Ohio History Journal

JAMES LEFFEL: DOUBLE TURBINE WATER WHEEL INVENTOR     by CARL M. BECKER     Though the evolution of steam engines in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a dramatic advance in the development of prime movers, waterpower mechanisms retained substantial importance in the industrial growth of western Europe and the United States. Indeed, European and American inventors were substantially improving conventional water wheels and developing new kinds of fluid mechanisms. Much of   NOTES ARE ON PAGES 269-270

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JAMES LEFFEL                                                     201

 

their work simply manifested a long-continuing process, but in part it

represented a response to the use of steam power; for in old industrial

regions lacking mineral fuel for the generation of steam power, the more

efficient use of water offered some degree of economic salvation.¹ Further

stimulating the invention of water power devices was the spirited debate,

especially in the United States in the 1830's and 1840's, over the relative

merits of water and steam power. Whatever the causative factors, water

wheels were noticeably improved, and, more importantly, a new and excit-

ing kind of waterpower mechanism -- the water turbine -- was progressively

elaborated.

The subject of much experimentation during the second half of the

eighteenth century but not ready for practical use then, water turbines

were, when finally effectively designed by the 1860's, considerably more

sophisticated and efficient in their use of water than were ordinary wheels.

Older, conventional wheels -- overshot, undershot, and breast wheels -- all

generated power through the direct action or pressure of water on buckets or

floats, without the water moving relative to the wheels. In contrast, in the tur-

bine, which was encased and fixed to a vertical or horizontal shaft, water

flowed through ducts or vanes, developing into velocity energy as impulses

and reactions were set up between the flowing water and the passages. To put

it in a simpler way, water ran over or under traditional wheels but through

turbine wheels.² In utilization of power received, water turbines could

deliver ninety percent effectiveness while conventional wheels developed

about seventy-five percent effectiveness. Moreover, turbines cost less to

install, occupied less space and turned with greater velocity than did

conventional wheels.3

Relatively complicated, the turbine lent itself to the development of

various types. Two general types in use by the 1840's were reaction and

impulse wheels. In reaction turbines, which were completely filled with

water, water entered the runner under pressure after a portion of its

energy had been converted into velocity energy. In impulse turbines, which

had to be partially filled with air, water entered under atmospheric pres-

sure after all its energy had been converted into velocity energy.⁴ A basis

for sub-classification was the direction of the flowing water. The flow could

be radial at right angles to the axis of revolution, or it could be axial, that

is parallel to the axis of revolution. Radial flow could be outward or inward;

axial flow could be downward or upward.5 Though the great European

pioneer in the invention of turbines, Benoit Fourneyron, worked almost

exclusively with outward flow reaction turbines, the wheels often used in

Europe were the Jonval axial flow turbine and the Girard impulse turbine.

The Jonval turbine was particularly effective where large quantities of

water were available under low or medium heads, not uncommon charac-

teristics of European streams. The Girard wheel was especially valuable

for use under conditions created by high falls with small volumes of water.⁶

In the United States, the dominant type of turbine was the inward flow

reaction wheel. Wheels of this type designed by the New England engineer,

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202                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

James B. Francis, were quite popular.7 Francis wheels and mixed-flow tur-

bines, a modification of inward flow wheels, were used with good effect where

immense volumes of water were discharged.⁸ Initially inefficient in the use

of part-loads, they were gradually improved by various American inventors

in the second half of the nineteenth century.

General American interest in water turbines, following in the wake of

the European movement, which had been on-going since the 1750's, first

became pronounced in the 1830's and 1840's. During these decades Francis,

Uriah Boyden and George Kilburn, all engineers active in New England,

were significantly advancing the theory and practice of water turbine

technology.⁹ Other inventors of lesser note were also at work, ever sanguine

as they dispatched their patent applications to the United States patent

office. Reflecting their efforts, the number of patents granted for turbines

was increasing in the period.¹⁰ Apparently none were granted in the 1820's;

but about twenty-five were issued in the 1830's and 1840's, twenty in the

1850's, thirty in the 1860's, and, as momentum gathered, over a hundred

in the 1870's.11 This interest had mounted despite and because of the rising

challenge of steam power. Waterpower adherents, by word and inventive

deed, argued their cause; but especially after 1840 many factories were turn-

ing to steam power as its advocates, led particularly by Charles T. James,

marshalled convincing evidence of the economic superiority of steam.12

Despite this fact, by the 1850's, water turbines still replaced the old style

wheels in many mills; all the pitch-back wheels at the Appleton Company

in Lowell, Massachusetts, for example, had been supplanted by turbines.

Among the water turbine men whose efforts were stamped with the

imprint of ingenuity was James Leffel, a foundry operator who embodied

many of the classic qualities of the nineteenth century inventor: steadfastness

of purpose and effort, resilient energy and optimism, and drive for technical

perfection and productive efficiency. Born in 1806 in Botetourt County,

Virginia, Leffel was but a baby when his parents, John and Catherine Leffel,

moved to the Ohio country.13 The family settled near Donnel's Creek,

several miles west of the hamlet of Springfield, Ohio. Here the father erected

a sawmill and gristmill.14 Young Leffel worked, of course, in the mills,

learning general mill technology and developing particularly an interest

in water wheels. Indeed, as one source has it, "the construction of rude

models of water wheels, and their practical application to some boyish

purpose, constituted almost the sole pastime of the leisure hours of his

youth."15

Leffel first made practical use of his knowledge of water wheels as a

"mere boy" when sometime in the 1820's he built a sawmill in which he

installed a wheel of his own design and construction. Supposedly, the mill

was "the most efficient mill in that section of the country," and the wheel,

demonstrating the "great care . . . exercised in admitting the water to it,

at once gave proof of an innate knowledge of Hydraulics possessed by no

other mechanic in the country, even if of greater age and experience."16

His success soon gave Leffel a beseeching clientele: "The complete success

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JAMES LEFFEL                                                      203

 

of the undertaking at once drew the attention of other mill owners; and,

notwithstanding his youth, he was beset on all sides to re-model wheels

which were now, in comparison, considered as inefficient." And Leffel was

a heroic mechanic: "With the tact natural to him, he soon detected the

errors in their construction; and many a manufacturer was constrained to

praise that youthful skill which, as if by magic, transformed his hitherto

insufficient power into a valuable and abundant one.^"17

For about fifteen years Leffel worked as a millwright. Acquiring some

skill in metal working and seeing in the growing population of Springfield

and Clark County (which rose from 13,114 in 1830 to 16,882 in 1840 and

to 22,178 in 1850) a market for sickles, knives and other small iron imple-

ments, he decided in the late 1830's to erect his first foundry and machine

shop near the National Road west of Springfield near Buck Creek. Com-

pleted in early 1840, the foundry was the first such facility in the Spring-

field area and was the site of much of his inventive and innovative labors.¹⁸

His initial enterprise in iron enjoyed success from the beginning. Patronage

became so great by 1843 that he decided to enlarge his productive capacity

and diversify output. His expansion plans calling for more capital and

skill than he could muster by himself, Leffel took on two partners, William

A. John, a molder from Columbus, and T. Y. Ferrell, a finisher from Cin-

cinnati. Acquiring new flasks and cores and other equipment, the three

proprietors increased the old line of small implements and also turned

to the production of mill gearing and stoves. This new work called for a

more sophisticated casting technology than did the small implement produc-

tion. Stove manufacturing in particular demanded the careful casting of

strong and irregular shapes, which in turn entailed problems of even

shrinkage in cooling. Nevertheless, stove castings soon accounted for much

of the firm's output; the "Queen of the West," a typical brand name of the

day, became the first important stove in the firm's line.¹⁹

His partnership with John and Ferrell was the first of a series of busi-

ness associations that Leffel initiated. In 1845, after apparently terminating

his connections with the foundrymen, he entered into a partnership with

William Blackeney, a machinist who gave him invaluable support for

nearly two decades; the two men continued operation of the foundry,

from which a variety of small iron goods soon poured forth.²⁰ Then in

1846, Leffel and Andrew Richards, another energetic Springfield manu-

facturer, joined to build a cotton mill and machine shop,²¹ located near

Buck Creek. This latter venture proved unsuccessful, however, and the

facilities eventually were acquired by the P. P. Mast Company.

As he was organizing his manufacturing concerns, Leffel was becoming

one of the acknowledged industrial leaders of Springfield. It was he who

first proposed to skeptical Springfield manufacturers in the early 1840's that

a race for the effective utilization of water power could be brought from

the outlying Buck Creek to a main thoroughfare in the community.²²

Leffel envisioned the establishment of a complex of mills along the race

that would bring trade to the very doorsteps of merchants and manufacturers.

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204                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

He pressed his "favorite scheme" on Samuel and James Barnett, two well-

established gristmill operators, and they finally cut a race running a one

and one-half mile course from country to town. Near its terminus, they

erected a "Water Power and Flouring Mill." And Leffel himself raised

his cotton mill and machine shop by the race. Several other mills were

soon located along the conduit, which at its lowest water stage provided

enough power to operate twenty run of stone.

Though busily engaged in foundry work, Leffel was more concerned with

water wheel development. He used his foundry for a series of experiments

in hydraulics and found time to construct wheels for a number of mills

in the area. Where "economical use of water was desired," he used a kind

of overshot wheel, which, according to an adulatory biographer, "was so satis-

factory that he was almost induced to believe it the most perfect form of wheel

that could be adopted."²³ But he always found some objection to his over-

shot wheel and resolved "to improve the Turbine so that it would possess

all the excellent qualities of the Overshot, without its defects." In fact,

This, then, became the great problem of his life -- to construct a

Turbine Wheel to at least equal, or if possible to excel, the Overshot,

in all circumstances and conditions. Never, perhaps, did a man pursue

a fixed purpose with more devotion, patience and industry. Day after

day, and year after year, the study of Hydraulics, and experiments

connected therewith, occupied his leisure hours . . . .

To convey some idea of the immense labor he performed in this

department, we would say that he constructed and experimented with

over one hundred different forms of water wheels. Among these were

the Outward Discharge or Fourneyron Wheel, the Jonval or Vertical

Discharge, the Center Vent, & c. Each Different class underwent in

his hands numerous modifications . . . .24

Despite his massive labors, Leffel patented but two wheels. His first

patent, received in 1845, was for a "new and useful improvement on a

bevel centrifugal water-wheel." The patent was a characteristic inventor's

document, speaking as it did of the marvelous utility of the wheel. Leffel's

"useful improvement" was the multiplicity of wheel apertures, which

numbered "five times" as many as found in ordinary wheels. Thus the

water of one inch or two hundred inches could "be applied on the periphery

of this wheel to greater advantage than upon any other known." Accordingly,

asserted Leffel, it would run in low and sluggish streams "with less fall

than any other wheel." Moreover, in times of "freshets" or high water,

"when other wheels refuse to act," it would do a "good business," since

the high water was permitted to gather toward the center of the wheel

without diminishing wheel speed.²⁵ Though not a true water turbine, the

wheel incorporated at least one characteristic feature of turbines: water

ran through it rather than simply upon the circumference. But neither

reaction nor impulse principles were utilized in the wheel.

So certain was Leffel of the effectiveness and salability of this wheel he

gave over a portion of the foundry capacity to its production. Expecting

to generate a local demand first and then area demand, he employed the

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JAMES LEFFEL                                                   205

 

wheel in his cotton mill and machine shop. But his act of faith moved only

a few Springfield manufacturers to a similar decision, and his roseate hopes

for sales were not realized. Though continuing to experiment with water

power mechanisms, he turned all of the foundry facilities back to the

production of older, more marketable and more prosaic goods for the farm

and home.²⁶

If Leffel had failed in his initial effort to invent and market a water

wheel, he remained, nonetheless, an important manufacturer in the com-

munity. By 1850 he had achieved a kind of security and maturity in his

industrial ventures. He had given up his interest in the cotton mill, but he,

Richards, and Blackeney had developed a machine shop and foundry of

considerable size for the time and place at the site of his first foundry

west of Springfield. According to the returns of the census of manufacturing

for 1850, capital invested in the foundry and machine shop was $18,000,

the second largest investment in Clark County; only the $27,000 of the

Samuel Barnett flour mill exceeded it.27 The works employed fourteen

"hands," the second largest work force in the county, and produced

annually stoves and machine castings valued at $15,000, the stoves account-

ing for $10,000 of the total. The national average for capital invested in

iron foundries was $11,000, and the national average for capital invested

per worker was $773 -- far below the $1,300 behind each Leffel employee.²⁸

With Leffel providing its inventive drive, the firm achieved substantial

status in the early 1850's. One prominent item fashioned in the foundry

in the period was an improved lever jack that Leffel patented in 1850.

It was, unfortunately, linked with a tragedy for its inventor; during a trip

to California, where he was selling the jack, his son, Wright Leffel, was

drowned.²⁹ Leffel's cooking stoves, the "Buckeye" and the "Double Oven"

or "Red Cook Stove" earned a good reputation for him among Miami Valley

housewives. Patented in 1849, the "Double Oven," was supposedly the first

stove in Ohio that threw the flame down over the oven at the base of

the stove; the oven heretofore was usually placed in the center of the stove.30

Some forty years later, Ohio's pioneer historian, Henry Howe, recorded

that the latter was the first cook stove invented in Ohio and quoted

an old citizen who believed that "no better has succeeded it."³¹ For some

reason or other, despite the success of the firm, Richards left it in 1852.

Nathaniel Cook, a machinist, then joined Leffel and Blackeney in the

partnership.

With the foundry turning out salable products of good repute, Leffel

increasingly turned to his water power endeavors in the mid-1850's. He

improved his facilities for hydraulic experiments, determined as ever to

be a turbine inventor. As a contemporary observer put it, he was a "person

who would undertake almost anything he set his mind to do."³² And "to

do" an improved water turbine remained his compelling purpose in life.

Finally in 1862 his years of labor bore fruit. Early in that year he was

granted a patent for a reaction type turbine wheel.33 The turbine was literally

Leffel's "pride and joy." The inventor carried his model constantly, placing

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it under a handkerchief in the crown of his plug hat and withdrawing it for display at the slightest encouragement. He was absorbed in it and could talk of nothing else.34 Leffel demonstrated the effectiveness of his creation in several dramatic ways. In Springfield he erected a mill for the processing of linseed oil, not primarily for oil processing but rather as a showcase for the wheel in produc- tive use.35 Confident of the superiority of his double turbine, he agreed to test it against the center-vent, horizontal wheel designed by Dr. Tobias Kindleberger of Springfield, a pioneer homeopath who had operated a "general manufactory" in the community for two decades.36 The contest was conducted on May 2, 1862 at the Methodist Publishing House, where both wheels were installed side by side. Men from all over the state, reported the Springfield News, came to view the exciting battle of the wheels. "With a sort of ingenious brake attached to the shaft," marvelled the News, "the Leffel wheel made 125 revolutions per minute, and exerted a force of 21 pounds."37 The Kindleberger wheel made only 100 revolutions per minute and exerted a force of 16 pounds; moreover, the Leffel wheel did not use as much water. The News also rejoicingly noted that a Leffel wheel, only ten inches in diameter, had been in use in its own office for several months. There it had been running a large Adams book press, a Northrup cylinder press, and two job presses -- often at the same time. Such practical usage stemmed from Leffel's distrust of test runs, which he believed could not duplicate actual conditions of manufacturing.

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Why his invention worked so well, Leffel himself, it was said, could not explain.38 His hydraulic notebook, in which he recorded the results of the encounter with the Kindleberger wheel, indicates, however, more than a fortuitous gathering together of parts by Leffel. Though probably he had developed the wheel's efficiency through laborious trial and error methods, the notebook demonstrates that Leffel was well acquainted with the theory and practice of hydraulic physics.39 Certainly he was confident that he had developed an effective mechanism. He asserted in his patent application that it was capable "of yielding from ninety-two to ninety-five per cent. of the power of the water and a greater per cent. than any other wheel heretofore constructed."40 The wheel, evidently designed to utilize small water-loads, was a reaction turbine with mixed flow, its sets of upper and lower vanes developing inward and downward flow. In the words of one authority, This improved Leffel wheel was a double bucket design, namely, with a ring of upper buckets and a ring of lower buckets immediately below them and arranged so that the water would pass through both of these sets of buckets and on out into the draft tube in the most efficient manner, thereby creating the highest results in power and speed for the amount of water and the fall of water that were being utilized.41 This use of double buckets, a technique apparently never employed by any other manufacturers before or since, was elaborated in later years into a more modern type of wheel.42

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208                                                OHIO HISTORY   Convinced that he could sell the wheel to mill and factory operators, Leffel dispatched his son, Frederick Leffel, on a mission through the Midwest and East to broadcast the good news and hopefully waited to receive orders. Evidently the son also took a model West to display to miners and millers. The fortunes of the turbine were regularly charted in the pages of the Springfield News. As the paper chronicled the event, the first notable sale of the turbine, marketed as the American Double Turbine, was recorded at Rochester, New York. There, a flour mill operator, needing to grind four hundred barrels of flour in twenty-four hours, asked Blackeney to run a trial with the Leffel wheel. In the trial run, the turbine produced not four hundred -- but seven hundred barrels in the specified time.43 According to the News, the double turbine "knock[ed] the spots off" its competitors in Rochester. Rochester millers who observed the trial run must have agreed with the newspaper assessment: within a few days after the run, they placed at least six orders with Leffel.44 As these orders and more were received in late 1862, Leffel and his partners raised the number of employees working on wheel production from ten to twenty and put them to work "night and day."

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JAMES LEFFEL                                                      209

 

Leffel himself determined to use his wheel for productive purposes.

In December of 1862 he purchased five or six acres of land near Lagonda

Creek in Springfield. Here he intended to build a large flouring mill that

would be capable of turning out one hundred barrels of flour a day.

Mechanical power for the milling was to be supplied by Leffel's double

turbine.⁴⁵ By March of 1863 the plans for a four story building had been

completed, and the construction work was ready to begin.⁴⁶ The subsequent

operation of the mill represented continuing and dramatic evidence of

Leffel's faith in the double turbine.

Meanwhile Leffel was involved in re-ordering his business interests.

Sometime in 1863 he and Blackeney formed a new firm, evidently a joint

stock company, taking on as associates Perry Betchel and Leander Mudge,

two rather non-descript businessmen. Physical changes were also taking

place. By March of 1863 the demand for the "best [wheel] in the known

world" had increased so much that Leffel expected to increase the work

force from twenty to over a hundred and fifty in the "coming season."⁴⁷

In December of 1863 he arranged the purchase for $6,000 of the Springfield

property on the corer of Limestone and Washington streets owned by

the Pitts Machine Works, the manufacturers of the thresher invented by

John and Hiram Pitts in 1834.48 Soon a foundry designed solely for the

production of the "celebrated" wheel was being erected on the site.⁴⁹

The building, 107 feet by 50 feet in exterior dimensions, was completed

in March of 1864. Before production in the facility could begin, Leffel

had to fabricate the machinery for manufacturing the wheel.50 Once fitted

with machinery, the foundry employed more than fifty men. Despite the

mounting success of their business, the partners evidently did not get on

well together. Betchel left the firm in early 1864 and was replaced by Henry

Barnett. But, as one observer later put it, the "combination did not seem

to be progressive and desirable," and in 1864 still another reorganization

was effected.51 This time Leffel joined with John Foos and James S. Goode

in forming a stock company, James Leffel and Company. Blackeney, Lef-

fel's long-time associate, did not continue in the business. Foos was a well-

known linseed mill operator, and Goode was a lawyer and jurist who

had been mayor of Springfield in the 1850's.52 A year later, in 1865, yet

another organizational change occurred. Now Goode and Foos took their

leave, and Leffel's son-in-law, John W. Bookwalter, and William Foos

entered the firm with Leffel; the firm's name then became The James

Leffel and Company.⁵³

All the while demand for the double turbine increased. Orders for it

totalled forty-seven in 1862, rose modestly to sixty-two in 1863, and jumped

to 153 in 1864.⁵⁴ Initially, orders came largely from the mid-western and

middle eastern states -- from towns and cities in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan

Pennsylvania and New York -- from Dayton, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and

Rochester. Customers were flour mill operators, woolen goods manufacturers,

paper producers and farm equipment makers, to name a few. By 1864

the wheel was reaching national and international markets; orders were

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being received from points in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Minnesota and Canada. The hardworking Mormons of the Utah Territory looked with favor on the American Double Turbine; one Joseph Croft of Salt Lake City, representing a number of millers there, ordered fourteen wheels of assorted sizes costing over $3,000. In 1865 orders totalling over $37,000 were received from California and Oregon, the western regions to which Leffel's son, Frederick, had carried a model on a sales trip. Prices varied, depending, of course, upon wheel size. Typical sizes ranged from thirty inches to forty inches in width, their prices in 1862 running from $350 to $500, with complementary gear resulting in different prices for identical models. Smaller wheels were ten and thirteen inches and usually were priced below $200. The largest one manufactured in the early years was a fifty-six inch wheel, ordered by Andrew Erkenbrecher of Cincinnati at a cost of $700. The success of the American Double Turbine probably was the result of various factors. Certainly the reputed effectiveness of the wheel com- mended it to potential buyers. Its efficiency with both full- and part-water loads widened its market. The variety of users suggests that it could be adapted to varying water conditions. Though prices of comparable wheels are not known, Leffel's evidently was competitively priced. The range of prices, moreover, fell within the reach of small producers, thus giving the wheel access to a large market. Its workmanship was excellent, an attribute perhaps stemming from Leffel's experience with stove castings. Its low

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JAMES LEFFEL                                                    211

 

cost of maintenance and durability further enhanced its position in the

market.⁵5 Little is known about Leffel's marketing methods, but clearly he

did seek to generate demand beyond the Springfield area, dispatching as

he did his son on sales trips throughout the nation and sending the wheel

to the East for trial runs.

Whatever the factors behind the popularity of his wheel, Leffel was not

destined to enjoy long the fruits of his success. In 1866 he died, but his

double turbine wheel and his name were firmly rooted in the industrial scene

of Springfield. By 1870 the company bearing his name could boast a capital

investment of $120,000, and its annual value of production had reached

$371,400; turbine production alone accounted for $250,000.56 The firm

employed sixty-five men, who were primarily working on the turbines. With

his water turbine the small foundryman had laid the foundations of a great

company; The James Leffel & Company still exists in Springfield and con-

tinues to manufacture hydraulic turbines as well as scotch boilers and

stokers. It stands today as a monument to a man of genius and tenacity;

well might his motto have been Tenax propositi.

 

 

THE AUTHOR; Carl M. Becker is In-

structor of History, Wright State Univer-

sity.

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