American manufacturer, born in Townsend, MA, on the 1st of December 1791. He obtained but scanty education, spending some years of his youth in his father’s blacksmith-shop. He left home at the age of twenty-one, and soon became an expert machinist, remaining until 1830 in Brownsville, NY, and conducting a machine and forge-works business, when he was appointed assistant superintendent of the Mohawk and Hudson railroad. He became superintendent the following year. In 1839 he was elected canal commissioner of New York state, and superintended the enlargement of the Erie canal. Removing to Philadelphia in 1842, he first engaged in the manufacture of locomotives with Matthew W. Baldwin, but soon withdrew and began the manufacture of car-wheels of his own invention. In 1848 he patented his process for annealing car-wheels. This discovery marked one of the most important eras in the history of railroads. The process is one of toughening, by placing the cast chilled wheel in a furnace, where it is heated and gradually cooled, the result rendering it practically unbreakable, and enabling railroads to increase both loads and speed. In 1860 Mr. Whitney became president of the Reading railroad, to whose success he largely contributed. He was a man of large benevolence, contributing, among other bequests, fifty thousand dollars to found a chair of dynamical engineering in the University of Pennsylvania. He died in Philadelphia on the 4th of June 1874.
