John Kruesi (May 15, 1843 – February 22, 1899) was a Swiss born machinist

Machinist

A machinist is a person who uses machine tools to make or modify parts, primarily metal parts, a process known as machining. This is accomplished by using machine tools to cut away excess material much as a woodcarver cuts away excess wood to produce his work. In addition to metal, the parts may...

 and close associate of Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

.

Career

Kruesi had been apprenticed as a clock maker in Switzerland, migrating to the United States where he settled in Newark, New Jersey

Newark, New Jersey

Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...

. There he met Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

 who employed him in his workshop in 1872.

Kruesi became Edison's head machinist through his Newark and Menlo Park periods, responsible for translating Edison's numerous rough sketches into working devices. Since constructing and testing models was central to Edison's method of inventing

Edisonian approach

The Edisonian approach to innovation is characterized by trial and error discovery rather than a systematic theoretical approach. This may be a convenient term, but it is an inaccurate and misleading description of the method of invention actually used by Thomas Edison...

 Kruesi's skill in doing this was critical to Edison's success as an inventor. Historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel

Paul Israel

Paul Israel was an Australian rugby league player for the South Sydney Rabbitohs in the New South Wales Rugby League competition in Australia, his position of choice was at Lock-forward.-Point scoring summary:...

 sum up Kruesi's remarkable ability of this:

If the devices that emerged [from Kruesi's workshop] didn't work, it was because they were bad ideas, not because they were badly made. And when the ideas were good, as in the case of the phonograph, the product of Kruesi's shop would prove it. (Friedel and Israel 1987, 35)

Kruesi was involved in many of Edison's key inventions, including the quadruplex telegraph

Quadruplex telegraph

The Quadruplex telegraph is a type of electrical telegraph which allows a total of four separate signals to be transmitted and received on a single wire at the same time Quadruplex telegraphy thus implements a form of multiplexing.The technology was invented by American inventor Thomas Edison, who...

, the carbon microphone

Microphone

A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...

, phonograph

Phonograph

The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...

, incandescent light bulb

Incandescent light bulb

The incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe makes light by heating a metal filament wire to a high temperature until it glows. The hot filament is protected from air by a glass bulb that is filled with inert gas or evacuated. In a halogen lamp, a chemical process...

 and system of electric lighting.

With the development of Edison's system of electric lighting Kruesi moved to more management positions. In 1881 Edison put him in charge of the Edison Electric Tube Company, responsible for the installation of underground power distribution cables from the central generating station. Kruesi was also an inventor, while at the Electric Tube company devising a two wire conduit in which two semicircular conductors were separated by an insulator and covered in insulating material. When the company merged with several others to form General Electric Company in 1892, Kruesi was promoted to General Manager, and then to Chief Mechanical Engineer at the Schenectady site in 1896.