The Cover Design GEORGE PULLMAN AND THE ALLEN PAPER CAR WHEEL HELENA E. WRIGHT In 1889, the tradejournal Inland Printer reported, “The world has seen its iron age, its stone age, its golden age, and its brazen age. This is the Age of Paper. We are making so many things of paper that it will soon be true that without paper there is nothing made that is made. We live in paper houses, wear paper clothing, and sit on paper cushions in paper cars, rolling along on paper wheels.”1 Yes, paper even appeared in such unlikely service as the centerplate of railroad car wheels, an idea introduced by Richard Allen of Vermont in 1869. George Pullman championed the paper car wheel and outfitted his growing fleet of dining and sleeping cars with thousands of them. For more than twenty years, from the 1870s well into the 1890s, better-quality passenger cars rolled along on papercored , steel-tired composite wheels. Was the paper car wheel merely a novelty, or was it a real improvement in the process of developing a quiet, comfortable ride? Where did it spring from, and what caused its demise? Large structural objects made of paper originated in Asia, but more directly relevant to this story is the japanning trade in 18th-century England, where sheets of paper were laminated, baked, and lac quered to produce forms such as trays and boxes and, in larger sizes, screens and carriage body panels. In the 19th century, papier-mache (molded, pressed pulp) was formed into elaborate shapes for furniMs . Wright is curator of graphic arts at the National Museum of American History. She gratefully acknowledges the assistance ofJohn H. White, Jr., historian emeritus in the Division of Transportation, National Museum of American History. He generously shared his knowledge and expertise on all matters of railroad history, including references on car wheels. Robert M. Vogel, curator emeritus in the Division of Engineering and Industry, National Museum of American History, also provided valuable advice and assistance for which the author is most grateful. This essay was originally presented at the annual conference of the Society for Industrial Archeology in Chicago in June 1991. 'Inland Printer 6 (1889): 580.© 1992 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/92/3304-0006$01.00 757 758 Helena E. Wright ture and clock cases, and laminated sheets were used as building products.2 The introduction of the papermaking machine and its rapid adoption in the United States after 1816 encouraged the use of paper. After the Civil War, new developments in wood-pulp processing freed the paper industry from dependence on rags as raw material, and new paper products proliferated in an astonishing variety. It was estimated that the number of uses for paper increased four times between 1870 and 1880. Agricultural waste such as straw had been used for making cheap paper and board since the 1820s. During the 1860s, there was an extraordinary demand for paper, and the new wood-pulp pro cesses were only just developing, not ready for serious production. Straw paper could be made quickly and cheaply, and the market for rye straw was booming.3 During this period of prosperity, Richard Allen, a peripatetic inventor and former railroad engineer and mechanic who also had prospected in the Pennsylvania oil regions, was persuaded to engage in strawboard manufacturing. About 1867, Allen and his brother-inlaw Walter North began the manufacture of straw paper in Pittsford, Vermont. By 1869, Allen had patented his idea for a car wheel with a paper core (see fig. 1), prompted no doubt by the properties of strawboard, his own practical background in railroading, and the proximity of Yankee mechanics. In nearby Brandon, Vermont, a railroad car wheel works had operated until only a few years before Allen’s arrival, and no doubt men remained in the neighborhood who had helped with the project. Although Allen himself had patented railroad axle boxes and an earlier car wheel, it is not known whether they were actually manufactured and sold.4 Allen had a checkered 2Henry Clay, “Manufacture of Panels,” British Patent no. 1,027, 1772. “A Papiermache Village in Australia,” Illustrated...