The following account is from a newspaper clipping published in the Kent Courier, Kent, Ohio (date unknown) describing a manufacturing plant located in Kent. The article was written by Loris C. Troyer under the byline “Portage Pathways”. A geography lesson is in order here – Kent is in Portage County, Ohio.
Now to the story – The Railway Speed Recorder Company was chartered on December 2, 1875 and operated for some 29 years in Kent. The Reverend W. W. Wythe of Meadville, Pennsylvania secured a patent for the speed recorder but it was the skill of James B. Miller, inventor of the Miller Keyless Lock, who perfected the speed regulator. The company was capitalized for $250,000 employing as many as 80 skilled machinists. The device recorded every movement of a train, the duration of each stop, and speed at any point along the rail line. The recorder was designed to be attached to the sill under a particular rail car. The instrument operated thusly, a worm gear was attached to the car’s wheel which in turn engaged a 50 toothed gear. It took ten thousand revolutions to cause the speed recorder’s drum to revolve one complete turn. According to the advertisement the recorder would provide freedom from wrecks and damaged roadbeds. Its inclusion on a train did away with stealing time at stops at stations and then making up for the lost time by fast runs between stations. It was the only firm in the world that manufactured a device to record the speed of trains and at one time the devices were used on scores of rail companies throughout the United States and foreign countries. Eventually the Company filled all the orders placed by the various rail companies and it turned its attention to the manufacture of other railroad hardware - track jacks, caboose and car shop stoves, milk testers and an electric saw. The company quit the Kent facility and moved to Meadville in 1904 thus ending a bit of historic rail ingenuity.
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PCRCThe Page County Railroad Club has a wealth of railroad information shared between it's members. In this blog we will do our best to share that knowledge. Archives
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