Edward Weston was an English-born American chemist.
Background
Edward Weston was born on a farm in the English Midlands near Wolverhampton, the only child of Edward and Margaret (Jones) Weston. In 1857 the family moved to Wolverhampton, where the father, a skilled carpenter and mechanic, obtained factory employment.
Education
Young Weston attended St. Peter's Collegiate Institute in Wolverhampton, where he received training in physics and chemistry.
Career
His great interest in the physical sciences led him to consider a scientific career, but his parents preferred medicine, and for three years he was apprenticed to a physician. This experience convinced him that he did not want to practise medicine, and in 1870, after receiving his medical diploma (and directly contrary to the desires of his parents), he went to London to look for work in the sciences. His search there having proved unavailing, he decided that such opportunities would be more plentiful in the United States, and in that same year - again in opposition to his parents - he came to New York City. There he worked at first as a chemist with a firm which manufactured photographic chemicals. He was next employed by several electroplating companies and, becoming interested in electricity, worked briefly for a manufacturer of stock-tickers. As Weston gained experience in electroplating, he concluded that a dynamo would be a better current source than the batteries then in use, and about 1872 he set about devising one for that purpose. His knowledge of the electroplating industry, together with his mechanical ability, inventive ingenuity, and understanding of electricity, resulted in a highly successful dynamo, and in 1875 he moved to Newark, N. J. , to concentrate on its manufacture. Securing additional financial backing, he formed the Weston Dynamo Electric Machine Company in June 1877. Within a few years he was the leading manufacturer of electroplating dynamos in the United States. Weston next turned to arc lighting. In 1878 and 1879, when Charles Francis Brush, Elihu Thomson, and others were making and installing their first arc-lighting equipment, Weston also entered the field, changing the name of his firm to the Weston Electric Light Company. Despite the fact that he was responsible for major technical advances, however, his arc-lighting system proved inferior to those of Brush and Thomson and failed to equal their success. Weston's efforts to develop an incandescent electric lighting system, beginning about 1880, met a similar fate. By 1882 the Weston Electric Light Company had been absorbed by the United States Electric Lighting Company, and from 1882 to 1886 Weston was chief electrical engineer of the latter. During this period he made important contributions to incandescent electric light technology, including the nonfibrous (or squirted) filament, the flashing process, and the "getter, " which helped to maintain a vacuum. In spite of these important inventions, however, tests of incandescent lamps conducted at the Franklin Institute in April 1885 found Weston's lamp inferior to Edison's. In 1886 Weston resigned from the United States company to carry on his own inventing and research. Seeing a great need for accurate and portable electrical measuring instruments, he decided to undertake their design and manufacture, and this time he scored an unqualified success. In 1888 he formed the Weston Electrical Instrument Company, and the name of Weston was soon known throughout the world for the precision and dependability of its instruments. Weston became a United States citizen in 1923. A charter member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, he was its president in 1888. He died at his home in Montclair, N. J. , of a cerebral hemorrhage, after having been stricken with apoplexy aboard his yacht at New Bedford, Massachussets. He was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Newark, N. J.
Achievements
Connections
In 1871 Weston married Wilhelmina Seidel, a German by birth. They had two sons, Walter Coleman and Edward Faraday.