WINANS, Ross, inventor, born in Vernon, New Jersey, in October, 1796; died in Baltimore, Maryland, 11 April, 1877. He began life as a farmer, and exhibited at an early age great inventive genius. One of his first devices was a plough. Afterward he invented the friction-wheel for cars, and the outside bearing on axles, now almost indispensable to the use of railways. He was also the inventor of the eight-wheeled car system. He was sent to England by the Baltimore and Ohio railroad company to study the English systems, and spent a year in making observations that proved of great value to the company. He built the first successful locomotive used on this railroad, and also invented the camel-back locomotive, he established in Baltimore the largest railway machine-shops in the country, and his sons were associated in their management. Mr. Winans was solicited by the Russian government, through the agency of George W. Whistler, to go to Russia and build rolling-stock for the railroad between Moscow and St. Petersburg, but declined to go himself, and sent his two sons. During the civil war he took an active part in politics, and was chosen to represent Baltimore in the extra session of the Maryland legislature in 1861; but he was arrested and imprisoned in Fort McHenry. He made numerous compilations of gleanings from the works of eminent writers, upon philosophical subjects, and was himself the author of various pamphlets on religious subjects, and of "One Religion, Many Creeds" (Baltimore, 1870).--His son, Thomas De Kay, engineer, born in Vernon, New Jersey, 6 December, 1820; died in Newport, Rhode Island, 11 June, 1878, showed when a child great fondness for mechanical toys, which taste his father encouraged, and apprenticed him in his youth to a machinist. On reaching his majority, he became associated in business with his father, and, with his brother William Lewis, was sent to Russia to arrange the contracts for furnishing and managing the equipment of the railroad between Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 1843, with Andrew M. Eastwick and Joseph Harrison, they concluded a contract with the Russian government for $3,000,000, and subsequently they held other contracts, from which the profits were very large. With his father and brother he invented a system of steam navigation commonly called the "cigar-ship," and for many years conducted elaborate, expensive, and successful experiments, principally in European waters. After his return to the United States, he devoted his attention to the study of new inventions of the most diverse kinds. He devised a great improvement in the construction of organs, invented a tubular adjustment by which young trout could be more readily fed, and built a chimney 100 feet high to ventilate his residence in Baltimore.