Francis A. Pratt
American businessman (1827–1902)
Francis Ashbury Pratt (February 15, 1827 – February 10, 1902) was an American mechanical engineer, inventor, and co-founder of Pratt & Whitney.
Biography
Pratt was born in Peru, New York. His parents moved the family to Lowell, Massachusetts, when he was eight years old. He was educated in Lowell and apprenticed in a machine shop. In 1848, he moved to Gloucester, New Jersey, and worked for Gloucester Machine Works as a journeyman and contractor. In 1852, Pratt moved to Hartford, Connecticut, to work at Colt Armory. It was at Colt that he met Amos Whitney. Pratt soon left Colt to work at Phoenix Iron Works and brought Whitney along with him.
While still working at Phoenix Iron Works, he designed a milling machine for George S. Lincoln & Company of Hartford, Connecticut, which became the Lincoln miller, in some ways perhaps the most important American machine tool of the late 19th century. Over 150,000 machines were built on this form factor (by many firms).
The public source identifies “Francis A. Pratt” as american businessman (1827–1902). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Francis, Pratt and American.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q3356618. VIAF identifies the subject as 41724007. The Library of Congress control number is nr94028831. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1827, 1902, 1848 and 1852.
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This entry incorporates text from “Francis A. Pratt” 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.