More on Jenkins & Lingle

1892 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Jenkins & Lingle

It turns out that Jenkins & Lingle were not best known for their turbine, but rather Jenkins' cushioned steam hammer.  William Jenkins had joined the Bellefonte Machine Shop as a machinist in 1866, and worked his way up through the ranks, so that when the partnerships rearranged in 1875, the shop became a partnership of William P Duncan, Jenkins, and J.H. Lingle, trading under the name W. P. Duncan and Co. When Dunacn retired the firm became Jenkins & Lingle, and Jenkins retired in 1902 [1].  In 1892 the machine shop was along Spring Creek in the heart of town, just downstream from the Bush House hotel.


According to Bellefonte through the Years, Jenkins was known for his hammer and turbine, as well as inventions in the continuous rolling, low-water alarms for steam boilers, a burner for coal oil, and various tools including a rake, hoe, clevis (a connecting link for hoisting), and an "ice creeper".  A quick search of Google Patents shows that Jenkins held at least 15 patents:

Patent no.	Date	Invention
466,790	Mar 10, 1891	Power Hammer
498,473	Mar 24, 1892	Car-Coupling
532,202	Mar 8, 1894	Hydrocarbon-Burner
532,379	Nov 4, 1893	Oil-Burner
578,242	Apr 1, 1896	Method of Making Picks or other Tools
612,001	Oct 16, 1897	Stamping or Punching Press
612,002	Dec. 9, 1897	Tool-Head
613,207	Aug 10, 1898	Tool [mfg. process for hatchets, etc.]
671,381	Dec 8, 1899	Hoe
736,971	Jul 26, 1902	Power-Hammer
740,865	Apr 17, 1903	Clevis
741,671	Dec 26, 1902	Art of Manufacturing Rakes
831,954	Jul 28, 1905	Ice-Creeper
838,417	Sep 19, 1906	Weeder
912,131	Mar 28, 1907	Friction Gearing

(There seems to be some confusion on whether this Jenkins is Jr. or Sr.  A William R. Jenkins Jr. of Williamsport patented a farm gate in 1874 [patent 155,953], though he lived in Williamsport -- could this have been the Bellefonte WRJ's son?)

Jenkins' Bellefonte Turbine

Jenkins Turbine, Patent no. 190,595

So I am reading the Second Pennsylvania Geological Report for Centre Co. from 1884 (as one does...), and in describing the operations of Eagle (Curtain) Furnace north of Milesburg (which they strangely call Pleasant Furnace, but which is now restored and run in the summer by PHMC), it says of it's operations:

The forge has 8 heating fires, using about 90 bushels charcoal to the ton [of iron]. An old wooden undershot water-wheel furnished power for hammer, soon to be replaced by a Jenkins (Bellefonte) turbine wheel.  Product chiefly for boiler plate. [p. 261]

Other than finding it interesting that the furnace had 8 hearths in a hammer mill, which I had never realized (not sure that that part of the ironworks has been restored), but when I read the comment about the turbine that was about to be installed, and my first thought was, "there's a patent turbine from Bellefonte?!?"  Indeed there is!  Read on.

In 1877, William R. Jenkins, Jr. of Bellefonte received a patent for "Improvements in Turbine Water Wheels" (U.S. Patent no. 190,595) wherein he claimed a simple and durable invention of the type that took horizontal (tangential) water flow and channeled it downward along the wheel's perimeter to derive torque.  This style vied for primacy with the type that took water in vertically at the top and channeled it out radially at the bottom to derive torque, though both are types of reaction turbines (I need to look into this distinction some more; the canonical type of reaction turbine for low-head applications is the Francis turbine from 1848, and Jenkins's seems a variation on that idea).

Jenkins' inverted-cone form of the turbine tried to combine light-weight manufacture (hence the empty hollow cone above), water striking the blades perpendicularly in order to deliver the greatest force, and blade shapes that let the water slightly lift the turbine, thereby reducing friction on the lower bearing.  Jenkins claimed that this would derive the maximum power from the water.

A decade after Jenkins patented the turbine, the Eagle Iron Works was interested in installing one, so he clearly had some success with the design.  Since, though, the iron works was only about 6 miles from Bellefonte, that might not be too surprising.  The advertisement below, however, from The Roller Mill, vol. 12 (July 1893), shows that Jenkins saw some success in his venture.

More to come on Jenkins & Lingle shortly...