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Charles Wallace Hunt

American engineer (1841-1911)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 8, 2024
Entity authorityQ19630250 ↗
Source-derived summary

Charles Wallace Hunt (October 13, 1841 – March 27, 1911) was an American mechanical engineer, inventor and business executive, known as president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in the year 1898–99.

Biography

Hunt was born at Candor, New York, on October 13, 1841. He came into prominence as founder of the C. W. Hunt Company in West New Brighton in 1871, three years after he had settled in Staten Island and had started a retail coal business.

Hunt was elected president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for the year 1898–99, and was elected an Associate of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1902.

He died March 27, 1911, at Richmond County in Staten Island, New York.

Work

C.W. Hunt Company

C.W. Hunt Company was a constructive engineering firm located in West New Brighton. The company made coal and ore-handling machinery, and build wharves, docks, storage warehouses, power stations, railways, cranes, etc.

The Robert Pearson Collection (2015) summarized that "although not as well known as other industrial suppliers, the C. W. Hunt Co. offered an amazing assortment of industrial equipment. Established in 1872, the New York based firm supplied rope, coal handling equipment, cranes, and complete industrial railways.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Charles Wallace Hunt” is american engineer (1841-1911). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Charles, Wallace and Hunt, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1841, 1911, 1898, 1871—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1841-10-13. For this dossier, Charles, Wallace and Hunt is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american engineer (1841-1911)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q19630250. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1841, 1911, 1898 and 1871.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Charles Wallace Hunt”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Charles Wallace Hunt primary sources, Charles Wallace Hunt archive and Charles research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Charles Wallace Hunt”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Charles Wallace Hunt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.