corliss boiler room steam engine group by George H. Corliss - 1 views
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kayleigh lavoie on 28 Sep 13Corliss Boiler Room Steam Engine Group by George H. Corliss Are you an engineer inventor who can sell your own ideas? George Henry Corliss was. During the industrial age, Corliss (1817 - 1888) left school at age 14 and spent his early years working in New York as a clerk in a factory store. He attended an academy in Vermont, but opted to return to the only business he had known previously and opened his own store, working as a merchant. Bored with routine tasks, around age 23, he began to use his mechanical talents to invent and perfect machinery, and after a few years was awarded his first patent for a boot-stitching machine. Corliss moved from New York to Providence, RI, to seek funding to market and produce the stitching machine but his plans changed when he became interested in steam engines. As a result, he took a job at Fairbanks, Bancroft, and Company as a draftsman for their steam engine and boiler manufacturing firm. He rose in seniority, was able to work on his own projects at the company, and after a few years, left to pursue his own ideas as senior partner in Corliss, Nightingale, and Co. His new ideas improved steam engine design which benefited the entire world. Corliss invented a valve that allowed steam to quickly pressurize a piston, moving it back and forth before the steam could condense. He also created governors that would control the steam and exhaust. These advances reduced waste heat and allowed the engine to operate with more uniform motion and lowered fuel costs. He designed, developed, and patented the Corliss Engine based on these improvements. The Inventors Hall of Fame notes that the efficient shuttle valve in the Corliss Engines "paved the way for the widespread use of steam power in nineteenth-century America." In 1856, Corliss opened the Corliss Steam Engine Company in Providence, RI. The steam engines he produced were used in many industrial applications, and were soon exported to Scotland for use in cotton mills. He opened a second