The Inventive Life of Charles Hill Morgan: The Power of Improvement In Industry, Education and Civic Life. Allison Chisolm
a month as the ship sailed in and out of several harbors. The bracing effects of the sea air may finally have helped Morgan’s health as he made no further comments about illness for the rest of the trip.
On shore, he returned to a familiar routine, however briefly, when he found a prayer meeting to attend. “Today has seemed more like Sunday than any day since leaving Provincetown,” he wrote on September 23. “Went ashore on Port Hood Island and went to meeting after supper.”
Pleased to report the ship was “homeward bound” on October 31, then sadly stalled in a cove the next day, Charles wrote they “started with a good wind for home” on November 3 and “hauled up to Gravin Wharf at 8 o’clock P.M.” on November 6. The following day he made it on to the last train to Clinton for a happy homecoming. Back in Boston November 12, he received his pay: $37.50 for “75 days’ labor as cook,” or 50 cents a day, about $12 in today’s money.
Given that he spent close to $6.50 on medicines and doctors’ visits over the course of the year, and wrote no further health complaints in his diary, the sea voyage delivered positive results for his body as well as his bank account.
Home less than a week in Clinton, he returned to work on a paper bag machine, but this time for J. Smith & Co. Some days he spent in Smith’s shop, others at a drafting table. Deacon Parker also hired him for further drafting on his horseshoe machine, swag hammers and a swaging machine. Morgan alternated between the projects until after Thanksgiving.
On December 13, a Thursday, he spent four hours working on the bag machine, then “went in company with Hatty, Cyrus, Aunt Abby & Harriet with a double team to Father’s wedding.” Hiram Morgan married his second wife, Eunice Goodale, that afternoon. Aunt Abby and Harriet were Hiram’s younger sisters Abigail and Harriet.
The newlywed couple continued to live in Bigelow company housing, but within a year Hiram and Eunice moved to a house known as “the McQuaid house” at 122 School Street, where it remains today. A sturdy two-story home, three windows wide with attic space, it has an attractive entry porch and adjacent garage which may have originally served as a stable.
Within a few days of the wedding, Charles was asked to make a gear cutter for J.C. Smith, who was not the same Smith refining his bag machine. Over the course of four days—spending 15 hours on it after full days on the other Smith’s bag machine—Charles completed the gear cutter project and earned five dollars, a tidy sum to end the year with. In today’s dollars, that would be worth just over $137. He continued other assignments, including the bag machine, but also worked on a stationary engine and a wire loom, most likely for Parker & Palmer.
Hiram Morgan’s house in Clinton, Massachusetts
While there are no surviving diary entries for the year 1856, Charles probably continued his work with Parker’s growing business. He did leave a notebook created that year filled with his own ideas for a paper bag machine that would have a better design than Smith’s or Goodale’s and could be commercially viable.
GENIUS AND GOOD MANAGEMENT
Charles Morgan returned to the Bigelow fold in March 1857, as his diary recorded, when he “commenced work for E.B. Bigelow making drawings of Brussels Carpet Loom Improvements.” At 26, Morgan had finally found in Erastus Bigelow the creative mentor capable of helping him refine his own ideas and improvements on existing machines.
Bigelow relied on skilled draftsmen, as he admitted some time earlier to a colleague, as an essential part of his own inventing process.
I always mature in my mind the general plan of an invention before attempting to execute it, resorting occasionally to sketches on paper for the more intricate parts. A draughtsman prepares the working drawings from sketches furnished by me, which indicates in figures the proportion of the parts. I never make anything with my own hands. I do not even like drawing to scale.
Bigelow had built his career and several flourishing businesses around his inventions, his patents on those inventions and, although somewhat controversial for his time, their value on his companies’ balance sheets. His four main patents equipped him to boost productivity, compete effectively with foreign producers and introduce higher quality carpeting to the American market: First, the coach lace loom, as described earlier; counterpane looms, to produce quilted coverlets; gingham looms, which launched the Lancaster Mills; and through the 1850s, Brussels looms. His efforts as both manufacturer and consummate salesman enabled the Bigelow name to represent quality and product leadership.
His patents were robust enough to pose an insurmountable barrier to entry for competitors until well after the Civil War. His Brussels carpet loom and two types of English looms were the only ones operating in the U.S. and Bigelow did not license his machines to other companies. This control of production kept prices high. Those who did not want a Bigelow carpet made in Clinton had to import theirs from England. As the newest business in the Bigelow empire, the Bigelow Carpet Company had plenty of growth plans. The previous year’s Clinton Almanac noted its capitalization of $200,000 and its production “annually about 210,000 yards of Velvet, Tapestry and Brussels carpeting of the most beautiful patterns and desirable materials. These mills... are propelled by steam power...some 150 persons on average, find employment.”
Within about two months of starting his work there, Morgan noted Bigelow’s request for help in another area of the business that needed new ideas and clear drawings to illustrate those ideas—tapestry carpet looms. Morgan soaked up every detail he could about the development of new looms, even correcting his diary notations as necessary, as he did in September 1857:
Note Mr. E.B.B. says use the same Take up ratchet gear as is used on Velvet Loom for the Velvet Tapestry*
*This was found to be wrong because there were 4 beats of the Loom the old Wilton & but 3 in the Improved Loom
He copied Bigelow’s “Sketch of Cam movements of Wire Parallel Lever & Wire Motion Shaft,” with column notations for each cam working either the lever or the shaft. In a typical entry, he listed each step of the wire loom’s weaving movements:
Wire supposed to be laid home
Move back Staff 2 inches
Rock the carrier back 3 ½ inches
Rest to engage wire
Staff to draw wire 27 ½ inches
Rest one beat
Rock forward 7 ½ inches
Staff insert wire 29 ½ inches
Rock back to fill
It was not surprising to imagine Charles perceiving alternative ways to design and run the looms. Working with Bigelow, his ideas would have been welcomed, rather than shrugged off as experimental and unproductive.
In a paper presented more than 20 years later at the Worcester County Free Institute, Morgan drew on his experiences working with Bigelow to address “Cam Construction.” He explained that “a cam is a mechanical device by means of which a velocity ratio, either constant or variable, is developed between two parts of a machine.” It can be understood as “an acting surface wrapped about an axis.” In other words, he wrote, “we shall consider the cam a disk.”
“Cam motions are often exceedingly perplexing,” he wrote, “and some system is especially perquisite in dealing with them.” He went on to say that cams and lay cranks “are developed by a single line of action.”
By May 1858, Morgan had fully comprehended the rhythm of cams, and developed his “Proposed Circle of Cam movements for gaining 30 percent of speed on Coach Lace Looms.” His overall theory was to use the full circle of cam movements to increase speed. In one diary entry, Morgan notes “Cam movements for 2 ft. wire Loom—circle of movements divided into 152 parts,” which would offer 152 locations for interactions with other parts of the loom system. But with speed can come destructive shock to