Ambrose Swasey
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Ambrose Swasey (December 19, 1846–June 15, 1937) was an American mechanical engineer and inventor.
He was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. He apprenticed as a machinist and was employed at Pratt & Whitney. As his career progressed he became a foreman in the gear cutting section. He developed a new technique for making gear-tooth cutters. Subsequently he and Worcester R. Warner formed the machine tool firm Warner & Swasey Company, based in Cleveland, Ohio. Swasey would perform the engineering and machine development at this company.
The close friends Warner and Swasey built their homes next to each other on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, a street that was known as "Millionaire's Row".
In addition to army ordinance contracts, the firm of Warner & Swasey became notable for their work on astronomical observatories and equipment. They realized that obtaining contracts to build large astronomical observatories would provide publicity for their company.
In 1885 Swasey completed work at McCormick Observatory on the 45-foot dome, which was the largest in the world, and had a unique, 3 shutter design. In 1887 Swasey built the mount for the 36-inch refracting telescope at Lick Observatory. In 1898 he manufactured a dividing engine for the U.S. Naval Observatory that was used to make the meridian circles. Both the building and dome of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory were made by Warner and Swasey Co. Other observatory telescopes and components were built by the company at the Kenwood Observatory, Yerkes Observatory, Argentia National Observatory, and the Case Institute Observatory.
From 1904 until 1905 he was the president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Both Warner and Swasey were amateur astronomers. In 1920 they made a joint donation to the Case Western Reserve University to fund the construction of an observatory. This was named the Warner and Swasey Observatory in their honor, and the observatory was used for research by the Case astronomy department. The observatory maintained by the department today is still known by this name today.
Other donations made by Swasey include the Swasey Chapel in Cleveland (1924), a bandstand in Exeter by architect Henry Bacon, (1916), and the endowment of a chair for a professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Sciences. The chimes in the chapel were included as a memorial to his wife, Lavinia Marston Swasey.
He died in Exeter. The Warner & Swasey Company he co-founded would continue until 1980, when it was acquired by Bendix Corporation.
[edit] Awards and honors
The Swasey crater on the Moon is named for him, as is the asteroid 992 Swasey. At CWRU, the chair of "Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics" was named for his endowment. (Lawrence M. Krauss was named to this position in 1993.) In 1936 he was awarded the Hoover Medal. Swasey was elected to the Machine Tool Hall of Fame of the American Precision Museum in 1982.
