Theodore Tuttle Woodruff (April 8, 1811 – May 2, 1892) was an American inventor who was an early developer of

sleeping cars The sleeping car or sleeper (often ) is a railway passenger car (rail), passenger car that can accommodate all passengers in beds of one kind or another, for the purpose of sleeping. George Pullman was the main American innovator and owner of sl ...

. Born in New York State, Woodruff became a wagon maker at a young age before working on railroad cars in Massachusetts. It is through his work on cars that led to Woodruff's invention of the Woodruff sleeping car, which entered operation in 1858. It is in this position that Woodruff was an early competitor to George Pullman and his company up until Pullman purchased Woodruff's company and patents in 1889. Woodruff also invented a coffee-hulling machine, a surveyor's compass and a steam plow.

Biography

Theodore Tuttle Woodruff was born in

Jefferson County, New York Jefferson County is a county on the northern border of the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 116,721. Its county seat is Watertown. The county is named after Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United S ...

on April 8, 1811. At age 16, he left his family farm to pursue an

apprenticeship Apprenticeship is a system for training a potential new practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study. Apprenticeships may also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in a regulat ...

wagon A wagon (or waggon) is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle pulled by Working animal#Draft animals, draft animals or on occasion by humans, used for transporting goods, commodities, agricultural materials, supplies and sometimes people. Wagons are i ...

-making. After three years as a wagon maker, Woodruff began to learn

pattern A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated l ...

making at a

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

. With this skill, he became a

journeyman A journeyman is a worker, skilled in a given building trade or craft, who has successfully completed an official apprenticeship qualification. Journeymen are considered competent and authorized to work in that field as a fully qualified employee ...

who worked in

Springfield, Massachusetts Springfield is the most populous city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, and its county seat. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the ea ...

railroad cars A railroad car, railcar ( American and Canadian English), railway wagon, railway carriage, railway truck, railwagon, railcarriage or railtruck (British English and UIC), also called a train car, train wagon, train carriage or train truc ...

. He married Eliza Lord Hemenway on July 25, 1833, and they had two children. In around 1855 at

Alton, Illinois Alton ( ) is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about north of St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 25,676 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is a part of the River Bend (Illinois), Riv ...

, Woodruff became the Master Car Builder for the Terre Haute, Alton & St. Louis Railroad company. On December 2, 1856, he received two

patents A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

for a convertible car seat. Following this, Woodruff relocated back to Springfield to create a new car utilising the convertible car seats built by T.W. Wason & Co. Woodruff's new design, the T.T. Woodruff's sleeping car, divided the car into sections with permanently fixed pairs of seats facing each other. The design then had a lower and middle berth (bunk) produced by a particular arrangement of pivoted seat cushions, while the upper berth was created by hinged frames that folded against the wall during the day. All berths had

curtains A curtain is a piece of cloth or other material intended to block or obscure light, air drafts, or (in the case of a shower curtain) water. Curtains are often hung on the inside of a building's windows to block the passage of light. For instan ...

that could be hung at night. Woodruff's new sleeping car was first used on the

New York Central Railroad The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected New York metropolitan area, gr ...

in 1858, which Woodruff personally managed. Whilst in New York, he met

Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie ( , ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the History of the iron and steel industry in the United States, American steel industry in the late ...

, who at this point was employed by the

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad ( reporting mark PRR), legal name as the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, also known as the "Pennsy," was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At its ...

. It is through Carnegie that Woodruff was introduced to the Pennsylvania Railroad's superintendent, Thomas A. Scott, who encouraged him to form his own company that would build and operate the Woodruff cars. Under the T.T. Woodruff & Company, with Carnegie as one of its investors, the cars were adopted by the Pennsylvania Railroad for its

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

Route. By the end of 1858, the Woodruff sleeping car was in service by eight midwestern railroads including the Michigan Central. When the Central Transportation Company (CTC) was established in 1862, Woodruff became its principal stockholder while his older brother, Jonah (1809-1876), became its manager. All of Woodruff's patents were subsequently assigned to the company and he retired in 1864. After a patent infringement suit with the

Pullman Company The Pullman Company, founded by George Pullman, was a manufacturer of railroad cars in the mid-to-late 19th century through the first half of the 20th century, during the boom of railroads in the United States. Through rapid late-19th century d ...

, many of the CTC's patents were assigned to Pullman. In early 1889, the CTC was purchased by Pullman not long after it joined the Union Palace Car Company in 1888. Woodruff lost most of his fortune in the

Panic of 1873 The Panic of 1873 was a financial crisis that triggered an economic depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 to 1877 or 1879 in France and in Britain. In Britain, the Panic started two decades of stagnation known as the "L ...

. He was killed when he was struck by a train in

on May 2, 1892.

Legacy

One of Woodruff's descendants was the 20th-century diplomat Charles Woodruff Yost.

References

1811 births 1892 deaths 19th-century American inventors People from Jefferson County, New York Railway accident deaths in the United States {{US-inventor-stub

Biography

Legacy

See also

References