Obituary

Enos M. Barton, chairman of the board of directors of the Western Electric Company, died on May 3, 1916, at his southern home in Biloxi, Miss., at the age of seventy-two years. He was born in Jefferson County, New York, and began work at the age of twelve as a messenger in the telegraph office at Watertown, N. Y. He became an operator, and worked in New York during the Civil War, sending night press reports. Then he went to Rochester as chief operator of the Western Union office in that city. In 1869 the Western Union shop at Cleveland, Ohio, was to be abandoned, and George W. Shawk, who had been foreman of the shop, bought part of the equipment and engaged in miscellaneous work, including the making of inventors´ models. Mr. Barton went into partnership with him. This firm became successively Gray and Barton, the Western Electric Manufacturing Company, and the Western Electric Company. Mr. Barton was successively secretary, vice-president and president of the Western Electric Company, and since his retirement from the presidency in 1908 he had been chairman of its board of directors. He was elected an Associate of the Institute July 12, 1887.