The Cyclopædia of American biography.

UNDERWOOD

WINANS

Comfort to the Enemy" ("Yale Law Review",
January, 1918); "The Plenary Power of
Congress over Alien Enemies" (1918);
"Memorandum of Law on the Construction of
Section Ten of the Federal Penal Code Relative to Unlawful Enlistment" (1918); "Spies,
and the Power of Congress to Subject Certain
Classes of Civilians to Trial by Court Martial"
("American Law Review", April, 1919);
"Aerial Warfare and the League of Nations"
("New York Times", 26 January, 1919);
"Earliest Cases of Judicial Review of State
Legislation by Federal Courts" ("Yale Law
Review", 1922); "New Light on the Federal
Judiciary Act of 1789" ("Harvard Law Review", November, 1923); "The Supreme Court
in the United States History" (3 volumes,
1922). He married, 6 January, 1904, Annie
Louise, daughter of William H. Bliss of New
York City.
UNDERWOOD, William Lawrence,
banker, b. in Boston, Massachusetts, 7 Augusr,
1856; d. there, 6 November, 1919, son of
Charles James, and Caroline S. Underwood.
He completed his education in the Boston
High School, and began his active career in
the employ of Parker, Hamlin and Company,
wool merchants. About 1879 he became associated with the banking firm of Tower, Giddings and Company, of Devonshire Street,
Boston. In 1905 the firm style was changed
to Tower and Underwood, and Mr. Underwood remained a member until his death.
Personally, he possessed marked artistic tastes,
and was a member of the Boston Art Club.
He also held membership in the Bostonian
Society, and was a director in the Boston and
Worcester Electric Companies. One who
knew him intimately wrote of him: "Lawrence
had to a wonderful degree the gift of practical
friendship. I never knew anyone to take so
much thought of others in doing things for
them, nor anyone who knew so well the right
thing to do for them." Mr. Underwood was
unmarried, and is survived by three sisters
and one brother, all of Boston.
WINANS, Ross, engineer and inventor, b.
in Vernon township, Sussex County, New
Jersey, in 1796; d. in Baltimore, Maryland, 11
April, 1877, son of William and Mary Winans. His earliest American ancestor was Jans
Wynants, a native of Holland who settled at
Elizabethtown, Essex County, New Jersey, in
1664. Little information is obtainable upon
his youth and education, but it is known that
he showed an early aptitude for mechanics,
and devoted much attention to experiments
and construction. At the age of thirty-one he
removed from the place of his birth to Baltimore, and entered the employ of the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad. As an engineer he assisted in its construction, at the same time
working on his inventions. That same year
he perfected the coned "friction wheel" with
outside bearing, which is now used on every
railroad in the world. He promoted this invention in America, later taking it to Europe,
where, through lack of legal precautions and
implicit faith in those to whom the invention
was exhibited, he lost the ownership of his
idea. Mr. Winans was sent to England in 1829
to witness the locomotive contest on the Liver

pool and Manchester Railway, which was won
by the Stevenson "Rocket". On his return to
the United States he invented the projecting
journals on the axles of car wheels, thus reducing the friction of hauling from twelve
pounds per ton, to.
three pounds per
ton. He also began to devote his
time to the perfection of the lo-.
comotive, and hav- a T
ing formed a copartnership with
George Gilling- s b
ham, Superinten- dd:i
dent of Machinery'
of the Baltimore
and Ohio Railtry. The first two f
engines completed,,
in the fall of 1836,
weighed eight tons
each, but developed a greater draw-bar
pull than any of the twelve-ton engines
built by Stevenson in England. They were of
the so-called "grasshopper" type, having vertical boilers and vertical cylinders driving
through a rocking arm, or "walking beam"
to countershafts, whence the power was transmitted to the road wheels by crank arms and
connecting rods. Like all early locomotives,
these "grasshoppers" were equipped with a
special,blowing fan for stimulating the draft
to the furnace, instead of using the steam blast
for this purpose, as is the universal practice
at the present time. According to the report,
several engines of this type were in use for
over fifty years, which indicates that they were
powerful and efficient machines, in spite of
their "primitive" complications. About a year
later, Gillingham and Winans introduced the
first of their so-called "coal crab" or "crab"
engines embodied several notable improvements in design. In these engines, for the first
time, the cylinders were placed horizontally,
instead of vertically, and drove direct to the
countershaft, whence the power was transmitted to the road wheels, as in former models.
These engines were built primarily for freight
traffic, and were able to develop considerable
power. According to extant data, the first
of them weighed twelve tons, later models,
about ten tons each. Several of them were
in use for many years on the Western Railroad
of Massachusetts, now a part of the Boston
and Albany system. The familiar models of
both the ",grasshopper" and "crab" types of
engine had four driving wheels, two on either
side, and the entire structure was short. This,
according to reports, involved the serious difficulty that the movement was unsteady at high
speeds. Mr. Winans concluded that to remedy
this defect the wheelbase should be lengthened,
and, accordingly, designed another type of
engine with eight drivers, four on either side,
arranged in two pairs, set fore and aft. Several such engines were built, although no definite information regarding their performance

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