Great Inventors of New York's Capital District

For more than a century, New York's Capital District was one of the most industrialized regions in America. Adding to the growth and fame of Capital District engineering were hundreds of gifted inventors, without whom some industries would never have been established. Based on the strength of milestone inventions, Troy became known as the Collar City, Cohoes as the Spindle City and Schenectady as the City that Lights the World. Other inventors established businesses to manufacture valves, fire engines, billiard balls, horseshoes and farming equipment, to name just a few. Great Inventors of New York's Capital District describes the lives and accomplishments of dozens of inventors. Some of their stories are well known; others, which are being published here for the first time, were groundbreaking and no less important to the evolution of technology in America.

Timothy Starr was born in Danbury, Connecticut, and moved with his family to Hebron, New York, in 1977. During his senior year in high school, he wrote his first book, a novel called The Meatloaf Incident and Other Adventures that is based on his experiences growing up in a rural community. Soon after graduating college, he moved to the historic county of Saratoga. After noticing many ruins around the town of Milton, he began researching its history, particularly during the mid- to late 1800s. After stumbling upon the old trolley railroad bed behind his house, he was motivated to write a book about it, called The Ballston Terminal Railroad and Its Successors. That project naturally led to another one that detailed the industries served by the railroad, called Lost Industries of the Kaydeross Valley. When he discovered that several important inventions were developed to support these industries, yet another project unfolded that resulted in a Ballston Spa book of inventions and a Saratoga County book of inventions. He has been published in Saratoga Living, Our Towne Ballston Spa, Spotlight Milton, the Saratogian, Schenectady Gazette and the Ballston Journal and is a frequent contributor to the Ballston Spa Life History Lesson series. He is currently the treasurer of the Saratoga County Historical Society (Brookside) Board of Trustees, and he lives in Rock City Falls.