ABSTRACT
McCORMICK 04.11. 1834 Tyrone PA/USA 21.08. 1924 West Mahoning PA/USA John Buchanan McCormick was apprenticed by his uncle in an old-fashioned cabinet and chair shop. Later he helped with house painting and graining so that he made money which enabled him to develop his future position. In 1873 he went to Brookville PA and there was engaged by a turbine manufacturer. After the tests of the Hercules turbine at Holyoke by James B. Francis (1815-1892), McCormick and his colleague made an agreement with a company of Dayton OH, proving disastrous for them, however, so that McCormick re-joined in 1877 the Holyoke furnisher, remaining there for 10 years. The turbine perfection was a success, with turbine efficiencies above 80%, producing almost 20 different types in size, both right and left hand. Around 1890 McCormick designed and manufactured a turbine 25% stronger as to its diameter than the Hercules turbine, which was referred to as McCormick’s Holyoke Turbine. It was also manufactured at York PA and at Dubuque IA. A famous turbine tester stated: ‘Mr. McCormick as a designer and perfecter of hydraulic motors stands upon the top rung of the ladder, has stood there for 20 years, without a parallel, not in the United States alone, but upon this planet’. The so-called American wheel was patented in 1858, and with the further blade-shape contributions of McCormick around 1870, it became the popular forerunner of the modern mixed-flow unit. Why the name of Francis continues to be associated with it presumably stemmed initially from the widespread attention attracted by his book, states Rouse, and then from the resulting adoption of this designation by the German and Swiss firms, which led in its scientific development later in the century. Anonymous (1913). McCormick. Indiana County PA: Her people 2: 848-849. P Francis, J.B. (1855). Lowell hydraulic experiments, being a selection from experiments on hydraulic motors on the flow of water over weirs, and in canals of uniform rectangular section and of short length made at Lowell. Little & Brown: New York. Rouse, H. (1976). John B. McCormick. Hydraulics in the United States 1776-1976: 40-41. P Safford, A.T., Hamilton, E.P. (1922). The American mixed-flow turbine and its setting. Trans. ASCE 85: 1237-1292. Stewart, R.J. (1967). John B. McCormick: Pathfinder for a new age in water turbines. Indiana University of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia. P Thurston, R.H. (1887). The systematic testing of turbine water-wheels in the United States. Trans. ASME 8: 359-420.
