Dillon Quality Plus Presents
The History of
W. C. Dillon,
inventor of the Dynamometer
and much more!

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Says Bill Dillon: “Designing instruments takes a lot of care, but if I want to add a little dimple on the side of an orange, no one can stop me.”


systems on which he has done extensive work in his later years, Dad has managed to stay abreast of this field in particular.

“the idea and the faith”
With his never ceasing interest in wanting to do things better or faster, Dad invented the famous Dynamometer which still bears his name and thousands of which have been placed in use all over the world. This instrument began as an idea for putting overhead phone lines up at correct tension instead of by guess and by gosh methods. It didn’t take engineers long to discover that it had lots of other uses, however. Today, there are probably well over a hundred different applications for this one instrument. As a small boy, I remember so well watching Dad work out the details of the Dynamometer using simple tools and performing all of the machining and testing functions under conditions that a modern engineer would surely hesitate to consider. Nevertheless, he had the idea and the faith, and he knew what was needed and what it had to do. Most of all, he had the inborn ability to change ideas into reality and to make them work—something he has since proven many times over.

I will never forget the time I came home from school to find Dad busy at work in a corner of the room molding clay into strange designs. In fact, it seemed that he was laying out the petals for a giant flower with an oversize stem. He explained that he was designing a new kind of earth anchor—one that would hold power and telephone poles up in highest winds and prevent them from pulling out of the ground. Looking at the pliable clay, and thinking back upon this experience, it is hard to realize that the Dillon anchor went on to become one of the most outstanding pieces of hardware in the trucks of telephone and power companies alt over America. It had features which gave it greater holding power and was the only anchor which could actually be retrieved for later use thereby saving utilities large sums when changing lines.

At one time in the history of America, bank robberies were costing banks millions of dollars in losses yearly. Crude burglar alarms were of little or no value, and bank employees were just plain scared anyhow. Dad decided that something could be done about this. He worked out the plans for a simple bank door lock, which was mounted inside of the steel vault door and which was connected to a network of spring tensioned wires criss-crossing the door.

When a burglar cut his way through the steel, his torch would sever the wires and set off a cloud of tear gas both inside and outside the vault, forcing the would-be burglar to depart in a hurry. Thousands of banks were equipped with the Dillon lock. I believe that Dad actually pioneered in the use of tear gas in this novel manner. To this day, the basic idea is just as good as it ever was.

“revolve under temperature change”
Burglar-proof locks, dynamometers and retrievable anchors, as accomplishments might have satisfied most men. But not Dad. From these he went on to the development and creation of a novel line of dial type metal thermometers and might well have built an empire on these alone. Realizing that standard glass thermometers become black and almost impossible to read when used repeatedly in hot solder or oil and waxes, he secured strips of bimetal, which was then largely in its infancy, and shaped these into coils very much like a helical spring. With one end anchored in a tube and the other end fitted with a pointer, he could dip the assembly into any hot material, metal or otherwise, and produce temperature readings of extremely high accuracy. The bimetal coil would revolve under the temperature change and had the ability to repeat readings with great fidelity. One of Dad’s earlier patents, the Dillon “Temperometer,” a coined word, went on to become a standard in the tool kit of virtually every telephone lineman in both the Bell and Independent telephone systems of the United States. Today this invention has grown to tre-mendous proportions, and there are a number of other firms who have hitched their wagons to this particular star of Dad’s. However, his particular satisfaction comes in knowing that he conceived the idea and carried it through.

One of Dad’s newest inventions deals with communications carrier systems whereby he is able to place as many as 24 separate telephone conversations on only two ordinary farm wires without anyone being able to listen in on the others. His goal in this has been to make such a system inexpensively so that the average small exchange can offer its farm customers private service at literally the same price they pay for 10 or 20 part~ lines. This development is now almost complete after some six years of design and testing under Dad’s supervision.

“entirely new in concept”
Still undaunted after 88 years, Dad has even another “iron” in the fire on which he is putting the finishing touches. This is a combination wire grip and tension measuring instrument which can be clipped onto most any type of wire and which, as tension is applied, permits the operator to measure this at a glance. The gripping feature and the measuring instrument itself are entirely new in concept and will make it possible for engineers to check existing lines without cutting them.

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