The Engineer from Monterrey

Tips went looking for him in Mexico. Hartford-Empire held near-total patent control over automatic glass bottle-blowing machinery, and no independent plant could obtain that equipment outside the licensing system. Tips had been told — through his officers’ travels — that a glass factory in Monterrey ran machines Hartford did not control. He went to Monterrey himself and recruited the engineer who had built them. That, at least, is what he later said he did: “the trip to Monterrey for Tremblay” is named alongside the Hartford-Empire refusal and the backing of W. L. Moody III in the fullest first-person account held, the letter Tips wrote to Thelma Lindholm in October 1971 [@ev-0041, pp. 43–44].

The machines that came back with him were running by early 1925 [ev-0042]. They were later found to infringe Hartford’s patents. Tips conceded this in writing in May 1929 and took a licence rather than contest it. What the man who built them was named, what primary documents say he did at the plant, and what becomes of him after the bill of sale, are the questions this article holds.

His name

Nearly every secondary source that names him gets the name wrong.

Michael David Smith, whose 1989 account is the most complete single narrative of the company, calls the engineer “Harold Trembley.” The Bottle Research Group chapter follows Smith and spells it “Harold Trembly.” Tips’ own prepared address at the 1973 marker dedication writes “Trembley,” with no first name given [ev-0041].

Three primary sources disagree. The bill of sale of 15 March 1928 identifies the seller as “A. F. Tremblay” [@ev-0041, pp. 47–49]. The San Patricio County News of 2 September 1926 names “A. F. Tremblay” as one of three factory managers [ev-0025]. And U.S. Patent 1,648,792, filed 26 June 1926 and granted 8 November 1927, names its inventor as Albert F. Tremblay of Monterrey, Mexico [ev-0051].

“Albert F.” and not “Harold.” The patent resolves it: the application was filed in Washington under the inventor’s own signature from his own address. The bill of sale and the September 1926 newspaper — both predating the patent’s grant and carrying no patent number — use the same surname. Tips’ own 1971 letter to Lindholm uses “Tremblay” in the sentence about the Monterrey trip, which is consistent with the primary record and inconsistent with his 1973 speech [@ev-0041, pp. 43–44]. The speech was prepared from memory across nearly fifty years; the letter was correspondence.

The variance in the secondary sources is a measure of how carefully a given account checked its work against primary documents. The bill of sale, the newspaper, and the patent — three sources that could not have copied the spelling from each other — all write the same surname, and the patent gives the initials in full.

Before Three Rivers

Smith’s account describes a deliberate expedition: Tips had been told that glass factories in Monterrey were running automatic machinery not controlled by Hartford-Empire; he went himself and found the engineer who had built it [ev-0042]. The patent filing address — Monterrey, Mexico, June 1926 — confirms that Tremblay was working from Monterrey at the time of that application. Tips’ own 1971 letter describes the Monterrey trip as a discrete act in his account of how the plant got its machinery [@ev-0041, pp. 43–44].

The most likely Monterrey employer is Vidriera Monterrey, S.A. (later Vitro), a glass factory founded in 1899 by Isaac Garza Garza and reorganised in 1909 after acquiring the Owens patent for automatic mechanical fabrication [ev-0074]. Vidriera Monterrey used Owens suction-process machinery — not Hartford-Empire gob-feed technology — which is exactly what Smith’s account describes Three Rivers officers discovering in Monterrey: automatic machinery that operated outside Hartford’s licensing system [@ev-0042; @ev-0074]. No held document names Tremblay’s employer directly; the identification rests on the patent’s Monterrey address and the fact that Vidriera Monterrey was the only significant glass factory there using non-Hartford automation in the 1920s [ev-0074].

The patent was never assigned to any company; Tremblay held it individually throughout its seventeen-year lifetime [ev-0074]. Two later patents by Owens-Illinois cited Tremblay’s design (US2811814A, 1957; US2918756A, 1959), which establishes that his independent machine had real technical merit in the field and was not a dead-end design [ev-0074].

At Three Rivers

The contemporaneous press record of his presence at the plant is one item. The San Patricio County News of 2 September 1926 reported that the factory, closed for several weeks for repairs, was ready to resume with new features added. Three men were named as factory managers who would train local men and boys: “A. F. Tremblay, Frank Schattel, and Bill Reese” [@ev-0025; @ev-0040, p. 6]. What accounts for their being named together — whether they were co-managers of equal standing, whether Tremblay had a technical lead while the others handled operations, or some other arrangement — is not in any held document. Tremblay is named first.

The patent was filed from Monterrey in June 1926 and granted in November 1927. The September 1926 newspaper puts him at the Texas plant while the patent application was pending, which means either he was commuting between the two countries, maintaining his Monterrey address for the filing while working in Texas, or returned to Mexico between the machines arriving and the patent application. The expert cannot resolve this from held evidence.

The bill of sale

On 15 March 1928 A. F. Tremblay sold Three Rivers Glass Company “1 certain bottle blowing machine manufactured under and described in Patent No. 1648792” for $6,000. The machine was at that moment at the Alamo Iron Works in Bexar County; it was to be installed at Three Rivers “not later than April 1, 1928.” The terms: $1,000 on installation, the balance in six monthly installments at 6 percent, with title staying with Tremblay until the last payment. Tremblay warranted that the machine would run “as efficiently as the other bottle blowing machines which the said Three Rivers Glass Company now has in use at its plant.” R. A. Ellerman and M. E. Herring witnessed the instrument; Tips signed as Secretary, Treasurer, and General Manager on the company’s behalf, and the document was filed and recorded in Live Oak County in late June 1928 [@ev-0041, pp. 47–49].

The warranty line matters for dating. It assumes the company already had other bottle-blowing machines running. The machine being sold was one of several, which aligns with Smith’s account of automated equipment coming online from early 1925 [ev-0042] — a machine had been operating for at least three years before this one was formally sold. Art-0003 holds the machinery story in full; what the bill of sale adds here is the record of a sale under his own name, to a company he had built equipment for, on terms that kept him the owner until it was paid for.

After the bill of sale

He is not named in any held document after March 1928.

The infringement notice arrived in 1929. Tips’ own letter of 27 May 1929 concedes that “the feeders we are now using infringe their patent rights” and that the company had agreed on “a payment of release of damages” [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60713]. Tremblay is not named in that letter, or in Hartford’s licensing correspondence, or in the trial record’s account of the infringement proceedings. The feeders Hartford was pursuing were described by that point in Hartford’s own terms, not as “Tremblay” machines. Whether the machine sold under patent 1,648,792 was still running by 1929 or had been retired in favor of the Hartford-licensed equipment is not stated in any held document.

What this expert does not hold about him

His given names beyond “Albert F.” — the patent names the inventor and gives only those initials; no held document expands them. The Monterrey employer is inferred as Vidriera Monterrey, S.A. from the patent address and the Owens-machinery match [ev-0074], but no held document names the employer directly, states his role there, or says whether he maintained any connection to that firm after coming to Texas. When he first arrived at the Three Rivers plant — the machines were running by early 1925, the patent was filed from Monterrey in June 1926, and the newspaper puts him at the plant in September 1926, but nothing held connects those dates. What became of Frank Schattel and Bill Reese, the two men named alongside him in the 1926 item, and what the three of them were to each other. Whether he had any role at the plant after March 1928, and what became of him after that date — no obituary, census record, or professional record naming him has been located in this evidence base. Whether U.S. Patent 1,648,792 passed to Ball Brothers when they acquired the Three Rivers plant at the November 1936 auction, as the BRG chapter suggests may have happened to patents connected with the plant, and if so whether they made any use of it; the patent expired on 8 November 1944 [ev-0074].