In preparing for an independant engineering course - he became the lecturer in engineering in 1901 - Chapman sought to equip an engineering laboratory. He had consulted various colleagues including Professor W.H. Warren at the University of Sydney. Although Sydney had acquired an English testing machine on Kirkaldy’s pattern(2) Chapman looked to purchase a different sort of machine. ‘I have decided upon the type of testing machine apparently most suited to our requirements’, Chapman informed the finance committee. This was a ‘U.S. Standard 100,000 lbs. Testing Machine, Automatic and fitted with G. Henning’s autographic recorder - complete with battery, countershaft and tools for tensile, transverse and compressive strains’, manufactured by the Riehlé Brothers Testing Machine Co. of Philadelphia. This for £380 (£402.10s with various accessories) was considerably cheaper than the £600 Sydney had paid for its Kirkaldy machine 15 years before.

The firm which became Riehlé Brothers seems to have begun in Philadelphia in 1825, presumably as one of the antecedent firms, Abbott & Co. or Banks, Dinmore & Co. According to the earliest catalogue I have seen the Philadelphia Scale Works as such was established in 1846 but it seems to have been quite some years later that the brothers Riehlé took over the business. At all events it was a well established manufacturer of a wide variety of scales when the firm was approached in 1866 by a man with a problem. The firm was engaged in manufacturing a relatively new development, platform scales. With expanding agriculture and technology, the market for cattle and hay scales, railway track scales, furnace charging scales and so on, was keeping the Philadelphia Scale Works busy.(3)

For some reason Mr Fulton of S. Fulton & Co. of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, thought the Scale Works could solve his problem. His company manufactured cast-iron pipe which was being supplied to a contractor installing the pipe for the City of Boston. Unfortunately many of the pipes were getting broken during shipping and installation, or failed after a short time. As a result Boston was withholding substantial payment. Fulton and the contractor were suing the City for their money.

What Fulton wanted from the Scale Works was a machine to test the quality of his cast iron. In the quagmire of opinions this was the only way to get some cast-iron facts, as it were. The firm took up the challenge, apparently reluctantly, and before long had devised a substantial machine which could break samples of the metal and measure the force required to do this. The machine consisted of four very solid timber pillars on which were mounted crosspieces. From a "Justice" hydraulic jack secured at the top of the frame was suspended a crane beam scale to which the upper grip for holding the specimen was attached. The lower grip for securing the specimen was attached to the lower crosspiece. With the small specimen of iron mounted between the grips a "Justice" hand pump began to work the jack while weights were adjusted to maintain the scale beam horizontal. In due course the specimen broke and a certificate was issued. The result was apparently a vindication of the quality of Mr Fulton’s iron as he bought the machine as evidence - for $350 - and before long he and the contractor had won their suit with the City of Boston.(4)

In fact this was not the first testing machine to be built and used in Philadelphia. In the early 1830s the United States Treasury had approached the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania to investigate explosions in boilers. For this a machine was constructed of heavy oak timbers on which hundreds of careful tests were made.(5)

The Franklin Institute machine was a one-off. Mr Fulton’s machine was the beginning of an industry. With the publicity of the legal case, other pipe manufacturers soon wanted testing machines for themselves. The Scale Works found itself repeating and modifying the original machine, ‘and in time [according to Tatnall’s account] every single pipe works in the United States had been supplied’. In 1870 the Supervising Inspector of Steam Engineering in the United States invited Riehlé to build ten boiler-plate testing machines. Up to that point Riehlé had followed the prototype in making machines with substantial wooden frames. The new contract called for the machines to be ‘all metal’. After several years of experimenting with the use of these machines, the government in 1877 made it compulsory to test samples of all plate used in wrought iron boilers. The market for testing machines began to expand rapidly.

Riehlé Brothers exhibited their testing machines along with their other manufactures at that showcase of American and foreign industry, the Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876. About the same time the firm was developing a universal testing machine to be pitched to the expanding iron and steel industry. The great new machine was launched in 1880 and the industry centred on Pittsburgh proved receptive. Reportedly, ‘every mill but one in that vast and crowded region ordered a testing machine’.

The principal designer of Riehlé’s testing machines during the 1870s was the firm’s superintendent, Tinius Olsen. It is a measure of the strength of the market for testing machines that Olsen set up his own testing machine business in 1880 which within a decade rivalled Riehlé Brothers. Other firms in the United States were also beginning to manufacture testing machines about that time. With the growing emphasis on testing machine manufacture, the opportunity arose for Riehlé Brothers to sell the scale side of the business. The firm became Riehlé Brothers Testing Machine Co. in the early 1890s.

It was under this name that the firm mounted an extensive display at the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. This no doubt only aided the international recognition the firm had already gained. In 1891 it was reported, for example, that Riehlé’s Latest Improved Power Tortional Testing Machine had been supplied to the Russian and Brazilian governments as well as various American firms.(6)  (Riehlé had begun to apply electric motors to their machines in 1890.)

In addition to firms and governments, universities were also an increasing market for testing machines. As Tatnall remarks, ‘Riehlé had had a large exhibit at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 which had first shown testing machines to the world in general and to the Universities in particular’. By the 1880s universities were increasingly equipping engineering laboratories, for which testing machines were an essential component. Both the State College of Pennsylvania and Worcester University in Massachusetts had purchased the tortional testing machine mentioned above. So by 1900 when Robert Chapmen was looking to equip an engineering laboratory at the University of Adelaide, Riehlé Brothers Testing Machine Co. had an established track record.

In November 1900 Chapman had received a quotation from Wm Adams & Co. Ltd in Clarence Street, Sydney, for the supply of a Riehlé testing machine and accessories.(7)   This was the basis of his request to the finance committee. In September 1901 the Registrar of the University received a letter from Clarke Padley & Co. in Melbourne. They had heard that the University intended to obtain a materials testing machine and wished ‘to bring under your notice the "Schencks" Machines which have a high character’. They would be glad to send an illustrated catalogue and quote prices.(8)  They were far too late in the running as the order had been placed in May!(9)  Adams & Co. wrote in October informing Chapman that the testing machine and accesories were in the SS Redhill, expected to arrive about the end of November.(10)

In his letter to the finance committee, Chapman had noted that ‘The machine is apparently liable to Customs duty, but I will make an effort to get it in free’. With the machine arrived in December, the Registrar wrote to the Collector of Customs about the matter of duty. In January 1902 the Registrar received a discouraging reply: ‘Referring to your letter dated the 20^th ult[im]o, I beg to inform you that the motor [sic] in question is not a scientific instrument and cannot therefore be admitted as such. It is classed as machinery liable to a duty of 25%’.(11)  W.H. Bragg, the professor of mathematics and physics (and in due course a Nobel Prize-winner and President of the Royal Society of London) wrote late in January to reassure the Registrar:(12)

Robert Chapman went on to play a prominent role in the engineering community in Australia. He was appointed professor of engineering in 1907, a post he held - with a break as professor of mathematics and mechanics, 1910-1919 - until his retirement in 1937. Not only was he a foundation member and president of the South Australian Institute of Engineers (founded 1913), but later served as president of the Institution of Engineers, Australia. He played an active part in setting up a standards laboratory in South Australia and was a member of the Australian Commonwealth Engineering Standards Association. He was knighted on his retirement.(14)

Acknowledgements

I am pleased to acknowledge the assistance I have received from several people in the preparation of this paper. In Adelaide, Kylie Percival, Archivist of the University of Adelaide, and the staff of Special Collections have been generous in guiding me through the University’s rich documentation on several research visits to Adelaide. John Patterson, Curator of the Physics Museum, and Dr Kenneth Moxham of the Department of Civil Engineering also provided information. Steven Turner and William E. Worthington, Jr, both of the National Museum of American History, Washington, kindly gave me access to the trade literature collection and the files of the Specialist Section of Heavy Machinery & Civil Engineering respectively.