Some leaders of the A. I. E. E.

Edward Bennett, Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Wisconsin, and Vice-President of the Institute during 1924–1926, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 26, 1876. After graduating in Electrical Engineering in 1897 with the degree of E. E. from the Western University of Pennsylvania, (now the University of Pittsburgh) — he served an apprenticeship of a year and a half in the machine shops of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company — a period of bench and machine work in the many departments of the Westinghouse factory. From January to September 1899 he was engaged in research work on lightning arresters; chancing one day to observe the subdivision of a spark which occurred when the electric discharge took place across a short gap between kaolin-graphite electrodes of considerable resistivity, he invented and produced the first multi-path lightning arresters which were placed on 600-volt railway systems and the 40,000-volt system of the Telluride Power Company, and also formed a nucleus for later developments of the Westinghouse Company.