Elihu Thomson

• Born: March 29, 1853
• Birthplace: Manchester, England
• Died: March 13, 1937
• Place of death: Swampscott, Massachusetts

English electrical engineer

Inventor and entrepreneur Thomson was prominent in the field of electrical engineering because of his creation and skillful marketing of early electric light and power systems in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.

Primary field: Electronics and electrical engineering

Primary inventions: Improved X-ray tubes; recording watt meter

Early Life

Elihu Thomson (ee-LI-hew TOM-suhn), the second of seven children born to Daniel Thomson and Mary Ann Rhodes, was born in Manchester, England, on March 29, 1853. Elihu’s father was a mechanic specializing in the installation of factory machinery, but he had difficulty finding steady work in England. In 1858, Daniel immigrated with his family to the United States and settled in Philadelphia, taking a position with the Southwark Foundry owned by Merrick and Sons. His work entailed a great deal of travel, often to such distant places as Cuba, so the running of the household and Elihu’s upbringing were mostly the responsibility of Elihu’s mother. One of her favorite pastimes happened to be stargazing, and she demonstrated the patterns of constellations and stars to her son, sparking his lifelong love for astronomy.

Thomson began his education in a local Philadelphia elementary school, where he met his first mentor, teacher George Stuart, and began to take an interest in mathematics and engineering. Thomson’s genius for invention and his quick-wittedness were remarked on by his instructors and his peers, leading to the early completion of his grammar school studies. At age eleven, Thomson passed the entrance exams for Philadelphia’s premier public school, Central High School. Unfortunately, he could not matriculate until he was thirteen years old, so Stuart unsuccessfully tried to persuade the boy to take more interest in his physical development than in additional education for a few years. Distressed by the idea of several years without books, Thomson persuaded his parents to allow him to direct his own studies, involving, especially, the reading of his father’s copies of The Imperial Journal of Art, Science, Mechanics and Engineering, published in Manchester in 1840 and 1841, which impressed upon the young Thomson the importance of inductive reasoning in scientific studies. He read and reread the articles, inspired by them to conduct early experiments on his own, one of which involved creating a crude electrostatic device from a wine bottle.

At Central High School, Thomson was such a talented student that, after graduating, he was appointed assistant professor of chemistry and mechanics at the Franklin Institute, spending more of his time building optical lenses and electrical motors than teaching classes and delivering lectures. In 1876, at twenty-three, he was promoted to chair of chemistry. Teaching, however, was not the career that fueled Thomson’s imagination. In 1880, having become nearly obsessed with possible applications for electricity, Thomson resigned as chair in order to pursue electrical research full time.

Life’s Work

The three-coil dynamo was one of Thomson’s earliest inventions; along with an automatic regulator, the coil was the basis of his electric lighting system. In 1880, he and fellow science professor Edwin Houston established the Thomson-Houston Electric Company for the purpose of profitably manufacturing and selling arc lamp systems. When the company proved to be financially successful, Houston and Thomson bought into other electrical markets, which led to the founding in 1880 of the American Electric Company in New Britain, Connecticut. The purchase of the Sawyer-Man Electric Company in 1886 enabled them to begin the manufacture of incandescent lamps. In 1892, having sufficient capital, Thomson-Houston merged with former competitor Edison General Electric Company to become the General Electric Company. In 1893, a Parisian office of Thomson-Houston was opened and named the Compagnie Française Thomson-Houston (CFTH). From this company derived the modern Thomson SA Company, which still manufactures televisions and other multimedia devices.

In 1896, Elihu Thomson built electrical equipment for the production of X rays, improved X-ray tubes by designing one that used cathode rays to produce more intense radiation than had been previously possible, and was one of the earliest proponents of stereoscopic “Röntgen pictures” as a investigative tool for the diagnosis of bone fractures and to aid in the medical removal of foreign objects. However, despite his work in improving the field of X-ray technology, he was also one of the few working in the field of radiation who admitted the dangerous effects of overexposure to radiation. At a time when X-ray demonstrations were held at cocktail parties, Thomson wished caution to be observed by all technicians. To prove his point, in November of that year, Thomson intentionally allowed a finger on his left hand to be burned by overexposure to radiation. Merely one-half hour of exposure per day was enough to cause observable pain, swelling, stiffness, and blistering of the skin.

In addition to his social awareness of the dangers of X rays and their responsible use, Thomas demonstrated through his inventions his care for the health of the average worker (perhaps inspired by his working-class ancestors) and was particularly interesting in improving working conditions. He espoused the use of helium rather than nitrogen in the breathing mixture used by divers and tunnel workers to prevent “the bends,” also known as caisson disease. Further, the inert nature of helium, he theorized, could extend the depth to which divers could proceed underwater.

Besides X-ray technology and the creation of electric coils, Thomson was also interested in improving technology once used by his father. Before 1887, a mechanic could only weld two pieces of metal together by heating one or both in a fire—a technique that had evolved out of ancient metalworking practices and had not seen much refinement since. High melting points and two metals with radically different melting points made forging in the traditional way impossible. Thomson’s solution, to insert two materials to be welded in a parallel circuit and run an electric current through them, was an elegant way to overcome this problem. The creation of this process allowed Thomson Electric Welding, a second Thomson-founded company, to advance the construction of new appliances and vehicles in society. The electric air drill, still used in industry today, is but one of the many practical and useful discoveries for which Thomson became not only wealthy but also renowned.

Having achieved a certain financial stability for his family, Thomson finally turned his attention back to education and attended first Yale University and then Tufts College (where he received his Ph.D.). Thomson’s Ph.D., however, was one of several degrees he received from many other prestigious universities around the world. He was, for many years, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and even an interim president (twice, between 1920 and 1923) for the university.

Thomson’s personal life, however, was more difficult than his professional one: his first wife, Mary Louise Peck, whom he had married in 1884 and with whom he had four children (Stuart, Roland Davis, Malcolm, and Donald Thurston), died in 1916. It was only in 1923 that he married again, to Clarissa Hovey, whom he described as the ideal assistant and supporter in his research. Thomson died in his bed at his estate in Swampscott, Massachusetts, on March 13, 1937, at the age of eighty-four. He was buried in the Pine Grove Cemetery in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Impact

Thomson’s studiousness and determination led to a prolific career as an inventor. His nearly seven hundred patents (a wide variety of inventions and refinements involving dynamos, three-phase generators, repulsion-induction motors, electric welding, transformers, meters, lamps, railways, and steam engines) made him the third most prolific inventor in history. Thomson was educated in engineering, mechanics, and chemistry, and he used a combination of these disciplines (some learned at his father’s knee) to power the creative imagination that spawned so many new inventions. His work demonstrates clearly how a thorough understanding of a mechanical skill can lead to the creation of new processes and new products. Further, his financial success and the continued existence of many of the companies founded by him demonstrate the value of practical thinking and skillful marketing techniques. At General Electric, it was Thomson’s skill as a marketer as well as his creativity as an inventor that allowed profitable products to become a realistic outcome of creative thought. Unlike his contemporary Nikola Tesla, who was perhaps more creative as an inventor but died in poverty, Thomson was also a shrewd businessman who left a legacy behind after his death.

Bibliography

Carlson, W. Bernard. Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric, 1870-1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. This work relates interesting and lively anecdotes about Thomson as a boy and a young man, relating the life of the inventor to a “social process” engaged in by creative thinkers of all kinds. The thesis seems admirably supported by the biographical details.

Collins, Jim, and Jerry I. Porras. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. New York: HarperBusiness, 2004. A discussion of how companies evolve from their beginnings as the simple visions of their founders to self-sustaining organisms.

Woodbury, David O., and Owen D. Young. Beloved Scientist: Elihu Thomson, a Guiding Spirit of the Electric Age. Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger, 2008. A thorough and entertaining biography of Thomson that describes his legacy to modern society and presents his inventions as shaping the modern world.