Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 04.djvu/60

 FARMER

FAKNAJI

invented an electric grid broiler upon which he broiled steak. Between 1H52 and 1S55 lie con- structed an apparatus by which he was enabled to transmit four messages simultaneously over a single wire; devised the printmg telegraph; was the first to make use of the " unison stop "; and the first to suggest the use of the continuity-pre- serving key in the duplex telegraph. In 1852-53 he constructed an instrument for determining the velocity of sound. In 1«55 he successfully deposited aluminum from its chloride solution, which never had been accomplished before, and also deposited copper in a condition both hard and brittle, a great achievement in electro metal- lurgy. In 1856 he constructed for the Dudley observatory, Albany, N.Y., a chronograph and system of electric clocks. In 1856 he commenced the business of electrotyping, and produced the first under-cut electrotype in America, from a gutta-percha mould. In 1857-58, he invented the automatic repeater and the double current sys- tem of duplex telegraphy, the automatic regula- tor for incandescent lighting systems, and devised an electro-magnetic apparatus to show the height of water in steam boilers. In July, 1859, he lighted the parlor of his home in Salem, Mass., with incandescent electric lights. In September, 1859, he discovered the law of the (now-caUed) " self-exciting dynamo " and between that time and 1866 built the first dynamo machine, " an in- vention which," says Prof. A. E. Dolbear, "has made possible all the electrical industries of today." With this machine in 1868 he lighted a private residence in Cambridge, Mass. , with forty incandescent lamps in multiple series and with absolute regulation at the dj'namo. Between 1864 and 1868 he perfected a thermo-electric bat- tery and in 1868 constructed the largest one ever built for the deposition of copper upon steel to produce the American-compound telegraph wire. In the latter part of 1869 he was employed to ex- amine and report upon the condition of the land lines and cables of the New York. Newfoundland and London telegraph company, and as a result of these investigations invented a new insulator. In 1860-63 he made alloys of aluminum with cop- per and other metals which closely resembled 18- karat gold and which is now in common use among jewelers. He was professor of electrical science at the U.S. naval torpedo station at New- port, R.I., 1872-81, and invented the machines for firing torpedoes. He resigned because of ill health and removed to Eliot, Blaine. He was married, Deo. 35, 1844, to Hannah Tobey, daughter of Richard Shaplei.gh of Berwick. Maine, and their only daughter, Sarah Jane, es- tablished in 1894 the Greenacre Assembly at Greenacre-on-the-Piscataqua, Eliot, Maine, and in 1896 at the same place the Monsalvat school

for the comparative study of religion. Mr. Far- mer was a fellow of the American academy of arts and sciences, a member of the Institute of technology, of the Essex institute, of the Ameri- can society of mechanical engineers, and of the English institution of electrical engineers, and was the first American elected to honorary mem- bership by the American institute of electrical engineers. He received the honorary degree of A.M. from Dartmouth in 1853 and was elected a member of the American association for the advancement of science in 1855. He died in Ciiicago, 111. , May 25, 1893.

FARMER, Silas, author, was born in Detroit, Mich., June 6, 1839; son of John and Roxana (Hamilton) Farmer; grandson of John and Catherine Jacokes (Stouten burgh) Farmer, and of Dr. Silas and Achsah (Burns) Hamilton; and a descendant of Paul Farmer, Boston, 1713, and of William Hamilton, Cape Cod, 1668. He stud- ied with his father who was a cartographer, and continued the business after the death of the latter in 1859. He was appointed historiographer of the city of Detroit in 1883. He was the founderof the Detroit Y.M.C.A. and the Chautau- qua movement in part grew out of a suggestion made by him. He wi-ote a series of religious and temperance booklets, of which over eighty thou- sand copies were published, and besides numerous religious and liistorical articles he compiled the Associatioi) Hi/mii /?. « lA- ( 1 sns ); and wrote i/Zs/oc?/ of Detroit iind Mii-Iinjn,, i ls.s)-sr-90); Cliamjrions of Cliristidiiiti/ (INiiD: }■._)[.<:'. A. Songs (1898). Hr- died in Detroit, Mich., Dec. 29, 1902.

FARNAM, Charles Henry, educator, was born in New Haven. Conn., Sept. 12, 1846; son of Henry and Ann Sophia (Whitman) Farnam. He was graduated from Yale in 1868 and from Columbia law school in 1871. He was assistant in archaeology at Yale, 1877-91. He published Ilistiiry iif Juhti Whitman and His Dcscendanls (1887).

FARNAM, Henry, engineer, was born in Scipio, N.Y., Nov. 9, 1803; son of Jeffrey A. and Mercy (Tracy) Farnam. He attended and after- ward taught the district school and prepared himself for the profession of civil engineer. In 1821 lie was one of a party making surveys for the western portions of the Erie canal. He re- moved to Connecticut in 1825 to become assistant engineer on the Farmington canal, and was made chief engineer in 1837, holding the position as long as the canal was in operation. In 1847-50 he built the canal railroad which was substituted for the Farmington waterway, and in 1850. with Joseph E. Sheffield, he contracted to build the unfinished portion of the Michigan southern rail- road from Hillsdale to Chicago, completing in 1852 the first line entering Chicago from the east.