Joseph F. Joy

Joseph F. Joy started his career at a nearby coal mine when he was 12. He began working on inventing a mechanical loading device, later showing this device to the senior officer of Pittsburgh Coal Company, John A. Donaldson. Donaldson requested Joy to begin manufacturing this machine and the first gathering arm loader was shipped to the company in 1916. On June 4, 1920, the first crawler-mounted JOY loader was manufactured. The first model, JOY 48, sold for $2,800 in 1922. Soon the loaders were successfully operating in West Virginia, Illinois and Canada. Due to a downturn in the coal industry in 1925, Joy was forced to retire. He became the director of mine mechanization in the Donetz Basin in Russia. For two years Joy, along with his American engineering associates, devoted themselves to the mechanization of Russian coal mines. In 1927, fearing for the lives of his staff and himself, Joe commandeered a railroad locomotive and escaped into Poland. When Joy returned to the United States, he pursued his life as an inventor. In 1930, Joy founded and was president of the Joy Brothers Company where he developed a system of coal saws that could produce block coal. This company was sold to the Sullivan Machinery Company who retained Joy as General Manager of the Mining Machinery Division in Claremont, New Hampshire. In a four-year period, he helped to create nine new cutting machines along with the development of a saw loader, which was basically a primitive continuous miner. Later, as an engineering consultant in Franklin, Joy created the Joy Safety Coal Drill. His major inventions were recognized as mile­stones in the history of underground mining mechanization.