Matthias W. Baldwin (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Matthias William Baldwin was an American manufacturer of steam locomotives. He opened his machine shop in 1825. The business grew to become Baldwin Locomotive Works, one of the most prolific and successful locomotive manufacturing firms in America. Baldwin was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, the third of five children to a successful carriage builder. His father, William Baldwin, died in 1799. In 1811 he entered an apprenticeship in Frankford, Pennsylvania, to learn jewelry making; he changed employers in 1817 to work with the company of Fletcher and Gardner in Philadelphia. Two years later, in 1819, he had used his jewelry-making knowledge to devise and patent a method for gold plating which has since become the standard method.