Moses G. Farmer
Encyclopedia
Moses Gerrish Farmer was an electrical engineer and inventor. Farmer was a member to the AIEE, later known as the IEEE.

Biography

He was born at Boscawen, New Hampshire
Boscawen, New Hampshire
Boscawen is a town in Merrimack County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 3,965 at the 2010 census.-History:The native Pennacook tribe called the area Contoocook, meaning "place of the river near pines." On June 6, 1733, Governor Jonathan Belcher granted it to John Coffin and 90...

. He received his schooling at Philips Academy and Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...

. He was a pioneer telegraph operator. He constructed and maintained the telegraph lines of Massachusetts. He later became a superintendent
Superintendent (construction)
On larger projects, it is common for most finance-related tasks and long-term scheduling to be handled by a project manager, with the superintendent's job limited to running the day-to-day operations on the construction site and controlling the short-term schedule...

 of a telegraph company. Farmer investigated multiple telegraphy. He successfully demonstrated duplex telegraphy between New York and Philadelphia in 1856 (Conot, p29). Farmer also investigated telluric current
Telluric current
A telluric current , or Earth current, is an electric current which moves underground or through the sea. Telluric currents result from both natural causes and human activity, and the discrete currents interact in a complex pattern...

s.

In 1847, Farmer constructed and exhibited in public what he called “an electro-magnetic locomotive, and with forty-eight pint cup cells of Grove nitric acid battery drew a little car carrying two passengers on a track a foot and a half wide". Farmer later fabricated a process for electroplating aluminum. At Boston in 1851, he constructed an electric fire-alarm service. He invented several forms of the incandescent electric light.

Farmer, in competition with Charles Wheatstone
Charles Wheatstone
Sir Charles Wheatstone FRS , was an English scientist and inventor of many scientific breakthroughs of the Victorian era, including the English concertina, the stereoscope , and the Playfair cipher...

 (1867); Carl Wilhelm Siemens
Carl Wilhelm Siemens
Carl Wilhelm Siemens was a German born engineer who for most of his life worked in Britain and later became a British subject.-Biography:...

; Ernst Werner von Siemens
Ernst Werner von Siemens
Ernst Werner Siemens, von Siemens since 1888, was a German inventor and industrialist. Siemens' name has been adopted as the SI unit of electrical conductance, the siemens...

; and Carl Heinrich von Siemens
Carl Heinrich von Siemens
Carl Heinrich von Siemens was a German entrepreneur, a child of a tenant farmer. He is a brother of Ernst Werner von Siemens and William Siemens, sons of Christian Ferdinand Siemens and wife Eleonore Deichmann...

 (1867); Ladd (1867); and Zénobe Gramme
Zénobe Gramme
Zénobe Théophile Gramme was a Belgian electrical engineer. He invented the Gramme machine, a type of direct current dynamo capable of generating smoother and much higher voltages than the dynamos known to that point.In 1873 he and Hippolyte Fontaine accidentally discovered that the device was...

 (1871), co-conceived the self-exciting dynamo in 1859, and constructed one in 1860. He built a platinum filament incandescent light in 1859 (Conot, p120). At the age of 39 while living in Salem, Massachusetts, he lit the parlor of his home at 11 Pearl St with incandescent lamps, the first house in the world to be lit by electricity. He was a co-inventor of the self-exciting dynamo, an electric generator using electromagnets for the field which are energized by the generator output, in 1866 (Derry & Williams, p614). In 1868, with the Farmer dynamo, Farmer lit a house in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

. He also patented an early lightbulb (which was later bought by 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...

).

With his partner William Wallace, he invented the early dynamo which powered a system of arc lights he exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia, and which inspired Thomas Edison to work on an improved incandescent light. Edison used the Wallace-Farmer 8 hp dynamo to power his early electric light demonstrations (Jonnes, p47,54, Josephson 176-186). Farmer served as a teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...

 for a time. Farmer died at the World's Columbian Exposition
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. Chicago bested New York City; Washington, D.C.; and St...

. Farmer was a pioneer of many aspects of 19th century electrical invention, but, because he and his wife were spiritualists,they felt that their talents were God-given,and he felt that they shouldn't take credit for any of his inventions. As a result he failed to carry his ideas to commercial success.

External articles

Patents, "Method of Sending And Receiving Messages Simultaneously Over the Same Wire". February 16, 1875.
Websites
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