Elihu Thomson
| Elihu Thomson | |
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| Born |
March 29, 1853 Manchester, England |
| Died | March 13, 1937 (aged 83) Swampscott, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Residence | United States |
| Nationality | British, American |
| Fields | Electrical engineering |
| Alma mater | Yale (Honorary M.A., 1890), Tufts (Honorary Ph.D., 1892), Harvard (Honorary, D.Sc., 1899) |
| Notable awards | |
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Elihu Thomson (March 29, 1853 – March 13, 1937) was an English-born American engineer and inventor who was instrumental in the founding of major electrical companies in the United States, the United Kingdom and France.
He was born in Manchester (England) on March 29, 1853, but his family moved to Philadelphia in 1858. Thomson attended Central High School in Philadelphia and graduated in 1870. Thomson took a teaching position at Central, and in 1876, at the age of twenty-three, held the Chair of Chemistry. In 1880, he left Central to pursue research in the emerging field of electrical engineering.
With Edwin J. Houston, a former teacher and later colleague of Thomson's at Central High School, Thomson founded the Thomson-Houston Electric Company. Notable inventions created by Thomson during this period include an arc-lighting system, an automatically regulated three-coil dynamo, a magnetic lightning arrester, and a local power transformer. In 1892 the Thomson-Houston Electric Company merged with the Edison General Electric Company to become the General Electric Company.
The historian Thomas P. Hughes writes that Thomson "displayed methodological characteristics in the workshop and the laboratory as [an] inventor and in the business world as [an] entrepreneur. He also chose to solve problems in the rapidly expanding field of electric light and power." Thomson's name is further commemorated by the British Thomson-Houston Company (BTH), and the French companies Thomson and Alstom.
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