George H. Corliss collection (Ms. 80.3)

Biographical note

George H. Corliss was born in Easton, New York, June 2, 1817. After attending local schools and Castleton Academy in Vermont, he drew upon his experience as a clerk in a factory store by opening his own country store in Greenwich, New York, in 1838. In the early 1840s, however, his apparently latent talents as a mechanical inventor lead him to develop a “sewing engine” for stitching heavy leather boots and shoes. He patented this device in 1843 then moved to Providence in the hope of gaining the financial support needed to manufacture and market his invention. Corliss received little encouragement from Providence businessmen with regard to his sewing machine; however, Edward Bancroft of Fairbanks, Bancroft, and Company, a steam engine and boiler manufacturing firm, successfully persuaded the inventor to turn his abilities toward improving the design of steam engines. In 1846 Corliss joined the firm—reorganized as Bancroft, Nightingale, and Company—as a draftsman and designer. By the end of 1847, he was chief manager of the organization. Under the successive names of Corliss, Nightingale, and Company, Corliss and Nightingale, and as of 1856, the Corliss Steam Engine Company, Corliss’s business prospered in Providence for almost forty-five years. Having perfected a device that dramatically improved the efficiency and economical operation of steam engines, the inventor secured his first patents in 1849, and the manufacture of steam engines remained the principal activity of his firm. The Corliss Steam Engine Company also manufactured water and sewage pumping engines during the 1870s, which were successfully installed in providence and Pawtucket. Corliss patented about seventy engines and engine parts during his active career and received numerous national and international awards for his inventions. In the mid-1880s he became interested in the mass production of engines with interchangeable parts and began a large-scale remodeling of the Corliss Steam Engine Company plant in Providence. These early experiments in developing assembly-line techniques for the production of machines, however, ended with Corliss’s death on February 21, 1888.