Decius Wadsworth | |
---|---|
![]() Colonel Decius Wadsworth | |
Allegiance | ![]() |
Service | ![]() |
Years of service | 1794 - 1821 |
Rank | ![]() |
Commands | 1st Chief of Ordnance (1812–1821) |
Decius Wadsworth (January 2, 1768 – November 8, 1821) was aColonel in theU.S. Army before and during theWar of 1812. He graduated fromYale College in 1785 with Honors. He was a renowned military organizer, engineer andinventor. In 1812, he was selected to be the1st Chief of Ordnance for the newUnited States Army Ordnance Department.
Decius Wadsworth was born in 1768 inFarmington, Connecticut, the eldest son of William Wadsworth, III and Mercy Clarke. He was a scion of the prominentWadsworth family of Connecticut. He was a sixth generation descendant ofWilliam Wadsworth, an originalfounder of Hartford, Connecticut. He was a contemporary and relative ofJeremiah Wadsworth,James Wadsworth,William Wadsworth, andJames Wadsworth. Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth, his second cousin, left Decius a handsome sum in his will in 1804. Decius never married.
In 1794, Decius Wadsworth was appointed by PresidentGeorge Washington as a captain in theArtillerist and Engineer Corps. He served was promoted to major in January 1800, supervised the rebuilding ofFort Nelson in Portsmouth, Virginia in 1802,[1] and served as acting Superintendent of the Military Academy from 1803 until 1805, when he resigned.
Just prior to the War of 1812, Wadsworth was invited to lead the newly established Army Ordnance Department and he was appointed as the firstCommissary General of Ordnance (later renamed to Chief of Ordnance). His department was charged with the procurement, supply, and maintenance of all cannon, small arms, powder, ball, shot, and other related items for the army. He drew up a set of regulations to ensure a system of uniformity in the armories and in the manufacture of ordnance material. He standardized small arms in the service and accomplished inventories of materiel at posts and forts around the country.
Wadsworth supervised the ordnance establishment across the country (includingSpringfield andHarpers Ferry Armory), established arsenals on the Hudson River (Watervliet Arsenal) and Pittsburgh (Allegheny Arsenal) in support of the war, made efforts to standardize weapons, particularly artillery, and in 1813, undertook efforts to improve the coastal defenses of the Chesapeake Bay. Wadsworth stressed the importance of uniformity and simplicity. Despite bureaucratic obstacles, he and his staff managed to streamline the number and variety of small arms and heavy ordnance. He led a failed campaign to adopt an artillery carriage based on a British design.[2]
Colonel Wadsworth served as the Chief of Ordnance until June 1, 1821, at which time he left the service due to illness. He died inNew Haven, Connecticut.
In 1817, he developed acipher system based on a design byThomas Jefferson, establishing a method that was continuously improved upon and used until the end ofWorld War II.
Wadsworth's cipher system involved a set of two disks, one inside the other, where the outer disk had the 26 letters of the alphabet and the numbers 2–8, and the inner disk had only the 26 letters. The disks were geared at a ratio of 26:33. To encipher a message, the inner disk was turned until the desired letter was at the top position, with the number of turns required for the result transmitted as ciphertext. Due to the gearing, a ciphertext substitution for a character did not repeat until all 33 characters for the plaintext letter had been used. He received recognition for this method onlyposthumously.
Military offices | ||
---|---|---|
Preceded by Vacant | Chief of Ordnance of the United States Army 1812 - 1821 | Succeeded by |
Military offices | ||
---|---|---|
Preceded by | Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy 1803–1805 (acting) | Succeeded by |