History of Jefferson, (Coos County) New Hampshire United States of America

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Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, scientist and inventor, was born at Jefferson, N.H., Aug. 20, 1832; son of Clovis and Alpha (Green) Lowe, and grandson of Thomas and Lydia Green of Berlin Falls, N.H. In early life he studied chemistry, with particular reference to its relation to gas and metallurgy. In 1855 he was married in New York city to Leontine A. Gachon of Paris, France. In 1856 he began the study of air currents, and as an aid to his investigations he constructed balloons of various sizes. In 1858-59 he secured instruments from the government, and invented other instruments for investigating upper air current, among these being an altimeter, for quickly measuring latitude and longitude without a horizon. In 1859-60 he built an a?rostat 150 feet in perpendicular diameter, with a transverse diameter of 104 feet, lifting more than 16 tons, including instruments, a car for carrying crew, and a Francis metallic life boat, 30 feet long, 7-foot beam, and rigged. The trial trip of this monster machine was made in the summer of 1860, when a burden of 8 tons was carried from Point Breeze, Philadelphia, to Atlantic City, N.J. Preparatory to making a trip across the ocean, a long-distance land trip was made on April 20, 1861, under the auspices of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia and the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, when the distance of more than 800 miles from Cincinnati, Ohio, to near the coast of South Carolina was covered in nine hours. Immediately after this, he entered the government service as chief of the a?ronautic corps, which he organized, rendering valuable service by his observations in nearly all the battles of the Army of the Potomac, 1861-63. During the siege of Yorktown, the day before the evacuation, the enemy trained all its guns in the fort upon the balloon which was in the air from early morning until nightfall. Mr. Lowe, by continuing his observations during the night, discovered that the enemy were apparently evacuating the forts, and this information, confirmed by General Heintzelman, who made an observation from the balloon, enabled McClellan to overtake the enemy at Williamsburg. His observations before Richmond, and especially previous to and during the battle of Fair Oaks, furnished continual reports of the movements of the enemy. While on the Peninsula in 1862, he invented the system of signals from a high altitude to the commander of the field batteries, thus enabling the gunners to locate objects beyond their vision. This system was also extensively used in clearing the blockades at Island No. 10 on the Mississippi river. After the close of the war he used his balloons in instructing commissions sent from various countries, and finally sold the entire equipment to the Brazilian government, who used it effectively in their war with Paraguay. In 1865 he invented the compression ice machine, and was the first to make artificial ice an article of commerce. He established the first cold storage for the preservation of meats, fruits and other food supplies, and was the first to equip a steamship with cold storage rooms which system made possible the great packing houses that followed his introduction of cold storage. He engaged in building regenerative metallurgical furnaces for the use of gas and petroleum as fuel, 1869-72. He invented and built in 1873-75 the first water-gas machinery, which revolutionized the gas industry of the world. He was awarded by the Franklin Institute a diploma and three medals for the manufacture and utilization of water-gas and appliances connected therewith, in 1885, one of these medals being the highest that had ever been awarded by the Institute. In 1888 he removed to California and built in Los Angeles the first heavy crude oil water-gas apparatus, afterward extensively used wherever heavy oils abound. In 1891-94 he built the Mount Lowe a?rial railway, projected a continuation of the road from the mountain top to the next peak by a suspended cable, and established the Lowe observatory in the Sierra Madre. He invented and put into operation, 1897-1901, the new Lowe coke oven system, for simultaneously producing gas and metallurgical coke.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Jefferson, (Coos County) New Hampshire

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