TINIUS OLSEN

Without some means of testing the strength of materials before their use, however, these experimental results were likely to take the form of explosions or building collapses. From the 1850's on, various devices for testing materials had been developed, but the goal of a truly universal testing machine proved elusive until 1880, when Philadelphia engineer Tinius Olsen, a Norwegian immigrant who had just lost his job, devised and patented what became known as the Little Giant. Here at last was a machine for tensile, transverse, and compression testing united in a single instrument. Olsen's mechanism was to become the ancestor of all testing machines subsequently produced around the world, while the company Olsen set up to market his invention continues in the testing machine business to this day. This year Tinius Olsen Inc. celebrates its 125th year of continuous operations... Shortly after the end of the Civil War, with industrialization gaining momentum in the United States and new..