Franklin Leonard Pope

Franklin Leonard Pope ( born December 2, 1840 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, † October 13, 1895 ) was an American electrical engineer, inventor and author.

Pope was a renowned man in the early days of the electric industry in the U.S.. He was at times a friend of Thomas Alva Edison and is regarded as a mentor and pioneer of Edison's later rise as the inventor - entrepreneur. Pope and Edison should have been the first person who led the Job Title Electrical Engineer ( electrical engineer ). A today Assessed as untenable Articles by Franklin Pope is a contributory cause of the emergence of Göbel legend.

Career

Pope took over in 1860 at the age of 20 years, a position as a draftsman at The Scientific American. The magazine reported extensively on newly issued patents, which Pope allowed the acquisition of knowledge about patents and patent law.

In 1862 he moved into a position as a telegraph operator. In civil disturbance, he showed a lot of skill in restoring the destroyed telegraph line from New York to Boston. His drawing skills and the exact make sketches of the technical equipment were the basis. Electrical wiring diagrams that time were not common; Popes Art was an equivalent for it. The success established his reputation in the industry.

1864 instructed the telegraph company, The Western Union Telegraph Company Pope with the guidance of an exploration team for finding a path to build a telegraph line between New Westminster in Vancouver and the Yukon as part of a planned America - Russia -Europe line. Pope made ​​on this expedition many drawings of the flora, fauna and geography of the region. The Mount Pope in British Columbia, Canada, is named after him. He mounted it for a better overview of the area during the reconnaissance expedition.

Back in New York Pope worked as a kind of technical manager at the Gold and Stock Reporting Telegraph Co. and technically improved the telegraph to transmit the current gold prices to dealers. He also put his work continued as an illustrator for magazines and created the first edition of his work, The Modern Practice of the Electric Telegraph, which later became a standard manual of the industry was.

1869 Pope met the then penniless 22-year old Thomas Alva Edison know, gave this a job and took him into his family. Thomas Alva Edison had also previously worked as a telegraph operator and is concerned with improvements in telegraphy. Pope founded later that year a company, were involved in the Edison and James Ashley, editor of the journal The Telegrapher. Pope and Edison led in their company Pope, Edison & Co. as allegedly the first people Job Title Electrical Engineers and acquired jointly patents 102 320 and 103 924 for improved telegraph with printing devices. Another developed by Edison and Pope printing telegraph should be especially suitable for use by individuals or small businesses without specialist staff. Together with other partners, the American Printing Telegraph Co. was founded for this market segment. The joint venture Pope, Edison & Co. was dissolved in late 1870 again. On an unknown date, there was a personal quarrel between Pope and Edison, which Pope never processed. According to Edward Covington Pope later represented frequently as an expert witness or consultant applicants against Edison Company and relativized journalistic Edison attributed to inventor services. Also, James Ashley, the third partner of the joint company, wrote disparaging articles about benefits of Edison and finally mentioned him no longer in The Telegrapher several years. Edison sold the rights to a 1874 alleged he developed technique by which you can transfer four messages simultaneously over a telegraph line, for the then unusual price of 30,000 dollars, some sources give $ 100,000 to Jay Gould, an investment firm. After today's purchasing power is the estimate of the order of millions of dollars. Possibly Pope and Ashley saw as spiritual co-authors of the art. However, the exact cause of the quarrel of Pope and Ashley with Edison is not known.

In the 1870s, Pope acquired patents for electrical signaling equipment for railways, besides, he continued his work as Illustratur and author of professional books and articles on.

In 1875, he was a patent expert for Gold and Stock Telegraph Company and one of the first management consultant with this specialty. In the course of his career, Pope was a highly paid respected expert of the United States in this field. He has worked for companies such as Postal Telegraph, Westinghouse, and American Bell Telephone. Activities as an expert witness in patent matters were added.

In the 1880s, Pope also took over the post of editor of the journal The Electrical Engineer and was in 1886 president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

Franklin Leonard Pope died in 1895 at the age of 54 years in his home by an electric shock when he tried to repair the constructed by him electricity supply to the village after a storm. The death of the renowned Pope by a current accident triggered activities to improve the safety of electrical equipment in the electrical industry in the United States.

Pope's role in the ascent of Thomas Alva Edison

Pope's activities as a talented draftsman brought him into contact with numerous companies in the electrical industry in the New York area and with journals which commissioned him with the preparation of drawings for patent applications, or for technical articles. Pope and his boyfriend at the time Edison possessed by a 1870 unusual for the time wealth of information on the state of the art. Several people who later expansion of the Edison company financially and legally organized, Edison met at this time through the contacts of Pope. Through the intensive activity of Pope with patent law and patent issues, and his work for newspapers Edison also learned the use of patents and the media to promote business objectives. Pope was 7 years older than Edison and had diverse talents and a better education. He had already started a family and taken in his career, leadership and responsibility. An influence on the development of the personality of Edison Edison is suspected by some biographers.

Edison was 1869, when he met Pope, a penniless telegraph operator and inventors looking for a job, which was not noticed by the newspapers. Pope is said to have occasionally given him 50 cents a day for his livelihood. 1871 Edison was able to start a family and buy a house. Already in 1874 he decreed apparent large financial resources, was well known in the telegraph industry, trade publications reported about him and financial investors watched his achievements in the field of telegraphy. This significant development could have done without meeting with Pope hardly taken place so. James Ashley, who in his journal The Telegrapher advertising for the company Pope, Edison & Co., where he was involved in, made ​​, contributed to increased awareness of Edison at this time at.

Pope's role in the development of Göbel legend

Pope published on 25 January 1893, the cover story of The Electrical Engineer an article entitled The Carbon Filament Lamp of 1859 The Story of an Overlooked Invention ( " The carbon filament lamp of 1859 - The story of an overlooked invention "). In this article, Pope Thomas Alva Edison speaks from the invention of the modern, permanently usable electric incandescent lamp with high-resistance carbon filament and writes them to the Heinrich Göbel born in Germany to which the solution after Pope already 20 years before Thomas Alva Edison is to be successful. The information from the article of the prestigious Franklin Pope have been adopted by many other newspapers in the U.S. and Europe. This article from the January 1893 thus became the journalistic primal source of Göbel legend.

The article is now regarded as untenable. It is thought that the content was motivated by the unprocessed personal rift with Edison. The article was misinterpreted by later art historians as well-researched journalistic professional articles. This a long-running misjudgment of the Heinrich Goebel's role with the bulb invention, especially in Germany was triggered. Yet 2006, the German museum the article as the source for Göbel - performance attributions.

Pope withdrew the article never, although doubts arose as to services Heinrich Göbel in other newspaper reports and in court proceedings already in the year of publication. Edward Covington points out that Pope in 1894 published the second edition of his book Evolution of the Electric Incandescent Lamp ( " evolution of the light bulb " ) Heinrich Göbel no mention that he had a year earlier proclaimed inventor of the light bulb.