Uriah A. Boyden

Uriah Atherton Boyden (February 17, 1804 – October 17, 1879) was a civil and mechanical engineer and inventor from Foxborough, Massachusetts best known for the development of the Boyden Turbine around 1844, while working for the Appleton Company in Lowell, Massachusetts. Boyden improved upon the water turbine developed by French engineer Fourneyron by adding a conical approach passage for the incoming water—submerged diffusers, guide vanes and a diverting exit passage.

Uriah was also the younger brother of Seth Boyden, also a notable inventor who perfected a process for making patent leather, among other developments.

Uriah Atherton Boyden was born in Foxborough, Massachusetts on February 17, 1804, the son of Seth Boyden, a farmer and blacksmith who had invented a machine to split leather. In 1813, Uriah moved to Newark, New Jersey to work in his elder brother Seth's leather shop. Around 1828, Uriah returned to Massachusetts where he worked on the early surveys for the Boston and Providence Railroad. He also worked under Loammi Baldwin on the dry dock at the Boston Navy Yard, as other mills in Lowell and the Boston and Lowell Railroad.

While at Lowell, Boyden worked with British-born engineer James B. Francis, who in 1848 developed the Francis turbine, which superseded Boyden's earlier invention. However, Boyden-type turbines continued to be manufactured, including those installed at Harmony Mills in Cohoes, New York in the early 1870s, and those used at the first Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant in 1895.

In 1850, Boyden settled in Boston, and devoted himself to the study of chemistry and physics. He died in Boston on October 17, 1879.

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