#charles brush

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Alternative Energy, 1881 style

Chillicothe Independent, Volume 6, Number 3, 22 October 1881

Solar Power in 1884

Today, an idea, long before its time. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make o

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Charles F. Brush, Sr. and the origins of Planned Parenthood

This semester we performed a quality check on our first mass digitization project; The Charles F. Brush Sr. Papers.  Special Collections student assistant, Charlie Zoller, conducted the review and along the way became acquainted with many interesting facts about Brush, a wealthy Cleveland inventor, business owner and philanthropist.  

In his notes below, Charlie highlights Brush’s interest in overpopulation and chose to illustrate this post with a letter from Juliet Rublee, an early birth control advocate, to Brush regarding his support of her views.

After the death of Charles F. Brush, Jr. in 1927, he established the Brush Foundation to help curb overpopulation, which he viewed to be the greatest threat to humanity:

“In my opinion the most urgent problem confronting the world today is the rapid increase of population which threatens to overcrowd the earth…  and threaten civilization itself.”

Brush endowed his foundation with $500,000, ($7,000,000 today.) This allowed Planned Parenthood and similar institutions to take hold in Cleveland from the 1930s onward. 

[online source:  http://digital.case.edu/concern/texts/ksl:spcbru00365 Brush ]

For more information about Charles Brush and his involvement in the early Pro choice movement check out these items in our online collection:

About the Publicity of the Brush foundation: http://digital.case.edu/concern/texts/ksl:spcbru00238

About Charles’s reaction to the Brush Foundations early days: http://digital.case.edu/concern/texts/ksl:spcbru00178

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Charles F. Brush really stepped out of his cottage one day, felt the wind blow on his face, and thought ‘hmm, I bet I could power a city with that.”

Fucking genius.

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Street illuminated by Charles Brush's arc lighting system, circa 1880s.

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On this day in 1880 the first electric streetlights in New York City lit up a stretch of Broadway Avenue, an area that would become known as "The Great White Way." Fifteen carbon arc lights were installed by Charles Brush and his Brush Electric Light Company, lighting up Broadway from 14th to 34th Streets — from lower Union Square to the fashionable Delmonico's restaurant on Madison Square.

Charles Brush had built his first arc lights back in high school, and then spent years working to refine them. Arc lights were the first effective electric lights, replacing gas and oil, and they were named because the light was produced by a current traveling between two electrodes. The scientist Sir Humphry Davy had first demonstrated arc lights back in 1802, but it took decades of experimenting before arc lighting was practical for commercial use. Besides an improved light, Brush designed a generator that had enough power and efficiency to make arc lights work as streetlights.

On this day in 1880, the lights were all installed and ready for lighting at the designated time of 5:30 p.m. The lamps were installed on tall iron posts, twice as tall as the old coal-powered lamps they were replacing. A crowd had gathered at the generating station at 25th Street to watch a steam engineer turn the wheel that would power the generator. At 5:27 the order was given, and the street flared into light, illuminating thousands of Christmas shoppers. The New York Times covered the story for the next day's paper, and the reporter wrote: "At the word, Engineer McGrath grasped the small wheel lever, gave it a twist, and almost instantaneously the bright white jets along Broadway began to flame out like stars emerging from the darkness. [...] A pair of white horses attached to an elegant private carriage outside of Tiffany's was illuminated with a degree of brilliancy beyond which, contrasted with the deep black outline beyond, formed a picture. The great white outlines of the marble stores, the mazes of wires overhead, the throng of moving vehicles, were all brought out with an accuracy and exactness that left little to be desired."

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2013/12/20

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Charles Brush dynamo