George H. Babcock. Engineering Record 29(4): 52. Anonymous (1894). George H. Babcock. Trans. ASME 15: 636-639. Anonymous (1992). Babcock & Wilcox 1867-1992. P Babcock & Wilcox Company (1922). Steam: Its generation and use. B & W: New York. Babcock, G.H. (1890). Circulation of water in steam boilers. Scientific American Supplement 30(745): 11902-11904. https://www.asme.org/kb/news---articles/articles/boilers/george-herman-babcock

BABCOCK H.A. 23.02. 1917 Rushville IL/USA 23.10. 2003 Monterey VA/USA Henry Ame Babcock obtained the BS, MS, and PhD degrees from University of Colorado, Boulder CO. He also was a registered engineer in Colorado State. He worked for the US Engineers prior to World War II, and the US Bureau of Reclamation USBR following discharge from the US Navy. He was associated with the Colorado School of Mines CSM, Golden CO, since 1946 for totally 36 years, advancing from instructor to Head of the Basic Engineering Department. He was Honorary Member of CSM from 1982, and enjoyed playing bassoon in an amateur symphony orchestra. Babcock was interested and taught all through his career engineering subjects. In parallel he was considered a world-authority on the hydraulic transportation of solids both in pipelines and in open channels. His PhD thesis submitted in 1959 dealt also with this problem, whose issues were detected only after World War II, mainly in France and in the USA. The 1956 paper deals, also as an early contribution, with jet flow. The 1967 paper was devoted to the extra head-loss of solid transport in pipes, in addition to the effects of fluid viscosity and boundary roughness. In addition to this research field, Babcock was interested in irrigation engineering, particularly the design of irrigation subdivisions. Anonymous (1956). H.A. Babcock. Proc. 6th Hydraulics Conference Iowa: Frontispiece. P Anonymous (1985). Babcock, Henry A. Who’s who in engineering 6: 22. AAES: Washington DC. Arendt, J., Babcock, H.A., Schuster, J.C. (1956). Penetration of a jet into counterflow. Journal of the Hydraulics Division ASCE 82(1038): 8-11. Babcock, H.A. (1959). Tabular solution of open channel flow equations. Journal of the Hydraulics Division ASCE 85(HY3): 17-23; 85(HY9): 125-135. Babcock, H.A. (1967). Head loss in pipeline transportation of solids. Proc. 1st World Dredging Conf. WODCON New York 1: 261-289. Babcock, H.A. (1970). The sliding bed flow regime. Proc. 1st Int. Conf. Transport of solids in pipes H1: 1-16. BHRA: Cranfield. Babcock, H.A. (1971). Heterogeneous flow of heterogeneous solids. Advances in solid-liquid flow in pipes and its application: 125-146, I. Zandi, ed. Pergamon Press: Oxford. Faddick, R.R., Babcock, H.A. (1971). Discussion of Sediment transport mechanics J: Transportation of sediment in pipes. Journal of the Hydraulics Division ASCE 97(HY5): 745-748.