Timken Four Aces Story

[00:00.000] I'm Bob Leibensperger. I came to the Temkin Company in 1960 as a sales [00:17.740] trainee in their industrial division. I worked for them for 40 years and retired [00:22.800] in 2000 as president of the company. I'm here today to tell the story about the [00:29.700] Timkin 4 ACES, a locomotive that was built by the Timkin Company in the 1930s to demonstrate [00:36.100] the benefits of anti-friction bearings on a steam locomotive. The locomotive was invented in Britain [00:44.100] in the early 1800s and it used a friction bearing which was basically a shaft running in a sleeve. [00:53.860] Then in the middle of the 18th century in Germany, the internal combustion engine was [01:04.480] invented which led to the automobile in Germany in 1886 which was patented by Bents. [01:14.620] The automobile made use of anti-friction bearings or ball bearings because Germany was the home [01:22.600] of the roller skate and they needed an anti-friction bearing roller skates in order to make them [01:29.480] work. And so the first automobile used ball bearings in their wheels. The tapered roller bearing, [01:38.440] which was a much later invention, was patented in 1898 by Henry Timken. Henry Timken came to [01:45.960] St. Louis when he was seven years old with his father. His mother had passed away. In 1854, [01:54.200] he went to a apprenticeship to learn to be a carriage builder. He successfully completed that [02:01.640] and along the way in the carriage business, he came up with a unique cross spring which was like [02:08.680] independent suspension for a wagon or carriage. He patented it and became very successful. [02:17.960] But his wife and himself traveled frequently to Germany to visit relatives and saw that [02:24.040] the auto industry was developing at a more rapid pace in Germany than in the United States. [02:30.980] So he came back to St. Louis and took his son, H.H. Timkin, who was running the business [02:38.200] that he retired from. [02:40.640] And they visited Germany to look at the bearing business, [02:45.600] developing there, looked at the auto industry, [02:50.040] which was evolving at a very rapid pace. [02:53.040] And they decided that they would look into building, [02:56.540] coming up with a different bearing. [02:59.080] And that they did in 1898, [03:01.340] they patented the tapered roller bearing. [03:04.360] And this is right where the United States [03:06.560] starting to take off in the automotive world. [03:10.260] They decided they needed to move to Canton, Ohio [03:14.960] because they were looking for a good source for steel [03:17.600] and Canton had developed [03:19.000] a very thriving alloy steel business. [03:23.040] They also wanted to get closer to their customer, [03:25.380] which was Winton in Cleveland. [03:28.380] And a lot of their suppliers were centralized [03:32.560] in Pennsylvania and Ohio compared to Missouri. [03:36.180] So they moved the business to Canton, Ohio in 1900. [03:40.920] This is where my friend Henry Ringer comes into the picture. [03:45.340] Henry Ringer was a young man in Canton, Ohio, [03:49.020] who ultimately became a good friend of Henry Ford. [03:52.740] And during World War I was in the motor pool [03:58.620] of the army in France. [04:02.680] And he told me one time how the Timken bearings, [04:07.480] tapered bearings in the trucks and tanks [04:10.980] that they were using in Germany [04:14.640] outperformed the ball bearings that were used [04:17.020] in the German and French automobiles and trucks and tanks. [04:23.880] And he was sold with Timken bearings [04:26.540] being what the world needed. [04:30.200] At the end of World War I, [04:33.340] Timken decided that they would expand their business, [04:36.120] which primarily was in the automotive industry, [04:39.280] to the railroad and industrial markets. [04:43.100] They hired a man by the name of Tracy Buckwalter to do that. [04:48.560] Tracy Buckwalter came up with the idea [04:52.000] of building a locomotive with Timken bearings in it [04:55.880] to demonstrate the benefits of Timken bearings. [04:58.520] I'll tell you now how I became familiar with the Timken 4 aces. [05:05.140] In 1960 when I was assigned to Cleveland as a sales engineer, I began working with a man [05:11.580] by the name of Roy Johnston. [05:15.280] Roy worked for a company called Klevite that designed torpedoes for the military. [05:23.240] As I was helping them apply a Timken bearing to the torpedo, Roy asked me, could I get [05:29.880] plans for the Timken 4-ACES? [05:33.080] And I said, what's the 4-ACES? [05:34.960] And he told me, and I said, well, I'll give it a try. [05:38.480] So I checked with Harry Jones, who was the assistant chief engineer in the railroad business [05:45.960] in Canton. [05:47.520] And sure enough, Harry came up with the drawings that Northern Pacific had, which is where [05:54.920] the locomotive ended its life in 1958. [05:59.520] When I took the drawings to Roy, he was ecstatic. [06:03.320] And I can understand why, because I was, I'm a history buff, and I was thrilled with what [06:09.880] he had made me aware of. [06:13.240] And so I started to collect Timkin memorabilia. [06:16.160] There's this service manual after 100,000 miles of service that was about a quarter-inch [06:24.520] thick that explained the benefits of Timken bearings in the railroad locomotive. [06:32.240] When I became Vice President of Technology, I hung the pictures in my office and Bob Timken, [06:39.720] who had retired, Bob Timken was third generation Timken, [06:45.680] and he came into the company in 1936 [06:50.560] and retired in 1978 as the chairman. [06:53.400] Bob was a man of few words, [06:56.180] and I could never call him anything but Mr. Timken. [06:58.800] We were on a first name basis throughout the company, [07:02.240] but I could never call Mr. Timken anything else. [07:07.000] And he came into my office and sat down [07:09.640] And he said, you know, the man that developed the four aces [07:14.240] had your job a long time ago. [07:19.040] And he began to tell me how when he was a student at Harvard, [07:23.600] when he'd come home in the summertime, [07:25.880] he would follow his father around [07:29.400] at different meetings to learn how to run the Timken business [07:33.920] that he would someday inherit. [07:37.120] He told me that one morning he came to work [07:42.320] and his father told him that they had this, [07:46.680] Tracy Buckwater, who was the head of, [07:48.800] vice president of Timken, [07:52.220] that wanted to build a steam locomotive [07:55.880] and implying he thought it was a dumb idea. [07:59.920] And so they went to the meeting [08:03.240] And he heard the presentation and he said what convinced his father to go ahead with [08:12.340] building the locomotive which was going to cost him about $100,000 was Tracy Buckwalter [08:18.980] said the railroad industry thinks the money is made with the locomotive. [08:23.720] We'll make our money when we convert all the freight cars over to Timken bearings. [08:27.780] The steam locomotive, which Tracy Buckwalter was proposing to build, was to include test [08:36.300] equipment that would actually measure the benefits of the Timken Taper Roller bearings [08:42.380] over the plane bearings that existed in all the other locomotives being built in those [08:49.180] times. [08:50.180] The locomotive would be built by American locomotive, [08:54.340] and it contained a equipment, which is on the tender [09:00.180] that you see back here in the model. [09:03.220] The cupola in the back of the tender [09:05.620] is where the measuring equipment was [09:08.500] to measure the benefits of Tempton bearings. [09:11.940] Now, as I mentioned early on, I got, [09:15.700] I was the one that got the drawings for Roy Johnson to make this model that you see behind me here. [09:24.100] It is absolutely impressive. I mean it actually runs on steam and you can make it work [09:34.260] just like it was a real locomotive and I always looked at that as unbelievable being someone who [09:41.620] works with machines and knows what's involved in making something like that. [09:46.740] As Roy Johnson was approaching the end of his life, [09:50.500] he felt that the locomotor should be returned to Canton where it originally [09:56.820] came from. And so in 1982 he offered the locomotive [10:03.140] to the McKinney Presidential Library and Museum [10:06.420] and that's how it how that locomotor you see the model [10:11.380] came to Canton, Ohio. [10:14.080] Tracy Buckwalter became my idol [10:18.160] because when you manage technology, [10:20.820] you have to manage making the change. [10:24.080] You gotta manage managing the change. [10:27.520] And you also have to remember to market the change. [10:30.520] And I can't think of a better example [10:33.080] of marketing change than Tracy Buckwalter did [10:37.520] with the 4-Aces locomotive. [10:41.380] I want to talk about the end of the life for the four aces. [10:48.380] After the two-year test program, the four aces was sold to a couple of railroad companies, [10:56.380] and it ended up in the possession of Northern Pacific in the 50s. [11:01.380] In 1958, they decided that the locomotives should come to an end of use on the railroads, [11:08.380] and it was offered to the Timkin Company as a member of Ophelia. [11:14.140] If they wanted it, they turned down the opportunity to acquire the four aces [11:22.540] and probably scrap value and the only thing that was saved was the bell. [11:28.140] So that's what's left of the four aces. But the memory and what it accomplished was far, far greater.