Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description Of The Edison System (1890)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Latimer Lewis Howard was an inventor and draftsman.
Background
He was born in Chelsea, Massachussets,
United States, on Sept. 4, 1848, to parents who had escaped from slavery.
His father, George A. Latimer, was a freed slave who deserted his wife and family when Lewis was approximately ten years old, forcing the youngster to forego his formal education in order to help his mother and four siblings survive.
Career
Lewis Latimer joined the U. S. Navy at the age of 15 on September 16, 1863, and served as a Landsman on the USS Massasoit under Commander Richard T. Renshaw and carried out his duties in an honorable fashion. After receiving an honorable discharge from the Navy on July 3, 1865, he gained employment as an office boy with a patent law firm, Crosby Halstead and Gould, with a $3. 00 per week salary. He learned how to use a set square, ruler and other tools. Later, after his boss recognized his talent for sketching patent drawings, Latimer was promoted to the position of head draftsman earning $20. 00 a week by 1872. He made the drawings for the telephone patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. Latimer was extensively involved in the drawings used for this historic invention.
He was a draftsman and secretary for Hiram S. Maxim, Bridgeport, CT, 1879. He mastered electric lighting, and in 1881 he and Joseph V. Nichols patented a method for connecting the carbon filament of an incandescent lamp to the metal wires in the lamp base. In 1882 Latimer patented a process for making long-lasting carbon filaments. Also in 1882 he and John Tregoning patented a globe supporter for electric arc lamps. He was a draftsman and engineer for Olmstead Electric Light and Power Company and Edison General Electric; legal advisor and witness for patent litigation, General Electric, 1890-1912. He often testified in patent infringement cases. In 1911 he became a patent consultant for the engineer and patent lawyer Edwin Hammer. Latimer also held four other patents.
He became an independent engineer in New York City, 1912-28; writer; poet.
Military service: Served in the Union Navy during the Civil War; served in 4th Battalion of Massachusetts Volunteer Militia; became lieutenant.
Edison had just demonstrated the first incandescent lamp, and Maxim was determined to improve upon and supplant Edison’s invention.
After joining Maxim’s firm, known as United States Electric Lighting Company, Latimer undertook the systematic study of electricity and its application to the problem of lighting.
He sent Latimer and other engineers to London to supervise European production of the Maxim incandescent lamp, and it is likely that Latimer was part of the team that designed and installed the Maxim exhibit at the Grand Paris Exhibition of 1881.
There the Maxim lamp was awarded a secondary prize along with other competitors of the Edison lamp, which took the highest honors. Upon his return to the United States in 1882, Latimer jumped to another of the many firms vying for control of the evolving market in electrical illumination, joining Olmstead Electric Light and Power Company of New York.
The most important of these battles involved Edison General Electric against the combined forces of Westinghouse and Thompson-Houston, two of its most powerful rivals.
United States Electric Lighting Company was Lewis Latimer’s former employer, and he had received some of the patents for the Maxim lamp then challenging the patent claims of Edison General Electric, Latimer’s employer at the time.
Latimer thus found himself in the odd position of helping discredit the originality of innovations in electrical lighting he himself had designed and patented ten years earlier.
Managers at Edison General Electric were not slow to recognize the value of such a witness, and in 1890—the same year his book Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System was published—Latimer was promoted to the company’s legal department and asked to serve as an expert witness in the lengthy trials then underway between the rival firms.
To some degree, Latimer’s testimony was helpful in Edison General Electric’s final victory in these struggles, which ironically tended to undervalue Latimer’s earlier work for United States Electric Lighting Company. Latimer remained with General Electric in its legal department for many years, making drawings and testifying on behalf of the company’s patent claims.
He was regarded as a distinguished inventor and engineer and as such, was of significant value in General Electric’s numerous court battles.
As the Goliath of the electrical industry, General Electric prevailed in the majority of its court contests, and by 1912 most of the important battles had been concluded. Latimer’s expertise as a patent trial witness was no longer needed, and at the age of 64 he was let go by General Electric, forced to make a fresh start in the business world.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
“Having a creative and inventive mind, and stimulated, no doubt, by working in an office where applications for patents on inventions were being processed, ” noted Louis Haber in Black Pioneers of Science and Invention, “Latimer began to work on inventions of his own. ”
Connections
He married Mary Wilson Lewis on November 15, 1873, in Fall River, Massachusetts. She was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the daughter of William and Louisa M. Lewis. The couple had two daughters, Emma Jeanette (June 12, 1883 – February 1978) and Louise Rebecca (April 19, 1890 – January 1963).