IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2021 - 86

in L
- ondon, on 26 June 1800, revolutionized electrical research. The significance of Volta's invention-the
production of a sustained electric current-was recognized immediately
by many researchers. One of them
was Cornish chemist and inventor
Humphry Davy. In September 1800,
he showed that charcoal acted as an
electrical conductor and produced a
" spark when made a medium of communication between the ends of the
galvanic pile of Signor Volta. " Davy
did not suggest the use of this phenomenon for illumination. He would do
that a decade later. In 1803, Russian
physicist Vasily Petrov produced light
by connecting closely spaced pieces
of charcoal to the terminals of a very
large battery bank. In 1810, Davy demonstrated, at the Royal Institution in
London, a primitive arc lamp powered

(a)

by a battery bank of 2,000 cells, which
had a total surface of 83 m 2. More practical arc lamps would be invented after the introduction of steam-powered
magnetoelectric generators during the
1840s. Early viable arc lamps used
complicated clockwork mechanisms
and other components to keep the gap
between the tips of the two carbon
rods constant as the carbons burned
away gradually. When Brush generators, regulators, and arc lamps were
being installed in 1878, dynamo electric generators had largely supplanted
magnetoelectric ones.

Charles F. Brush
Charles F. Brush (Figure 1) was born
on a farm near Cleveland, Ohio, on 17
March 1849. I have found not a single
published book-size biography of this
pioneer of electric lighting and central

(b)

figure 1. (a) Charles F. Brush. (Source: " Charles Francis Brush, " Scientific
American Supplement, vol. 18, p. 7,287, 1884.) (b) A Brush arc light tower in San
Jose, California, in 1882. Brush Electric recommended placing its arc lights on
tall towers, thus signaling that the lights were too bright for general use close
to the ground. (Source: " Tower system of electric lighting, " Mechanics, vol. 1,
pp. 292-294, 1882.)
86

ieee power & energy magazine

stations. An unpublished rough draft
written around 1950 and an unpublished Ph.D. thesis dated 1967 can be
accessed at digital.case.edu, a website
of the Kelvin Smith Library at Case
Western Reserve University, Cleveland. As a teenager, Brush experimented with batteries, magnets, telescopes,
and microscopes. After high school,
he enrolled at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he graduated,
in 1869, with a degree in mining engineering. He moved to Cleveland, where
he organized a chemical analysis business and, for a short time, engaged in
the marketing of iron ore and pig iron.
His start as an inventor of dynamos and
arc lamps was facilitated by a childhood schoolmate, George W. Stockly,
vice president and manager of the Telegraph Supply Company of Cleveland,
a manufacturer of telegraph equipment
and other electrical devices. I obtained
the following timeline of contracts between Brush and Stockly's company
from digital.case.edu.
Stockly was impressed with Brush's
ideas about the commercial possibilities of electric lighting, and he encouraged Brush to design and build a
dynamo, which Brush did, in 1876. An
agreement, dated 7 June 1876, granted
the firm the exclusive right to manufacture and sell Brush dynamos and all the
improved forms of that machine. The
company assumed financial responsibility for development and marketing
and for the expenses of patent applications. Brush would receive a royalty of
20% of the selling price for anything
that was his invention. To preserve
quality, Brush had to approve any deviation in the machine designs he supplied to the company.
The arrangement was modified in a
memorandum of understanding, dated
1877, because production and sales
were slow and the royalties too meager
for Brush to live on. Brush would receive US$150 a month as an advance
on his royalties and, in return, work full
time on electric lighting development. A
more detailed one-year agreement was
signed on 24 March 1877 and extended
for another year on 3 April 1878. A
january/february 2021

http://digital.case.edu http://digital.case.edu

IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2021