Joseph Thomas Murray

Joseph Thomas Murray

Joseph Thomas Murray (born May 12, 1834 in Salem , Massachusetts , † January 27, 1907 in Springfield , Massachusetts) was an American manufacturer and inventor.

Live and act

Joseph Thomas Murray was a son of the English mathematician and stenographer James Mason Murray (1787-1880). He and his family moved to Newark in 1844 . When he was eleven he wanted to become a seaman and was taken by his uncle on his sailing trip to Africa. Due to the harassment of his uncle, the young Murray already towered at the first opportunity and lived with the locals in Benin for six months . There he witnessed the effects of slavery . Murray became a believer in abolitionism . He was in contact with John Greenleaf Whittier and the Mayor of Lynn James Needham Buffum (1807-1887), who also fought against slavery. Together with William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips , he had connections to the informal network Underground Railroad , which helped slaves fleeing the southern states to the north. Murray was once arrested by US Marshal Charles Devens while smuggling a black man through Boston .

Murray began his apprenticeship in 1848 at Everett Machinery Works in Lawrence , Massachusetts, where he learned the mechanic trade. For two years he worked as a postmaster in Danvers . Murray served in the 35th Massachusetts Regiment during the American Civil War .

Murray was with that of the October 1, 1870 Thomas Edison and George Harrington founded company American Telegraph Works hired, restored the telegraphic. Together with Edison he founded the small company Murray and Company in February 1872 , which also produced devices for telegraphy . When Newark Telegraph Works , founded by Edison and William Unger in February 1870 , which traded under the name Edison and Unger after moving to Newarker Ward Street in May 1871, ceased operations on July 1, 1873, took over between July and October Edison and Murray founded most of the staff in 1873 . Another business partnership between Edison and Murray and the inventor Jarvis Bonestreet Edson (1911-1845) existed in the Domestic Telegraph Company founded on April 2, 1874 . When Edison decided in the spring of 1875 to concentrate entirely on his inventiveness, Edison and Murray was formally dissolved on July 13, 1875. Edison continued his experiments in the building on Ward Street until he moved to Menlo Park .

Joseph Thomas Murray died in 1907 in his daughter's house May Murray to pneumonia .

Patents

• JT Murray: Journal Bearing . U.S. Patent 413081, October 15, 1889, PDF .
• JT Murray: Lamp Wick . U.S. Patent 519795, May 15, 1894, PDF .

proof

literature

• Paul Israel: Edison: A Life of Invention . Wiley, 1998, ISBN 978-0-471-52942-2 , pp. 77, 100-101, 107, 118, 135.
• The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States . Volume 9, White, New York 1899, p. 539.
• Joseph T. Murray Dead. Noted Inventor Was Once a Partner of Thomas A. Edison . In: Special to The New York Times . January 28, 1907, p. 7, (online) .
• Electrical World , Vol. 49, Feb. 2, 1907, p. 283.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Joseph Thomas Murray, Thomas Alva Edison: Agreements and Contract . In: Document File Series - 1875 , July 13, 1875, TAED D7514H .