Western Inventor, Businessman, and Civic Leader
Inventors such as Harold Farnes Silver can be counted among the few souls who reshape their time and place. Silver belongs in the company of such figures as Cyrus McCormick and fellow Utah natives John Moses Browning and Philo Farnsworth, for he created machines that transformed whole industries. An entrepreneur as well, he built corporations on the foundation of his inventions. He then shared his success and business acumen through civic service that strengthened the communities with which he was affiliated, especially Denver, Colorado, where he made his home. During World War II, as owner of a still fledgling business, he piloted the effort that brought inland shipyards hundreds of miles from the ocean to the city by the Rocky Mountains. As a philanthropist and as an organizer or participant in countless causes and business organizations, he left a rare legacy of public service through private means in Denver and elsewhere. Mastery of mechanical invention made Harold Silver's business and civic achievements possible. He was born into a family of mechanical engineers, craftsmen in iron and steel. Their trade was with mines, smelters, farms, and food factories, businesses whose products were the mainstays of the western economy. Sugar, from sugar beets, and coal were among the most important of those products. In the twentieth century new technology continued to alter farms and mines, but as midcentury approached, coal mines and sugar factories still employed many antiquated labor-intensive methods. Mechanization, chemistry, and automation had only begun to redefine the nature of work and production in these industries. Harold Silver had an unequaled role in creating the machinery that accelerated that process. He invented new means of receiving and processing sugar beets and extracting sugar from them, dramatically reducing labor needs and increasing production capabilities. Having revolutionized the sugar beet business, he then created a new way of obtaining sugar from its other major source, sugar cane. His influence on coal mining was perhaps even more important, earning him a place among America's greatest inventors. Silver's continuous coal miner, a teethed monster of a machine, tore out coal by the wall, moved it from the mining face, and loaded it for transport to the surface. It replaced back-breaking hand labor by miners, integrated the various tasks of several less-efficient machines, and made coal mining safer, less expensive, and more productive. Harold Silver faced a fair share of controversy and hardship along his road to achievement and success. From his youth in Salt Lake City as part of a polygamous and broken Mormon family to his own permanent break with his youngest son, episodes of personal tragedy as well as joy and public accomplishment shaped a life that has received insufficient notice.
Nathan Rosenberg, Technology and American Economic Growth (Armonk, N.Y.:
M. E. Sharpe, 1972). Joseph Rossman ... Yale University Press, 1970). Gregory C
. Thompson and Allan D. Ainsworth, EIMCO: The History 242 Harold F. Silver.
