Peter Cooper

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Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper (born February 12, 1791 in New York City , †  April 4, 1883 ) was an American industrialist , inventor and philanthropist .

Live and act

Cooper was the son of Dutch immigrants, only went to school for a short time and was integrated into the domestic hat production. He learned the profession of coach builder. However, his manual skills soon allowed him to create something new. In the following years he owned a furniture factory and a grocery store. In 1828 he founded a successful company to manufacture glue and isinglass . He patented this process in 1830 and became rich with it. In 1813 he married Sarah Bedell. They had six children, but only Edward Cooper the future Mayor of New York City and Sarah Amelia survived. Sarah married Abram Hewitt .

As an autodidact, Cooper went down in the history of railroad construction when he designed the first American locomotive , the Tom Thumb , in 1830 , which he had manufactured in his Canton ironworks near Baltimore. The locomotive allowed a radius of curvature of less than 100 feet and could therefore be used successfully on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad .

In 1840 he was in the City Council elected from New York. He particularly distinguished himself through the fight against corruption.

In 1845 he filed the first US patent for the manufacture of gelatine . The product soon became known across the country under the trade name Jell-O (German: Jelly pudding). In the same year he opened a rolling mill for the production of steel beams in Trenton, New Jersey . The first standardized steel girders for building construction were also rolled there.

With four other people he founded the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company . In 1858, together with Samuel Morse , he succeeded in deploying the first transatlantic cable, thus enabling fast communications between the USA and Europe.

Cooper was socially committed and funded several projects for the education of the poor. In 1859 he founded the Cooper Union for Advances in Science and Art .

In 1876 , Cooper took part in the US presidency elections, where he stood without a chance for the United States Greenback Party , which had set itself the goal of turning on the money press in order to make it easier for farmers and other poor sections of the population to repay loans. He only got 1 percent of the vote.

Cooper died on April 4, 1883 at the age of 92 and was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Publications

literature

Web links

Commons : Peter Cooper  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sarah Amelia Cooper-Hewitt
  2. ↑ patent US4084 : Improvement in the Preparation of Portable gelatin. Published June 20, 1845 . ‌
  3. ↑ In 1854, Frederick Gisborne went to New York where he met with Cyrus W. Field and Peter Cooper, among others, who became interested in the project ( Memento of the original from October 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . A new company, The New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company was formed replacing the Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company in the project. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / visitnewfoundland.ca
personal data
SURNAME Cooper, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American industrialist, inventor, and philanthropist
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1791
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH April 4, 1883