David Brooks Obituary

BUSY BRAIN AT REST.

Electrician and Inventor David Brooks Passes Away.

NEW YORK, June 2 . - David Brooks, the well-known electrician and inventor, died at his home in Germantown, Penn., Late on Saturday night. Mr. Brooks had been ill with pneumonia, but his illness was not regarded as threatening until two days before his death. He was in his 72d year.

The funeral will take place tomorrow, and the burial will be at Cheshire, Conn.

Mr. Brooks was associated with Prof. Morse in his experiments, and was one of those present when the first telegraph poles were put up in Philadelphia.

He was connected with the putting in operation of the first commercial telegraph line in the United States. It was between Lancaster and Harrisburg, and Mr. Brooks received the first message transmitted over it - the first telegraphic message, in fact, ever sent in Pennsylvania.

In 1846 he constructed the Atlantic & Ohio Company's line from 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 secondary or "local" circuit.

He was appointed by the government in 1850 as an expert to give a written description of the Morse and the Bain 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 telegraph line between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, and in 1851 he became superintendent and manager of the Atlantic & 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 electrical experiments.

He was the inventor of the insulator that bears his name, and in recent years has devoted his attention to underground telegraph. 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 induction is greatly lessened, and the use of paraffine [sic] paraffin as an insulator.