Robert Poole | |
---|---|
Born | 1818 |
Died | 1903 (aged 84–85) United States |
Occupation(s) | Engineer, inventor |
Spouse |
Ann Simpson
(m. 1841; died 1891) |
Children | 8 |
Robert Poole (1818-1903) was an Irish-born engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and benefactor. In 1843 he founded an ironworks in Baltimore, Maryland. For his workforce he hired members of what would become the first generation of modern metalworkers (machinists, molders, patternmakers, and boilermakers)—an emerging trade whose numbers would swell to 250,000 nationally by the end of the 19th century.[1] His enterprise became the largest of its kind in Maryland,[2] with 800–850 employees, and, from the 1850s on, played a central role in the manufacture of iron-based infrastructure essential for private enterprise and public works in America.[3]
Poole’s company made the columns that encircle the base of the dome of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., engines that powered Union gunships during the Civil War, hydraulic pumps that dredged the Potomac River (creating park land for national monuments), and complex devices (known as carriages) that controlled the raising and lowering of long-range guns for the defense of the U.S. coastline for the federal government.
For industry, the Poole company produced metal-based turbines and millwork that powered new and expanding manufacturers of flour, fertilizer, paper, and textiles—industries central to a growing economy. Municipalities bought Poole-made steam fire engines, horsecars that ran on rails, and mechanisms that drove urban cable cars—new services for the nation's burgeoning cities.
At Poole's death in 1903, a newspaper headlined his obituary "Captain of Industry Dead."[4] Poole did business in an era of wide-spread industrial strikes; his company went fifty years without one. At his funeral service, a delegation of two hundred and fifty men from his ironworks filed past his casket. Poole is recognized as a benefactor[5] for schools, colleges, and, most notably, a library which he had built and gave to the Enoch Pratt Free Library, the library system for the City of Baltimore.