Franklin Leonard Pope

Franklin Leonard Pope (born December 2, 1840 in Great Barrington , Massachusetts , † October 13, 1895 ibid) was an American electrical engineer, inventor and specialist author.

Pope was a well-known man in the early days of the electrical industry in the USA. He was at times friends with Thomas Alva Edison and is considered a mentor and pioneer for Edison's later rise as an inventor-entrepreneur. Pope and Edison are believed to have been the first to earn the Electrical Engineer job title . A specialist article by Franklin Pope that is now considered untenable is one of the causes of the Göbel legend .

Professional career

Pope took a position as a draftsman with The Scientific American in 1860 at the age of 20 . The magazine reported extensively on newly issued patents, which enabled Pope to gain knowledge of patents and patent law.

In 1862 he moved to a position as a telegraph operator. During civil war riots, he showed particular skill in restoring the destroyed telegraph line from New York to Boston. His drawing skills and the precise preparation of drawings of the technical equipment were the basis for this. Electrical circuit diagrams were not common back then; Pope's performing arts was an equivalent for this. The success established its reputation in the industry.

In 1864 the telegraph company The Western Union Telegraph Company commissioned Pope to lead a reconnaissance team to find a route to build a telegraph line between New Westminster near Vancouver and the Yukon as part of a planned America-Russia-Europe line. On this expedition Pope made many drawings of the flora, fauna and geography of the region. Mount Pope in British Columbia, Canada is named after him. He climbed it for a better view of the area during the exploration expedition.

Back in New York, Pope worked as some sort of technical manager at the Gold and Stock Reporting Telegraph Co. , technically improving the telegraph for transmitting current gold prices to traders. He also continued his work as an illustrator for trade magazines and created the first edition of his work The Modern Practice of the Electric Telegraph , which later became a standard manual for the industry.

In 1869 Pope met the then destitute 22-year-old Thomas Alva Edison, got him a job and took him into his family. Thomas Alva Edison had previously worked as a telegraph operator and worked on improvements in telegraph technology. Pope started a company later that year involving Edison and James Ashley, publishers of the trade journal The Telegrapher . Pope and Edison were supposedly the first people to use the title Electrical Engineers in their company Pope, Edison & Co. and jointly acquired patents 102,320 and 103,924 for improved telegraphs with printing devices. Another printing telegraph developed by Edison and Pope should be especially suitable for use by private individuals or small companies without specialist staff. The American Printing Telegraph Co. was founded together with other partners for this market segment . The joint enterprise Pope, Edison & Co. was dissolved again at the end of 1870. At an unknown point in time, Pope and Edison had a personal rift, which Pope probably never dealt with. According to Edward Covington, Pope later often represented plaintiffs against Edison companies as a reviewer or advisor and put the inventive achievements ascribed to Edison into perspective. James Ashley, the third partner in the joint venture, also wrote disparaging articles about Edison's achievements and ended up not mentioning him at all in The Telegrapher for several years . In 1874 Edison sold the rights to a technology allegedly developed by him, with which one could transmit 4 messages simultaneously over a telegraph line, for the then unusual price of $ 30,000, some sources cite $ 100,000, to Jay Gould, a financial investor. In terms of today's purchasing power, this can be estimated in the millions of dollars. Perhaps Pope and Ashley saw themselves as co-creators of technology. However, the exact reason for Pope and Ashley's falling out with Edison is unknown.

In the 1870s, Pope acquired patents for electrical signal systems for railways, and he also continued his work as an illustrator and author of specialist books and articles.

In 1875 he became a patent expert for the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company and thus one of the first management consultants to specialize in this area. Later in his career, Pope became a highly paid respected expert in the United States in this field. He has worked for companies such as Postal Telegraph , Westinghouse, and American Bell Telephone . Activities as a court expert in patent matters were also included.

In the 1880s, Pope also took on the post of editor of The Electrical Engineer and was President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers from 1886 .

Franklin Leonard Pope died of an electric shock in his home town in 1895 at the age of 54 while trying to repair the electrical power supply he had designed for the town after a storm. The death of the renowned Pope in an electrical accident triggered activities to improve the safety of electrical systems in the US electrical industry.

Pope's role in the rise of Thomas Alva Edison

Pope's work as a talented draftsman brought him into contact with numerous companies in the electronics industry in the New York area and with specialist magazines that commissioned him to produce drawings for patent applications or for specialist articles. Pope and his friend at the time Edison thus had an abundance of information about the state of the art that was unusual for the period around 1870. Edison met several people who later organized the expansion of the Edison company financially and legally through Pope's contacts. Through Pope's intensive study of patent law and patenting problems, as well as his work for newspapers, Edison also learned how to use patents and the media to promote business goals. Pope was 7 years older than Edison and had versatile talents and a better education. He had already started a family and had taken on managerial roles and responsibilities throughout his career. Some Edison biographers suspect an influence on the development of Edison's personality.

When Edison met Pope in 1869, he was a penniless telegraph operator and job-hunter who was ignored by the newspapers. Pope is said to have given him 50 cents a day for a living. In 1871 Edison was able to start a family and buy a house. As early as 1874, he obviously had large financial resources, was well known in the telegraph industry, he was reported in trade magazines and financial investors observed his achievements in the field of telegraph technology. This significant development would hardly have happened without the meeting with Pope. James Ashley, who advertised Pope, Edison & Co., a company he was involved in, in his magazine The Telegrapher , contributed to Edison's increased profile during this period.

Pope's role in the creation of the Göbel legend

Pope published an article on January 25, 1893, as the cover story of The Electrical Engineer, entitled The Carbon Filament Lamp of 1859 — The Story of an Overlooked Invention . In this article, Pope Thomas Alva Edison denies the invention of the modern, permanently usable electric incandescent lamp with high-resistance carbon filament and attributes it to Heinrich Göbel , who was born in Germany and who , according to Pope, was said to have succeeded in finding the solution 20 years before Thomas Alva Edison. The information from the article by the renowned Franklin Pope has been copied from numerous other newspapers in the US and Europe. This article from January 1893 thus became the original journalistic source of the Göbel legend .

The article is now considered untenable. It is believed that the content was motivated by the unprocessed personal falling out with Edison. The article was also misinterpreted as a well-researched journalistic specialist article by later technology historians. This triggered a long-lasting misjudgment of Heinrich Göbel's role in the invention of light bulbs, especially in Germany. In 2006 the Deutsches Museum cited the article as a source for Göbel performance ascriptions.

Pope never withdrew his article, although doubts about Heinrich Göbel's achievements arose in other newspaper reports and in court proceedings as early as the year of publication. Edward Covington points out that in the second edition of his book Evolution of the Electric Incandescent Lamp , published in 1894, Pope did not mention Heinrich Göbel, whom he had proclaimed the inventor of the incandescent lamp a year earlier.

Individual evidence

Biographical information is taken from the published Pope biography on the telegraph-history.org website: Franklin Leonard Pope , accessed on December 1, 2008

↑ Mount Pope Provincial Park, History.Retrieved December 1, 2008
^ Frank Lewis Dyer, Thomas Commerford Martin: Edison, His Life and Inventions , Harper Brothers, 1929; Online edition at gutenberg.org
↑ Pope-Edison Patent 102320 "Printing Telegraph Instrument"
↑ Pope-Edison Patent 103924 "Printing Telegraph Instrument"
↑ with reference to The Papers of Thomas A. Edison - The Making of An Inventor - February 1847-June 1873 , Vol 1, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1989
^ The Papers of Thomas A. Edison - The Making of An Inventor Vol 1, 2, 3 and 4, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1989. This publication contains several references to the relationship between Pope, Ashley and Edison and theirs Behavior.
↑ The Edison Papers - Chronology 1847-1878, compare July 18, 1874 , accessed December 10, 2008
↑ Jay Gould wanted to take advantage of the fact that this technology could save telegraph companies an estimated $ 12 million in investments in new telegraph lines to bring several of these companies under his control. The so-called quadruplex technology and the power struggles of financial investors and telegraph companies triggered years of legal disputes, including over copyrights. It was one of the most economically important techniques at the time. The proceeds from the sale of the quadruplex telegraph technology were used by Edison to build his inventor laboratory in Menlo Park and thus to establish his activity as an inventor entrepreneur. Some sources cite $ 100,000 as the sales proceeds of the quadruplex technology at the time. Different information may be due to a combination of payment in securities and cash.
^ The Edison Papers. Chronology 1847-1878 , accessed December 6, 2008
^ Franklin Leonard Pope: The Carbon Filament Lamp of 1859 — The Story of an Overlooked Invention. In: The Electrical Engineer , Vol. XV, No. 247, January 25, 1893, p. 77
↑ Hans-Christian Rohde: The Göbel legend - the struggle for the invention of the light bulb. To Klampen, Springe 2007, ISBN 978-3-86674-006-8 , pp. 82-86
↑ Dietmar Moews: Munich criticism. In Neue Sinnlichkeit 54 (February 2006): 15–63, ISSN 1432-5268 (the author is the editor of Neue Sinnlichkeit , self-published)
^ Edward Covington: A Review of the Henry Goebel Defense. ( Memento from January 11, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Brief description of the patent processes with “Goebel defense”.

personal data
SURNAME	Pope, Franklin Leonard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Pope, Frankin L .; Pope, Frank L .; Pope, Frank Leonard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American electrical engineer, inventor and specialist author
DATE OF BIRTH	December 2, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH	Great Barrington , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH	October 13, 1895
Place of death	Great Barrington, Massachusetts

[1] Mount Pope Provincial Park, History.Retrieved December 1, 2008

[2] Frank Lewis Dyer, Thomas Commerford Martin: Edison, His Life and Inventions , Harper Brothers, 1929; Online edition at gutenberg.org

[3] Pope-Edison Patent 102320 "Printing Telegraph Instrument"

[4] Pope-Edison Patent 103924 "Printing Telegraph Instrument"

[5] with reference to The Papers of Thomas A. Edison - The Making of An Inventor - February 1847-June 1873 , Vol 1, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1989

[6] The Papers of Thomas A. Edison - The Making of An Inventor Vol 1, 2, 3 and 4, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1989. This publication contains several references to the relationship between Pope, Ashley and Edison and theirs Behavior.

[7] The Edison Papers - Chronology 1847-1878, compare July 18, 1874 , accessed December 10, 2008

[8] Jay Gould wanted to take advantage of the fact that this technology could save telegraph companies an estimated $ 12 million in investments in new telegraph lines to bring several of these companies under his control. The so-called quadruplex technology and the power struggles of financial investors and telegraph companies triggered years of legal disputes, including over copyrights. It was one of the most economically important techniques at the time. The proceeds from the sale of the quadruplex telegraph technology were used by Edison to build his inventor laboratory in Menlo Park and thus to establish his activity as an inventor entrepreneur. Some sources cite $ 100,000 as the sales proceeds of the quadruplex technology at the time. Different information may be due to a combination of payment in securities and cash.

[9] The Edison Papers. Chronology 1847-1878 , accessed December 6, 2008

[10] Franklin Leonard Pope: The Carbon Filament Lamp of 1859 — The Story of an Overlooked Invention. In: The Electrical Engineer , Vol. XV, No. 247, January 25, 1893, p. 77

[11] Hans-Christian Rohde: The Göbel legend - the struggle for the invention of the light bulb. To Klampen, Springe 2007, ISBN 978-3-86674-006-8 , pp. 82-86

[12] Dietmar Moews: Munich criticism. In Neue Sinnlichkeit 54 (February 2006): 15–63, ISSN 1432-5268 (the author is the editor of Neue Sinnlichkeit , self-published)

[13] Edward Covington: A Review of the Henry Goebel Defense. ( Memento from January 11, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Brief description of the patent processes with “Goebel defense”.