Weston Fulton
Encyclopedia
Weston Miller Fulton was an American meteorologist, inventor, and entrepreneur, best known for his invention, the "sylphon
," a seamless metal bellows
used in thermostat
s, switches, and other temperature-control devices. Fulton also invented an automatic river gauge while working for the U.S. Weather Bureau
, and played a primary role in the development of the depth charge
during World War I
. His company, now called Fulton Bellows after numerous ownership changes, still operates in Knoxville
.
, the son of William and Mary Hudson Fulton. His family owned a large cotton plantation, and Weston and his brothers did much of the cotton picking. He briefly attended Howard College (modern Samford
) in Birmingham
before enrolling at the University of Mississippi
, where his uncle, Robert Burwell Fulton
, was chancellor. He graduated as valedictorian in 1893, and spent the subsequent five years working at Weather Bureau stations in Vicksburg
and New Orleans.
In 1898, Fulton was hired to manage the Weather Bureau station in Knoxville, Tennessee. The station had been moved to the "Hill" earlier that year at the University of Tennessee
at the request of U.T. president Charles Dabney. While working at the Knoxville station, Fulton taught meteorology and took classes at U.T., obtaining his Masters of Science in 1902.
Fulton's duties required frequent quarter-mile walks from the station atop the Hill to the railroad bridge over the Tennessee River
, where a river gauge had been mounted, to the check the river's depths. To eliminate this daily walk, Fulton designed an automatic gauge mechanism, which was essentially a float-actuated device that kept a continuous record of river levels. The Weather Bureau used the device at several of its weather stations in the early 1900s.
s of Western mythology.
Fulton quickly realized that his invention could be used as a bellows
, and thus would have numerous industrial uses. In 1904, he left the Weather Bureau, and with financial backing from businessman John Scruggs Brown, he launched the Fulton Company to market sylphon-based products. One of the company's first successful products was a damper regulator for boiler
s that used a sylphon to automatically adjust the damper position as the temperature changed. The earliest automobile thermostats used sylphons for actuation.
During World War I, Fulton developed the firing mechanism for the depth charge, a weapon used by surface ships to destroy submarines. The mechanism consisted of a graduated disk that measured water pressure (which increases with depth), and ignited when a pre-set depth was reached. Depth charges allowed Allied navies to defeat German U-boat
blockades.
, was hired after being interviewed by Fulton. Brownlow proved controversial, however, and his supporters were ousted in 1927. Fulton never ran for office again, and advised his children to avoid politics.
In 1928, Fulton built a palatial mansion, Westcliff, on Lyons View Pike in West Knoxville
. The mansion was designed by prominent local architect Charles I. Barber
, who later recalled it as one of his most difficult projects, as Fulton continuously demanded modifications to the design, even as construction was nearing completion. Fulton had a workshop on the second floor of the house.
In 1929, Fulton bought the W. J. Savage Company, which specialized in flour mill and marble processing machinery. The following year, he sold the Fulton Company, which had been reorganized as the Fulton Sylphon Company, to focus on W. J. Savage. He also acquired interests in several other local factories, including Royal Manufacturing, which made furniture. Just before he died in 1946, Fulton had been making plans for the manufacture of a cleaner-burning, "nonchoking" furnace.
purchased Robertshaw, and used the Fulton plant to manufacture car parts. In the mid-1990s, Siebe began selling off its American holdings, and the Fulton factory was purchased by financier Robert Greaves. Inspired by the factory's original owner, Greaves named the new company Fulton Bellows, which manufactures seamless metal bellows.
In 1928, Fulton donated his house (built in 1913) at 820 Temple Avenue (now 900 Volunteer Boulevard) to the University of Tennessee as a memorial to his son, Weston, Jr., who died from injuries sustained in a car crash that year. The house is now used as the university's student counseling center, though it has been slated for demolition. In the early 1900s, Fulton lived in the house at 1202 Clinch Avenue, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places
as a contributing property in the Fort Sanders Historic District.
Knoxville's Fulton High School, which opened in 1951, is named in honor of Weston Fulton. Several of Fulton's blueprints as well as an oil portrait donated by his family are on display in the school.
Sylphon
A sylphon is an old name for a cylindrical symmetry metal bellows. When made of metal, the sylphon shape was formerly created by metal spinning onto a metal mandrel , and now by hydrostatic forming within a mold. Because the mold contains the convolutions of the bellows, the mold must be...
," a seamless metal bellows
Metal bellows
Metal bellows are elastic vessels that can be compressed when pressure is applied to the outside of the vessel, or extended under vacuum. When the pressure or vacuum is released, the bellows will return to its original shape .Bellows technology of the 20th and 21st century is centered on metal...
used in thermostat
Thermostat
A thermostat is the component of a control system which regulates the temperature of a system so that the system's temperature is maintained near a desired setpoint temperature. The thermostat does this by switching heating or cooling devices on or off, or regulating the flow of a heat transfer...
s, switches, and other temperature-control devices. Fulton also invented an automatic river gauge while working for the U.S. Weather Bureau
National Weather Service
The National Weather Service , once known as the Weather Bureau, is one of the six scientific agencies that make up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States government...
, and played a primary role in the development of the depth charge
Depth charge
A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare weapon intended to destroy or cripple a target submarine by the shock of exploding near it. Most use explosives and a fuze set to go off at a preselected depth in the ocean. Depth charges can be dropped by either surface ships, patrol aircraft, or from...
during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. His company, now called Fulton Bellows after numerous ownership changes, still operates in Knoxville
Knoxville, Tennessee
Founded in 1786, Knoxville is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Tennessee, U.S.A., behind Memphis and Nashville, and is the county seat of Knox County. It is the largest city in East Tennessee, and the second-largest city in the Appalachia region...
.
Early life
Fulton was born in Hale County, AlabamaHale County, Alabama
Hale County is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama. It is named in honor of Confederate officer Stephen Fowler Hale. As of 2010 the population was 15,760. Its county seat is Greensboro and it is part of the Tuscaloosa Metropolitan Statistical Area....
, the son of William and Mary Hudson Fulton. His family owned a large cotton plantation, and Weston and his brothers did much of the cotton picking. He briefly attended Howard College (modern Samford
Samford University
Samford University, founded as Howard College is a private, coeducational, Alabama Baptist Convention-affiliated university located in Homewood, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, United States. It includes the , Cumberland School of Law, McWhorter School of Pharmacy, Brock School of Business, Ida V....
) in Birmingham
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
before enrolling at the University of Mississippi
University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as well as the...
, where his uncle, Robert Burwell Fulton
Robert Burwell Fulton
Robert Burwell Fulton was the Chancellor of the University of Mississippi from 1892 to 1906. He was also President of the National Association of State Universities.-Biography:...
, was chancellor. He graduated as valedictorian in 1893, and spent the subsequent five years working at Weather Bureau stations in Vicksburg
Vicksburg, Mississippi
Vicksburg is a city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the only city in Warren County. It is located northwest of New Orleans on the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, and due west of Jackson, the state capital. In 1900, 14,834 people lived in Vicksburg; in 1910, 20,814; in 1920,...
and New Orleans.
In 1898, Fulton was hired to manage the Weather Bureau station in Knoxville, Tennessee. The station had been moved to the "Hill" earlier that year at the University of Tennessee
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...
at the request of U.T. president Charles Dabney. While working at the Knoxville station, Fulton taught meteorology and took classes at U.T., obtaining his Masters of Science in 1902.
Fulton's duties required frequent quarter-mile walks from the station atop the Hill to the railroad bridge over the Tennessee River
Tennessee River
The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately 652 miles long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names...
, where a river gauge had been mounted, to the check the river's depths. To eliminate this daily walk, Fulton designed an automatic gauge mechanism, which was essentially a float-actuated device that kept a continuous record of river levels. The Weather Bureau used the device at several of its weather stations in the early 1900s.
The Fulton Company
Using U.T.'s laboratories, Fulton conducted numerous weather experiments. While studying the effects of lightning on the atmosphere, Fulton designed a seamless metal container that could trap vapor while allowing for its expansion and contraction as the pressure changed. He called this new container the "sylphon," after the sylphSylph
Sylph is a mythological creature in the Western tradition. The term originates in Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as invisible beings of the air, his elementals of air...
s of Western mythology.
Fulton quickly realized that his invention could be used as a bellows
Bellows
A bellows is a device for delivering pressurized air in a controlled quantity to a controlled location.Basically, a bellows is a deformable container which has an outlet nozzle. When the volume of the bellows is decreased, the air escapes through the outlet...
, and thus would have numerous industrial uses. In 1904, he left the Weather Bureau, and with financial backing from businessman John Scruggs Brown, he launched the Fulton Company to market sylphon-based products. One of the company's first successful products was a damper regulator for boiler
Boiler
A boiler is a closed vessel in which water or other fluid is heated. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications.-Materials:...
s that used a sylphon to automatically adjust the damper position as the temperature changed. The earliest automobile thermostats used sylphons for actuation.
During World War I, Fulton developed the firing mechanism for the depth charge, a weapon used by surface ships to destroy submarines. The mechanism consisted of a graduated disk that measured water pressure (which increases with depth), and ignited when a pre-set depth was reached. Depth charges allowed Allied navies to defeat German U-boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
blockades.
Politics and later business ventures
In 1923, Fulton was elected to Knoxville's city council, and was chosen as vice mayor. Along with wholesaling tycoons Benjamin Morton and Rush Hazen, Fulton was part of a slate of progressive candidates elected during the city's transition from a commissioner-style government (which was deemed corrupt) to a council-manager form of government, which called for the hiring of a city manager to oversee the city's business affairs. Knoxville's first city manager, Louis BrownlowLouis Brownlow
Louis Brownlow was an American author, political scientist, and consultant in the area of public administration...
, was hired after being interviewed by Fulton. Brownlow proved controversial, however, and his supporters were ousted in 1927. Fulton never ran for office again, and advised his children to avoid politics.
In 1928, Fulton built a palatial mansion, Westcliff, on Lyons View Pike in West Knoxville
West Knoxville
West Knoxville is the section of Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, that lies west of the city's downtown area. It generally stretches from Sequoyah Hills on the east to the city's border with Farragut on the west...
. The mansion was designed by prominent local architect Charles I. Barber
Charles I. Barber
Charles Irving Barber was an American architect, active primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, and vicinity, during the first half of the 20th century...
, who later recalled it as one of his most difficult projects, as Fulton continuously demanded modifications to the design, even as construction was nearing completion. Fulton had a workshop on the second floor of the house.
In 1929, Fulton bought the W. J. Savage Company, which specialized in flour mill and marble processing machinery. The following year, he sold the Fulton Company, which had been reorganized as the Fulton Sylphon Company, to focus on W. J. Savage. He also acquired interests in several other local factories, including Royal Manufacturing, which made furniture. Just before he died in 1946, Fulton had been making plans for the manufacture of a cleaner-burning, "nonchoking" furnace.
Legacy
Following its sale in the late 1920s, the Fulton Sylphon Company operated as a subsidiary of the Reynolds Metal Company. In 1947, several Reynolds subsidiaries merged to form Robertshaw Controls, and the Fulton factory operated as the Fulton Sylphon Division of this company for several decades. In 1986, the British engineering firm SiebeSiebe plc
Siebe plc was once one of the United Kingdom's largest engineering businesses. It was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but in 1999 it merged with BTR plc to form Invensys.-History:*1819: Siebe plc was founded by Augustus Siebe in London....
purchased Robertshaw, and used the Fulton plant to manufacture car parts. In the mid-1990s, Siebe began selling off its American holdings, and the Fulton factory was purchased by financier Robert Greaves. Inspired by the factory's original owner, Greaves named the new company Fulton Bellows, which manufactures seamless metal bellows.
In 1928, Fulton donated his house (built in 1913) at 820 Temple Avenue (now 900 Volunteer Boulevard) to the University of Tennessee as a memorial to his son, Weston, Jr., who died from injuries sustained in a car crash that year. The house is now used as the university's student counseling center, though it has been slated for demolition. In the early 1900s, Fulton lived in the house at 1202 Clinch Avenue, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
as a contributing property in the Fort Sanders Historic District.
Knoxville's Fulton High School, which opened in 1951, is named in honor of Weston Fulton. Several of Fulton's blueprints as well as an oil portrait donated by his family are on display in the school.
External links
- Fulton Bellows, LLC
- Fulton Bellows Factory, c. 1920s – photograph on file at the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection