Matthias William Baldwin

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Matthias Baldwin (illustration - published in 1899)

Matthias William Baldwin (born December 10, 1795 in Elizabethtown , New Jersey , USA ; † September 7, 1866 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , USA) was an American industrialist .

Baldwin was born in Elizabethtown , New Jersey , the youngest of five children of a wheelwright . After the early death of his father, he learned the trade of goldsmith and silversmith, which he practiced from 1819. In 1825 he gave up his profession to become a partner in a company for engraving and bookbinding tools, of which he became the sole owner in 1827. In the same year he married Sarah C. Baldwin, a distant cousin.

On April 25, 1831, Baldwin's newly founded company, Baldwin Locomotive Works , presented a model railroad in Philadelphia with two cars that could each carry four passengers. The locomotive was heated with local coal instead of the usual coke . This aroused the interest of the local railroad company Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railroad , which also soon commissioned the first locomotive. This is how the famous Old Ironsides steam locomotive , one of the first successful US steam locomotives , was created in 1832 .

The Baldwin Locomotive Works , which was located in Eddystone from 1912 , became the world's largest steam locomotive manufacturer, which also supplied machines to Europe , Asia and Africa .

literature

  • John K. Brown: The Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1831-1915: A Study in American Industrial Practice . Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8018-6812-2