Bond, George Meade

SUBJECT AREA: Mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic engineering

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b. 17 July 1852 Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA

d. 6 January 1935 Hartford, Connecticut, USA

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American mechanical engineer and metrologist, co-developer of the Rogers- Bond Comparator.

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After leaving school at the age of 17, George Bond taught in local schools for a few years before starting an apprenticeship in a machine shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He then worked as a machinist with Phoenix Furniture Company in that city until his savings permitted him to enter the Stevens Institute of Technology at Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1876. He graduated with the degree of Mechanical Engineer in 1880. In his final year he assisted William A.Rogers, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the design of a comparator for checking standards of length. In 1880 he joined the Pratt \& Whitney Company, Hartford, Connecticut, and was Manager of the Standards and Gauge Department from then until 1902. During this period he developed cylindrical, calliper, snap, limit, thread and other gauges. He also designed the Bond Standard Measuring Machine. Bond was elected a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1881 and of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1887, and served on many of their committees relating to standards and units of measurement.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

Vice-President, American Society of Mechanical Engineers 1908–10. Honorary degrees of DEng, Stevens Institute of Technology 1921, and MSc, Trinity College, Hartford, 1927.

Bibliography

1881. "Standard measurements", Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2:81.

1882. "A standard gauge system", Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical

Engineers 3:122.

1886, "Standard pipe and pipe threads", Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 7:311.

1887. Standards of Length and Their Practical Application, Hartford.

Further Reading

"Report of the Committee on Standards and Gauges", 1883, Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 4:21–9 (describes the Rogers-Bond Comparator).

See also: Pratt, Francis Ashbury; Whitney, Amos

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