Philip Vaughan

Philip Vaughan was a Welsh inventor and ironmaster who patented a ball bearing race for carriage axle-trees in 1794. He was a proprietor and agent of iron foundries at Carmarthen and Kidwelly, and he married Elizabeth Griffiths in 1793. In 1800 he signed a copartnership deed with John Morgan Junior, William and Thomas Morris and William Morgan, and started a twenty-one year lease of the Carmarthen rolling mills from John Morgan Senior, a lease that also covered Kidwelly Forge, Blackpool Forge and the tin mills. His ball race had no cage to keep the balls apart, and it is described in a NASA history of ball bearings. He died in 1824.