Babbitt in this case has no relation whatsoever to the chief character in Sinclair Lewis’s satire of that title.
This is the name of a soft, whitish alloy used to reduce friction in machine bearings and was that of its American inventor, Isaac Babbitt (1799-1862), who first produced it at Taunton, Massachusetts, in 1834.
The invention contributed so greatly to the development of the “Machine Age” that Babbitt later received a Congressional award of $20,000.
