Los Angeles County
Biographies
DAVID CHAMBERS McCAN
McCAN, DAVID CHAMBERS, Investor, owner McCan Mechanical Works, Los Angeles, California, was born at New Orleans, Louisiana, July 9, 1884. His father was Charles Patterson McCan and his mother Mary G. (Tobin) McCan. He married Mrs. George H. Yenowine, a daughter of H. N. Smith, of Wisconsin, March, 1904. Mrs. McCan is one of the most prominent club women in Southern California and has played a leading part in the great progress and up-building of the club circles of Los Angeles and Southern California. She has been for two years president of the Southern California Woman’s Press Club, is president of the Friday Morning Club, chairman of the Miscellaneous Collection of the Fine Arts League and chairman of publicity of the Political Equality League of Los Angeles.
Mr. McCan began his education in New Orleans, but at an early age moved to Europe, where he was reared. He obtained his education in private schools and colleges of England, France and Germany. Up to the time of his manhood he traveled extensively, visiting practically all of the leading countries of Europe, during which he mastered several languages. He spent a number of years touring Japan, China, Ceylon, India, Egypt and the United States.
Upon his return to America Mr. McCan went into the foundry and machine business. He continued in that for several years and at an early age was regarded as one of the most scientific founders in the United States. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had been in the foundry and machine business, and his ability was a natural inheritance.
In 1905 he went to Los Angeles, California, to go into business for himself, establishing the McCan Mechanical Works, of which he is sole owner. His plant, 450 feet long by 75 feet wide, built for the manufacture of modern mechanical apparatus, consists of a pattern shop, iron and brass foundries and a machine shop, equipped with special machines, of which there are more than twenty different types. Castings up to fourteen feet in diameter can be handled.
The notable examples of his work are the observer’s platform for the Mount Wilson telescope camera, the plates and ball-races for the spectroheliograph apparatus, and the 8½-foot mill to be used in grinding the “Hooker Lens” for the Carnegie Institute of Washington, D. C. He has handled some of the most delicate and scientifically accurate work in the world, and contracts for the largest corporations and companies of the West; also the United States War Department and City of Los Angeles.
Mr. McCan’s career has been productive of a number of useful inventions which are of infinite value to the manufacturing world. Although still a young man, he has won international reputation as an inventor, and is regarded as one of the most scientific men in the mechanical business today. While he was in the foundry business he originated a number of valuable devices, but his most important work in this line was the invention of the McCan Wood shaving Compressor, a machine which promises to revolutionize the wood fuel industry of the United States and which was evolved after four years of experimentation.
It is estimated that the United States has lost over $500,000,000 during the last forty years through an inability to utilize all the wood shavings and sawdust of sawmills and planning mills. Mr. McCan proposes to make by his invention wood for fuel purposes by compressing this waste into blocks. To this end he built in his plant an entire equipment rated firstly, to filter the wood shavings and sawdust from any foreign material; secondly, to measure each charge as a complete block, and thirdly, a machine which in one revolution makes a block and ejects it in a conveyor leading into sacks. No binder, chemical or foreign substance, is used other than the way the material is compressed and the pressure employed, which is 20,000 pounds to the square inch. Block made of sawdust as fine as flour, when finished, are as hard as lignum-vitae. They may be sawed in two or more pieces and the parts will remain solid.
Mr. McCan has done some literary work along purely scientific lines, and in addition to this has been a well-known writer of verse and editorials for a number of years. He is a member of the California Club and is known in other professional organizations and orders. He is always ready to aid any movement for the betterment of his city.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 602,
International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2011 Joyce
Rugeroni.
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BIOGRAPIES