Mr. Clutch: The Story of George William Borg

by Robert J. Casey

Overview

This book, first published in 1948, is an enjoyable biography of George William Borg (1887-1960), an American industrialist, inventor, and one of the founders of the Borg-Warner Corporation. While at Borg & Beck, which was formed in 1914 by his father Victor Borg and Gary Marshall Beck, George W. Borg was instrumental in developing the first successful automobile clutch, a revolutionary clutch using a circular pressure plate that would hold well when engaged yet slip as needed when starting out. He managed the partnership, which was ultimately merged with Warner Transmission in 1922 to form Borg-Warner Corp.

In 1925, Borg, who wanted his own business independent of Borg-Warner, collaborated with William Greenleaf to develop a new venture in automobile clocks. Following a brief partnership with Greenleaf Corp. from 1926-1927, Borg set up the George W. Borg Corp, whose clocks first appeared in 1928. With the Depression soon at hand, Borg’s lower-cost clocks were in demand, and soon Borg clocks were sold as factory equipment in all the major car lines, including General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789123180
Publisher:	Papamoa Press
Publication date:	01/13/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	220
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Robert Joseph Casey (1890-1962) was a decorated combat veteran and distinguished Chicago-based newspaper correspondent and columnist.

Casey was in Beresford, South Dakota, and attended St. Mary’s College in St. Marys, Kansas from 1907-1911. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1918 and served at Verdun and Meuse-Argonne as an artilleryman. He earned three citations for bravery in combat before his discharge as a captain in 1919. Casey later wrote (anonymously) The Cannoneers Have Hairy Ears: A Diary of the Front Lines about his wartime experiences, and this book was acclaimed for its gritty and realistic depictions of an American soldier in World War I.

In 1920, Casey joined the Chicago Daily News, where he worked as a columnist and foreign correspondent for 27 years. Casey wrote features, chronicled the Chicago gang wars of the era, and compiled “slice of life” stories, which were published in the paper under column titles “Vest Pocket Anthology,” “Such Interesting People,” and “More Interesting People.”

During the 1920s and 1930s, Casey traveled through Indochina, Cuba, Pitcairn Islands and Easter Island, and many other sites, and wrote about his adventures in newspaper columns and books. In 1940, Casey covered the blitz in London and its aftermath; he was also in Hawaii and the Pacific right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941.

After his coverage of World War II in France, Africa, and the Pacific, Casey came back to Chicago to write. He had been married to Marie Driscoll, who died in 1945; in 1946 Casey married Hazel MacDonald, a reporter and fellow Chicago-based foreign correspondent he first met in 1933. After Casey’s retirement from the Daily News in 1947, he continued to write books and freelance newspaper articles. In 1955, he was named Press Veteran of the Year by the Chicago Press Veterans Association.

Casey died of a stroke in 1962 in Evanston, Illinois at the age of 72.