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John Kruesi was born on May 15, 1843 in Speicher, Canton Appenzell, Switzerland. While he was still an infant, his parents died and Kruesi was placed in the local orphan asylum, where he lived the difficult life of such institutions, until he was able to take care of himself.
Kruesi went to St. Gall, Switzerland, as an apprentice learned the locksmith's trade, and later proceeded to Zurich, where he worked as a journeyman machinist. During the following three years (1867 - 70), he followed his trade in Holland, Belgium, and France. Believing that his greatest opportunity lay in the United States, in 1870, after a visit with his relatives in Switzerland, he sailed from England for New York.
There he found work with the Singer Sewing Machine Company and quickly indicated his superior mechanical knowledge not only by improving the action of the sewing machine, but by making changes in the manufacturing methods. In the meantime he became deeply interested in Edison's experimental work and in 1871, despite attractive monetary inducements, he left the Singer Company and went to work for him in Newark, New Jersey. From that time until his death he was closely associated with Edison and was responsible for the mechanical execution of many of the latter's ideas. He was with him in 1877 at Menlo Park, New Jersey, as foreman of the machine shop, and that year built the first Edison phonograph.
During the next two years he had an intimate part in perfecting the incandescent lamp and dynamo and devised much of the machinery for the manufacture of electric lighting equipment.
With the establishment of the Edison Machine Works in New York in 1881, Kruesi was made superintendent, and there began the manufacture of Edison dynamos. He was active, too, in the installation of the electric lighting system in New York City, developing a watertight and insulated underground method of distributing electricity, the feature of which was the placing of gangs of wires in iron tubes and filling them with hot tar. In connection with this work he obtained ten patents, the first granted October 24, 1882, and the last, July 5, 1887. The Kruesi tube, as it was called, and all other equipment used in the installation of the system was made subsequently by a subsidiary organization, the Electric Tube Company, in New York. By 1886 the capacity of the Edison Machine Works was overtaxed and the plant was established in Schenectady, New York, with Kruesi as general manager and chief mechanical engineer. He directed its affairs most successfully for the succeeding nine years, but in 1895, after the consolidation of the company with the Thompson-Houston Electric Company as the General Electric Company, he was relieved of the heavy burden of the the twofold office and continued as chief engineer for the remainder of his life.
In 1871 he married Emily Zwinger of Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
