Henry Patch Howe

Henry P. Howe was an inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts who invented a method for fire-drying paper.

"He married Martha F. Thurston on May 31, 1824, in Oxford, MA. He and Isaac Goddard owned and operated a paper machinery company in Worcester called "Howe, Goddard & Company." In September of 1846, he bought a $5,000 life insurance policy, and the beneficiary was his wife. The following spring, he came down with pneumonia and died."

• Source - https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/111238569/henry-patch-howe

"Henry P. Howe was appointed superintendent of this mill, which was two stories in height, the upper part being entirely occupied for drying purposes. Mr. Howe was a skilful machinist, and he devised various artificial methods to remedy the long process of air drying. He finally hit upon the plan—which was subsequently patented—of the "fire-dryer." The wonderful machine, after many trials, alterations and amendments, was at length completed, and put in operation with satisfactory results. It is hardly possible to describe the astonishment which the new enterprise created. The dull way of grinding the material, pressing it into sheets, and then passing it through a long season of air drying, was a tedious method of producing one of the most important articles of domestic and business use; and such was the imperfection of the material thus produced that it would hardly be regarded worthy the meanest service to which paper is devoted at the present day. By the invention of Mr. Howe, the pulp was received at one extreme end of the machine, and after passing through a complicated process of change and preparation, was discharged at the other end, finished paper, ready for immediate use.

The reputation of the inventor was now sufficiently established to warrant him in undertaking the manufacture of paper-making machinery with the fire-dryer. He accordingly fitted up a machine shop—near the paper-mill —in 1833, and there carried on the business for the space of three years, when he removed to Worcester, where he soon after died. The fire-dryer, which promised so much in the outset, has been superseded by steam drying, which is the most felicitous way of making paper that ever has or probably ever will be invented."

• History of the Town of Shirley, Massachusetts: From Its Early Settlement to A.D. 1882 by Seth Chandler, page 54.

"Between 1830 and 1835 many industries were begun, some of which have lasted till today. Henry P. Howe began the manufacture of paper machinery, Davis & Howe, Kimball Si Fuller, Fitzroy Willard, Henry Goulding and Albert Curtis built textile machinery, the latter business surviving as Curtis & Marble. William A. Wheeler established a foundry in 1823, and there has ever since been a Wheeler foundry, though none of that name have been connected with it for many years. Wheeler was the first to bring a steam engine to Worcester and also the first to build machine tools, by 1840 he had 10 men building wooden bed engine lathes with chain feed. He was considered very visionary and no one could see where so many lathes could be sold. Ichabod Washburn entered the machine business previous to 1830 but about that time he centered his efforts on the wire industry beginning with a few men in a little shed in Northville which was the beginning of the Washburn & Moen Mfg. Co., now a part of the American Steel & Wire Co. The Daniels planer was invented and built by Thomas E. Daniels in 1835 at what is now Lincoln Square. William Crompton built his first fancy loom in 1836 while working for Crocker & Richmond."

• American Machinist, Volume 37, No. 9, page 358.

"Prominent among the early manufacturers of American paper-making machines and machinery was the firm of Rice, Barton and Fales, still after well over a century very well known as builders of paper-making machines, especially in the United States. The firm was started in 1837 by two paper-makers, Henry P. Howe and Isaac Goddard, in Worcester, a small village in Massachusetts, but now a large town where the present firm still continues to operate."

• http://www.ricebarton.com/history.html See Also:
• Rag Paper Manufacture in the United States, 1801-1900: A History, with Directories of Mills and Owners by AJ Valente, pages 79-80.
• American Paper Mills, 1690-1832: A Directory of the Paper Trade, with Notes on Products, Watermarks, Distribution Methods, and Manufacturing Techniques by John Bidwell, page 108.
• A History of Paper-Manufacturing in the United States, 1690-1916 by Lyman Horace Weeks, page 135.
• The Paper-making Machine: Its Invention, Evolution, and Development by R. H. Clapperton, page 353.