Wynalazca “balloon frame” George W. Snow
GEORGE WASHINGTON SNOW (1797-1870)
The inventor of the balloon frame was George W.. Snow. He was born in Keene, New Hampshire, 16 September 1797 year, in an old American family from the Mayflower settlers. He must have been rather restless in spirit, because he first left his family home and moved to New York, and then went to Detroit with his wife. Under very primitive conditions, he made his way through Michigan and finally in a canoe, led by an Indian guide, reached the mouth of the Chicago River 12 July 1832 year. A small settlement, which he found there – counting only 250 residents – it suited his pioneering disposition.
Snow received an education as a civil engineer in his youth. This technical training may have contributed to the invention of the balloon frame. We do not know, how it happened and what obstacles he had to overcome! Nazwa “balloon frame” it maliciously alluded to the lightness of this new type of construction.
The tradition in the Snow family was confirmed several times, that he is the inventor of the 'balloon frame”. W Industrial Chicago, the most important book on the development of this city, we read, that the balloon frame is a common idea of Snow and current needs. Snow was the inventor of the balloon frame, methods of erecting wooden buildings, which in this city completely displaced the old method of construction from poles, caps, beams and braces.
A building with the 'balloon frame' structure, with a thin frame, machine-cut posts and external plank covering, It came from the seventeenth-century farmhouses of early settlers. Snow knew this type of building well from his home state of New Hampshire and the surrounding area, where his wife was from, where this type was commonly used. In these houses, relatively thin and narrow pillars are used as an auxiliary frame, and the entire structure is bound by external formwork. George Snow went out of these traditional methods, changing and adapting them to new production possibilities in both simple ways, how ingenious.
The "balloon frame" has remained viable for a century and is still widely used today. This simple and efficient structure is fully adapted to the requirements of modern architects. Many of Richard J.. Neutry in Texas, Southern California and Canada reveals elegance and lightness, which are inherent in the "balloon frame" skeleton.
