Joshua Hendy came to the United States from Scotland in 1836. As a younger man he learned the machinist’s trade in the East and in 1851, at the age of 33, he traveled to California, probably hoping for riches in the gold fields. He discovered work as a mechanic in the newly constructed boiler retailers of San Francisco and realized there was more of a future in the machinery enterprise than in prospecting for gold.
After a yr Joshua had saved enough money for a small business enterprise, and in 1852 he built a sawmill at Salt Point on the coast above Fort Ross. In the early days of sawmilling in California the mills had been very small labor intensive operations, normally consisting of a small steam engine and a carriage with a reciprocating flat bladed noticed not much larger that a 2 man hand saw. The mills could not lower a lot in a day, however lumber was scarce so income had been high. Over time Joshua built and offered several mills, and seeing that there was a demand for milling machinery, finally determined he could make extra money constructing the sawmill equipment moderately than reducing timber. Thus, in 1855 he started the Joshua Hendy Machine Works at 49-51 Fremont St. in San Francisco.
Hendy’s authentic machine works started then, by strictly building the components for small sawmills, however Joshua was always wanting for ways to increase his business. By the 1860’s he was repairing milling and mining tools and constructed a foundry to cast element elements for varied forms of equipment, rather than having to buy substitute components from “back East”. Because the laborious rock mines of California had been booming, most of his repair work was completed on mining tools, particularly the stamp mills used for crushing ore.
Joshua soon discovered that most of the damage executed to stamp mills occurred when the operator fed both a lot ore into the hopper, which jammed the mill, or fed too little, which allowed the stamp heads to hit the mortar base with no cushion of ore, thus breaking the heads. Unfortunately, most mill employees of the day have been both inexperienced or drunkards-only a few males wished to spend their day shoveling ore into a soiled, deafening, monster of a machine.
Solving this drawback led to Joshua Hendy’s biggest accomplishment: In 1874 he invented, patented and began producing the Challenge Automatic Ore Feeder for stamp mills. This feeder, which ran off the primary shaft of the mill routinely opened and closed the hopper to feed a continuous and consistent quantity of ore to the stamp heads, thus maximizing production and minimizing damage. Everyone was glad-the mine house owners and the employees-and now Joshua Hendy had a source of profits to show his enterprise into one of California’s main manufacturers. From 1880 to 1885 Joshua patented a number of improvements and purchased out many different patents: He soon controlled the ore feeder market. The Joshua Hendy Machine Works built feeders below it’s personal title, and constructed the feeders for almost all different mill manufacturers.
In 1882 Joshua integrated the business together with his nephew Samuel J. Hendy as one of the officers. Joshua’s title was now supervisor, with Samuel as President of the agency. Samuel became active in expanding the business and during the 1880’s the company built ore concentrators, elevators, crushers, and hydraulic monitors. By 1888 Samuel’s brother John grew to become plant superintendent, and the Machine Works was building stamp mills, crushers, ore vehicles, hoists, buckets, skips, steam engines, pumps and lots of different types of mining tools used all over the West. They had been also agents for all varieties of mining equipment built by different concerns, and shipped mills and tools all around the world, especially to Australia and South America.
On October 19, 1891 Joshua Hendy died at the age of 74. Samuel Hendy took over the enterprise, and expanded manufacturing in casting, forging and riveting iron. The Machine Works continued to increase its manufacturing, producing ever bigger and more fashionable mining tools.
In 1906 main changes occurred. Samuel died within the spring of that year, so his brother John took over the each day operating of the business. When the great San Francisco earthquake and fire hit in April, the whole lot within the manufacturing space of the city was destroyed. The Iron Works had already outgrown its amenities on Fremont St, so John decided that since he needed to rebuild from scratch, he would keep the places of work there, however moved the company’s manufacturing to a big tract of land south of San Francisco at Murphy’s Station close to Sunnyvale, where he might increase the plant even more. It’s most certainly that at this time the title of the enterprise was modified to the Joshua Hendy Iron Works. In Sunnyvale, the enterprise had room to grow, and continued on strongly by way of the years, even during the depression of the 1930’s.
When WWII hit, and the mines had been shut down by authorities decree, the Iron Works built ship components and ship engines for the warfare effort. After the war, the mining trade was finally starting to wane, so the Iron Works continued by constructing marine engines. In 1956 the Joshua Hendy Iron Works was sold to Westinghouse Corp., who continued to use it for a manufacturing plant, and nonetheless has a facility there in Sunnyvale to this present day.
The Joshua Hendy Iron Works was a serious contributor to the event of the California mining trade, and for over a hundred years supplied tools to the mines of the West, each giant and small. If you have any questions concerning in which and how to use Steel Tube Wholesale, you can contact us at our webpage. Its legacy will be seen in museums and back yards throughout California: Fascinating old ore vehicles, ore crushers, stamp mills, and all sorts of “old mining junk” are collected by folks involved in the historical past of the Old West.