The forerunner of the electric sheep shears used by shearers today was a mechanical-force sheep shearer invented by New Hampshire native John K. Stewart.
The company he cofounded to mass produce the machine in 1893 has since morphed into a billion-dollar corporation with which nearly everyone in America is familiar.
One of the circa-1890s Stewart Clippers recently made its way to the Jackson County Historical Society Museum in Lakefield, a former hotbed of sheep production. The clipper was donated to the museum by Elaine Thomas Schroeder.
“Elaine Schroeder is a relative of Robert Thomas, a former area sheep shearer that owned the machine,” Mike Kirchmeier said. “He, along with his brother, Howard, originally worked out of Lakefield shearing sheep and later moved to Olivia.”
Kirchmeier said the crank-operated shearing machine is in very good condition, but is missing a small part that connects the clipper to the flexible shaft that was mechanically driven by the machine’s crank. It took two men to operate the machine, Kirchmeier said.
“We have that machine on display here at the museum, along with some donated photos of the machine being used back in the 1890’s,” he said. “We also have a pair of hand-operated sheep shears that were the predecessor of the Stewart mechanical clipper.”
Stewart and his lifelong friend, Thomas J. Clark, got their initial training in manufacturing while working together at a New Hampshire factory that manufactured horse clipping equipment. Later, the two moved on to Providence, R.I., working for Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Co.
By 1890, the pair had moved to Chicago and, in 1893, formed a partnership and their own business, the Chicago Flexible Shaft Co., which eventually became the Sunbeam Corp. In its beginning, the company manufactured primarily flexible shafts and mechanical sheep clippers.
In 1896, expanding his business, Stewart joined Charles Timson of Wm. Cooper & Nephews, an English company, in a partnership creating the Cooper-Stewart Sheep Shearing Machinery Co. that sold sheep shearing products exclusively. It was this company that manufactured the mechanical-force sheep shearer, predecessor of today’s electric sheep shearing equipment.
In 1903, Wm. Cooper & Nephews purchased 50 percent of Stewart’s Chicago Flexible Shaft Co. and, in 1908, purchased the remaining 50 percent of the company for $400,000, though Julia Stewart — wife of John — had a nephew who remained president of the company after the sale was completed.
Then in 1910, the Chicago Flexible Shaft Co. introduced its first home appliance — an electric iron. Between 1908 and 1936, the company, operating as a subsidiary of Wm. Cooper & Nephews, began to manufacture a variety of electrical appliances, including mixers, coffeemakers and toasters, employing around 500 people. In 1946, the company became known as Sunbeam Corp.
By the end of the1970s, Sunbeam employed more than 30,000 people worldwide, became the leading American manufacturer of small appliances and had annual sales of $1.3 billion.
But that is just a part of John K. Stewart’s success story, Kirchmeier said. Back in 1896, Stewart and Clark founded another company, Sterk Manufacturing, to produce speedometers and automobile horns. Using a variation of the flexible shafts from their Chicago Flexible Shaft Co. — the same type of shaft Stewart invented to drive his Stewart Clipper mechanical sheep shearer — Sterk Manufacturing began producing cables for speedometers.
Then, in 1905, Stewart & Clark Manufacturing Co. was founded and the company acquired all the assets of the Sterk Manufacturing Co. From there, Stewart and Clark built a small manufacturing plant in Chicago. The plant grew in size over the years to a million-square-foot facility and headquarters for what would become Stewart-Warner Corp. in 1929 and which remained in the Chicago area until 1988.
Stewart held and had acquired a total of 80 patents in his lifetime and was paid $311,000 in royalties for his speedometers he sold in the year 1909 alone.
Clark was killed while demonstrating the Stewart speedometer in 1907 at which time Stewart acquired his shares in the company.
To answer the need for the blades of clippers and shears to last longer and remain sharp, Stewart worked with Edward Larson to build a heat treatment furnace to temper steel. In 1906, the two formed the E.A. Larson & Brothers Co. for that purpose, but also used the processes they had developed to provide die casting for speedometer production and for other companies benefiting from that new process. Two years later, the company was reorganized as J.K. Stewart Manufacturing Co.
John K. Stewart died in 1916 at just 45 years of age. A year prior to his death, being a lover of music, he struck out in pursuit of the phonograph market. That venture became a division of Stewart-Warner Phonograph Co. that eventually expanded into radios, televisions and speakers.
The company Stewart originally founded with Clark, the Chicago Flexible Shaft Co., which manufactured the mechanical-force sheep shears, had evolved into the Sunbeam Corp., a billion-dollar enterprise 60 years later; Stewart-Warner Corp., which bears his name, still manufactures electronic component parts to this day.