Thaddeus Fairbanks

Fairbanks was born in the town of Brimfield, Massachusetts, on January 16, 1796.[1] He was the elders of three sons of Joseph Fairbanks and his wife Phebe (née Paddock) Fairbanks. He was educated in the schools of Brimfield working on the family farm in his spare time and showed a natural inclination toward mechanics.[2][3] In 1815, he moved with his family to St. Johnsbury, Vermont, from the old Fairbanks' homestead in Dedham, Massachusetts. This oldest surviving timber-frame house in North America was originally started in construction around 1636 by Jonathan Fairbanks, who emigrated from Summerby on the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, in 1633.[4]

Fairbanks made a woodworking shop above his father's sawmill and gristmill, which were powered by the Sleepers River stream flow water falls.[5][6] There he manufactured carriages alone until 1824. He then constructed an iron foundry with his brother Erastus—who later became Governor of Vermont—joining him in the establishment of the new business partnership E. & T. Fairbanks to make furnaces for heating, cooking stoves, cast iron plows, and farm implements.[7] In 1826, Fairbanks was granted a patent on a refrigerator and a cast-iron plow that was extensively used.[8] He was the mechanical technician behind the designs of the inventions of the company and his brother was the businessman that marketed the products.[9]

In 1830, Fairbanks and Erastus took up an interest in processing hemp as a product to sell. Fairbanks, being mechanically minded, made and patented a hemp-and-flax-dressing machine at this time called a Haynes machine.[1][10] He became the general manager of Saint Johnsbury Hemp Company that was in a new building 25 feet by 60 feet with 1500 square feet of floor space.[6][11] There he built mechanical scales that would accurately weigh large loads of hemp straw that came from farmers. There was no accurate measuring scales for this important task at the time, so no way of knowing exactly what to pay the farmer with the going rate of $15 (equivalent to $427 in 2019) a ton.[12] The designed scale for weighing heavy loads was placed in a dug out pit with the platform that the object being weighed sat on being at ground level and then wagon loads of hemp could be driven onto it with a team of horses.[13][14]

The scale consisted of two A shaped levers and four straight levers meeting at a steel rod. Fairbanks determined that by hanging from the one that hung upon the steel rod, he could put together four supports for his platform, from all of which the leverage related to the steel beam was balanced on bearings. This mechanical innovation was the birth of the modern platform scale.[15] He was then granted a patent on the platform scale, which became known as the Fairbanks scale. Upon building these scales that turned out to be popular, his brothers advised him to produce and sell these as town scales.[16] He was given the title "Father of Modern Weighing" for the technology.[17] Fairbanks received many foreign awards, was knighted by the Emperor of Austria, and received honors from the Bey of Tunis and the King of Siam.[5] The chief honor was awarded to the United States at the 1873 Vienna World's Fair for Fairbanks technology.[6]

Fairbanks scale and log table - Bureau of Mines Weigh Station, Boulder City, Nevada

The platform scale for accurately weighing heavy objects became Fairbanks' most famous invention; it is commonly known to the public as the Fairbanks Scale, for which he patented a design in 1831.[18] Before its invention, accurately weighing of particularly heavy objects required hanging them from a log beams; as a result, these heavy and awkward objects could not be precisely weighed with any reasonable degree of accuracy. A platform scale, built large enough, could weigh an entire loaded wagon. By placing a fully loaded wagon on the platform scale for weight measurement, removing the load, and then bringing it back onto the platform scale when empty, it became possible to accurately calculate the weight of just the load and then determine the value of the farm products of the load.[3]

Fairbanks platform and table scales

In 1834, Fairbanks with his brothers Erastus and Joseph formed an enterprise of E. & T. Fairbanks Company to make and market these platform scales. The unique scales became popular all throughout the United States and its popularity spread worldwide to South America, Europe, Asia, and Russia.[19] The exported units used figures of the country (i.e. Chinese characters) and the metric system for the measurements.[11] The company at first slowly increased in production and doubled in volume every three years from 1842 to 1857. There was a temporary slowdown in business from 1857 to 1860.[20] In 1860 business picked up again and the enterprise increased considerably from year to year when they received orders from foreign countries.[21] In 1874, the business partnership incorporated into Fairbanks Scale Company and sold on a large scale.[22] By 1885 the home factory of a thousand men was manufacturing 70,000 scales a year and other factories were in Asia, Africa, Russia, Holland, Cuba, Siam, and Japan.[21]

The platform scale revolutionized the weighing of large loads and has been in use since its inception. Platform scales are found in many hardware stores, doctor's office, and factories in the United States. Fairbanks scales were used as farm scales that could be set up on top of the ground or barn floor, scales for weighing small cargo cars at coal mines, platform scales for weighing up to 250-ton freight cars, scales for weighing cotton, meat weighting scales with grinding attachments, warehouse scales in many varieties, scales of non-corrosive material impervious to salts for use to fish dealers, 5-ton scales for weighing minerals at mines, heavy duty scales with racks to weigh bars of iron in rolling mills, railroad track scales with capacity of 335,000 pounds, automatic sacking scales for the grain trade, scales for weighing milk containers at creameries, scales for fine weighing from a feather or a phonograph needle to 10 pounds as required by merchants, photographers, druggists, cloth sellers, and postal workers.[23] Fairbanks was granted the first railroad-track platform scale patent on January 13, 1857, and received number 16,381. In 1916, the E. & T. Fairbanks Company was taken over by Fairbanks, Morse & Company. Ownership of the company has since changed hands several times but Fairbanks platform scales are still made in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont.[24]

St Johnsbury Academy - Colby Hall

Fairbanks in 1820 married Lucy Peck Barker (1798-1866). They had five children, two lived to adulthood. His daughter Charlotte, wife of Reverend George N. Webber, died in 1869. His son Professor Henry Fairbanks cared for Fairbanks in his last years of life and survived him.[6] He received over forty patents in his lifetime,[5] the 43rd one being his last one was granted to him at the age 90. On March 31, 1886, Fairbanks made a misstep in his house and fell. He broke his hip and it never healed properly. He died April 12 and was buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in St. Johnsbury.[25][26]

Fairbanks was involved in numerous charitable and civic endeavors, including the 1842 founding with his brothers Erastus and Joseph of the St. Johnsbury Academy for St. Johnsbury children and children of nearby towns. The academy in 1873 was reincorporated as a school of grades 9-12 for all boys and girls in the county to receive exceptional educational opportunities as was intended by the founders. It is a school for both technical training and college preparatory studies, making the school unique among New England academies.[27] Fairbanks paid $50,000 (equivalent to $1,478,000 in 2019) to have it constructed. It is a red brick building of Norman-Gothic Tudor style. He added the South Hall a year later at a cost of $36,000 (equivalent to $1,064,000 in 2019). Horace Fairbanks, a nephew, added a picture gallery, library, and reading-room.[28] A painting of Fairbanks is in the lobby of Colby Hall.[5]

Fairbanks, Morse & Company national headquarters building

Fairbanks Historical Marker

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  Very large Fairbanks scale
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  Fairbanks Scale at home
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  Fairbanks platform scale
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  Various Fairbanks scales

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  Fairbanks track scale
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  Fairbanks Cotton Scale
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  Fairbanks-Morse scales
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  Fairbanks butcher's scale

• Chisholm, Hugh (1911). Encyclopedia Britannica, Edition 11, volume 10. Cambridge University Press. OCLC 266598.

• Duffy, John J. (2003). The Vermont Encyclopedia. University Press of New England. ISBN 1-58465-086-9.

• Ingham, John N. (1983). Biography Dictionary Business Leaders of American. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313239076.

• Moody, John (1923). Moody's Analyses of Investments. Moody's Investors Services. OCLC 930258712.

• Ullery, Jacob G. (1894). Men of Vermont. Transcript Publishing Company. OCLC 1048796062.