Isaac Babbitt is now connected!

Question

You heard it right. Isaac Babbitt is now connected to the Wikitree. He was an inventor who invented an alloy called, for lack of a better term, babbitt metal. It is mostly tin with some lead and other metals thrown in. Without babbitt metal (so commonplace that it is not even capitalized), your life would grind to a halt. Literally.  Babbitt metal is used to make ball bearings. And there you habit, babbitt.  What is even way cooler is his parents' names:  Ziba and Bathsheba which sorta rhymes. What kinda sucks is he forgot to patent the composition of babbitt metal in the US. So some other guys took care of that for him. So it goes.

Answer 1

That's fascinating. Just dove into Wikipedia's page on Babbitt alloys. 

One suggestion for a source type that you might want to add to the page (which is already quite thoroughly sourced!) is to add some of his patents. I haven't seen much of it on WikiTree, but for inventors, it's a unique and under-utilized option. 

Yes, Google Patents goes that far back! And it has at least two authored by Isaac Babbitt:

• Isaac Babbitt (of Roxbury, Massachusetts), "Improvements in Metallic Hones for Sharpening Razors", US Patent No. 10,954. 23 May 1854, https://patents.google.com/patent/US10954A/en
• Isaac Babbitt (of Boston, Massachusetts), "Journal Box", US Patent No. 1,252. 17 July 1839, https://patents.google.com/patent/US1252A/en

Plus it's free to access the PDF full text, as well as figures, from the patents. 

Comments

Google Patents could be useful for a lot of inventors.

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Thanks! As you can see, I have already included those patents on his profile page.

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Ah, I somehow missed that! I was looking though the sources list :P Double good work then, Mark! Though I'd still recommend linking the Google Patents ones, perhaps as an alternate link.