Today, a technology dies when we lose our nerve.
The University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
Helena Wright, curator of
graphic arts at the Smithsonian, is an expert on
paper. She tells a remarkable tale about paper.
The story begins 200 years ago. The 18th-century
English had begun making all sorts of things from
laminated paper with a japanned lacquer finish. We
see trays, clock cases -- even carriage parts -- of
japanned paper. Soon after, we find a growing use
of papier-maché -- of items made directly
from paper pulp.
Before the Civil War we made almost all paper from
rags. Then we began making paper from wood and other
fibers. We also began making a whole array of new
products from those new papers.
In 1867 an inventor, Richard Allen, went into
business with his brother-in-law making paper from
straw. Allen had been a railway engineer. Now he
concocted a wild use for his new paper.
Cast-iron railway wheels transmitted every
imperfection on the track into the car above it.
Early train rides were noisy adventures. Allen
invented a quiet railway-car wheel. It had a steel
rim and an iron hub. But its center was laminated
paper.
People had made other kinds of composite wheels.
They'd tried wood, but wood reacts to weather.
Laminated paper was more stable. Wood can split
along its grain. Paper doesn't.
Enter now George
Pullman. Pullman's classy-luxury-railway-car
business took off just after the Civil War. Allen's
paper wheel was just the thing to bring quiet
elegance to Pullman's dining and sleeping cars.
Pullman became Allen's champion.
Paper railroad wheels lasted 25 years while railway
cars grew larger and larger. Finally, wheels began
breaking under the load. Not the paper ones, but
other composite wheels. Heavy freight trains coming
down out of the mountains put huge stress on their
wheels when engineers applied the brakes.
Allen's wheels didn't fail. But after George
Pullman died, the public's confidence in steel
riding on paper did begin to fail. We went to steel
wheels. We fitted them with fancier suspension
systems and went on about our business.
Still, if paper wheels are forgotten, the concept
is not. It's come back, and it's writ large.
Laminated paper was a composite material. Today we
make composites of glass or carbon fibers in a
plastic matrix. We make many automobile wheels from
composites not too different from the lacquered
paper in Allen's old wheel. It was non-metallic
composites that hid the Stealth bomber from radar.
Yet paper and iron still seem too different for the
mind to hold. I suppose it's little wonder we lost
confidence and went back to steel -- when we really
didn't have to.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
Wright, H.E., George Pullman and the Allen Paper Car
Wheel. Technology and Culture, 1992,
Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 757-768 and cover.
I am most grateful to Helena Wright for providing a
great deal of additional information and
advice.
Image courtesy of Smithsonian
Institution, National Museum of American
History
The Smithsonian Institution's Paper-Cored Railroad
Wheel
Image courtesy of Smithsonian
Institution, National Museum of American
History
Paper-Cored railroad wheel as displayed
in an Allen Paper Car Wheel Co. circular
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-1997 by John H.
Lienhard.
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