Gustavus Charles Hennings
Gustavus Charles Hennings (1855-1919)
1911 Obituary [1]
GUSTAVUS CHARLES HENNING died at his residence in New York City on December 30, 1910. He was born on January 1, 1855, at Brooklyn, and educated, first at the Polytechnic Institute in that city, and afterwards at the Stevens Institute, Hoboken, New Jersey, where he graduated in 1876. Immediately after graduation he entered upon the work of the inspection and testing of materials, to which he practically devoted his professional life. He was first employed in this capacity upon the Brooklyn Bridge. His work led him to a critical study of the defects and limitations of the high-power testing machines, and to the invention of a machine of greater accuracy, which he described in two papers before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
For two years he represented the [Yale and Towne Manufacturing Co|Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company]] in London and Paris, and he was the official delegate of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers at conferences of the International Association for Testing Materials.
During this period he contributed to the Transactions of the Society a number of important papers upon the standardisation of methods of testing. In 1898 and following years he translated from the German the works of Professor Martens, of Berlin, on this subject.
During the last few years of his life he gave attention to the development of the use of the diamond as a cutting-face for tools, on which subject he presented a paper before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1904. He also contributed largely to the Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, of which he was a member. He was also a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Iron and Steel Institute, the International Association for Testing Materials, the American Geographical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected a member of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1889, and in 1897 he contributed a paper before the Institute entitled "A Portable Recorder for Tests of Metals."