Babbitt
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Babbitt. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
or Babbitt's Metal, an alloy much employed for machine boxings. This alloy was discovered and patented in 1839 by a Mr. Charles Babbitt of Taunton, Massachusetts, a goldsmith and manufacturer of britannia ware. Metal used for boxings must be tough, it must not crush easily, and it must possess anti-friction qualities. Mr. Babbitt started with twenty-four parts of tin for smoothness, four parts of copper for strength, and eight parts of antimony for solidity. Genuine babbitt is unsurpassed for ordinary journal purposes. Many manufacturers use a greater proportion of tin. Cheaper and less serviceable imitations are made partly of lead. The greatest mistake in using babbitt metal is heating too hot before pouring. When the metal is hot enough to light a small pine stick, it is ready to pour. Never heat the metal until it shows red. Babbit that has been overheated or burnt crystallizes, and when poured is brittle, hard, and not homogeneous. Never mix overheated metal with the good hoping to restore it, as such mixed metal will be brittle.-Popular Mechanics.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
IRVING, an American ed- , ucator born in Dayton, O., in 1865. He graduated from Harvard University in 1889 and after post-graduate courses at Harvard he studied in Paris for several years. He was instructor of Romance languages in Williams College in 1894, and later successively instructor, assistant professor, and professor of French literature in Harvard University. He was the author of "Literature and the American College" (1908); "Masters of Modern French Criticism" (1912); etc. He edited the works of several French 25-Vol. I-Cyc and there are other structures of an writers and was a frequent contributor elaborately ornate type. Originally a to
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's credits the 1839 alloy to "a Mr. Charles Babbitt of Taunton, Massachusetts" — the inventor was in fact Isaac Babbitt (1799–1862), the Taunton goldsmith and britannia-ware maker, who was voted $20,000 by Congress for releasing the formula. His tin-copper-antimony alloy is still poured into plain bearings today, in ship propeller shafts, turbines and large engines, though rolling-element bearings have taken over much of the machinery Aiton's had in mind, and the cheap lead-bearing grades it warned against are now curbed on health grounds. Collier's caught Irving Babbitt in 1921 mid-career as a Harvard professor of French; he went on to lead the New Humanism, taught T. S. Eliot, and died in 1933. The year after Collier's went to press, Sinclair Lewis published "Babbitt" (1922), and the surname became a byword for complacent middle-class boosterism — the sense in which most readers now meet the word.
Written for this edition, 2026.