Background
Peter Hewitt was born on May 5, 1861, in New York City, New York, United States, the son of New York City Mayor Abram S. Hewitt and Sarah Amelia Cooper, and grandson of Peter Cooper, the industrialist.
Peter Hewitt was born on May 5, 1861, in New York City, New York, United States, the son of New York City Mayor Abram S. Hewitt and Sarah Amelia Cooper, and grandson of Peter Cooper, the industrialist.
In New York Hewitt was educated by private tutors, at Stevens Institute of Technology. His Alma mater was the Columbia University School of Mines.
Peter Hewitt inherited a genius for mechanism and a marked gift for invention from his grandfather, Peter Cooper, who perceived his talent at an early age and gave it full encouragement, placing at his disposal an old greenhouse for workshop and experiment station. There he began those researches and experiments in mechanics, physics, and especially in electricity which later led to a number of discoveries and inventions, including the mercury vapor lamp (1903), a static converter or rectifier, an electrical interrupter, and a wireless receiver. His methods were unacademic, often incomprehensible to the orthodox investigator; he designed and constructed his own instruments and apparatus, which, though sometimes apparently crude, proved by use to be peculiarly adapted to the problem in hand.
His mercury vapor lamp marked progress in a department of electrical science at that time little developed - the motion of electricity through rarefied gases and vapors. Hewitt was the first to establish the fact that the reacting force at the negative electrode is the principal determining factor in these motions and the first to find a means of overcoming this reaction.
Hewitt was the first also to recognize the importance of the rectifying characteristic of electrodes in a rarefied gas, to employ it in the wireless art, and to discover the third or pilot electrode, usually called the ‘grid, ’ which inserted in the path of moving electricity in a vacuum tube and suitably electrified can influence that motion to any extent. This last discovery is the fundamental principle of the vacuum-tube amplifier, which is so important in radio telephony.
Hewitt was a pioneer in the development of hydro-airplanes and of high-speed motor boats. He was early interested in the problem of the helicopter, and in 1918 succeeded in building a machine that would rise into the air without a horizontal take-off. In 1915 he was made a member of the Naval Consulting Board, and in that capacity designed an torpedo.
Hewitt had large business interests and was director in a number of corporations, including Cooper, Hewitt & Company, the New York & Greenwood Lake Railway, and the Midvale Water Company. He was also a trustee of Cooper Union and of the Hospital and House of Rest for Consumptives. He died at the American Hospital in Paris.
Peter Hewitt was a geniuos scientist and inventor. He is best known by the mercury vapor lamp bearing his name, which because of its high efficiency has been widely adopted for industrial illumination. In recognition of his achievements he was given the honorary degree of doctor of science by Columbia University in 1903 and by Rutgers College in 1916.
Hewitt was a member of many learned and scientific societies.
Quotes from others about the person
“Those who knew Hewitt watching him at work, felt that a part, at least, of Hewitt’s thinking apparatus was in his hands. ”- Michael Pupin
In New York Hewitt married on April 27, 1887, his first wife, Lucy Work. On December 21, 1918, he married his second wife, Maryon J. (Andrews) Bruguiere, daughter of Tunstall T. Andrews of Virginia.
