As you know, Rex, I'm rather knowlegable about Henry Burden, his entrepreneurial career, and his inventions. Something that you don't mention is that, apropos current political issues in the States, he was an immigrant. From Scotland, where he'd picked up an education at Edinburgh before he came here. Ninety per cent of all the horseshoes used by the Union Army during the Civil War were made at his factory in South Troy, which cranked out about a million horseshoes a week during the war. Toward the end of the war, a Confederate spy named Mordecai L. Moses was arrested in Troy for trying to steal the plans for Burden's horseshoe machine. Earlier, by the way, Burden was the first person to produce the hook-headed railroad spike by machine. In the 1830s, he supplied all the spikes for the original Long Island Railroad, about ten tons of them, and shortly after that, he supplied all the spikes for the original Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a hundred tons of them. So if you bought B&O Railroad when you played Monopoly, you bought a hundred tons of railroad spikes made in Troy, New York. His story is an early example of how the nation benefited from the achievements of an immigrant. FYI. Happy Spring to you and Marion. Tom
As you know, Rex, I'm rather knowlegable about Henry Burden, his entrepreneurial career, and his inventions. Something that you don't mention is that, apropos current political issues in the States, he was an immigrant. From Scotland, where he'd picked up an education at Edinburgh before he came here. Ninety per cent of all the horseshoes used by the Union Army during the Civil War were made at his factory in South Troy, which cranked out about a million horseshoes a week during the war. Toward the end of the war, a Confederate spy named Mordecai L. Moses was arrested in Troy for trying to steal the plans for Burden's horseshoe machine. Earlier, by the way, Burden was the first person to produce the hook-headed railroad spike by machine. In the 1830s, he supplied all the spikes for the original Long Island Railroad, about ten tons of them, and shortly after that, he supplied all the spikes for the original Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a hundred tons of them. So if you bought B&O Railroad when you played Monopoly, you bought a hundred tons of railroad spikes made in Troy, New York. His story is an early example of how the nation benefited from the achievements of an immigrant. FYI. Happy Spring to you and Marion. Tom