Blood, sweat, and skins—and cement, and cinema, and searchlights: Carl Akeley’s adventures in inventing

Abstract

Carl Akeley is a familiar figure in the world of museums, scientific exploration, conservation, and especially taxidermy—his innovations in that field in the early 20^th century led peers to dub him ‘The Father of Modern Taxidermy’. But Akeley’s knack for innovation stretched far beyond mounting animal skins. As one colleague put it, ‘his practical mechanical resourcefulness was almost uncanny’. Akeley invented the ‘cement gun’ and sprayable concrete (aka ‘gunite’), a revolutionary movie camera embraced by Hollywood studios and documentarists, several ‘improved’ searchlight reflectors during World War I (when he was appointed a Consulting Engineer for the Army), and an assortment of other devices—more than 30 patents in all. One common thread tied all these efforts together: envisioning a problem, and devising a solution. This article presents an account of Carl Akeley’s inventive side, describing the wide array of inventions that grew from his natural mechanical aptitude, and his tireless passion to fabricate, and then improve.

keywords:

• Carl Akeley
• gunite
• searchlights
• movie camera
• taxidermy

Acknowledgments

The author extends sincere thanks to Rebecca Morgan in the AMNH Archives for enthusiastic diligence in tracking down important correspondence there. Warmest gratitude also to the reviewers of the paper for their positive and constructive feedback, and to IJHET Associate Editor Julia Elton for shepherding the manuscript (and the author) through the process.

Notes

1 Karen Wonders makes a case for William T. Hornaday as the ‘Father of American Taxidermy’ in her book Habitat Dioramas: Illusions of Wilderness in Museums of Natural History (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis Figura Nova, No. 25) (London: Coronet Books, 1993). There appears to have been something of a rivalry between American and European taxidermists, with each side loath to acknowledge the contributions of the other. Hornaday, for example, flatly declared that ‘no European taxidermy played any more than a very trivial part in the development that took place in the United States from 1879 to 1900’ (letter to John Moyer, 15 January 1935, Field Museum Archives). On the other hand, Montagu Brown, Curator of the Leicester Museum, observed in 1896 that ‘America, the most progressive of all nations, is curiously behind the age in taxidermic knowledge’. M. Brown, Artistic and Scientific Taxidermy and Modelling (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1896), p. 16. This is followed in the book by specific criticisms of certain methods used by American taxidermists (including, on pp. 119–121, the mounting of Jumbo!).

2 There is no substitute for Akeley’s own memoirs—In Brightest Africa (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing, 1923)—although he overstates his contributions to taxidermy at the expense of mentors. Akeley’s second wife penned a biography after his death (borrowing liberally from In Brightest Africa): Mary Jobe Akeley, The Wilderness Lives Again (New York, NY: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1940). The standard recent reference on Akeley is Penelope Bodry-Sanders, African Obsession: The Life and Legacy of Carl Akeley (Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Batax Museum Publishing, 1998). A more recent biography, Jay Kirk’s Kingdom Under Glass (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2010), takes a more novelistic approach to Akeley’s life. While the two ‘modern’ books make for compelling reading, and are well researched, both are rife with errors, and often allow speculation to veer beyond verifiable facts, especially regarding the motives and emotions of the principal characters. I depend primarily on Bodry-Sanders for the broad outlines of Akeley’s life here.

3 The legend apparently sprang from Barnum’s directive to Ward: ‘Let him [Jumbo] show like a mountain’. See L. Harding, Elephant Story: Jumbo and P.T. Barnum Under the Big Top (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 1994), p. 113. Sources that make the claim of fakery—citing sources that do not lead to evidence!—include Kirk, Kingdom Under Glass, pp. 44–45, and R. Wilson, Barnum: An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019), p. 270. The case against ‘inflation’, in brief: ‘Let him show like a mountain’ is not necessarily a directive to artificially enlarge the animal, but can be read to suggest optimization—the creature was already mountainous. That said, James Hutchison, Barnum’s partner in the ‘Greatest Show’ circus, was concerned enough to write to the showman advising that ‘it is vastly more important that he [Jumbo] should look natural than that his size should be increased’. Hutchison to Barnum, 6 October 1885, quoted in R. W. Flint, ‘Jumbo Recycled,’ The Bandwagon 23.4 (1979), 17. The Ward company newsletter gives a detailed account of the mounting, and Akeley himself sketched his experience of the process three years after the fact; neither account mentions any enlargement of the mount beyond the animal’s actual size. See Ward’s Natural Science Bulletin, 1 May 1886, pp. 10–11, and ‘Is Quite an Art: What a Good Taxidermist Must Know,’ Milwaukee Sentinel, 14 October 1888, p. 9. Finally, and most compelling, three renowned contemporary taxidermists assure me that elephant hide simply does not stretch. (John Janelli, e-mail message to author, 12 May 2016; Joe Kish, e-mail message to author, 21 September 2019; Ray Hatfield, e-mail message to author, 5 September 2019).

4 Akeley’s friend William Morton Wheeler, a curator at MPM, puts Akeley’s hiring in fall 1888, but it was announced in a newspaper article in summer 1889—although the article states that ‘for the last year Mr. Akeley has been employed mornings at the museum’. This suggests that Akeley was working on-site at MPM as a contractor, and added to the payroll in 1889, and that Wheeler’s recollection is not wrong, and that the newspaper account is technically accurate. See Wheeler, ‘Carl Akeley’s Early Work and Environment,’ Natural History 27.2 (March–April 1927), 133–141, and ‘Mounting the Birds—The Public Museum Trustees Employ a Taxidermist,’ Milwaukee Sentinel, July 17, 1889, p. 3.

5 US Patent 556,953, ‘Horse-Collar’, C. E. Akeley, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, filed 16 September 1893, patented 24 March 1896, p. 2.

6 US Patent 556,952, ‘Head-Rest’, C. E. Akeley & C. G. Junkermann, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, filed 21 August 1893, patented 24 March 1896, p. 1.

7 Akeley provides a detailed account of the leopard episode in In Brightest Africa, pp. 95–103.

8 Akeley describes the process in In Brightest Africa, pp. 11–14.

9 Montagu Brown pioneered papier-mâché forms created in moulds made from an animal’s carcass. See M. Brown, pp. 212–141.

10 J. E. Fraser, ‘Akeley, The Sculptor’, Natural History 27.2 (March–April 1927), 121.

11 F. Lucas, The Story of Museum Groups, American Museum of Natural History Guide Leaflet Series, no. 53 (New York, 1921), p. 12. For a detailed account of the Four Seasons and their genesis, see M. Alvey, T. P. Gnoske, and J. Janelli, ‘Akeley’s Four Seasons: A Vision, an Obsession, and Sixteen Deer’, Natural History 129.9 (October 2021), 34–39.

12 US Patent 719,632, ‘Artificial Foliage and Process of Making Same’, C. E. Akeley, Chicago, Illinois, filed 2 October 1902, patented 3 February 1903. The ‘17,000 leaves’ figure was reported in ‘Four Seasons of a Fawn’s Life Shown at Field Museum’, The Inter Ocean, 24 August 1902, p. 5.

13 Proceedings of the American Association of Museums, Vol. 2, 1908, pp. 57–58.

14 C. Akeley, In Brightest Africa, pp. 94–95.

15 C. L. Dewey, ‘My Friend “Ake”’, Nature Magazine, December 1927, Vol. 10, pp. 390–391.

16 Dewey, p. 390.

17 Dewey, p. 391, provides a first-hand sketch of the early experiments.

18 Field Museum of Natural History, Annual Report of the Director to the Board of Trustees for the Year 1908 (Chicago, IL: Field Museum of Natural History, 1909), pp. 219–220.

19 There are two patents, one for the ‘process’ and one for the ‘apparatus’ (although the former describes a machine as well). US Patent 984,254, ‘Process of Producing and Depositing Plastic or Adhesive Mixture’, C. E. Akeley, Chicago, Illinois, filed 22 January 1908, patented 14 February 1911; US Patent 991,884, ‘Apparatus Mixing and Applying Plastic or Adhesive Materials’, C. E. Akeley, Chicago, Illinois, filed 13 September 1909, patented 9 May 1911. For a good contemporary account of the machine and the process see in R. C. Davison, ‘The “Cement Gun”’, Scientific American, 106.2 (13 January 1912), 44–45. Davison calls the material ‘gunite’ in this article. The Wikipedia entry on Shotcrete states that Akeley coined ‘gunite’, but none of the sources cited bear out the claim; see ‘Shotcrete’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotcrete [accessed 1 January 2020].

20 Louis Rodriquez, From Elephants to Swimming Pools: Carl Akeley, Samuel W. Traylor, and the Development of the Cement Gun (Easton, PA: Canal History and Technology Press, 2006), pp. 68–69.

21 Rodriquez observes that there are similarities between the sandblasting device patents and Akeley’s designs, but they are more in the nature of basic principles—sand propelled by compressed air—than design elements. Akeley’s ideas may well have been informed by sandblasting equipment, of which there were many designs extant in that era, but even his first cement gun patent includes unique, more advanced features—e.g., an agitator to break up clumps, a wheel to feed the material evenly, and above all, a system to add water to the mix—while the later iteration adds a second hopper for the dry material. In addition, Akeley and Dewey’s more robust machine was being used to repair the Field Museum exterior in 1907, four years before the Cement Gun companies were formed and the sandblasting patents purchased; it seems most probable that the patents were purchased primarily as a safeguard against infringement claims, as Rodriquez states—and not necessarily only with regard to Akeley’s patents, but also to protect later designs developed by the company post-Akeley.

22 The McElroy–Shepherd Company’s initial licensing deals and subsequent transfer to Traylor are sketched in ‘Cement Gun Co., Inc., Petitioner, v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Respondent’, Reports of the United States Board of Tax Appeals, 14 May–7 September 1927, Vol. 7, pp. 1202–1215; the story of Traylor’s interest, embrace, and success with the cement gun is well told by Rodriquez, pp. 75–91. A clear account of the technical differences between ‘dry-mix shotcrete’—still often termed ‘gunite’ and ‘wet-mix shotcrete’ can be found in M. Guarino and R. Oakes, ‘Gunite Versus Shotcrete in Swimming Pool Construction’, Shotcrete, 20.3 (Summer 2018), 12–14.

23 Akeley’s assignment of his interests in the cement gun to Delia is recorded in correspondence in the Samuel Traylor papers, National Canal Museum, Easton, Pennsylvania.

24 Dewey joined McElroy–Shepherd’s ‘General Cement Gun Company of Chicago’ in 1910, and later assumed command of a subsidiary, ‘General Cement Gun Construction Company’; in 1916 Dewey and Akeley’s friend, attorney, and safari partner Herbert Bradley of Chicago, formed ‘The Dewey Cement Gun Company of Chicago’, and eventually he became part of Traylor’s enterprise, including, among other iterations, ‘The Traylor-Dewey Contracting Co.’ See ‘Supply Trade News’, Railway Age Gazette, 60.7 (18 February 1916), 335–336, and Engineering News, 75.9 (9 March 1916), 138; The American Contractor (11 March 1922), 41.

25 R. C. Davison mentions gunite’s use in constructing the Panama Canal, re-facing houses, and coating a sea wall at Lynn, Massachusetts (‘The “Cement Gun”’, p. 45). Good historical overviews of gunite’s development and later uses include and Pietro Teichert, ‘Carl Akeley—A Tribute to the Founder of Shotcrete’, Shotcrete 4.3 (Summer 2002), 10–12, G. D. Yoggy, ‘The History of Shotcrete’, Shotcrete 7:3 (Summer 2005), 26–32, and A. T. Sullivan, ‘Shotcrete’ in Twentieth-century Building Materials: History and Conservation, ed. by T. C. Jester (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2014), pp. 71–75.

26 Dewey, p. 390. The claim that Akeley used gunite for taxidermy forms was promoted as early as 1912 (e.g., R. C. Davison, ‘The “Cement Gun”’, p. 44), and survives today (e.g., Sullivan, p. 256, and Yoggy, p. 28—the latter writer asserts that Akeley used gunite ‘originally for recreating animal skeletons’—perhaps the most confused version of the legend, since taxidermists do not recreate skeletons). In his memoirs Akeley does state that he used compressed air as part of ‘the many experiments … I had tried in working out methods for manikin making’ (see In Brightest Africa, p. 164), but nowhere does he describe using sprayable cement of any kind, in any way, in making taxidermy mounts. Akeley himself debunked the myth in a Q&A on the cement gun at a meeting of the Municipal Engineers of the City of New York on 23 December 1918; see ‘Discussion of Paper 120’, Municipal Engineers Journal, 5.1 (January 1919), 120.38–120.39. The methods Akeley inherited, developed and employed for making taxidermy forms at Milwaukee, Chicago and New York have been well documented, and none involve sprayable cement.

27 Application of gunite in the construction of the Crossrail is treated in A. Thomas, Sprayed Concrete Lined Tunnels, 2nd edn. (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2019), and vividly depicted in the television documentary series Impossible Engineering, ‘Mega City Railway’, Science Channel, 27 April 2017. Manufacturers of gunite equipment estimate that shotcrete/gunite comprises 60% of the pool market; e.g., see LEC, ‘Gunite machine for swimming pools’, 9 March 2017, https://www.leadcrete.com/news/gunite-machine-the-swimming-pool.html [accessed 27 September 2021]. Current industry data indicate that concrete dominates the swimming pool market and will continue to do so. See D. Pawar, R. Sawant and O. Sumant, ‘Swimming Pool Construction Market Outlook, 2020–2027’, Allied Market Research. https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/swimming-pool-construction-market-A10288 [accessed 27 September 2021].

28 US Patent 913,388, ‘Turn Table’, S. M. Hunter, C. E. Akeley and D. E. Holt, Chicago, Illinois, filed 20 August 1908, patented 23 February 1909. In 1909 alone, six vehicle turntable patents were granted besides Akeley’s, plus several patents for internal turntable mechanisms. See Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1909 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1910), p. 999.

29 M. L. J. Akeley, Wilderness Lives Again, pp. 112–113.

30 Akeley, In Brightest Africa, p. 223.

31 J. L. Clark, Good Hunting (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), p. 50.

32 The financial backers’ concerns are sketched in R. C. Andrews, ‘Akeley of Africa’, True Magazine, June 1952, p. 122. Akeley filed 18 separate patents on different elements of the camera between 1914 and 1917 (e.g., the gear head, the finding/focusing lens, the magazine, and the tripod). His first patent included initial versions of key innovations like the gear had and the rotary shutter, but also featured an awkward feed and take-up system—in which the film had to make several twists and turns from the feed reel, past the aperture, and back to the supply reel—that was abandoned in the final version. US Patent 1,181,201, ‘Moving Picture Camera’, C. E. Akeley, New York, N.Y., filed 3 August 1914, patented 2 May 1916.

33 For copious technical specs, see Akeley Camera, Inc., The Akeley Camera: The Camera of Superior Accomplishment (New York, ca. 1921). More background on the Akeley Camera—and its relationship to Akeley’s other artistic mediums—can be found in M. Alvey, ‘The Cinema as Taxidermy: Carl Akeley and the Preservative Obsession’, Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, 48.1 (Spring 2007), 23–45.

34 Quoted in Bodry-Sanders, p. 73.

35 Mary Jobe Akeley presents a clear description of the process in Wilderness Lives Again, pp. 150–154. Louis Jonas, Akeley’s assistant on the group, describes an updated version of the process (with photos), in L. Jonas, ‘The Mounting of an Elephant Group’, Publications of the American Association of Museums. New Series, No. 11 (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 1930), pp. 1–32.

36 C. Akeley, In Brightest Africa, p. 171.

37 Akeley mentions his advising on the concrete ships in In Brightest Africa, p. 171. Akeley’s idea for rotating bands is recorded in an Engineer Depot memo from Akeley (no recipient) dated 20 August 1918. Carl Ethan Akeley Papers, A.A31, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

38 See, for example, Materials for Non-metallic Driving Bands. Part I. (London: Directorate of Weapon Research, 1953), https://ia801301.us.archive.org/27/items/DTIC_AD0005270/DTIC_AD0005270.pdf [accessed 27 September 2021], and US Patent 3,760,736, ‘Non-metallic rotary bands, M. Eig, Parsippany, NJ, filed 18 October 1971, patented 25 September 1973.

39 O. B. Zimmerman, ‘Akeley’s War Activities’, 1 March 1929, p. 1. Notes sent to Mary Jobe Akeley for her biography of Akeley (The Wilderness Lives Again). Mary L. Jobe Akeley Papers, American Museum of Natural History Research Library Special Collections, Mss A344, Box 1, Folder 4.

40 US Patent 1,313,243, ‘Motion-Picture Trench Camera’, C. E. Akeley, New York, NY, filed 12 April 1918, patented 19 August 1919.

41 Zimmerman, ‘Akeley’s War Activities’, p. 3.

42 C. A. B. Halvorson, Jr., ‘The Lynn 60-inch Open Type Army Searchlight Development’, 22.9 (September 1919), 704.

43 C. Lichtenberg, ‘Searchlight Developments of the U.S. Army’, General Electric Review, 22.9 (September 1919), 700–703. The chain of command at the Engineer Depot is detailed in E. J. Mehren, ‘Supply Organization Expands 2250 Per Cent to Equip Engineer Troops’, Engineering News-Record, 3 January 1918, pp. 25–29.

44 Halvorson, 1919.

45 C. Lichtenberg, ‘U.S. Army Searchlights’, Journal of the Franklin Institute, 190.4 (October 1920), 513–514; Halvorson, p. 704; R. B. Hussey, ‘Metal Mirrors for Searchlights’, General Electric Review, 22.9 (September 1919), pp. 652–653.

46 Halvorson, p. 708.

47 US Patent 1,382,261, ‘Composite Reflector and Method of Making the Same’, C. E. Akeley, New York, NY, filed 19 March 1919, patented 21 June 1921.

48 ‘List of Government Contracts and Purchase Orders’, The Official U.S. Bulletin, 3.557 (10 March 1919), p. 24. The column notes that the Army contracted with Akeley for ‘Services and material in connection with placing the development of mosaic mirror … to the United States Government in form for quantity manufacture’.

49 US Patent 1,384,420, ‘Method of Backing Mirrors’, C. E. Akeley, New York, NY, filed 19 March 1919, patented 12 July 1921.

50 US Patent 1,342,578, ‘Mirror and Method of Backing the Same’, C. E. Akeley, New York, NY, filed 19 March 1919, patented 8 June 1920.

51 US Patent 1,384,294, ‘Mirror and Method of Backing the Same’, C. E. Akeley, New York, NY, filed 19 March 1919, patented 12 July 1921.

52 US Patent 1,341,004, ‘Training Control for Light Projectors’, C. E. Akeley, New York, NY, filed 19 March 1919, patented 25 May 1920.

53 C. Akeley, Patent petition for ‘Mounting for Telescopes’, 14 February 1919, and ‘Elevating & Sighting Gear’, n.d. [Notes on the device]. Carl Ethan Akeley Papers, A.A31, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

54 Lichtenberg, ‘Searchlight Developments’, p. 700.

55 Organizational Chart of the War Department’s General Engineer Depot, revised 30 January 1918. Explorers’ Club Archives.

56 See Hussey, pp. 653–654, and Halvorson, p. 708. Designs illustrated in the reports depict mirrors with perforated sheet metal embedded in the cement, rather than the wire mesh proposed in Akeley’s patents, but the basic principle is the same—a metal backing permeable enough to admit embedment in the backing cement. In addition, Lichtenberg’s 1920 overview of Army searchlights discusses several reinforcement systems for cement-backed mirrors, including a ribbed ‘spoke and rim design’ strongly reminiscent of Akeley’s wheel truss patent (Lichtenberg, ‘U.S. Army Searchlights’, p. 527).

57 Zimmerman, ‘Akeley’s War Activities’, pp. 2–3.

58 B. Crowell, America’s Munitions, 1917–1918 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919), p. 391.

59 Lichtenberg, ‘Searchlight Developments’, enthusiastically touts the progress made in searchlight research and notes that 293 searchlight ‘problems’ that were investigated between 1918 and 1919—sidestepping the fact that no units other than prototypes were produced, let alone shipped to the front. Halvorson notes that one open type unit was shipped to the British Government for testing, albeit not until mid-1919. It ‘was pronounced far superior to anything thus far developed for field use by our Allies’ (p. 711).

60 Lichtenberg, ‘Searchlight Developments’, pp. 702–703.

61 F. T. Davison, ‘Akeley, the Inventor’, Natural History 27.2 (March–April, 1927), 124.

62 Ibid.

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Mark Alvey

Mark Alvey is a writer/researcher with interests in the history of popular television, taxidermy, and natural history. His work has appeared in Screen, Natural History, American History, Framework, and Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, as well as several anthologies on television history and criticism. He is employed as Academic Communications Manager at the Field Museum in Chicago.