Thomas D. West

Thomas Dyson West (born August 31, 1851 in Manchester , England, † June 17, 1915 in Cleveland , USA) was an American iron caster, entrepreneur and author. His work forms the basis of the literature on practical foundrying and accident prevention in the United States in the early 20th century.

Life

Thomas D. West came to America as a child and lived in Portland. At the age of twelve, he joined the Portland Locomotive Co. to begin his apprenticeship. In 1871 he went to Cleveland and became an iron caster at the Globe Iron Works. In 1890 West joined the Alice blast furnace plant in Sharpsville (PA) in order to successfully carry out castings from the blast furnace. He published his knowledge as a regular contributor to the magazine "The Foundry" and in 1882 his first book "American Foundry Practice" was published by John Wiley & Sons. In 1905 and 1906 he was president of the American Foundrymen's Association. During the last years of his life he devoted his attention to accident prevention and in 1908 he created the American Accident Prevention Society. As chairman of a committee of the Ohio Foundries, regulations and measures on this subject were developed with his assistance and submitted as a proposal to the Ohio Industrial Commission. In 1915 he succumbed to his injuries sustained in a car accident.

Fonts

• Metallurgy of cast iron; a complete exposure of the process involved in its treatment, chemically and physically, from the blast furnace through the foundry to the testing machine (Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland printing company, 1897),
• American foundry practice. Treating of loam, dry sand and green sand molding, and containing a practical treatise upon the management of cupolas and the melting of iron (New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1906),
• Accidents, their causes and remedies (Greenville, Pa., Beaver printing company, 1908)