[Newspaper]
Publication: The Times
Philadelphia, PA, United States
no. 5730, p. 4, col. 7
DAVID BROOKS DEAD,
The WeII-Known Electrical Expert fine-climbs to Pneumonia.
David Brooks. The well-known electrician and inventor, died at his home OD Emit Washington lane, Germantown. on Saturday evening. Mr, Brooks bad been ill with pneumonia, but the illness was not regarded as threatening until two days before his death. Mr. Brooks retained his mental faculties and grasp of affairs up to the end, and dictated business letters on the morning that he died. He was in the 72d year of his age and his wife and five children survive him. Of the latter one son is engaged in business in this city, another lives in Brooklyn, and the daughters are respectively the wives of J. L. Bell, Assistant Postmaster General; Edward Troth, a merchant of this city, H. S. Snow, a New York lawyer.
The funeral will take place at his home in Germantown next Thursday and the burial will be at Cheshire, Conn.
Mr. Brooks was a native of Brooksdale, Conn. While yet a young man he was an instructor of mathematics in the United States navy, but left the service in 1845 to engage it, electrical enterprises which had early enlisted his close attention. He was associated with Morris in his experiments and was one of those present when the first telegraph poles were put up in Philadelphia in front of the old Nelson House, at Broad and Willow streets. He was connected with the putting in operation of the first commercial telegraph line in the United States. It was he. tween Lancaster and Harrisburg, and Mr. Brooks received the first message transmitted over it, the first telegraphic dispatch in fact ever sent in Pennsylvania.
In 1846 he constructed the Atlantic and Ohio Company's line front Philadelphia to Pittsburg, and sent the first message over it. A year later he originated the first "repeater," based upon the Morse idea of the second or local circuit. He was appointed by the government in 1850 as an expert to give a written description of the Morse and Bains systems of telegraphy. He went to Mexico in 1851 and built the first line of telegraph in that country between the City of Mexico and Vera Cruz; later he built the Pennsylvania Railroad's telegraph line between this city and Pittsburg, and in 1854 he became superintendent and manager of the Atlantic and Ohio company. When the latter company was absorbed by the Western Union in 1862 he was made district superintendent at Philadelphia, and held the position until 1867, when he resigned to devote himself exclusively to his electrical experiments. He was the inventor of the insulator that bears his name, and in recent years has devoted his attention to underground telegraphs. He was the president of two underground telegraph companies and a director in a third. Among his more important inventions were the metallic circuit for the long distance telephone, whereby the inductance is greatly lessened, and the use of paraffine as an insulator.
