Samuel Wylie Miller
Samuel Wylie Miller (c1867-1929)
1929 Obituary [1]
SAMUEL WYLIE MILLER, consulting engineer of the Union Carbide and Carbon Research Laboratories, Inc., Long Island City, N.Y., U.S.A., well known both in the United States and in Europe as a pioneer in oxy-acetylene welding and an authority on its application, died on February 3, 1929, at his home in Hollis, Long Island, N.Y., at the age of sixty-two.
Mr. Miller was a native of New York, and received his degree in Mechanical, Engineering from Stevens Institute in 1887. His first professional activities were as master mechanic for the Pennsylvania Railroad plants at Logansport, Indianapolis, Ind., and Columbus, Ohio. Following this he was with the American Locomotive Company at Dunkirk, N.Y., and Providence, R.I., after which he founded the Rochester Welding Works at Rochester, N.Y.
During the World War he served on the Welding Committee of the Emergency Fleet Corporation.
In 1921 he joined the newly formed Union Carbide and Carbon Research Laboratories, Inc. In professional circles Mr. Miller was recognized as an able engineer. He was a director and past-president of the American Welding Society, a director of the American Bureau of Welding, and chairman of the Oxy-Acetylene Committee of the International Acetylene Association. As a member of the Welding Sub-Committee of the Boiler Code Committee he was prominently identified with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
He was an active member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, American Society for Steel Treating, Iron and Steel Institute, and other scientific and engineering organizations. Mr. Miller was instrumental in the development of welding by all processes scientifically well founded, and was noted for his energetic insistence upon high quality and dependable workmanship. He was the donor of the Miller Medal, awarded annually by the American Welding Society for work of conspicuous merit in advancing the art and science of welding. He is credited with having been among the first to visualize the possibilities of the oxy-acetylene process, and his important contributions to it were many. He wrote several books on the subject, and was much sought after as a lecturer on welding at engineering meetings. The loss of Mr. Miller will be keenly felt by the entire engineering and welding profession.
Mr. Miller was elected a member of the Institute of Metals on March 18, 1915.