Oliver B. Shallenberger

Oliver Blackburn Shallenberger ( born May 7, 1860 in Rochester, Beaver County ( Pennsylvania), † January 23, 1898 ) was an American engineer and inventor.

His parents were the doctor Aaron T. Shallenberger and Mary, born Bonbright. His uncle William Shadrack Shallenberger was a Member of Parliament.

After attending school in Rochester and Beaver College in 1877, he joined as a cadet in the Naval Academy in Annapolis, a, the physical department of electricity paid special attention. Here were his contemporaries Frank J. Sprague, Dr. Louis Duncan, WFC Hasson and Gilbert Wilkes. After his graduation he spent two years traveling on the USS Lancaster in the Mediterranean, where he witnessed the bombardment of Alexandria.

After he returned to the U.S. in 1883, he joined the following year from out of the Navy devoted himself to electricity. The Union Switch and Signal Company presented under the direction of George Westinghouse at the time just a department of electric lighting, and he had the following summer and autumn of opportunity in the experiments to the AC equipment by Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs, the Westinghous had brought from Europe to participate. Here he worked with William Stanley and Reginald Belfield to the commercial development of the AC system. The results then led Westinghouse to found the Westinghouse Electric Company, its chief electrician Shallenberger was, as in the following Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, whose member he was end of 1888.

As a spiral spring him was dropped late April 1888 when investigating a new arc lamp, he observed that she turned slowly in the magnetic field. This observation led to the development of his change of electricity meter - still in ampere-hours. ( In Edison's direct current system the counter was a galvanic cell in which the electrodes were weighed. )

In 1889 he visited some major European cities. On November 27, 1889, he married Mary Woolslair, with whom he had a son and a daughter.

In 1891 he had to give up his post as chief electrician due to health problems. Since Westinghouse did not want to do without his services, he remained as a consultant. The following winter he spent in Colorado and the summer months at home in Rochester, where he had a well- equipped laboratory.

In 1897 he founded the Colorado Electric Power Company, whose president he became.

• Engineer
• Inventor
• Americans
• Born in 1860
• Died in 1898
• Man