Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 07.djvu/57

 LOWE

LOWE

and invented other instruments for investigating upper air currents, among these being an alti- meter, for quickly measuring latitude and longi- tude without a horizon. In 1859-60 he built an aerostat 150 feet in perpendicular diameter, with

a transverse diameter of 104 feet, lifting more than 16 tons, in- cluding instruments, a car for carrying crew, and a Francis metallic life boat, 30 feet long, 7-foot beam, and scliooner- rigged. The trial trip of this monster ma- chine was made in the summer of 1860, when a burden of 8 tons was carried from Point Breeze, Phila- delphia, to Atlantic City, N.J. Preparatory to making a trip across the ocean, a long-distance land trip was made on April 20, 1861, under the auspices of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia and the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, when the distance of more than 800 miles from Cincin- nati, Ohio, to near the coast of South Carolina was covered in nine hours. Immediately after this, he entered the government service as chief of the aeronautic corps, which he organized, rendering valuable service by his observations in nearly all the battles of the Army of the Potomac, 1861-63. During the siege of Yorktown, the day before the evacuation, the enemy trained all its guns in the fort upon the balloon which was in the air from early morning until nightfall. Mr. Lowe, by continuing his observations during the night, discovered that the enemy were appa- rently evacuating the forts, and this information, confirmed by General Heintzelman, who made an observation from the balloon, enabled McClellan to overtake the enemy at Williamsburg. His observations before Richmond, and especially previous to and during the battle of Fair Oaks, furnished continual reports of the movements of the enemy. While on the Peninsula in 1862, he invented the system of signals from a high alti- tude to the commander of the field batteries, thus enabling the gunners to locate objects beyond their vision. This system was also extensively used in clearing the blockades at Island No. 10 on the Mississippi river. After the close of the war he used his balloons in instructing commissions sent from various countries, and finally sold the entire equipment to the Brazilian government, who used it effectively in their war with Paraguay. In 1865 he invented the compression ice machine,

and was the first to make artificial ice an article of commerce. He established the first cold storage for the preservation of meats, fruits and other food supplies, and was the first to equip a steamship with cold storage rooms which sys- tem made possible the great packing houses that followed his introduction of cold storage. He engaged in building regenerative metallurgical furnances for the use of gas and petroleum as fuel, 1869-72. He invented and built in 1873-75 the first water-gas machinery, which revolution- ized the gas industry of the world. He was awarded by the Franklin Institute a diploma and three medals for the manufacture and utilization of water-gas and appliances connected therewith, in 1885, one of these medale being the highest that had ever been awarded by the Institute. In 1888 he removed to California and built in Los Angeles the first heavy crude oil water-gas ap- paratus, afterward extensively used wherever heavy oils abound. In 1891-94 he built the Mount Lowe aerial railway, projected a continua- tion of the road from the mountain top to the next peak by a suspended cable, and established the Lowe observatory in the Sierra Madre. He in- vented and put into operation, 1897-1901, the new Lowe coke oven system, for simultaneously pro- ducing gas and metallurgical coke.

LOWE, William ilanning, representative, was born in Huntsville, Ala., Jan. 16, 1842; son of Gen. Bartley M. and Sarah Sophia (Manning) Lowe, and grandson of Dr. James and Sophia (Thompson) Manning. He attended school at Florence, Ala.; was graduated at the law depart- ment of the University of Virginia in 1860, and was attending the law department of the Uni- versity of Virginia in 1861 when he entered the Confederate army as a private in the 4th Ala- bama infantry. He was seriously wounded at the first battle of Manassas; was appointed on the staff of Governor John G. Shorter with the rank of colonel, and engaged in organizing companies for the field. He was appointed cap- tain on Gen. Jonas M. Withers's staff, serving through the Kentucky campaign and being wounded before Murfreesboro, Tenn. He was afterward transferred to Gen. J. H. Clanton's staff and served with him in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee until captured at the battle of Franklin. He was imprisoned at Camp Chase and at Fort Delaware until after the close of the war, and tlien returned to Huntsville, Ala. He was solicitor of the 5th judicial circuit of Alabama, 1865-68; represented Madison county in the Alabama legislature in 1870; and was a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1875. He was a representative from the eighth Alabama district in the 46th congress. 1879-81. He died in Huntsville, Ala., Oct. 12, 1881.