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[malcolmyoung]

Why is the reversing lever on a steam locomotive called the Johnson bar?
Who Was Johnson?

Malcolm Young.

[Anonymous]

and he notes -

A "Johnson Bar" is the name given to a number of levers in several applications, (i.e. aircraft controls, electrical contacts etc.).

It is really a pry bar more commonly used to move or lift heavy objects such as a granite block, or heavy crate so that logs or rollers can be inserted underneath. A couple of companies make Johnson Bars for such a purpose. There are innumerable other applications of course, including, with modification, the cab of a locomotive.

The idea is not new as Archeologists surmise that the stones used to build the pyramids were moved with pry bars, (such labor is depicted in temple hieroglyphics).

One source lists the derivation as a bar used by the Johnson Brothers, a notorious 19th century family of crooks who used it to crack safes. They would apparently leave the bar behind when the made their getaway and the tool became known as a "Johnson's Bar" and later as just a Johnson Bar.

The term also seems to have been applied to the reverse lever used on early Vulcan locomotives and may have been name of the mechanical engineer who came up with the idea. Locomotive diagrams from the 1870's and on list the reverse lever as a "Johnson Bar", so the term was in use at that time.

There are probably dozens of possibilities but like the "Circus Peanut", the true origin of the Johnson Bar may be lost to history.