Worcester Reed Warner (May 16, 1846 – June 25, 1929) was an American mechanical engineer, entrepreneur, manager, astronomer, and philanthropist. With Ambrose Swasey he cofounded the Warner & Swasey Company.

Biography

Life and career

Warner was born near Cummington, Massachusetts.
p. 11
He met Swasey at the Exeter Machine Works. On the completion of their apprenticeship in 1870, both entered the employ of

Pratt & Whitney Pratt & Whitney is an American aerospace manufacturer with global service operations. It is a subsidiary of RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Technologies). Pratt & Whitney's aircraft engines are widely used in both civil aviation (especially ...

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ce ...

. In 1880 he co-founded a business to manufacture machines with Ambrose Swasey. The firm, Warner & Swasey, was initially located in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

but soon moved to

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

.
p. 19
Worcester Warner would design the 36-inch

refracting telescope A refracting telescope (also called a refractor) is a type of optical telescope that uses a lens (optics), lens as its objective (optics), objective to form an image (also referred to a dioptrics, dioptric telescope). The refracting telescope d ...

installed at

Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton (California), Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The ...

in 1888. He later built telescopes that were used in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

and

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

Further activities

Warner was a charter member of the

American Society of Mechanical Engineers The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is an American professional association that, in its own words, "promotes the art, science, and practice of multidisciplinary engineering and allied sciences around the globe" via "continuing edu ...

, and from 1897 to 1898 he served as the 16th president of ASME. (Ambrose Swasey would later serve as the 23rd ASME president.) In 1900 the firm was incorporated as Warner & Swasey Company.
p. 27
Warner served as president and

chairman of the board The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a Board of directors, board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by ...

, but retired in 1911. Both Warner and Ambrose Swasey also became trustees of the Case School of Applied Science. As both men had an interest in astronomy, they donated an entire observatory to the school. This became the Warner and Swasey Observatory. It was dedicated in 1920. Worcester Reed Warner Gravesite

The Warner Building on

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a Private university, private research university in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It was established in 1967 by a merger between Western Reserve University and the Case Institute of Technology. Case ...

houses the Worcester Reed Warner Laboratory, named after the former university trustee. The construction of this building was partly funded by Worcester Warner. The crater Warner on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

is named after him.

Death

Warner died in

Eisenach Eisenach () is a Town#Germany, town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, west of Erfurt, southeast of Kassel and northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia, and bordering northeastern Hesse, Hessian re ...

Saxe-Weimar Saxe-Weimar () was one of the Saxon duchies held by the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty in present-day Thuringia. The chief town and capital was Weimar. The Weimar branch was the most genealogically senior extant branch of the House of W ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, and is buried in

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York, is the cemetery, final resting place of numerous famous figures, including Washington Irving, whose 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is set in the adjacent burying ground of the ...

Sleepy Hollow, New York Sleepy Hollow is a village in the town of Mount Pleasant, New York, Mount Pleasant in Westchester County, New York, Westchester County, New York (state), New York, United States. The village is located on the east bank of the Hudson River, about ...

Worcester Reed Warner Medal

The ''Worcester Reed Warner Medal'' is awarded by the ASME for "outstanding contribution to the permanent literature of engineering". It was established by bequest in 1930. Some of the recipients are: * 1933: Dexter S. Kimball * 1934: Ralph Flanders * 1935: Stephen Timoshenko * 1943:

Igor Sikorsky Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky, (25 May 1889 – 26 October 1972) was a Russian-American aviation pioneer in both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. His first success came with the Sikorsky S-2, the second aircraft of his design and construc ...

* 1945: Joseph M. Juran * 1947: Arpad L. Nadai * 1949: Fred B. Seely * 1951: Jacob Pieter Den Hartog * 1954: Joseph Henry Keenan * 1956: James Keith Louden''The Gazette and Daily from York,'' Pennsylvania. December 7, 1956. p. 15 * 1957: William Prager * 1960: Lloyd H. Donnell * 1965: Ascher H. Shapiro * 1967: Nicholas J. Hoff * 1969: Hans W. Liepmann * 1970:

Wilhelm Flügge Gottfried Wilhelm Flügge (March 18, 1904 – March 19, 1990) was a German engineer, and Professor of Applied Mechanics at Stanford University.J.J. O'Connor and E.F. Robertson.Gottfried Wilhelm Flügge" at ''history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk.'' School of M ...

* 1971: Stephen H. Crandall * 1975: Philip G. Hodge, Jr. * 1979: Darle W. Dudley * 1980: Olgierd Zienkiewicz * 1984: Yuan-Cheng Fung * 1985: Richard H. Gallagher * 1990: J. Tinsley Oden * 1992: J. N. Reddy * 1997: Zdenek P. Bazant * 1998: Thomas J. R. Hughes * 1999: Yogesh Jaluria * 2007: Portonovo Ayyaswamy * 2016: Isaac Elishakoff * 2017: Michael Paidoussis * 2018: Martin Ostoja-Starzewski * 2019: Arun Srinivasa * 2020: Marco Amabili

References

Bibliography

* . * . {{DEFAULTSORT:Warner, Worcester Reed 1846 births 1929 deaths People from Cummington, Massachusetts American mechanical engineers Machine tool builders Presidents of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers American astronomers Case Western Reserve University people Burials at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery