Miller Reese Hutchison

American engineer

• Born: August 6, 1876
• Birthplace: Montrose, Alabama
• Died: February 16, 1944
• Place of death: New York, New York

Hutchison utilized his engineering expertise to invent numerous devices, notably hearing aids and innovations with communication, transportation, and military applications, and to influence Thomas Alva Edison’s policies while serving as the chief engineer of that inventor’s laboratory.

Primary field: Electronics and electrical engineering

Primary inventions: Acousticon; Klaxon horn

Early Life

Miller Reese Hutchison (MIHL-ur REES HUHT-chih-suhn) was born on August 6, 1876, in Montrose, Alabama, a community on the east side of Mobile Bay. His father, William Peter Hutchison, worked as a broker in Mobile. Hutchison’s mother, Tracie Elizabeth (Magruder) Hutchison, was the daughter of affluent landowners who lived near Tuskegee, Alabama. Hutchison grew up in a house near the Hutchison Hotel, which his paternal grandmother had developed as a resort.

When he was seven years old, Hutchison began attending private school in Mobile. Intrigued by electrical and mechanical processes, he explored area machine shops, powerhouses, and foundries, gaining experience with technological devices, comprehending how they functioned and appreciating their practical applications. At home, Hutchison attempted to make batteries, accidentally creating acid holes in carpets. By 1889, Hutchison enrolled in Marion Military Institute, then took classes at Spring Hill College and the University Military Institute at Mobile. At the age of fifteen, he envisioned his first invention—a device to protect communication wires from electrical storms. He filed for a patent on May 25, 1895.

During 1895, Hutchison moved to Auburn to take electrical and mechanical engineering and machine design courses at the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Auburn University). Faculty and administrators at that school encouraged innovation, establishing laboratories for electrical and engineering work. Hutchison was surrounded by progressive scientists and engineers who conducted early X-ray experimentation and applied electricity to such industrial uses as ginning cotton. Hutchison constantly contemplated ideas for new inventions. He received a U.S. patent for his first invention on November 12, 1895.

During academic breaks, Hutchison worked in Mobile machine shops. In 1896, he built an electrical X-ray device at the Mobile Light and Railway powerhouse. Hutchison hosted X-ray demonstrations, showing audiences bones in his hands and feet. He considered becoming a surgeon but decided that he preferred being an inventor. A member of the class of 1897, Hutchison left college without graduating in order to focus on engineering endeavors.

Life’s Work

In summer of 1897, Hutchison initially visited Thomas Alva Edison’s laboratory. During the Spanish-American War, Hutchison secured employment with the U.S. Light House Service as an electrical engineer in charge of the Seventh and Eight Districts, placing cables and mines to impede enemy submarines from entering Gulf Coast ports from Key West, Florida, to Galveston, Texas. He then resumed electronic work in his Mobile laboratory and attended classes at the local Alabama Medical College to study physiological aspects of hearing and ear anatomy to improve his hearing aid inventions. In 1902, he received a patent for the first electrical hearing aid, which he called the Acousticon.

Hutchison moved to were chosen, where he established a laboratory and married Martha Jackman Pomeroy. They had four sons. Beginning in 1904, Hutchison applied his engineering knowledge as a consultant for New York City businesses. He devoted his days to financial work and invented at night. That year, St. Louis Exposition officials designated Hutchison as honorary commissioner of the Department of Electricity for that fair, presenting him with two medals.

By 1906, Hutchison envisioned his most lucrative invention, the Klaxon horn. While driving in Newark, New Jersey, Hutchison pushed his automobile’s horn when a pedestrian ran onto the road. He realized that a horn’s sound should be loud, not pleasant. Hutchison filed an application for his electric horn design in 1906, receiving a U.S. patent three years later. By 1912, General Motors had equipped its stock, over 150,000 vehicles, with Hutchison’s horn, providing Hutchison over $40,000 in royalties. Hutchison gave Edison a Klaxon horn. Edison admired Hutchison’s excitement for invention and his energetic personality, and the inventors formed a professional friendship, while investigating methods to strengthen storage batteries and strategies to sell them.

By 1908, Hutchison had invented an electronic tachometer to calculate a ship’s velocity. He described that invention to Admiral George Dewey, President Theodore Roosevelt, and significant naval officers. The charismatic Hutchison convinced both U.S. and foreign naval officials to outfit submarines with Edison’s batteries, which he stressed extended underwater range possibilities. As an Edison Storage Battery Company representative, Hutchison received commissions on battery sales.

In 1911, Edison chose a man named Donald Bliss as his Engineering and Experimental Department laboratory’s chief engineer. Although skilled technically, Bliss lacked administrative capabilities. In April of that year, Edison privately invited Hutchison, whom he called “Hutch,” to conduct business and research at that West Orange, New Jersey, laboratory and act unofficially as his chief engineer and spokesperson for Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (TAE), stating that Hutchison should be ready to take control if Edison’s health failed or if he died.

When Edison needed money to maintain the laboratory, Hutchison loaned him $50,000. Hutchison drove Edison to meetings and sporting events, and they often debated topics all night. Hutchison met Edison’s business associates, including J. P. Morgan, Jr. During meetings, Hutchison relayed messages in Morse code to Edison by touching Edison’s leg or wrist. In 1912, Edison formally named Hutchison as chief engineer to oversee that laboratory. In addition to managing laboratory conditions, equipment, and personnel, Hutchison offered advice to adjust Edison’s kinetophone, which did not perform well because of film and sound losing synchronicity. He served on the Naval Consulting Board, which Edison chaired and which was established to seek inventions useful for military applications, designating that work as his occupation on his World War I draft application.

Hutchison quit the Edison Storage Battery Company on New Year’s Day, 1917, and established the Hutchison Company to concentrate on selling Edison batteries internationally as the only distributor of that technology. He resigned his TAE position in July, 1918, because of pressure from Stephen B. Mambert, a TAE executive, who claimed that some government officials preferred direct transactions with TAE, not Hutchison, to purchase Edison’s products. The aging Thomas Edison did not defend his friend, and Hutchison sold his distribution rights to TAE.

After leaving TAE, Hutchison initially considered World War I military technological needs. He continued inventing and securing patents in the 1920’s and 1930’s. In 1921, he demonstrated a supercannon from his Woolworth Building laboratory, emphasizing that weapon’s potential three-hundred-mile range. He also created a compound to reduce carbon monoxide in fuel exhaust. After his son, Harold, died in an April, 1928, airplane crash, Hutchison developed the motor-vita for enhanced aircraft performance. He experimented with that invention in his personal plane. Hutchison also devised a film-processing technique to clarify sounds in motion pictures, recording as many as twelve thousand sound vibrations per second.

Hutchison wrote articles for periodicals, including Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, and two booklets, A Series of Twelve Non-technical Letters on the Edison Storage Battery (1912) and The Submarine Boat Type of Edison Storage Battery (1915). In 1944, he died at the New York Athletic Club, where he resided during retirement.

Impact

Hutchison’s attitude regarding invention, embracing all aspects, from designing and revising inventions to marketing and selling them, contributed to his successes. His willingness to promote his innovations assured profits, which financed his continued inventive pursuits and secured respect from Edison and many industrial and political leaders. Hutchison sold several hundred thousand horns and hearing aids, which improved the quality of life for many people. Industries adopted elements of these inventions as standards for later versions of horns installed in vehicles or basic hearing aid designs.

Perhaps Hutchison’s most significant achievement as an inventor was how he affected Edison. For almost one decade, Hutchison’s close proximity to Edison enabled him to shape laboratory and business decisions more than TAE executives. Because of his association with Edison, Hutchison expanded his contacts with military and political leaders, voicing concerns about technology used in warfare and inventions that could strengthen U.S. defenses.

Many inventors valued Hutchison’s insights regarding innovations, incorporating fundamental ideas and technology he devised into their inventions. Several inventors’ patents referenced some of Hutchison’s patents soon after his inventions became public. References to Hutchison’s patented inventions appeared in patents throughout the twentieth century and into the early twenty-first century, indicating the sustained awareness of Hutchison’s work over a century since his first inventions were created. Recognizing Hutchison’s influence on modern inventors, the Edison National Historic Site’s archive preserves Hutchison’s diary and correspondence he wrote while employed by Edison.

Scientific groups in the United States and Europe honored Hutchison with awards. When he returned to his alma mater at Auburn in June, 1913, to donate a wireless station, his gift initiated the first wireless telegraphy course taught in the region. In recognition of Hutchison’s professional achievements, that college granted him an electrical engineering degree. His legacy continues in Auburn’s pioneering wireless engineering program, which develops innovations for twenty-first century telecommunications advancements worldwide.

Bibliography

Conot, Robert E. Thomas A. Edison: A Streak of Luck. New York: Da Capo Press, 1979. Provides information regarding Hutchison’s early inventions and his successes selling Edison’s storage batteries. Includes details of how Hutchison curried Edison’s favor. Hutchison’s quotations reveal his ambitions and respect for Edison. Contains photographs.

Dyer, Frank Lewis, and Thomas Commerford Martin. Edison: His Life and Inventions. Introduction by Robert J. Crawford. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2005. Reprint of the 1910 account by Edison’s lawyer and TAE executive that depicts the innovative laboratory environment and people Hutchison would have experienced when he started discussing his inventions with Edison.

Israel, Paul. Edison: A Life of Invention. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998. Discusses the administrative structure of Edison’s laboratory and how Hutchison became chief engineer of its Engineering and Experimental Department and projects undertaken. Includes passages from Hutchison’s correspondence and diary.

Melosi, Martin V. Thomas A. Edison and the Modernization of America. 2d ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. Describes interactions between Hutchison and Edison that nurtured their mutual professional goals for developing and selling inventions. Discusses conflicts within Edison’s laboratory and how some TAE employees and Edison’s relatives disliked Hutchison.

Millard, Andre. Edison and the Business of Innovation. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Explores the dynamics of Hutchison and Edison’s working relationship and why Edison valued Hutchison. An illustration shows a signed photograph of Hutchison that he gave Edison.