Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/448

420 BRUSH, Charles Francis, inventor, b. in Euclid, Ohio, 17 March, 1849. His early life was spent on his father's farm, after which he entered the public schools in Cleveland and was graduated at the high school. During the years so occupied he was interested in physics, chemistry, and engineering, in which subjects he became very proficient. Much of his leisure was spent in experimenting and in manufacturing scientific instruments. As early as 1864 he constructed microscopes and telescopes for himself and his companions, and during the same year he devised a plan tor turning on gas in street-lamps, lighting it, and then turning it off again. Soon after leaving the high school he entered the University of Michigan, where he was graduated in 1869 with the degree of M. B. Returning to Cleveland, he fitted up a laboratory, became an analytical chemist, and within three years obtained a high reputation for the accuracy of his work. Then for four years he was engaged in the iron business. In 1875 Mr. Brush's attention was directed to electric lighting. The problem of producing a dynamo machine that could generate the proper amount and kind of electrical current for operating several lamps in a single current was submitted to him, and in less than two months a machine was built so perfect and complete that for ten years it has continued in regular use without change. A lamp that could successfully work upon a circuit with a large number of other lamps, so that all would burn uniformly, was then necessary, and this he produced in a few weeks. These two inventions were successfully introduced in the United States during 1876. Since then he has obtained more than fifty patents, two thirds of which are sources of revenue. They relate principally to details of his two leading inventions—the dynamo and the lamp—and to methods for their production. All of his patents, present and future, are the property of the Brush electric company of Cleveland, and his foreign patents are owned by the Anglo-American Brush electric light corporation of London. Mr. Brush has been fortunate both in honors and in pecuniary reward. In 1880 he received the degree of Ph. D. from Western Reserve, and in 1881 the French government decorated him chevalier of the legion of honor.

BRUSH, George Jarvis, mineralogist, b. in Brooklyn, N. Y., 15 Dec, 1831. He removed with his father to Danbury, Conn., in 1835, and returned to Brooklyn in 1841. He was educated in the schools of these places and at West Cornwall, Conn., where he acquired a fondness for science. From 1846 till 1848 he was in business in New York ; but in the latter year a severe illness determined him to become a farmer, and he went to New Haven to attend a six-months' course of lectures on agriculture. Instead of leaving at the end of that time, he remained two years studying chemistry and mineralogy. In October, 1850, he went to Louisville, Ky., as assistant to Benjamin Silliman, Jr., who had been chosen professor in the university there, and in 1851 accompanied the elder Silliman on a tour in Europe. In 1852 he was one of six who received, after examination, the newly created degree of Ph. B. from Yale, and in 1853-'3 was assistant in chemistry at the University of Virginia, where he made, with Prof. J. L. Smith, a series of valuable examinations of American minerals, the results of which were published in volumes XV. and xvi. of the "American Journal of Science." From 1853 till 1855 he studied at Munich and Freiburg, and in the latter year was elected professor of metallurgy in Yale Scientific School. This chair he exchanged in 1864 for that of mineralogy. After a course of study in the Royal School of Mines, London, and a visit to the principal mines and smelting-works of Europe, he returned to this country, and in January, 1857, entered upon his new duties. From that time till the present Prof. Brush has been identified with the Sheffield Scientific School, where his energy, judgment, and executive capacity soon gave him the leading direction in its affairs. He was for some time its secretary, has always been its treasurer, and, since the formal organization of its faculty in 1872, has been director of the governing-board. Prof. Brush has aided Prof. James D. Dana in the preparaiion of the recent editions of his "Descriptive Menealogy," has published a "Manual of Determinative Mineralogy" (1875), and has been a constant contributor to the "American Journal of Science." He is a member of numerous scientific societies in this country and abroad. In 1868 he received his election to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1880 was chosen president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For a list of his numerous scientific papers, see a sketch of him by Prof. Lounsbury, in the "Popular Science Monthly," November. 1881.

BRUTE, Simon Gabriel, R. C. bishop, b. in Rennes, France, in 1779; d. in Vincennes, Ind., in 1839. His father, who was superintendent of the royal domains in Brittany, died, leaving his affairs in such embarrassment that his widow was obliged to sacrifice her private fortune to pay her debts. Being a woman of cultivated intellect, she conducted the education of her son, assisted by the celebrated Abbe Carron. He afterward studied in one of the colleges of his native city, where he prepared himself to enter the polytechnic school; but the breaking out of the French revolution changed all his plans. During the reign of terror many priests were secreted in his mother's house, and he visited and relieved others in their retreats. His mother having been forced to open a printing-office on account of family reverses, he worked at type-setting, and became a skilful compositor. In 1796 he entered the medical college of Rennes, and in 1799 went to Paris to complete his professional studies. He was graduated in 1803, winning the first prize among the 120 students selected to compete for it out of the 1,100 that attended the college. He was immediately appointed physician to the First Dispensary of Paris ; but he had already determined upon a different career, and in November entered the seminary of St. Sulpice, at Paris, where he devoted himself ardently to the study of theology and canon law. He was ordained in 1808, and was offered several places, among them that of chaplain to the Emperor Napoleon; but, preferring to be the guide of young candidates for the ministry, he refused them all, and was appointed professor of theology in the Sulpitian seminary of his native city. In 1810 he met Bishop Flaget, of Kentucky. During his ecclesiastical course in the seminary he had often thought of devoting himself to the foreign missions, and his intercourse with the American prelate now revived his early intentions, and, with the consent of his superiors, he embarked at Bordeaux, and landed at Baltimore in 1810. Immediately on his arrival he was made professor of philosophy in the college of St. Mary's, and during his two years' residence he did much to elevate the reputation of that institution. In 1812 he was summoned by Father Dubois to assist him in his missionary work at Emmittsburg, where he became spiritual attendant to the sisters of charity, and was principally instrumental in building up the institution they had established. He went to France