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Here is an edited Bio sketch of a "John Seaver" who worked for Conley from 1884 to 1896. This sketch provides a glimpse at the quality of R&C's employees, R&C's product line during the interested time period, etc:
Seaver, John W. 26 patents in sampled years, some joint with Wellmans. Assignees at issue:
Wellman-Seaver Engineering Company (1 patent in 1898, 4 in 1900, 2 in 1902, and 2 in 1903);
Wellman-Seaver-Morgan Engineering Co. (4 in 1903, 2 in 1905, and 1 in 1907). Patents included inventions for a gas producer, shipbuilding crane, furnace filling, blast furnace charging, and ore storage and delivery. Was a principal in a firm that bore his name and to
which he assigned many of his inventions at issue.
1897-8 Cleveland Directory: vice president of the Wellman-Seaver Engineering Co.
(engineers and contractors, bessemer and open-hearth steel, etc.)
1906-7 Directory: chairman of the board of Wellman-Seaver-Morgan
Seaver was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1856 and then moved with his parents to
Buffalo, New York. At the age of 13, he took a job in the machine shop of the Shepard Iron Works, attending school in the evenings. Five years later he moved to the Howard Iron Works, which designed and built marine engines. He was promoted to Assistant Superintendent at the age of 20. After a stint in the partnership of Seaver & Kellogg, where he built the first steel railroad cars in the U.S., be took a position with the Kellogg Bridge Works and then, in 1880, became chief engineer of the Iron City Bridge Works in Pittsburgh.
In 1884 he assumed the same title at the Riter-Conley Co. and earned a reputation designing blast furnaces, steel works, oil refineries, and other industrial structures.
In 1896 he joined Samuel T. and Charles H. Wellman to found Wellman-Seaver Engineering (later Wellman-Seaver-Morgan), assuming the position of vice president. The firm operated extensive plants in Cleveland and Akron, manufacturing ore and coal handling machinery, car dumpers, hoisting engines, water power, steel plant and railroad equipment, and other heavy machinery. He remained a director of that firm until his death in 1911, but in 1906 joined a consulting practice with James E. A. Moore. |