Decius Wadsworth

Decius Wadsworth
Colonel Decius Wadsworth
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1794 - 1821
Rank	Colonel
Commands	1st Chief of Ordnance (1812–1821)

Decius Wadsworth(January 2, 1768 – November 8, 1821) was aColonelin theU.S. Armybefore and during theWar of 1812.He graduated fromYale Collegein 1785 with Honors. He was a renowned military organizer, engineer andinventor.In 1812, he was selected to be the1st Chief of Ordnancefor the newUnited States Army Ordnance Department.

Family

Decius Wadsworth was born in 1768 inFarmington, Connecticut,the eldest son of William Wadsworth, III and Mercy Clarke. He was a scion of the prominentWadsworthfamily 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.

Military career

In 1794, Decius Wadsworth was appointed by PresidentGeorge Washingtonas a captain in theArtillerist and Engineer Corps.He served was promoted to major in January 1800, supervised the rebuilding ofFort Nelsonin Portsmouth, Virginia in 1802,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 (includingSpringfieldandHarpers FerryArmory), 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.

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.

Wadsworth's cipher

Main article:Wadsworth's cipher

In 1817, he developed aciphersystem based on a design byThomas Jefferson,establishing a method that was continuously improved upon and used until the end ofWorld War II.

Wadsworth's ciphersystem 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.

References

• Two Hundred and Fifty Years of the Wadsworth Family in Americaby Horace Andrew Wadsworth, Eagle Steam Joe Printing, Boston, 1883
• "Historical Sketch of the Organization, Administration, Material and Tactics of the Artillery, United States Army", by William E. Birkheimer, Washington, D.C., 1884

External links

• http://www.usaocaweb.org/awards.htm