American Inventions and InventorsMowry, William A. (William Augustus)
History
American Inventions and Inventors
Mowry, William A. (William Augustus)
Inventions
ELECTRIC LIGHTING.
The electric light differs widely from all modes of artificial
light previously invented. It is the latest method that man has
discovered for the production of light. In its practical form this
invention is quite recent. In England the arc light was produced in
lecture-room experiments as early as 1802. Prof. Michael Faraday, a
learned Englishman and celebrated chemist, experimented many years
in electricity and magnetism in the Royal Institution at London. He
continued his studies and experiments in developing the science of
electricity through his whole life, but he died, an old man, before a
single electric arc was seen in the streets of London.
In ancient times an invention was frequently the result of one man's
efforts, but at the present time it is often quite otherwise. Many
men are now engaged in the development of electric lighting. Charles
Francis Brush was a farmer's boy in Ohio. He pushed himself through the
Cleveland High School and graduated at the University of Michigan. He
established a laboratory in Cleveland and turned his attention to the
invention of apparatus for electric lighting. He was one of three or
four great American inventors who successfully put into operation the
dynamo and furnished electricity for the electrical lamp. This dynamo
is a machine which produces electric currents by mechanical power.
Brush's dynamo at the outset was so perfect and complete that for many
years it has continued in regular use with but very little change.
Elihu Thomson graduated at the Central High School in Philadelphia and
taught chemistry in that school. He studied with great care the subject
of electricity, giving special attention to lighting. He organized the
Thomson-Houston Electric Company, and has patented nearly two hundred
inventions relating to electric lighting and other applications of
electricity. He was also the inventor of the system of electric welding.
Among the great American inventors in electrical science is Thomas
Alva Edison. He was an Ohio boy whose Scotch mother taught him to
read. When he was twelve years old he was a newsboy on the Grand Trunk
Railroad. Here he acquired the habit of reading. He studied chemistry
and conducted chemical experiments on the train. He learned to set
type, and edited and printed a newspaper in the baggage car. He was
constantly noticing the telegraph stations along the road, and he soon
began to study electricity.
[Illustration: EDISON'S HEROIC ACT.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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