| Charles Sumner Tainter |
Article Index for Charles |
Website Links For Charles |
Information AboutCharles Sumner Tainter |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT CHARLES SUMNER TAINTER | |
| 1854 births | |
| 1940 deaths | |
| american entrepreneurs | |
| american inventors | |
| national inventors hall of fame | |
|
Charles Sumner Tainter ( April 25 , 1854 - April 20 , 1940 ) was an American engineer and inventor, best known for his collaborations with Alexander Graham Bell , Chichester Bell and his improvements to Thomas Alva Edison 's Phonograph , resulting in the Graphophone , one version of which was the first Dictaphone . Tainter was born in Watertown, Massachusetts , where he went to Public School . His education was modest, he acquired his knowledge mostly through self-education. In 1873 , he took a job for a company producing telescopes in Cambridge, Massachusetts , which got the contract for the observation of the Transit Of Venus on December 8 , 1874 , and Tainter was sent with the observation expedition to New Zealand . In 1878 he opened a shop for the production of scientific instruments and a year later, Alexander Bell called him to his Volta Laboratories in Washington, D.C. , where Tainter would work for the next seven years. During this time, he worked with Bell on several inventions, amongst them the Phonograph and also the Graphophone , a substantial improvement of Edison's earlier Phonograph , for which he received several patents. Edison subsequently sued him for Patent infringement, but the case was settled by a compromise between the two. In . His ill health (he was frequently sick with Pneumonia ) made him and his wife move to San Diego in 1903 . After the death of his wife in 1924 , he married Laura F. Onderdonk in 1928 . Tainter received several distinguished awards for his graphophone. EXTERNAL LINK |
|
|