Edward Acheson was born in Washington, Pennsylvania back in 1856. He attended the Bellefonte Academy for three years, this being all the formal education he received. At 16 after the death of his father he worked as a surveying assistant to help support this family.
In the evening hours his time was devoted to scientific pursuits-primarily electrical one. in 1880 he attempted to see a battery of his design to Thomas Edison. Edison recognizing his talents wound up hiring him on the spot. In 1884 he left Edison and became a supervisor at a plant competing with Edison for the manufacture electric lamps.
He still continued his nightly experiments which resulted in him gaining 70 patents, all of them relating to abrasives, graphite products, reduction of oxides, and refractories. BTW you may have heard of some of them let’s see he was the inventor of the Acheson process, which is still in use today. He invented a way to make Silicon carbide and later used that product to manufacture graphite. He died in 1931 in New York City. In 1997 he was inducted into the National Inventor Hall of Fame. His home in Monongahela, Pennsylvania is a National Historic Landmark.
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