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Edward G. Budd | |
|---|---|
 Edward G. Budd,1925 | |
| Born | Edward Gowen Budd December 28, 1870 |
| Died | November 30, 1946 (aged 75) |
| Resting place | West Laurel Hill Cemetery |
| Occupation | Industrialist |
| Employer | Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company |
| Spouse |
Mary Wright (m. 1899) |
| Children | 5 |
Edward Gowen Budd (December 28, 1870 – November 30, 1946) was a visionary American inventor and industrialist pioneered the manufacture of steel wheels, all-steel automobiles, four-wheel brakes on highway vehicles, stainless-steel railroad passenger cars, and stainless-steel aircraft.
Early life
[edit]Budd was born in the small town of Smyrna, Delaware, on December 28, 1870. In 1887, he started as an apprentice machinist at the G.W.&S. Taylor Iron works[1] after graduating from public high school aged 17.[2]
Early career
[edit]Budd moved to Philadelphia in 1899 (the year in which he married Mary Wright)[3] to finish his apprenticeship with the Bement Machine Company. He enrolled at the Franklin Institute Schools, undertook correspondence courses voraciously, and filled his spare time with experimentation and scientific reading. From 1900 to 1902 he worked for the American Pulley Company, which promoted him to workshop superintendent.[2] For the next 10 years he worked for Hale & Kilburn, where he demonstrated that pressed steel could be used instead of metal castings. He advocated the manufacture of steel automotive bodies, but the company's lack of interest led him to resign in 1912 to start up his own company.[3]
Automotive manufacturing
[edit]
The Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company[2] started with capital of $75,000 – mostly Budd's own savings – but it proceeded frugally, with a hired circus tent next to his "corner shop" sheetmetal premises being the site of his first steel truck body manufacturing.[3]
In 1916, Budd founded the Budd Wheel Company and led the United States in the development of wire-spoke wheels.[1] Despite the surge in automotive production, the company expanded its capacity for the United States' participation, in 1917 and 1918, in the First World War. 4700 employees were manufacturing a large range of military products – helmets, field kitchens, army trucks, bombs and shells – by the war's end in late 1918.[3]
Budd added pressed-steel chassis frames for automobiles to his product line-up, but the automotive industry was reluctant to accept this innovation, despite the impediment that wood-body production included 10 to 15 days for varnishing.[1] However, he built steel bodies for Packard and Peerless from 1914, and in 1915 Charles Nash, then head of General Motors, bought a steel-chassis automobile and liked it; other industry leaders noticed. In the same year, the newest auto barons, the [Dodge#Founding and early years|Dodge brothers]], branched out from making engines to making passenger cars and gave Budd his first quantity order for steel bodies. The following year Dodge purchased 70,000 all-steel open touring bodies. An all-steel Dodge sedan followed. The brothers had not believed closed bodies could be built from steel but they were persuaded to allow Budd to go ahead with the design, die-making and press-installation needed for production to begin. Arc welding, which Budd had pioneered in automobile manufacturing, was an important part of the process. Other US manufacturers soon followed Dodge's lead: closed bodies outsold open bodies from 1923 onwards.[4]
Soon Budd's company was delivering millions of steel bodies to Ford, Chrysler and Studebaker. In 1925 it opened a Detroit body plant, where he already had shifted his Budd Wheel Co. in 1921. Pressed-steel wheels were as hard to sell, at first, as steel car bodies – but eventually they became standard.[3]
Shot welding Shot welding, like spot welding, uses electrical resistance to join sheet metal products: contacting metal surface points are joined by the heat obtained from resistance to electric current.[5] The distinction is that in shot welding, strips and sheets of metal (usually stainless steel) are "sewn" together with rows of uniform spot welds.[6] The amount of heat (energy) delivered to the spot is determined by the resistance between the electrodes and the magnitude and duration of the current (discovered as Joule heating in 1840). recognized the important metallurgical characteristics of 18/8 stainless steel (known today as SAE 304 austenitic stainless steel) and further developed a spot welding process to take advantage of the oxidized layer on the surface of stainless steel. [7] Heat treating the 18-8 stainless steel leaves the metal with non-magnetic and ductile properties. Repeatedly reheating the metal to 1000–1100°C impairs the mechanical and chemical properties of the metal. The metal becomes susceptible to corrosion due to carbide precipitation, and loses fatigue resistance. The important factor in controlling the metal's properties is the dwell time at those temperatures. Using a controlled time element and recorder, a power supply with smooth current, and very brief high currents, a satisfactory spot weld may be produced. text |
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Innovation
[edit]Budd constantly advocated the strength and utility of steel to the automotive industry, and argued that the sturdiness of a metal frame could save lives. To dramatize the strength of steel bodies, he had an elephant placed on top of a steel body, with virtually no damage occurring.[2] In a similar vein, Dodge staged a promotion in which a new steel-bodied Dodge car went over a cliff, rolling several times before the driver stepped out before driving it away.[1]
Budd and his employees' innovation was constant, reflected in their successful patent applications for a range of technologies, especially in the field of welding and, later, shot-welding.[8]
Shot welding
Shot welding, like spot welding, uses electrical resistance]] to join sheet metal products together, through a process in which contacting metal surface points are joined by the heat obtained from resistance to electric current.[9] The distinction is that in shot welding, strips and sheets of metal (usually stainless steel) are "sewed" together with rows of uniform spot welds.[6]
recognized the important metallurgical characteristics of 18/8 stainless steel (known today as SAE 304 austenitic stainless steel) and further developed a spot welding process to take advantage of the oxidized layer on the surface of stainless steel.
[10] Heat treating the 18-8 stainless steel leaves the metal with non-magnetic and ductile properties. Repeatedly reheating the metal to 1000–1100°C impairs the mechanical and chemical properties of the metal. The metal becomes susceptible to corrosion due to carbide precipitation, and loses fatigue resistance. The important factor in controlling the metal's properties is the dwell time at those temperatures. Using a controlled time element and recorder, a power supply with smooth current, and very brief high currents, a satisfactory spot weld may be produced.
A steel airplane
[edit]Budd's advocacy for steel extended to aviation. In 1930, he decided to use his company's innovative shot-weld technique to fabricate an airplane. The Budd BB-1 Pioneer, a small seaplane, was their prototype.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US2425498A/en
Railroad manufacturing
[edit][[File:Pioneer Zephyr Budd shotweld stainless steel souvenir.gif |thumb|350px|left|Stainless steel "business cards" incorporating two shot-welds (not visible from the back), given as souvenirs by the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company
He then took his knowledge of pressed steel to the railroad industry. He worked with the Pullman Company on a contract for Pennsylvania Railroad, building the first all-steel car.
During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Budd pioneered the fabrication of stainless steel and helped create the Pioneer Zephyr, a streamlined train for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. Budd stainless steel railway cars were very successful for many years.[12] During World War II, Budd was also the original maker of the Bazooka projectile and the rifle grenade. He and his company were also instrumental in the development of the radial disk brake and the automatic wheel line.[13]
In 1945, the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co. and the Budd Wheel Co. merged to become The Budd Company. By then the companies' plants extended over 92 acres (37 hectares).
Personal life
[edit]Budd married Mary Wright in May 1899. They had two sons and three daughters.[3]
Budd died on November 30, 1946 at his home in Philadelphia.[2] He was buried at West Laurel Hill Cemetery.[3]
Legacy
[edit]Budd's Pioneer Zephyr was the first of many streamlined passenger trains. The original trainset is on permanent display at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.
In 1985, 40 years after his death, Edward G. Budd, the "father of the stainless-steel streamliner", was inducted into Dearborn, Michigan's Automotive Hall of Fame.[14][1]
In 2015, 70 years after his death, he was inducted into Galesburg, Illinois's National Railroad Hall of Fame.[15]
He also received the American Society of Mechanical Engineers's Medal.[3]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e "Edward G. Budd". Hall of Fame inductees. Automotive Hall of Fame. 1985. Archived from the original on March 15, 2016. Retrieved January 8, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e "E.G. Budd dies; industrialist, 75, a transit pioneer". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Philadelphia. December 2, 1946. p. 1. Retrieved January 7, 2024 – via newspapers.com.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "E.G. Budd dies; industrialist, 75, a transit pioneer (cont.)". The Philadelphia Inquirer. December 2, 1946. p. 13. Retrieved January 8, 2024 – via newspapers.com.
- ^ Oliver, George A. (1962). A history of coachbuilding. London: Cassell. p. 106. ISBN 9781903088319.
- ^ Jeffus, Larry F. (2002). Welding: principles and applications. Boston, Massachusetts: Cengage Learning. p. 694. ISBN 9781401810467.
- ^ a b Walling, Morton C. (February 1947). "Stitching steel into streamliners". Popular Mechanix. Archived from the original on December 5, 2019. Retrieved January 9, 2024.
- ^ "Jan 16, 1934. E.J.W. Ragsdale: Method and product of electric welding". Google Patents. August 20, 1932. Retrieved January 9, 2024.
- ^ "Jan 16, 1934. E.J.W. Ragsdale: Method and product of electric welding". Google Patents. August 20, 1932. Retrieved January 9, 2024.
- ^ Jeffus, Larry F. (2002). Welding: principles and applications. Boston, Massachusetts: Cengage Learning. p. 694. ISBN 9781401810467.
- ^ "Jan 16, 1934. E.J.W. Ragsdale: Method and product of electric welding". Google Patents. August 20, 1932. Retrieved January 9, 2024.
- ^ [X "X"]. X. X. August 20, 1932. Retrieved X.
{{cite web}}:|first=missing|last=(help); Check|url=value (help); Check date values in:|access-date=(help) - ^ Illustrated Treasury of Budd Railway Passenger Cars: 1931–1981 by James Kerr (1981, Delta Publications). ISBN 0919295029.
- ^ See Illustrated Treasury of Budd Railway Passenger Cars, at 5.
- ^ "Edward Budd". The American Experience. PBS. Retrieved March 15, 2015.
- ^ Vantuono, William C. (October 31, 2015). "From Edward G. Budd to Bombardier Transportation". Railway Age. Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corporation. Retrieved March 15, 2016.
- PBS Online / WGBH (2000) Edward G. Budd.
- President and Fellows of Harvard College (2004), 20th Century Great American Business Leaders: Edward G. Budd.
- Setright, L J K (2003). Drive On!. Granta Books, London. ISBN 1-86207-698-7.
- Steel in our lives. Retrieved January 19, 2005
- White, John H. Jr. (Spring 1986). "America's Most Noteworthy Railroaders". Railroad History. 154: 9–15. ISSN 0090-7847. JSTOR 43523785. OCLC 1785797.
