Minot
Name: Charles Minot
Achievements: Rose to prominence as a railroad official
Born: August 30, 1810; Haverhill, Massachusetts
Died: December 10, 1866; Somerville, Massachusetts (Aged 56)
Field & Discipline: Industry; Railroad; Railroad Superintendent
Language: English
Father: Unknown
Mother: Unknown
Siblings: George (lawyer to Boston and Maine Railroad Company)
Spouse: Unknown
Children: Unknown
Education: Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Life & Times:
Little is known of Charles Minot until he graduated from Harvard in 1828, at the age of 18. He went into law and was admitted to the bar in Suffolk County, where he practised for many years.
In 1841, at 31, Minot was appointed superintendent of the Boston and Maine railroad. A year later, he accepted a similar appointment with the Erie Railroad (which superseded [work related to] Clinton’s* Erie Canal) , where he remained for 13 years.
While superintendent of New York and Erie Railroad, in autumn 1851, Minot was responsible for first telegraphic train orders being sent. Four years earlier a commercial telegraph line had been installed along the line of the railroad, to Fredonia in Chautauqua County, and gradually the magnetic telegraph caught on and became busier. Legend has it that Minot saw Ezra Cornell stringing telegraph poles along wagon roads in the region around Goshen during his first year on the Erie railroad.
Operators on part of the telegraph line that paralleled the railroad developed habit in idle moments of chatting back and forth between messages - and part of the talk inevitably involved how the trains were running, etc.
Such casual gossip fired Minot to make good use of it for the railroad. The story goes that September 22nd 1851 was first use of the telegraph for railroad control. For eight to ten years past, trains had waited for one another upon sidings, to the intense irritation of most of the passengers and the general upset of service on the line. On that date Minot was a passenger on a train waiting on the siding at Turners, NY (now Harriman) for the train coming from the other direction.
Minot was impatient and, looking outside, saw the telegraph line. He got off the train, went to the telegraph office and wired the next station (Goshen) to ask if the eastbound train had passed yet. It hadn't, so Minot dispatched the first telegraphic train order ever sent in America: to the operator at Goshen - "HOLD EASTBOUND TRAIN TILL FURTHER ORDERS" - and then ordered his engineer to proceed to Goshen.
The engineer refused, so Minot climbed into the cab himself and ran the train to Goshen, where again he wired ahead to Middletown, then stopped there to wire to Port Jervis - so bringing the train into Port Jervis an hour ahead of schedule.
Soon after, Minot developed a system of dispatches or orders under which the trains might proceed over the line, especially in regard to passing one another at stations. The modern version of this system was first set up on the NY & Erie Railroad, and remained in use until the end of 1888, when it was superseded in large measure by the 'block' system of train control brought over from Pennsylvania Railroad.
Minot then joined the Michigan Southern Railroad, where he worked for four years. In 1859, he returned to the Erie as superintendent and continued in this capacity for five years. From 1864 until his death in 1866, he worked as a consultant.
Extra Connections: Met [met] Cornell*.
His work related to that of [work related to] McCallum*
Assessment: One of the most noted railroad officers of his day.
Oneliner: Charles Minot, an early US railroad manager.
Bibliography:
- Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Eds. Wilson James Grant and John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1888.