INVENTORS HALL OF FAME
Farmer
Patent No. 8,920 Improvement in Electromagnetic Alarm-Bells
Inventor and manufacturer Moses Farmer pioneered the practical application of electricity, using it to drive numerous inventions, including the first electric fire-alarm system and the "self-exciting" dynamo.
Born in Boscawn, New Hampshire in 1820, Farmer attended Dartmouth College. After graduating in 1840, he and William Channing began working on an electric striking apparatus for a fire alarm service. The system had a signaling mechanism that triggered a special water motor that drove the electric dynamo. Their alarm system was an immediate success, following the system's installation in Boston in 1851, the first electric fire-alarm system in the United States.
Farmer's interest led him to invent an incandescent electrical lamp in 1859 with a platinum wire filament supplied by a wet-cell battery. Improving on the design to ensure practicality and application, Farmer conceived and patented the "self-exciting" dynamo. One dynamo lit a private residence with forty incandescent lamps arranged in multiple series.
Farmer continued to expand the capabilities of electricity for the remainder of his life, becoming an electrician at the United States Torpedo Station in Rhode Island in 1868. He later served as a consulting electrician for the United Sates Electric Lighting Company of New York.
Moses Farmer died on May 25, 1893.
The above information was supplied by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc., Room 1D01-Crystal Plaza 3, 2021 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22202. Videotapes and printed materials are currently available. For more information, visit the Foundation's web site at:: http://www.invent.org
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