The Biographical Dictionary of America/Andrews, William Draper

ANDREWS, William Draper, inventor, was born at Grafton, Mass., May 23, 1818. In 1840 he obtained employment with a wrecking company in New York. Familiarity with pumping apparatus led him to make experiments looking to its improvement; and in 1844 he invented a centrifugal pump, for which in 1846 he received a patent. Later he developed an anti-friction centrifugal pump, which came into universal use. The "Cataract" is considered the best of the several other centrifugal pumps patented by him. He obtained patents also for siphon gang-wells, balanced valves, safety elevators, boilers, oscillating steam-engines, friction and differential power gearing, to the number of twenty-five in the United States, and nine foreign patents. His pumps were applied with great success to the U. S. monitors in the civil war, as a means of submerging the ships in action or lightening them when retreat was necessary, water being pumped at the rate of thirty tons a minute into or out of the water compartments. His pumps were also of very great service in dredging channels through the sand bars at the mouth of the St. Johns river, Fla., in the improvements effected in the deepening of the Mississippi river, and in fixing the foundations for the piers of suspension bridges. In 1885 the water supply of Brooklyn was augmented by means of his gang-wells, which supplied daily an average of twenty-five million gallons of water. Various medals and diplomas were awarded Mr. Andrews in the United States and Europe.