Alfred Rosling Bennett

Alfred Rosling Bennett ( born March 14, 1850 in Islington, London, † May 24 1928 in Matlock, Derbyshire ) was an English electrical engineer and pioneer of electric lighting and the telephone.

Life

Bennett studied at the Bellevue Academy in Greenwich, London. He then took a job in 1869 at the Indian Telegraph Office at.

In 1873 he returned to Britain and was responsible active in the introduction of electric lighting in the early 1880s. He received patents for an iron- alkaline battery, a ceramic insulator telegraph and telephone converter.

In 1895 he introduced a telephone system in Guernsey and was later engineer for the public telephone companies in Glasgow, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Portsmouth, Brighton and Kingston upon Hull. He was also the first technical director of the telephone company of Jersey (now Jersey Telecom), as this system took over from the General Post Office in 1923.

Throughout his life he was interested in railways and in 1911 vice- president of the " Institution of Locomotive Engineers ".

Works

AR Bennett has written several books, including:

  • The First Railway in London (via the London and Greenwich Railway)
  • Historic Locomotives
  • London and Londoners in the 1850s and 1860s
  • A Saga of Guernsey
  • The Telephone Systems of the Continent of Europe
  • The Chronicles of Boulton 's Siding

Swell

  • Foreword by John Marshall on " The Chronicles of Boulton 's Siding " by Alfred Rosling Bennett, published by David & Charles, 1971, ISBN 0-7153-5318-7
Matlock (Derbyshire)
2392
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