William McConway
William McConway (1842-1925)
1925 Obituary [1]
WILLIAM MCCONWAY died at Pittsburgh, U.S.A., on July 28, 1925.
Mr. McConway was born in Desertmartin, Co. Derry, Ireland, in 1842, and emigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of seven. His parents settled in Pittsburgh, and the boy attended school until the age of twelve, and was then put to work at the Old Novelty Iron- works.
After six months with that firm he obtained employment with Olnhausen and Crawford, a pioneer steel manufacturing company, and remained with them until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he enlisted as a private in the Pennsylvania Volunteers.
In 1863 he obtained a commission as 2nd Lieutenant.
After receiving his discharge he rejoined his firm, and was admitted to partnership in 1866.
In 1869 he promoted the firm of Lewis & Co., predecessors of the McConway and Torley Co. By the members of the Institute McConway will be best remembered on account of his interesting film demonstration during the meeting of the Institute in York in 1922, on which occasion he described his new process for the production of steel discs in a centrifugal hydraulic casting machine in which, due to the rapid rotation of the cylinder, the metal is forced against the cylinder wall and forms a cylindrical or ring-shaped ingot.
Mr. McConway was elected a member of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1890. He was a trustee of the Carnegie Institute and the Carnegie Institute of Technology.