Re: What was made in the Harrison, NJ works of Worthington: The answer is centrifugal pumps. Worthington got its start when Henry Rossiter Worthington patented a direct acting steam pump. This was probably in the 1850's. Whether it was the first direct acting steam pump is something I don;t know. A direct acting steam pump has the steam piston and the water end piston (or plunger) on the same rod. Worthington really made their name and grew with the basic "duplex" steam pumps. At some point, they got into the manufacture of centrifugal pumps and became one of the biggest in the industry. Towards the end of their existence, Worthington employed Igor Karassik (sp ?) as their chief engineer or chief designed for centrifugal pumps. Karassik wrote textbooks on the design of centrifugal pumps and is still looked at as one of the "names" in research and development of centrifugal and turbine pumps.
I know that when Worthington was at their peak, they had divisions making all sorts of divers product lines: centrifugal pumps was a big division, once recip pumps fell into relative disuse. Holyoke, MA had the Worthington plant making the higher speed recip air compressors (such as are used in garages or similar). Somewhere along the line, Worthington had divisions making grounds-keeping tractors, concrete mixers, central air conditioning units, steam surface condensers, heat exchangers, and then they had their "turbodyne division", in Minnesota, which built steam turbines. The biggest units to come out of Turbodyne were about 40 Mw. I've got a few of the old Worthington nameplates in my office at home, one of which is actually the steam chest cover (complete with the bronze Worthington insignia) from a tiny duplex steam pump (rest of the pump was long gone, unfortunately), and a large Worthington nameplate off a 10 Mw Turbodyne steam turbo generator. Both of these have the Worthington insignia with the snakes, supposedly something from ancient Egypt. I've got a small two stage vee-compressor out in my garage, made by Worthington in Holyoke in the late 40's. It is direct coupled to the motor with a "Thermoid" dampener coupling and runs at 1725 rpm. Nice and smooth and quiet. The intercooler has a tag soldered to it from "Harrison Radiator", in Buffalo, NY. The compressor has the Worthington nameplate riveted to the crankcase with the wings and snakes. Great old compressor.
As for stories of bosses disappearing on the job, this is nothing new. Years ago on powerplant construction sites and in heavy shops, there was a kind of "code". You did not rat out anyone. You covered for the people who were in your crew.
You did not cooperate with the law as a rule. I remember on one powerplant job, it was a couple of weeks before Christmas when the law showed up at the project gate. The local deputies had an out of state officer with them, and he had a warrant and extradition papers to pick up a guy working on our jobsite on a murder or manslaughter charge. The fun began at the gate. The old security guard was a former iron miner who had taken the job to make ends meet, and had no real love for law enforcement. He let the law know he did not think much of their coming to pick a working man up right before Christmas. The word went like wildfire over that powerplant site. It took the law over two hours to find the man they were looking for. Everyone said they had not seen the guy all day. He kept moving around the site, from the new units under construction into the existing units, out in the coal yard, up on the bunker floor, all over the place. Eventually, the law caught up with the man they were looking for and took him into custody, in irons. About that time, the shop stewards for the different crafts and from the various contractors all showed up with a sack of cash, having had spontaneous collections. They got the word as to where the guy's family was and got it to them. All the men who could were jeering and booing as the law led the guy out the gate. Management knew better than to say a word about it.
That was the code on the jobsites. Years later, I was working with a crew inside a hydro turbine. I had a hunch as to why there was water spurting out of concrete a good 50 feet from the turbine scroll case, and let it be known that I believed there was a crack in one of the longitudinal seam welds in the scroll case which has been propigating over time. One thing led to another, and we put the unit on clearance and unwatered it. I was being accused of heresy for my theory. As soon as we could enter the scroll case, the crack in the longitudinal seam weld in the biggest diameter part of the casing was evident. The crew was uproarious that I was right, in high spirits. I was ready to tell the crew to stop drill the crack and vee it out for a repair weld. About then, my previous boss showed up. He was not a mechanical engineer and had disdain for the mechanics. He was an electrical engineer, and into the latest and greatest in controls and protective relaying. He tippy toed into the scroll case, and we showed him the crack. Instead of saying: "Great thinking, Joe... go fix it", he started hemming and hawing that we should "photograph it, document it, and let corporate engineering decide what to do..." His order was to close the unit up (it takes about 12 hours to take a unit off line and get it unwatered, and has to be scheduled way in advance). I said I knew how to repair the crack, and my boss started whining "You and the mechanics might make it worse... how do you know how to fix it ? What if you make it worse ?" I told my boss that the crack was in carbon steel pressure vessel grade steel plate, and I'd seen worse on parts of locomotive boilers and come up with repairs that worked. I also pointed out we had one very experienced mechanic who was prepared to do the repair welding and a crew standing by to support the work. My boss kept whining, and I got so mad I was frustrated. I kept telling my boss I'd put my PE stamp on the job, and his ass was not on the line, and that corporate knew the least about this sort of thing and consulted me when things like this came up at the other plants. My boss kept on about NOT doing any repairs. I started to lose it, and my thought right then was to deck my boss, right inside the scroll case. The chief mechanic read the situation right and got next to me and put his shoulder against mine. The Scroll Case is like a giant pump casing, and it is cylindrical in cross section, smooth steel with epoxy paint, and water laying in the 6:00 area of the tubular section. Welding lead and lead cords and air hoses were already strung out. I felt the chief mechanic push against my shoulder, and right then, a fellow who outranked my boss stepped in between. He put his back to my boss and said: "Joe: can you fix this with the crew ?" I said we could. I said I estimated I'd release my clearance at midnight (we had come on site at 6 AM that morning), and we'd be watered up and ready for test operation by about 4 AM the next morning. The chief mechanic said we'd work straight through. The fellow who outrnaked my boss said: "I knew you'd figure it out, Joe. Good luck. I'll clear out so you guys can get to work." My boss was outranked, outflanked, and disregarded. He muttered "good luck" and left. Years later, the chief mechanic reminded me of that morning. He said he knew I was close to decking my boss, so he'd put his shoulder against me. He saved my job and my career and all else. He told me that had I swung at my boss, the other mechanics would have pulled the power to the lights in that scroll case. That is absolute darkness. They would have sworn to the last man that my boss slipped and fell hard against the steel scroll case. Nice to hear that the crew had my back. We did make the repair as a temporary weld (the plate of the scroll case was 3" thick, so we could only vee out for enough depth of weld to take the internal pressure, not time enough for a complete penetration weld). The temporary weld held for 3 years. We went back in, gouged it out, and did a complete joint penetration weld and by then, I had a new boss who really has been a friend and has encouraged me and turned me loose to do what I need to do. He's heard the story about his predecessor from the crew and laughed about it with them. I think in workplaces where people work on "real things" rather than office work or business environments, and particularly when they work on large and heavy stuff, people tend to be direct and tell it like it is. If someone screws them over or is a prick, it is not long before he gets his in one way or another.
If you are going to be a boss in that environment, you have to know how to reach your crew and how to work with them. Anything human resources, psychology courses, motivational speakers, or anyone or anything else along those lines has to say is generally inapplicable in this kind of work environment. Usually, in this type of work environment, unless a boss has "made his bones" and come up from the tools, he has little or no credability. If he announces he has a degree and a professional license, he is generally more mistrusted if he is the theoretical sort. We have some engineers who will not go to a crew briefing unless ordered to, as they know they are not held in particularly high regard.
I am on deck with the crew for the morning briefing every morning I can, even though I do not have to be there. We kid around, and the crew knows they can ask me about stuff for their personal use, whether it is how to pipe up a pump in a maple sugar shack, or what size framing lumber to use to carry an opening thru a bearing wall in their home, or what courses their kids should take in HS or college. They ask me about the jobs assigned to them, even if I am not the responsible engineer. I sketch and show them reasons for the design, how the forces act in the different parts, or whatever they want to know about. We kid around, and if the HR and politically correct patrol from corporate heard us, we'd be in for discipline, or people would think we were all mortal enemies. Every shop and powerplant and heavy construction jobsite had its stories and legends. There was always a prick or rat who, in the least case, got Never Seez or Prussian Blue in their shirt collar or hardhat headband, or who had a roadkill or a carp put under the seat of their car, to name a few standard things done to pricks and rats. Accidentally "tripping" over an "Igloo cooler" of water or a bucket of turbine oil so it just happened to spill thru the gratings and catch some deserving soul at a lower elevation in the plant used to be quite common. Back "in the day", a LOT got settled "on the shop floor" and never made it to HR or beyond. Now, we live in a kinder, gentler, and politically correct world. We are so entangled in corporate policies for all sorts of things that have no relevance to the main business of the company that it is getting next to impossible to get anything done. About all this sort of evolution has accomplished in our plant was to help me decide my era was nearly over and it is time to retire.