Up for auction a RARE! "Mercury-Vapor Lamp" Peter Cooper Hewitt Cut Signature. This item is

certified authentic by Todd Mueller and comes with their Certificate of

Authenticity.

ES-3197

Peter

Cooper Hewitt (May 5,

1861 – August 25, 1921) was an American electrical engineer and inventor, who invented

the first mercury-vapor lamp in

1901. Hewitt was issued U.S. Patent

682,692 on September 17, 1901. In 1903, Hewitt created an improved version

that possessed higher color qualities which eventually found widespread

industrial use. Hewitt was born in New York City, the son of New York City Mayor Abram Hewitt and the grandson of industrialist Peter Cooper. He was educated at the Stevens Institute of

Technology and the Columbia University School of Mines.  In 1901, Hewitt invented and patented a mercury-vapor lamp that

was the forerunner of the fluorescent lamp. A gas-discharge lamp,

Hewitt's invention used mercury vapor produced by passing current through liquid

mercury. His first lamps had to be started by tilting the tube to make contact

between the two electrodes and the liquid mercury;

later he developed the inductive electrical ballast to

start the tube. The efficiency was much higher than that of incandescent lamps, but

the emitted light was of a bluish-green unpleasant color, which limited its

practical use to specific professional areas, like photography, where the color

was not an issue at a time where films were black and white. For space lighting

use, the lamp was frequently augmented by a standard incandescent lamp. The two

together provided a more acceptable color while retaining some efficiency

advantages. In 1902, Hewitt developed the mercury arc rectifier, the first rectifier that could convert alternating current power

to direct current without

mechanical means. It was widely used in electric railways, industry, electroplating, and high-voltage direct

current (HVDC) power transmission. Although it was largely

replaced by power semiconductor devices in

the 1970s and 1980s, it is still used in some high power applications. In 1903,

Columbia University awarded Hewitt the degree of Honorary Doctorate of Science

in recognition of his work.  In

1907, he developed and tested an early hydrofoil. In 1916, Hewitt joined Elmer Sperry to

develop the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic

Airplane, one of the first successful precursors of the cruise missile. Hewitt's first wife was Lucy Bond Work. Work

was the daughter of Franklin H. Work (1819–1911), a well-known stockbroker and protégé of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and

his wife, Ellen Wood (1831–1877), who was the sister of Frances Ellen Work. While

married to Work, Hewitt had an extramarital relationship with Marion Jeanne

Andrews] that resulted in the birth of Ann Cooper Hewitt

in 1914. Hewitt later married Andrews and formally adopted Ann. Prior to

Hewitt, Andrews was married to George William Childs McCarter, Baron

Robert Frederic Emile Regis D'Erlanger, Dr. Peder Sather Bruguiere, and

Stewart Denning. Peter Cooper Hewitt died in 1921. His will left two-thirds of

his estate to Ann and one-third to her mother Marion; but Ann's portion would

revert to her mother if Ann died childless. In 1935, just before

Ann's 21st birthday when she would have attained legal majority, she was

hospitalized for appendicitis. Ann's mother, by that time using using the name

Maryon Brugiere-Denning-Hewitt-d’Erlanger-McCarter, told the surgeons that Ann

was "feebleminded" and paid them to sterilize her while performing

her appendectomy. Ann retaliated by suing her mother in San Francisco court and

telling the press about Maryon's gambling and alcohol addictions. The

mother-daughter dispute riveted the public; and the unconventional use of

sterilization (it occurred in private practice, not a public asylum) forced a

public debate of eugenics.