William Arnold AnthonyBorn 17 Nov 1835; died 29 May 1908 at age 72.American physicist and electrical engineer who initiated and developed one of the first courses in electrical engineering in the U.S. (1883), while teaching in the Physics Department at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. During 1872-75, Anthony, with the aid of student George Moler, built the first American Gramme dynamo for direct current, used to power arc lamps that lighted the Cornell campus, the first American electrical outdoor-lighting system. Anthony also built a mammoth tangent galvanometer, a device which utilized the earth's magnetic field for the measurement of current. He designed the dynamo for first underground electricity distributing system. Anthony contributed to development of gas-filled electric lamps. |
