Peter Cooper Hewitt

• Born: May 5, 1861
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: August 25, 1921
• Place of death: Paris, France

American electrical engineer

Hewitt’s invention of the bright and efficient mercury-vapor lamp provided an important component of industrial lighting through the first half of the twentieth century. With little loss of heat energy, the Cooper Hewitt lamp demonstrated the effectiveness of conveying electrical charges through gases and was a precursor to the fluorescent light.

Primary fields: Aeronautics and aerospace technology; electronics and electrical engineering

Primary inventions: Mercury-vapor lamp; mercury-arc rectifier

Early Life

Peter Cooper Hewitt was born in New York City in 1861. His father was Abram Hewitt, a successful manufacturer, businessman, and from 1886 to 1888, mayor of New York City. His mother was Sarah Amelia Cooper Hewitt. Sarah was the daughter of one of New York City’s most famous residents, Peter Cooper, a brilliant inventor in his own right, wealthy industrialist, and philanthropic founder of Cooper Union. Grandfather Cooper taught mechanical skills to Peter and his other grandson Edward. He had a workshop with a lathe, forge, tools, and a steam engine built for the boys, and he hired a mechanic to teach them how to use the implements. When Alexander Graham Bell visited Cooper to explain the workings of his new telephone, Cooper called in Peter and Edward to see the demonstration. The boys returned to their workshop and built a makeshift phone. Strung across the street to a friend’s house, it may have been the first house-to-house phone in New York City.

Peter Cooper Hewitt was educated by private tutors, at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and at Columbia University, where he specialized in economics, physics, and chemistry. Recognizing Hewitt’s interest and talent for mechanical invention, his grandfather made available to him an old greenhouse as a laboratory for experimentation. Young Hewitt improved machinery in his grandfather’s glue factory and invented new models of centrifugal machines and evaporators for use in New York’s ubiquitous breweries.

On April 27, 1887, Hewitt married Lucy Bond Work. Given the prominence of the two families, the wedding was considered the social affair of the season, catered by Delmonico’s restaurant. A few years later, Hewitt was involved in a well-publicized controversy with the New York police in May, 1890. Hewitt was leaving Madison Square Theatre when he argued with a hansom cab driver. The driver lashed Hewitt with his whip, and Hewitt smashed his cane on the driver’s head. A police officer, not knowing Hewitt’s prominence, arrested and manhandled him.

Life’s Work

Hewitt received three important legacies from his distinguished family. First, he inherited a genius for mechanical invention from his illustrious grandfather and namesake, Peter Cooper. Second, like his grandfather, he followed unorthodox and intuitive methods in developing new technology, relying on experimentation and trial and error rather than theoretical science. Third, he inherited from his father a fortune that allowed him to pursue his scientific interests unhindered.

Working in his laboratory, which eventually occupied five floors in the Madison Square Garden Tower in New York City, Hewitt produced a steady stream of inventions around the turn of the century. Hewitt discovered that if he electrified a quantity of mercury in a vacuum tube, a vapor was formed that could conduct electric currents and produce other extraordinary phenomena. This discovery would become the basis of his life work. In 1898, he produced his most significant invention, the mercury-vapor lamp, also known as the Cooper Hewitt lamp (patented in 1901). It consisted of a quartz or glass tube containing mercury, mercury vapor, and wires connected to an electric current. The tube was sealed vacuum-tight. The contents of the tube conducted electricity to and from the vapor carrying the current. Designed to produce more light and less heat than incandescent lights, Hewitt’s mercury-based lamp represented a pioneering effort in employing gases to conduct electrical charges.

Based on his research for the mercury-vapor lamp, Hewitt made other inventions that advanced knowledge of the interaction of electrical charges and gases. Because the light emitted from his lamp was a strange bluish-green color, without red radiation, Hewitt designed a transformer that restored parts of the color spectrum that had been eliminated. He invented the mercury-arc rectifier (also known as a static converter) in 1902. This invention converted alternating electric current into direct current, thus allowing the use of apparatuses designed to work on one kind of current to work on the other kind of current. Hewitt would receive the prestigious Elliott Cresson Medal in 1914 from the Franklin Institute for this important invention. A related invention was Hewitt’s electrical interrupter, which could turn off high-tension currents and could make or break a circuit. Hewitt’s final invention that grew out of his researches into charged vapors was a wireless telegraph receiver. This invention detected wireless telegraph signals by means of a mercury-vapor tube with an electrode. Hewitt’s telegraph receiver increased sensitivity for detecting signals without increasing the possibility of burnout. Engineer, entrepreneur, and industrialist George Westinghouse purchased patent rights to the mercury-vapor lamp from Hewitt. In 1902, Westinghouse provided the capital to launch the Cooper Hewitt Electric Company to develop, manufacture, and market Hewitt’s gas-based electrical lamps. Hewitt’s productivity in his electrical researches was made possible by his disciplined work habits. He devoted mornings to his business interests and his afternoons and evenings to his scientific experiments. For recreation, he attended the leading social and athletic clubs in New York.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, Hewitt turned his attention to the engines and modes of transportation characteristic of the new age. As to the automobile, he improved a means of regulating engine speed and assisted his brother, Edward Hewitt, in the manufacture of the Hewitt automobile. As to watercraft, in 1907 he developed a motorboat that employed an eight-cylinder engine to lift the hull on four wing-shaped hydrofoils. With the hull freed from the friction of the water, the boat was able to achieve higher speeds. This motorboat was a precursor of high-speed hydroplanes. As to aircraft, Hewitt made several innovations. He wrote popular articles in 1908 in which he daringly predicted that air travel would one day be inexpensive and widely available. He received a patent in 1915 for an aerostat (balloon) envelope and supporting truss. In 1920, he acquired three patents for a prototype helicopter. Columbia University professor Francis Crocker assisted Hewitt in constructing a model of a machine that could elevate vertically.

Hewitt worked on behalf of American inventors as a member of the board of governors of the Inventors’ Guild and as a member of the Naval Advisory Board. For use by the Navy, he designed an aerial torpedo. Columbia University awarded Hewitt an honorary doctorate in 1903, and Rutgers College did likewise in 1916. Hewitt’s divorce from his first wife, Lucy, in December, 1918, made a minor sensation in the New York City papers, as they had been a prominent society couple in New York, lavishly entertaining in the Cooper Hewitt mansion on 11 Lexington Avenue in the Gramercy Park neighborhood. Hewitt married Maryon J. Bruguiere on December 21, 1918, only a few days after obtaining the divorce. (It was later revealed that Hewitt’s only child, Ann, was born to Bruguiere in Paris in 1914; Ann would be involved in a notorious court case in 1936 over Hewitt’s million-dollar estate.) Hewitt died in Paris in 1921.

Impact

Hewitt followed in the footsteps of his famous grandfather and namesake, Peter Cooper, in ingeniously inventing and improving a wide range of devices practical in the commercial world. His four most important inventions—the mercury-vapor lamp, the mercury-arc rectifier, an electrical interrupter, and a wireless receiver—were the result of his study of electric currents in a vacuum tube containing mercury. These devices not only were important industrial instruments but also demonstrated pioneering technological principles. The mercury-vapor lamp showed the effectiveness of employing the motion of electricity through rarefied gases and vapors. Hewitt’s success with the lamp helped spur interest in this field of electrical science. His mercury-vapor lamp was also the forerunner of the fluorescent lamp. Hewitt’s experiments demonstrated the importance of the rectifying characteristic of electrodes in rarefied gases and led to the invention of his wireless telegraph receiver. His rectifier allowed for direct current to be economically converted from alternating current at its final destination. Acting as a simple transformer, this rectifier was able to replace expensive and heavy rotary converters. Hewitt’s research into the nature of moving electricity in a vacuum tube contributed to the development of the vacuum-tube amplifier for radio telephony. Hewitt was also a pioneer in the development of hydro-airplanes, high-speed motorboats, and the helicopter.

Coming from a family of inventors and possessed of an independent fortune, Hewitt, nicknamed “the millionaire inventor,” was able to fund his own experiments, unaffiliated with any institution. His curiosity and ingenuity produced a variety of inventions, improved by his unorthodox methods and imaginative techniques. As such, Hewitt represents a tradition of independent invention that would become increasingly rare in the twentieth century.

Bibliography

Beckert, Sven. The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Sociological account of the wealthy citizens of New York. Describes the 1887 marriage of Hewitt and Lucy Work as helping to unite the city’s industrial and merchant families.

Buttolph, Leroy J. “The Cooper Hewitt Mercury Vapor Lamp.” General Electric Review 23 (September, 1920): 741-751. A technical article by a Cooper Hewitt Electric Company engineer explaining the theory, principles, and operation of the Cooper Hewitt lamp. Replete with diagrams, charts, and tables, this is almost certainly the most in-depth and scientific study of the workings of the Cooper Hewitt lamp ever published.

Gurko, Miriam. The Lives and Times of Peter Cooper. New York: Thomas Crowell, 1959. Engaging narrative geared to young audiences. Includes charming stories of Cooper fostering mechanical skills in his grandson, Peter Cooper Hewitt.

Nevins, Allen. Abram S. Hewitt, with Some Account of Peter Cooper. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935. Described by Nevins as a biography of the Cooper and Hewitt families, with a focus on Peter Cooper Hewitt’s illustrious father and maternal grandfather. Shows the remarkable lineage and upbringing that helped propel Peter Cooper Hewitt to success in inventing.

Skrabec, Quentin R., Jr. George Westinghouse: Gentle Genius. New York: Algora, 2007. Biography of the American industrialist who purchased patent rights for the Cooper Hewitt lamp and financed the founding of the Cooper Hewitt Electric Company in 1902.