Slater Lewis

Joseph Slater Lewis (4 June 1852 – 27 July 1901) was a British engineer, inventor, business manager, and early author on management and accounting, known for his pioneering work on cost accounting.

Lewis's early life was spent largely in Helsby, Cheshire at the Rake House, where he was born. After attending a private school at Nantwich, he received further education at the Mechanics' Institutes in Manchester. Lewis was apprentice at a land agent and surveyor, named George Slater, in Northwich from 1868 to 1872. In his younger years he had been particularly interested in agriculture and had been secretary to the Wirral and Birkenhead Agricultural Society. In the 1870s he was working as a coal trader in Malpas, and turned his attention to mechanical engineering and electricity.

In 1879 in Helsby Lewis started his own company in electrical engineering. The next year he invented and patented a self-binding insulator for electric telegraph wire, which he started to manufacture. This device got adopted across Europe and in the United States. After he had travelled to the United States to sell his American rights, he extended his company's work into other branches of electrical engineering, then merged with a neighbouring company to form the Telegraph Manufacturing Co., Limited, where for some years he was managing director.

In 1892 Lewis became manager of the electrical engineering company W.T. Goolden & Co. in London, which specialised in mining machinery. After two years, in 1894, he joined the rolling mills company P. R. Jackson & Co., to start up an electrical engineering department, eventually becoming general manager of the entire company. In 1900 he became director of the Brush Electrical Engineering Company, where Emile Garcke had been managing director since 1891. In the summer of 1901 he died suddenly from an attack of apoplexy.

Lewis was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Electrical Engineers. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1898 elected a member of the Iron and Steel Institute.

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