Inventor Name
Henderson, William M.
Repository
Hagley Museum and Library
PO Box 3630
Wilmington, DE 19807-0630
302-658-2400
https://www.hagley.org/research
Physical Description
30 items.
Summary
William M. Henderson was a mechanical engineer and inventor who spent most of his career in Philadelphia. Henderson appears to have been born in Birmingham, England, his first recorded employment being as a mechanical engineer for the London & North Western Railway in 1847. By 1857, he had emigrated to America and was working at the Union Works of Baltimore. Here he patented a slide valve and a force pump. There followed a few years building railroad bridges and similar works in Chile, but by 1865 he had settled in Philadelphia and formed the partnership of Brinton & Henderson, pump manufacturers, doing business as the Philadelphia Hydraulic Works. This firm was succeeded by William M. Henderson & Co. Henderson invented a hydraulic brake for railroads around 1873 and formed a separate company to manufacture it, although it quickly lost out to the Westinghouse air brake. By the late 1870s, Henderson's interest had turned to steel-making, particularly in the blowing engines used in the Bessemer process and the engines and other machinery of rolling-mills. Henderson's papers consist of two distinct items, a scrapbook containing items from 1847 to 1893, and an atlas of 29 plates (ca. 1879) of Bessemer and rolling-mill machinery, showing installations at a number of important European steel works. The scrapbook contains letters, prospectuses, advertisements, magazine articles and drawings pertaining to Henderson's career and inventions. It also contains a clipping on his son William Claude Henderson (b. 1861) and an 1876 "Centennial Chorus" by his daughter Jessie M. Henderson.