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John
Rome Battle was born March 30, 1889 in St. Louis, Missouri
and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1910
with a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering.
He later received a Master of Engineering from the University
of Pennsylvania in 1917 for a thesis on oil engineering.
Mr.
Battle began his career in 1910 as a cadet engineer for United
Gas Improvement Co. in Philadelphia.
He worked as a lubrication engineer for Atlantic Refining
Co. and later took a position with Swan and Finch Co.
John
R. Battle |
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In
1916 while still with Atlantic , he authored his first book,
"Lubricating Engineer's Handbook." In 1920, only three years
after receiving his master's degree, Mr. Battle
started his own consulting business, J.R. Battle and Co.,
specializing in industrial application, use and research of
petroleum and other oil products.
During
the same year he published a second book "Handbook of Industrial
Oil Engineering." With more than 1,100 pages, this was a practical
handbook, encyclopedic in nature, with the original "Lubricating
Engineer's
Handbook" content
incorporated in it.
Books
Written by Mr. Battle |
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With
plain text explanations and several charts, line drawings,
curves and useful tables, the book was adopted by several
oil companies at the time and had two subsequent editions
in 1933 and 1936. Mr. Battle wrote another book, "Handbook
of Lubrication, Liquid fuels and Industrial Oil Engineering"
in 1938, as well as several articles throughout his career.
He also served as editor of the Industrial Oil Engineering
Department of The National Petroleum News and was a member
of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the
American Petroleum Institute (API).
Mr.
Battle invented various types of lubrication and
oil handling and dispensing equipment while
concurrently presiding over his other
company,
Gun-fil Corporation. The
Gun-fil lubricator was patented by Mr.
Battle
in 1924. It is a spring-loaded automatic lubricator. The lubricator
is designed to deliver a constant amount of lubrication. His
four design configurations (for different lubricating frequencies)
are highlighted in his "Handbook of Industrial Oil Engineering"
published in 1926. In 1946 he sold the Gun-fil product line
to Gray Company and retired. The company, now Graco, began
selling the Gun-fil lubricators and continued to manufacture
and sell them until the mid-1960s, when it sold the rights
to Lube Devices, Inc.
Graco
continued to market the Gun-fil lubricators until
the early 1980s. The Gun-fil is still sold today
by Lube Devices and the lubricator uses
the
same product number assigned by Graco half a century ago.
Graco offers products for lubrication and other applications
primarily for end-users. You can view the company's history
and products at www.graco.com. Lube Devices, Inc. offers products
primarily to original equipment manufacturer (OEM) markets
as well as maintenance, repair and operation (MRO) markets.
Its Web site is www.lubedevices.com
Mr.
Battle died on March 18, 1975 in Philadelphia
, Penn. His three grandchildren, Susan,
Julie and Richard Norris Clattenburg live
in the East Coast of the United States.
ICML
chose to honor Mr. Battle as the namesake
for this award because his work represented
at such an early stage in the history of
modern machinery lubrication, the exact mission
of the Council - that of bridging the gap
between academic and practical application of
machinery lubrication.
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