Obituary

Stephen Dudley Field, Fel. A. I. E. E., a charter member of the Institute, died at his home in Stockbridge, Berkshire Co., Mass., on May 18, 1913. Mr. Field was born in Stockbridge on January 31, 1846, and was a son of Jonathan Edwards and Mary Ann (Stuart) Field. His father, who died in 1868, was a lawyer of high, standing in Western Massachusetts. One of his uncles, Cyrus West Field, was eminent in his day as the leader in the promotion of the then doubtful enterprise of a submarine cable across the Atlantic Ocean. The other uncles, who were men of recognized ability in public affairs, were David Dudley, Stephen J. and Henry M. Field. When the first Atlantic cable was successfully laid in 1858, a telegraph office was opened in Stockbridge in the law office of Jonathan E. Field, and Henry J. Dunham, then a law student, was the first operator. Mr. Field, then a youth of 12, immediately showed his interest in the Morse apparatus with which the office was equipped, and soon became an efficient operator. This did not materially interfere with his regular studies which he pursued at the old Williams Academy and Reid Hoffman´s school in Stockbridge, and at the Dutchess County Academy in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. He went to California in 1863, entering the service of the California State Telegraph Company. The routine duties of an operator were never quite congenial to him excepting as a stepping stone to the development of his inventive talent. When the Collins Overland Telegraph organized its force at San Francisco in 1865, he became a member of the British Columbia exploring party, with which he remained until it reached Lytton, B. C. Returning to San Francisco he was appointed an inspector with the San Franciso Fire Alarm Telegraph Company, and in 1872 organized the California Electrical Works. He was then free to give wider scope to his inventive faculty which had developed with his electrical experience. He had already invented a multiple call district telegraph box, an- in 1878 had built and equipped a telephone line 60 miles long with 24 stations. In 1879 he designed and subsequently perfected the utilization of the dynamo for the generation of current for telegraph purposes, as a substitute for the galvanic battery. While this arrangement was comparatively simple in the case of a straight Morse circuit, the important problem of using it in combination with the quadruplex was ingeniously solved by Mr. Field, and it was this particular improvement which led to the introduction of the system by the Western Union Telegraph Company. The compactness of the apparatus compared with the batteries then in use, has effected a saving of hundreds of thousands of dollars in rentals in various commercial centers. Turning his attention to other uses of electricity, he took up the electric railway problem. Although handicapped by lack of capital, which was not readily available for a project generally considered visionary, he imported the Siemens machines required for the purpose, and built at Stockbridge his pioneer electric locomotive which was subsequently operated on a special track near his home, and publicly exhibited in August, 1880. Having demonstrated the practicability of his invention, a more ambitious project followed in the construction and equipment of an electric railway at the Chicago Railroad Exposition in 1883, where a regular fare was charged for passengers. This is believed to be the first commercial use of the invention, and thus the forerunner of the great development which Mr. Field fortunately lived to witness. Having, as he believed, fortified his position with patents, which included a railway conduit system, he saw an opportunity for introducing an improved stock printing telegraph in New York City. The speed of his stock printer, surpassing anything of the kind then in use, led to the organization of the Commercial Telegram Company and forced a general improvement in the quick distribution of stock quotations. During