Swasey, Ambrose (1846-1937)
Dates
- Existence: 1846 - 1937
Biography
Ambrose Swasey and his business partner Worcester R. Warner were both on the CMA’s Advisory Board in the early twentieth century (see also Warner, Worcester R.). The Warner & Swasey Company invented and manufactured high precision tools and telescopes in Cleveland from 1881 to 1992. Both Swasey and Warner grew up on farms and found work as apprentices in the Exeter Machine Works in Exeter, New Hampshire. At the end of their apprenticeships in 1870, they took jobs at the Pratt & Whitney Company in Hartford, Connecticut. By 1880 they combined their capital to form their own company in Chicago; in 1881 they relocated the business to Cleveland for its more skilled mechanics.
Warner and Swasey’s inventions centered on the application of gears in the mechanical and automotive industries. Their most important contributions include a milling machine, the turret lathe, the long-range finder on coastal defense guns, and the largest telescopes of their era. In 1886 they designed and built the Lick Observatory telescope for the University of California with a 36-inch lens, the largest in its time. Later their telescopes were built with lenses as large as 72 inches. They donated one of their telescopes to Case Western Reserve University; it is now in the observatory at the Museum of Natural History in Cleveland. In 1923, Dr. Otto Struve, a Russian American astronomer, named a newly discovered asteroid Swasey in his honor.
The French decorated Ambrose Swasey in 1900 for his work on astronomical instruments. He was one of the organizers of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and its president in 1904. He was a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers of Great Britain. In 1924 Swasey was the recipient of the John Fritz Medal, awarded annually since 1902 by the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES) for "outstanding scientific or industrial achievements." In 1936, the year before his death, he received the Hoover Medal of the Engineering Societies of America.
Swasey was also a philanthropist. Among his benevolences are the observatory and chapel at Denison University; the Science Building at the University of Nanking, China; The Christian Association of the Canton Christian College in Canton, China; a pavilion for his native town of Exeter; an endowed chair of physics at Case Western Reserve University, and the endowment funds for the Engineering Foundation.
Ambrose Swasey married Lavinia Marston of Exeter in 1871; they had no children. The Swaseys moved to Cleveland when his company moved there in 1881. Swasey died in Exeter in 1937.
Sources
Ingalls Library clipping file
“Swasey, Ambrose,” Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, accessed May 28, 2015.
https://case.edu/ech/articles/s/swasey-ambrose
-Biography by Anne Cuyler Salsich, 2025