Weston Miller Fulton (August 3, 1871 – May 16, 1946) was an American meteorologist, inventor, and entrepreneur, best known for his invention, the "sylphon," a seamless metal bellows used in thermostats, switches, and other temperature-control devices. Fulton also invented an automatic river gauge while working for the U.S. Weather Bureau, and played a primary role in the development of the depth charge during World War I. His company, now called Fulton Bellows after numerous ownership changes, still operates in Knoxville, as part of the United Flexible Group, which acquired it in 2016.
Biography
Early life
Fulton was born in Hale County, Alabama, the son of William and Mary Hudson Fulton. His family owned a large cotton plantation, and Weston and his brothers did much of the cotton picking. He briefly attended Howard College (modern Samford) in Birmingham before enrolling at the University of Mississippi, where his uncle, Robert Burwell Fulton, was chancellor. He graduated as valedictorian in 1893, and spent the subsequent five years working at Weather Bureau stations in Vicksburg and New Orleans.
In 1898, Fulton was hired to manage the Weather Bureau station in Knoxville, Tennessee. The station had been moved to the "Hill" earlier that year at the University of Tennessee at the request of U.T. president Charles Dabney. While working at the Knoxville station, Fulton taught meteorology and took classes at U.T., obtaining his Masters of Science in 1902.
Fulton's duties required frequent quarter-mile walks from the station atop the Hill to the railroad bridge over the Tennessee River, where a river gauge had been mounted, to check the river's depths. To eliminate this daily walk, Fulton designed an automatic gauge mechanism, which was essentially a float-actuated device that kept a continuous record of river levels. The Weather Bureau used the device at several of its weather stations in the early 1900s.
The Fulton Company
Using U.T.'s laboratories, Fulton conducted numerous weather experiments. While studying the effects of lightning on the atmosphere, Fulton designed a seamless metal container that could trap vapor while allowing for its expansion and contraction as the pressure changed. He called this new container the "sylphon," after the sylphs of Western mythology.
Fulton quickly realized that his invention could be used as a bellows, and thus would have numerous industrial uses. In 1904, he left the Weather Bureau, and with financial backing from businessman John Scruggs Brown, he launched the Fulton Company to market sylphon-based products. One of the company's first successful products was a damper regulator for boilers that used a sylphon to automatically adjust the damper position as the temperature changed. The earliest automobile thermostats used sylphons for actuation. By 1940, over 50 million sylphons were in daily use the United States alone.
During World War I, Fulton developed the firing mechanism for the depth charge, a weapon used by surface ships to destroy submarines. The mechanism consisted of a graduated disk that measured water pressure (which increases with depth), and ignited when a pre-set depth was reached. Depth charges allowed Allied navies to defeat German U-boat blockades.
Politics and later business ventures
In 1923, Fulton was elected to Knoxville's city council, and was chosen as vice mayor. Along with wholesaling tycoons Benjamin Morton and Rush Hazen, Fulton was part of a slate of progressive candidates elected during the city's transition from a commissioner-style government (which was deemed corrupt) to a council-manager form of government, which called for the hiring of a city manager to oversee the city's business affairs. Knoxville's first city manager, Louis Brownlow, was hired after being interviewed by Fulton. Brownlow proved controversial, however, and his supporters were ousted in 1927. Fulton never ran for office again, and advised his children to avoid politics.
In 1928, Fulton built a palatial mansion, Westcliff, on Lyons View Pike in West Knoxville. The mansion was designed by prominent local architect Charles I. Barber, who later recalled it as one of his most difficult projects, as Fulton continuously demanded modifications to the design, even as construction was nearing completion. Fulton had a workshop on the second floor of the house.