Edmund A. Smith (inventor)

Edmund Augustine "Ned" Smith (March 17, 1870 – June 3, 1909) was an American entrepreneur and inventor who helped to industrialize the fish packing and canning industry.[1][2]

Edmund A. Smith
Photograph of Smith, circa 1908
Born
Edmund Augustine Smith

March 17, 1870
Ontario, Canada
DiedJune 3, 1909 (aged 39)
Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Burial placeLake View Cemetery
Seattle, Washington, U.S.
For other people with the named Edmund Smith, see Edmund Smith (disambiguation).

Early life

Smith was born in 1870 in Middlesex County, Ontario, the son of Robert Frederick Smith (1832–1916) and Mary Charlotte Garnett Smith (1845–1899) By 1895, Smith had moved to Seattle, Washington.

Career

Smith was an investor in various fish canning and brick-making businesses in the Seattle area. He owned the Smith Manufacturing Company, a waterfront workshop in the city where he developed and manufactured various inventions.[3]

In 1903, Smith invention a mechanized fish-butchering machine which he named the Iron Chink, which gutted and cleaned salmon for canning at a rate of 55 times faster than human butchers.[4] Smith obtained a U.S. patent for the machine in 1905 and a patent in Canada the following year.[5][6] Other patented inventions of Smith's included a weight testing machine and composite pile.[7]

The naming of the machine is seen by some as symbolic anti-Chinese racism during the early 1900s.[8][9] However, some historians have held that Smith named the machine due to his regard for Chinese butcher crews.[10][11]

Smith's Iron Chink machine, pictured alongside a Chinese fishplant worker, was marketed as a replacement for fish-butchers, who were primarily Chinese immigrants

Smith's invention severely impacted the workers of the seafood industry, forcing thousands of seafood butchers and packers to find other sources of employment. However, Smith's invention increased cannery profits and led to the growth of the seafood industry.

Smith's invention gave him considerable wealth. Smith was invited to display his invention at the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition in 1909.

Personal life and death

Smith married Wisconsin native Mary Gertrude Peterson in 1898. They had two children, Helen (b. 1899) and Wallace (b. 1902).

In June 1909 at the age of 39, Smith died in an automobile accident on his way to the opening of the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition.[12] He is buried at Lake View Cemetery in Seattle.

Legacy

An exhibit about Smith, including his "Iron Chink" invention, is displayed at the Museum of History & Industry.

Smith's invention is still used today, now known as the "Iron Butcher." His invention is regarded as an influential contribution to the growth of the warehousing, shipping, packing, and other cannery activities of the modern seafood industry, especially the Salmon canning industry.[13]

References
  1. Adam Woog, Sexless Oysters and Self-Tipping Hats: 100 Years of Inventions in the Pacific Northwest, (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1991), 52-54
  2. "Edmund Augustine Smith". digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu. Retrieved December 12, 2022.
  3. Polk's Seattle (King County, Wash.) City Directory, (Seattle: R. L. Polk, 1903), 963
  4. Carlos Schwantes, Columbia River: Gateway to the West (Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho Press, 2000), 47
  5. "Automated salmon cleaning machine developed in Seattle in 1903". www.historylink.org. Retrieved December 12, 2022.
  6. The Canadian Patent Office Record and Register of Copyrights and Trade Marks. Patent Office. 1906. p. 2757.
  7. Commissioner of Patents Annual Report. United States Patent Office. 1905. p. 458.
  8. Wing, Avra (January 14, 2005). "Acts of Exclusion". AsianWeek. Archived from the original on October 21, 2006.
  9. "HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History". Archived from the original on June 22, 2011. Retrieved June 1, 2011.
  10. Jo Scott B, "Smith's Iron Chink – One Hundred Years of the Mechanical Fish Butcher", British Columbia History, 38 (2): 21–22, archived from the original on October 23, 2007
  11. Philip B. C. Jones. "Revolution on a Dare; Edmund A. Smith and His Famous Fish-butchering Machine" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on July 25, 2011. Retrieved June 1, 2011. The myth arose that Edmund Smith had designed the machine specifically to fire Chinese workers
  12. "Edmund A. Smith Obituary". The Wenatchee Daily World. June 4, 1909.
  13. Sundquist, Mark (2010). Seattle. Arcadia Publishing. p. 46. ISBN 978-0-7385-8008-1.
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