David Brooks

DAVID BROOKS.

An Eminent Electrician Dies in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, Pa., May 31.

David Brooks, the well known electrician, died at his home in this city yesterday afternoon of pneumonia in the 72nd year of his age.

David Brooks has for nearly half a century been one of the best known electricians of this country. He was born in Cheshire, Conn., in 1820. The town was settled by his ancestors nearly two centuries before. Leaving college in 1840, Mr. Brooks entered the navy as an instructor in mathematics. He was, however, deeply interested in Professor Morse's telegraph, then just invented, and in 1845 he left the navy to engage actively in the development of the telegraph. During that year he and James D. Reid constructed the first telegraph line for commercial purposes built in the country. This was between Lancaster and Harrisburg, Penn., and Mr. Brooks received the first message over it. In 1840 he built the first line between Philadelphia and Pittsburg. In the following year he invented "repeaters," which were first used in telegraphing Henry Clay's Lexington speech on the Mexican war to the New York dailies. The report of the speech was carried from Lexington, Ky., to Cincinnati by pony express, and thence telegraphed. This achievement first brought David Brooks into public prominence. In 1850 he was appointed expert by the United States court to report upon the Morse system of telegraphing in the litigation then in progress. In 1851 he built the first lines of telegraph constructed in Mexico, from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico. From 1852 to 1854 he had charge of the Pennsylvania railroad telegraph construction and operation at Pittsburg. While thus engaged Andrew Carnegie, the well known millionaire, came to him seeking employment and was given a position as messenger boy at $2.50 a week. Mr. Carnegie has frequently said that Mr. Brooks gave him his first start in life. From 1854 to 1867 David Brooks was actively engaged in the service of the great telegraph companies, chiefly the Western union. He was for years closely associated with the late General Anson Stager of Chicago, for many years vice president of the Western union. He resigned from the company's service in 1867, and since that time has devoted himself to invention and to the extension and introduction of his many improvements for telegraph and telephone purposes. In 1873 General Grant appointed him United States commissioner to the Vienna exhibition. Among the best known of Mr. Brooks' electrical inventions are line insulators, insulated transformers, paraffins, resin oil, and general liquid insulation, and the invention and development of underground conductors, widely used both in this country and in Europe. By his invention of the metallic circuit, or continuous wire, for long distance telephoning, he first made the long distance telephone of practical utility. Mr. Brooks was one of the founders of the Union league club in Philadelphia during the war time, and has for many years been a leading citizen there. In Great Britain and on the continent of Europe he ranks as one of the most eminent of American electricians. He leaves a wife, two sons and three daughters. The oldest of the latter is the wife of Second Assistant Postmaster General J. Lowrie Bell, and the youngest is Mrs. Henry Sanger Snow of this city.