Scientific American on the Industrial Uses of Asbestos and H. W. Johns (1876)

Two pages from Scientific American, the New York weekly, for April 22, 1876 (Vol. XXXIV, No. 17): the front page, with an unrelated article on Du Laney's "Little Monitor" sewing machine, and page 258, an illustrated article titled "The Industrial Uses of Asbestos." The article describes the mineral, notes that until recently it had been little more than "a mineralogical curiosity," and states: "It is to Mr. H. W. Johns, of New York city, that the credit of first using asbestos for industrial purposes on a large scale is due." It then describes his asbestos roofing, boiler and pipe coverings, steam packing and paints, with engravings of a large piece of fiber, roofing being laid and an asbestos-covered boiler and pipe.

What it shows

The article tells how Johns, after inventing a cement containing asbestos, advertised it widely "through the Scientific American and other journals" and received "an avalanche of letters" offering supplies of the mineral, which let him develop his other products. It praises the asbestos roofing as fire resistant and cheap, and the pipe and boiler coverings as excellent non-conductors of heat that "successfully withstood" tests at the New York navy yard in 1874. Nothing in it mentions any risk to the people making or using these products. H. W. Johns's business later became part of Johns-Manville. Scientific American described the H. W. Johns works again five years later (its 1881 profile of the company), and the trade journal Asbestos quoted this article's paragraph on Johns in 1927 (Asbestos magazine, 1927).

About this copy

This copy has only the issue's front page and page 258, not the whole issue. The right-hand column of page 258 runs into a short item on clipping horses.