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Pacific Historian
The Strongest Handshake in the World
A lone inventor and a lone crusader gave the world a safe device to hold railroad cars together
by John H. White, Jr.
The crude and deadly link-and-pin system for connecting cars.
The crude and deadly link-and-pin system for connecting cars.
(Chesapeake and Ohio Railway)
Every day thousands of long trains lumber across North America. They come and go unnoticed by most of us, but even more unnoticed is what holds them together. It is a clawlike device, a huge steel hand. Two hands, or couplers, grip each other to connect the cars, and they join and unjoin quickly so that cars can easily be picked up or dropped off. They are technical marvels whose basic design was introduced more than 130 years ago by a dry goods clerk who had no training in engineering or mechanics. He was a true amateur inventor. And they entered general use—preventing thousands of disabling injuries a year—because of long, tireless effort by one other devoted man.
To read the rest of the story:
AmericanHeritage.com / The Strongest Handshake in the World
A lone inventor and a lone crusader gave the world a safe device to hold railroad cars together
by John H. White, Jr.
The crude and deadly link-and-pin system for connecting cars.
The crude and deadly link-and-pin system for connecting cars.
(Chesapeake and Ohio Railway)
Every day thousands of long trains lumber across North America. They come and go unnoticed by most of us, but even more unnoticed is what holds them together. It is a clawlike device, a huge steel hand. Two hands, or couplers, grip each other to connect the cars, and they join and unjoin quickly so that cars can easily be picked up or dropped off. They are technical marvels whose basic design was introduced more than 130 years ago by a dry goods clerk who had no training in engineering or mechanics. He was a true amateur inventor. And they entered general use—preventing thousands of disabling injuries a year—because of long, tireless effort by one other devoted man.
To read the rest of the story:
AmericanHeritage.com / The Strongest Handshake in the World