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Peter Cooper

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Peter Cooper
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(born Feb. 12, 1791, New York, N.Y., U.S. — died April 4, 1883, New York City) U.S. inventor. Cooper became involved with the Canton Iron Works, built to supply the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co., for which he devised and built the diminutive but powerful Tom Thumb locomotive. His factory at Trenton, N.J., produced the first structural-iron beams for buildings. He supported the Atlantic-cable project of Cyrus Field (1819 – 92) and became president of the North American Telegraph Co. His inventions include a washing machine, a compressed-air engine for ferry boats, and a waterpower device for moving canal barges. A social idealist and reformer, he founded the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1859.

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Biography: Peter Cooper
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American inventor and manufacturer Peter Cooper (1791-1883) was considered New York City's "first citizen" because of his philanthropy and civic activities. He was a self-made millionaire, and his ideas of government were, for his time, politically radical.

Peter Cooper's father, John, was a craftsman whose restlessness and lack of success resulted in less than a year of formal education for his son, although the boy early became an accomplished mechanic. At 17 Cooper apprenticed himself to a New York City coach maker. Subsequently he was employed by a cloth-shearing factory, where he invented a new shearing device that became the basis for his first independent enterprise. He also bought a grocery store in New York. He married in 1813 and his wife, Sarah, baked the bread sold in the store. In 1827 he bought the glue factory which was the nucleus of his later fortune. Through experimentation he produced a product as good as that imported from Europe and gained a monopoly of the American market. Returns from the glue factory enabled him to participate in the iron and telegraph industries.

Cooper's capital backed the development of a large-scale iron industry centered by 1845 in New Jersey, the Trenton Iron Company, managed by his son-in-law, Abram S. Hewitt, and his son, Edward. Cooper was a dedicated supporter of Cyrus Field in the effort to lay the Atlantic cable, and he was an early sponsor and organizer of the telegraph industry. He was president of the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company from 1854 to 1874 and, for shorter periods in the 1860s, of the American Telegraph Company and the North American Telegraph Association. His mechanical ingenuity, displayed in inventions as various as a lawn mower and a steam-propelled torpedo, enabled him in 1830 to construct the model locomotive "Tom Thumb," which demonstrated that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad could be made practicable for sharply curved terrain.

Cooper's philanthropy, however, was more significant than his inventions. The Cooper Union, opened in 1859, reflected Cooper's special desire to provide education for working people. It was a significant contribution to adult education, offering professional and coeducational courses in science, technology, and art at night so that working people could take advantage of them. A well-stocked reading room and weekly public lectures were some of the services offered the public for more than 100 years. Cooper's work provided one model for Andrew Carnegie's later concept of the stewardship of wealth.

Beginning in 1828, when he was elected assistant alderman of the City of New York, Cooper was continuously occupied with civic projects, which included the building of the Croton Reservoir and participation in the Public School Society, which until 1842 oversaw the public schools of the city. His political convictions made him an unusual millionaire in the decades following the Civil War, perhaps America's first "socialist" millionaire. In his 80s he became the presidential candidate of the Greenback party (1876). He sought government management of the currency in the interest of the working classes and proposed government ownership of railroads and public works programs. "Ideas for a Science of Good Government," published in 1883, contained his reform proposals.

Further Reading

For a biography of Cooper see Edward C. Mack, Peter Cooper, Citizen of New York (1949). Allan Nevins, Abram S. Hewitt (1935), gives an account of Cooper.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Peter Cooper
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Cooper, Peter, 1791-1883, American inventor, industrialist, and philanthropist, b. New York City. After achieving success in the glue business, Cooper, with two partners, erected (1829) the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore. There he constructed the Tom Thumb, one of the earliest locomotives built in the United States. His success in trials on the Baltimore & Ohio RR probably saved that pioneer line from bankruptcy. During the next 20 years, Cooper expanded his holdings, becoming a leader in the American iron industry, and in 1870 he was awarded the Bessemer gold medal for rolling the first iron for fireproof buildings. Cooper invented and patented other practical devices and processes. His faith in the success of the Atlantic cable led him to invest heavily in the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company after banks refused to finance the operation. He was president of this company for 20 years while he headed the North American Telegraph Company, which controlled more than half of the telegraph lines in the country. An outstanding leader in the civic affairs of New York City, Cooper led the successful fight to secure a public school system and did much to improve several of the municipal departments. His lasting monument is Cooper Union in New York City, built after his own plans to provide for education for the working classes. He supported the Greenback party in national politics, and in 1876 he was the party's presidential candidate, polling over 80,000 votes. Many of his addresses were collected in Ideas for a Science of Good Government (1883, repr. 1971). Abram S. Hewitt was his son-in-law, Peter Cooper Hewitt his grandson.

Bibliography

See biographies by R. W. Raymond (1901), A. Nevins (1935, repr. 1967), and E. C. Mack (1949).

Wikipedia: Peter Cooper
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For other persons named Peter Cooper, see Peter Cooper (disambiguation).
Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper
Born February 12, 1791(1791-02-12)
New York, New York, U.S.
Died April 4, 1883 (aged 92)
Occupation Industrialist, Inventor, Philanthropist
Spouse(s) Sarah Cooper

Peter Cooper (February 12, 1791 – April 4, 1883) was an American industrialist, inventor, philanthropist, and candidate for President of the United States.

Contents

Biography

Peter Cooper was born in New York City to a Dutch-American family. He had little formal schooling, and he worked in the family trade of hatmaking. He then worked as a coachmaker's apprentice, cabinet maker, and grocer. Then he was involved in the manufacturing and selling of cloth-shearing machines. He designed and built the first locomotive in the United States, the Tom Thumb. A home in which he resided is maintained at the Old Bethpage Village Restoration in Nassau County, New York. In 2006, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Family

Peter Cooper's son Edward Cooper would serve as mayor of New York as would his daughter Sarah Amelia's husband, Abram S. Hewitt, a man heavily involved in inventions and industrialization like his in-laws.

Politics

An 1879 Puck cartoon shows Cooper spanking his poor son Mayor Edward Cooper.

In 1840, Peter Cooper became an alderman in New York City. As a prosperous businessman, he conceived of the idea of having a free institute in New York, similar to the École Polytechnique (Polytechnical School) in Paris. He erected a building and endowed art schools for preparing young men and women of the working classes for business. In 1858, he presented the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art to the City of New York.

Engraving of Peter Cooper

In 1845, he patented the first powdered gelatin dessert (US Patent 4084), which later became better known by the brand name Jell-O. In 1854, Cooper was one of five men who met at the house of Cyrus West Field and formed the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company. He was among those supervising the laying of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858.

Prior to the Civil War, Cooper was active in the anti-slavery movement and promoted the application of Christian concepts to solve social injustice. He was a strong supporter of the Union cause during the American Civil War and an advocate of the government issue of paper money.

Influenced by the writings of Lydia Maria Child, Cooper became involved in the Indian reform movement, organizing the privately funded United States Indian Commission. This organization, whose members included William E. Dodge and Henry Ward Beecher, was dedicated to the protection and elevation of Native Americans in the United States and the elimination of warfare in the western territories. Cooper's efforts led to the formation of the Board of Indian Commissioners, which oversaw Ulysses S. Grant's Peace Policy. Between 1870 and 1875, Cooper sponsored Indian delegations to Washington D.C., New York City, and other Eastern cities. These delegations met with Indian rights advocates and addressed the public on United States Indian policy. Speakers included: Red Cloud, Little Raven and Alfred B. Meacham and a delegation of Modoc and Klamath Indians.

Cooper was an ardent critic of the gold standard and the debt-based monetary system of bank currency. Throughout the depression from 1873-78, he said that usury was the foremost political problem of the day. He strongly advocated a credit-based, Government-issued currency of United States Notes. He outlined his ideas in his 1883 book Ideas for a Science of Good Government

Presidential candidacy

Peter Cooper Monument in front of the Cooper Union

Cooper was encouraged to run in the 1876 presidential election for the Greenback Party without any hope of being elected. His running mate was Samuel Fenton Cary. The campaign cost more than $25,000. At the age of 85 years, Cooper is the oldest person ever nominated by any political party for the office of President of the United States in the history of the nation.

The election was won by Rutherford Birchard Hayes of the Republican Party. Cooper was surpassed by another unsuccessful candidate: Samuel Jones Tilden of the Democratic Party.

Cooper Union

Peter Cooper founded in 1859 the Cooper Union school of New York City which today is recognized as one of the finest USA schools in architecture, engineering and art. Carrying on Peter Cooper's belief that college education should be free, the Cooper Union awards all its students with a full scholarship.

Death

At the age of 92, Peter Cooper died on April 4, 1883. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Sources

External links

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Party political offices
Preceded by
(none)		 Greenback Party presidential candidate
1876 (lost)		 Succeeded by
James Baird Weaver

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Peter Cooper".  Read more

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