Who Was John F. Wandersee?

Now, as to Who he was .... John Wandersee was born on a farm in Wisconsin, trained in Milwaukee and Detroit machine shops, and hired on October 17, 1902 as one of the early employees of the Henry Ford Company. This was about the time that the Company was completing its design of the race cars the ARROW and number 999. John was one of the three mechanics brought along the day that the ARROW set a new speed record on frozen Lake St. Clair (91.4 mph, December 1, 1902). He was part of the design team that developed the first Model "A" (1903) and became a self-taught fledgling metallurgist. When Henry Ford became enamored with vanadium and other alloy steels, rather than hire a university trained man to set up a metallurgical laboratory, Ford sent Wandersee off for three months to the United Alloy Steel Laboratory (an early example of company-financed higher education) to learn to manage such a laboratory and become better trained in metallurgy. Vanadium steel was used quite extensively in the Model T (although inappropriately in some instances). Wandersee developed special heat treatments for other alloy steels to replace vanadium in the developing Model "A"

One special treatment used to temper cam shafts was patented - number 1,376,984 issued May 3, 1921 to John F. Wandersee as inventor. but assigned to the Ford Motor Company. The essence of the patent was to take a high carbon steel cam shaft (which is inherently a tough material), place the lobes of each cam between the two electrodes of a conventional electrical welding machine, and heat the cam to a specific temperature by applying current. Upon reaching the desired temperature the shaft is quenched, to achieve the hardened face of the cam without degrading the toughness of the basic shaft. Notwithstanding the importance and the applicability of the patent to the production of the Model "A," the Model "A" Patent Plate never displayed that patent number.

The reminiscences of Wandersee, among many others, are included in the Oral History section of the Ford Archives.

Aldie E. Johnson - MAFFI