Peter Cooper Hewitt

Peter Cooper Hewitt (May 5, 1861 – August 25, 1921) was an American electrical engineer and inventor, who invented the first mercury-vapor lamp in 1901. Hewitt was issued U.S. Patent 682,692 on September 17, 1901. In 1903, Hewitt created an improved version that possessed higher color qualities which eventually found widespread industrial use.

Hewitt was born in New York City, the son of New York City Mayor Abram Hewitt and the grandson of industrialist Peter Cooper. He was educated at the Stevens Institute of Technology and the Columbia University School of Mines.

In 1901 he invented and patented a mercury-vapor lamp; a gas-discharge lamp that used mercury vapor produced by passing current through liquid mercury.His first lamps had to be started by tilting the tube to make contact between the two electrodes and the liquid mercury; later he developed the inductive electrical ballast to start the tube.The efficiency was much higher than that of incandescent lamps, but the emitted light was of a bluish-green unpleasant color, which limited its practical use to specific professional areas, like photography, where the color was not an issue at a time where films were black and white. For space lighting use, the lamp was frequently augmented by a standard incandescent lamp.The two together provided a more acceptable color.Later. in the 1930s. a fluorescent coating (phosphor) was added to the inside of the tube at General Electric, which produced more pleasing white light when it absorbed the ultraviolet light from the mercury.This was the fluorescent lamp, which is now one of the most widely used lamps in the world.

In 1902 Hewitt developed the mercury arc rectifier, the first rectifier that could convert alternating current power to direct current without mechanical means.It was widely used in electric railways, industry, electroplating, and high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power transmission.Although it was largely replaced by power semiconductor devices in the 1970s and 1980s, it is still used in some high power applications. In 1903, the degree of Honorary Doctorate of Science was conferred upon him by the Columbia University in recognition of his work.

In 1907 he developed and tested an early hydrofoil.In 1916, Hewitt joined Elmer Sperry to develop the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane, one of the first successful precursors of the cruise missile.

Hewitt married Lucy Bond Work (1861–1934), a daughter of Franklin H. Work (1819–1911), a well-known stockbroker and protégé of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and his wife, Ellen Wood (1831–1877). and sister of Frances Ellen Work. He thenfathered Ann Cooper Hewitt (July 31, 1914, Paris, France to February 09, 1956, Monterrey, Mexico) and later married her mother, Marion Jeanne Andrews, the ex-wife of George William Childs McCarter, Baron Robert Frederic Emile Regis D'Erlanger, Dr. Peder Sather Bruguiere, and Stewart Denning. Hewitt later adopted Ann Cooper Hewitt, his illegitimate daughter.

Marion Jeanne Andrews Hewitt sterilized her daughter, Ann Cooper Hewitt, to take her daughter's inheritance from her father, Marion's ex-husband, Peter Cooper Hewitt, an inheritance dependent on the young woman having children.