Person

McCarty, Francis Alexander (1875 - 1938)

Born
20 October 1875
Blossburg, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Died
27 September 1938
Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Electrical engineer

Summary

Francis McCarty AMIEAust was an electrical engineer and pioneer in the construction of electrical lighting and tramway undertakings across Australia between 1900 and the late 1920s.

In 1900 he was recruited from America by Noyes Brothers, the Australian agents for Westinghouse Engineering Co., to supervise Noyes Bros electrical engineering projects. From 1908 he was engaged in significant engineering contracting work in Melbourne, Tasmania, Geelong and Adelaide. From 1913, in partnership with Henry Arthur Underwood AMIEAust, he focused on consulting work related to electric tramways and electrical engineering work in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales.

Details

Associated Engineering Works:
* 1901 Electric lighting, Adelaide, South Australia;
* 1903 Electric power, equipment and lighting, Ipswich Railway workshops, Queensland;
* 1904-05 Electric tramways and lighting, Fremantle, Western Australia;
* 1908 Electric tramway, Prahran-Malvern Tramway Trust;
* 1910 Schematic design, Great Lakes hydro-power scheme, Complex Ores Co., Tasmania;
* 1911 Electric tramway, Geelong, Victoria;
* 1912 Electric tramway extension, Prahran-Malvern Tramway Trust;
* 1912-14 Electric Tramway extensions, Adelaide, South Australia;
* 1914-18 Electric tramway, Hawthorn Tramway Trust;
* 1919 Electric tramway, Fitzroy, Northcote and Preston Tramway Trust.

Chronology

c. 1893
Career position - Served his time with Westinghouse Engineering Co. America
1894
Career position - Engineer, electrification of Monroe-Toledo electric railway [Part of Detroit, Michigan to Toledo, Ohio]
1895
Career position - Engineer, hydro-electricity power scheme for Boisie basin mines, Idaho
c. 1898 - c. 1900
Career position - Engineer, Petty Harbour Hydro-Electric Generating Station, St. John's Street Railway Company Newfoundland, Canada [Generating electricity for tramways and lighting for City of St.John's]
1900
Life event - Migrated to Australia, from Pittsburgh, USA
1900 - 1905
Career position - Supervising electrical engineer, Noyes Brothers
1901
Career position - Supervising electrical engineer, Noyes Brothers [Electric Lighting Plant, Adelaide, working with Francis Edwin Bradford, and J.M.Jolly]
1901 - 1903
Career position - Supervising engineer, Noyes Brothers [Electrical power, equipment and lighting, Ipswich Railway workshops, working with Francis Edwin Bradford.]
1902
Talk - Talk on how the Ipswich Railway workshops plant worked, to Ipswich Technical School
1904
Lecture - Presented paper "Electrically driven machine tools", to Electrical Association of New South Wales
1904 - 1905
Career position - Engineer in charge of construction / Chief engineer, Noyes Brothers [Fremantle Tramways and Electric Lighting]
1905
Life event - Married Annie Smith, in Cottesloe, Western Australia
1905 - 1906
Career event - Visit to England and America
1908
Career event - First use of Thermit welded rail joints in Victoria. Prahran-Malvern Electric Tramway
1908
Career event - Member, Victorian Institute of Electrical Engineers
1908 - 1909
Career position - Contractor, McCarty and W. Sim & Co, for Prahran-Malvern Electric Tramway [Design by Noyes Bros: design engineer, Joseph Henry Draper Brearley. Trust general manager and supervising engineer, H S Dix CE]
1910
Career position - Consulting engineer, Valuation of Perth Tramways system, Perth City Council
1910
Career position - Consulting engineer, Schematic design, Great Lakes hydro-power scheme, Complex Ores Co., Tasmania
1911
Career position - Consulting engineer, Geelong Tramway Trust
1911
Career position - Contractor, to complete Dandenong road tramway extension, Prahran and Malvern Tramway Trust, Melbourne
1911
Life event - Naturalisation, Melbourne [NAA: A1, 1915/15779]
1911 - 1912
Career position - Contractor, Hill Street electric tramway extension, Adelaide
1911 - 1912
Military service - Second Lieutenant, Australian Engineers' Corp, South Australia
1912
Career position - Contractor, Goodwood electric tramway, Adelaide
1913 - 1918
Career event - Formed consulting engineering partnership "McCarty and Underwood" with Henry Arthur Underwood AMIEAust
1914
Career event - Vice-President, Victorian Institute of Electrical Engineers
1914
Career event - Talk "Electric tramway construction", Victorian Section, Electrical Association of Australia
1914
Career position - Consulting engineer, Beaumaris Tramway Company [To assess the safety of the decaying conditions of the tramway]
1914 - 1918
Career position - Consulting engineer and manager, Hawthorn Tramway Trust, Melbourne
1916
Career event - President, Victorian Section, Electrical Association of Australia
1916
Career event - Councillor, Federal Council, Electrical Association of Australia
1917
Career position - Consulting engineer, Footscray Tramway Trust
1917
Patent - Designed and patented (with Underwood) built-up tramway rails rolled in Australia [to overcome supply shortages during the First World War]
1917
Career event - Talk "A special tramway rail", Electrical Association of Autralia, Victorian Section
1917
Career position - Consulting engineer, Proposed Box Hill Tramway
1919
Career event - Foundation Associate Member (AMIEAust), Institution of Engineers Australia
1919
Career position - Consulting engineer, Fitzroy, Northcote and Preston Tramways Trust
1921
Career position - Consulting engineer, St.Mary's District water supply scheme, New South Wales
1921
Career position - Consulting engineer, Proposed Toowoomba Electric Tramways Scheme, Queensland
1924
Career position - Consulting engineer, Penrith water supply, New South Wales
1929
Career position - Consulting engineer, Emergency bridge work repairs, following floods, Launceston, Tasmania
1938
Life event - Cremated, Fawkner Memorial Park, Victoria

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Books

  • McCarty, F.A., Report for the city of Toowoomba : proposed electric tramway and general power requirements (1920), 14 pp. Details

Journal Articles

  • McCarty, F.A., 'Electric tramway construction', Proceedings of the Electrical Association of Australia, Victorian Section, I (1914-15), 107-125. Details
  • McCarty, F.A., 'Presidential address. Electrical Association of Australia. Victorian Section', Proceedings of the Electrical Association of Australia, Victorian Section, II (1915-16), 1-11. Details
  • McCarty, F.A., 'A special tramway rail', Proceedings of the Electrical Association of Australia, Victorian Section, III (1916-17), 30-35. Details

Ken McInnes

EOAS ID: biogs/P007077b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P007077b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260