American inventor, born at Catskill, NY, on the 14th of March 1800; died in New York City on the 13th of April 1874. He was apprenticed to a watchmaker, and early showed the bent of his mind by improvements in the construction of eight-day clocks, and by the invention of a delicate engraving-machine. The dry gas-meter is his invention, as is also the transfer-machine to produce bank-note plates from separate dies; and in 1839 his plan for manufacturing postage-stamps was accepted by the British government. He subsequently introduced improvements in the manufacture of India-rubber goods, tools and machinery, and invented a pyrometer, a deep-sea sounding-machine and a dynamometer. In 1847 he erected a factory in New York entirely of cast-iron, five stories high, which was the first of the kind ever built, and his success led him to engage in the erection of similar structures in other places.
