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a delay in closing the negotiations, and
Mr. Emery returned home. Mr. Sellers
introduced Mr. Emery to Colonel Laidley,
of the Ordnance Bureau of the War
Department. He met him at the Reming-
ton Armory in Ilion, New York, by appointment
and gave him a demonstration
with the scales that he had there. As a
result Mr. Emery was asked by the Ordnance
Department to design a large testing
machine while Colonel Laidley was
investigating the testing machines of this
country and Europe. He then designed
a system of testing machines, from little
ones to big ones. While he was working
on these designs, Colonel Laidley returned
from Europe and gave him an
order for a four-hundred-ton machine.
This was on December 23, 1874.
In February, 1875, Mr. Emery was
called to Washington and there met General
Benet, chief of the Ordnance Department.
It was decided to try to get an
increased appropriation from Congress,
which was obtained to cover additional
work, and President Grant appointed a
board to take charge of the matter and to
this board Mr. Emery's designs were sub-
mitted. The supervision of the contract
was turned over to the board, Colonel
Laidley acting as its president. Parts of
the machine were built in different places,
the whole being assembled at the Watertown
Arsenal. In order to build this test-
ing machine it was necessary to design a
number of new and novel machines, one
of these being a twenty-ton scale to
standardize some weights with which to
calibrate the testing machine. When this
was finally tested with a load of forty-
five thousand pounds, it was found to be
sensitive to half an ounce under all loads.
This demonstration greatly delighted the
board. The completion of the testing
machine was delayed by various difficul-
ties, but in 1879 it was finished, and in
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY
25?
1880 went into government use, constitut-
ing a wonderful monument to the genius
of the inventor.
When this machine was tested by the
board for acceptance, a bar of iron, having
a section of twenty square inches, was
pulled in two with a tension load of
722,800 pounds, and immediately following,
two horse hairs were tested, one
breaking with a load of one pound and
the other with a load of one and threequarter
pounds. This second hair was
tested on a small dynamometer and broke
with the same load of one and three-
fourths pounds, showing the great sensi-
tiveness of this large machine, which in
1920 was as sensitive as ever, and is still
in service. The testing machine while in
operation at the arsenal in 1881 was considered
part of the exhibits of the Massa-
chusetts Charitable Mechanic Association
Fair, held in Boston, on Huntington ave-
nue, and as such was awarded a large gold
medal of honor, which cost $500 and was
awarded for "That exhibit most condu-
cive to human welfare." A second gold
medal was at the same time also awarded
Mr. Emery on this same machine for
"The best scientific apparatus."
In 1882 Mr. Emery moved from
Chicopee, Massachusetts, to Stamford,
Connecticut, and the Yale & Towne Manufacturing
Company took up the manu-
facture of his scales, gauges and testing
machines, and three one-hundred-andfifty-thousand-pound,
and two three-hundred-thousand-pound
testing machines,
for tension, compression and transverse
loads, were constructed. One of these
went to the University of Toronto, another
to McGill University of Montreal,
and one to the University of Vienna. One
of the large ones went to the Cambria
Iron and Steel Works in Johnstown,
Pennsylvania, and the other to the Bethlehem
Steel Company.