Charles Francis Brush was born on March 17, 1849, and died on June 15, 1929. He was an American engineer, inventor, business owner, and someone who helped others through charitable work.

Biography

Charles Brush was born in Euclid Township, Ohio, to Isaac Elbert Brush and Delia Williams Phillips. Isaac Brush was a distant cousin of Delia on her Phillips family side. Through Delia, Isaac was a descendant of Reverend George Phillips, who settled in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1630. Delia was also a descendant of Henry Wisner, who served in the First and Second Continental Congresses during the American Revolution, as well as Thomas Cornell, a settler, and the Winthrop family.

Brush grew up on a farm about 10 miles from downtown Cleveland. He was deeply interested in science, especially the work of Humphry Davy with arc light. At age 12, he built simple electrical devices, like a static electricity machine, in a workshop on his family’s farm. He attended Central High School in Cleveland, where he created his first arc light and graduated with honors in 1867. His speech at graduation was about the "Conservation of Force." He studied mining engineering at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1869 (at that time, electrical engineering was not a separate major). While at Michigan, he was part of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He earned his PhD from Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) in 1880.

In 1876, Brush got support from the Wetting Supply Company in Cleveland to design an electrical generator, called a "dynamo," for powering arc lights. He started with a design by Zénobe Gramme but later created a different version that used a ring armature idea from Antonio Pacinotti. In his patent, Brush explained that existing generators were too large, heavy, and costly, and they wasted mechanical power. After testing, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia said Brush’s design was better because it was simpler and easier to maintain.

Over the next years, Brush improved his arc light designs and sold systems to cities for public lighting. He even installed a system at Philadelphia’s Wanamaker’s Grand Depot. His lights were easier to maintain, had automatic features, and lasted twice as long as Yablochkov candles. His generators were reliable and automatically adjusted voltage when needed. By 1881, cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Montreal, Buffalo, San Francisco, and Cleveland used Brush’s arc light systems, which provided light for many years.

The San Francisco system was the first example of a utility selling electricity from a central plant to multiple customers through power lines. The California Electric Light Company (now PG&E) bought two generators from Brush’s company in 1879 and later added more. Customers paid $10 per lamp per six-day week for light from sunset to midnight. Brush’s system lit Broadway in New York two years before Edison’s Pearl Street Station began lighting the city. By 1893, 1,500 arc lights illuminated New York streets.

In 1879, the Anglo-American Brush Electric Light Corporation, using Brush’s inventions, was formed in London, England. The company later moved to Loughborough and became the Brush Electrical Engineering Company Limited.

In 1880, Brush started the Brush Electric Company in the United States. Though successful, it faced competition from Thomson-Houston Electric Company, whose arc lights could be turned off individually, and from Edison, whose incandescent lights had a soft glow, did not flicker, and were cheaper to maintain. In 1882, Brush’s company provided equipment for a hydroelectric power plant at St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, one of the first in the U.S. Thomson-Houston bought Brush’s company in 1889, and it later merged to form General Electric in 1891. After selling his shares, Brush left the electric industry.

In 1884, Brush built a mansion on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, where he displayed many of his inventions. He lived there with his family and used a private laboratory in the basement. In 1888, he powered the home with the world’s first automatically operated wind turbine generator, which charged 12 batteries. This made it the first home in Cleveland with electricity. The turbine worked perfectly for 20 years. In 1926, Brush created the first piezo-electric featherweight stylus.

In 1898, Brush claimed to have discovered a new gas he called "etherion," which was 10,000 times lighter than hydrogen and conducted heat 20 times faster. In 1900, Marian Smoluchowski identified the gas as water vapor.

Between 1910 and 1929, Brush wrote several papers about his version of a kinetic theory of gravitation, based on electromagnetic waves.

He died on June 15, 1929, in Cleveland, Ohio, and was buried at Lake View Cemetery there.

Legacy

• Charles F. Brush High School in Lyndhurst, Ohio is named in honor of Charles F. Brush. The school's sports teams and other groups are called the "Arcs," named after Brush's invention of the electric lamp. The school's colors are brown and gold.
• Charles F. Brush Preparatory High School in Dansha, Ethiopia opened in 2018. The school was built with help from Brush alumni and the Tigray Development Association.
• Metro Parks, Serving Summit County's Furnace Run Metro Park in Richfield, Ohio received a land donation from the family of Charles F. Brush. The donated land is called Brushwood.
• The USS Brush (DD-745), which served from 1943 to 1969, was named after Charles F. Brush. The ship was later renamed Hsiang Yang and served in Taiwan until it was scrapped in 1993. The ship was sponsored by Brush's great-granddaughter.

Honors

• Received the Rumford Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1899
• Awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1881
• Was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1910
• Received the Edison Medal in 1913
• Was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1917
• Received the Franklin Medal
• Was a Fellow of the North British Academy of Arts

Patents

• Generator (Magneto Electric Machine) 1877 U.S. patent 189,997
• Arc light (automatic control of spark gap) 1878 U.S. patent 203,411
• Arc light (double-carbon lamp control system) 1879 U.S. patent 219,208
• Arc light (Automatic shut-off system for electric lights or motors) 1880 U.S. patent 234,456
• Arc light (improved regulator for the carbon arc) 1885 U.S. patent 312,184
• Patents granted to Charles F. Brush relating to electric machinery and apparatus, 1878–1894 available via Internet Archive