RIAMCO

Rhode Island Archival and Manuscript Collections Online

For Participating Institutions

George H. Corliss collection (Ms. 80.3)

Brown University Library

Box A, John Hay Library
Providence, RI 02912
Tel: 401-863-2146
E-mail: hay@brown.edu

Scope & content

The materials include correspondence, primarily relating to the business affairs of the Corliss Steam Engine Company, but also including some personal correspondence; business records of the Corliss Steam Engine Company; patent certificates, patent applications, and materials stemming from Corliss’s patent litigation; scrapbooks of newspaper and magazine clippings relating to various topics of concern to the business, including the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, for which he constructed a celebrated forty-foot-tall, six-hundred-ton steam engine to provide power to all of the other machinery in Machinery Hall, and the performance of Corliss’s sewage and water pumping engines; writings about Corliss and his inventions and business affairs, including newspaper clippings, research notes, pamphlets, monographs, and reports; certificates and medals won by Corliss, including the Rumford Medals from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the cranks used by President Ulysses S. Grant and Emperor Don Pedro II of Brazil to activate the Corliss engine at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia; and photographs, blueprints, and diagrams of Corliss and his inventions.