Sullivan-Lycoming County PA Archives Biographies.....CAMPBELL, George Lowe 1866 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/pafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com February 27, 2007, 9:17 pm Author: Thomas J. Ingham (1899) GEORGE LOWE CAMPBELL. - This is the age of marvelous accomplishments in subduing the giant forces of electricity to the use of man. A great number of distinguished men have come into being as notable inventors, who are now promient [sic] among those whom science and wealth delight to honor, and the names of Morse and Bell, of Brush and Edison, of Tesla and Roentgen are familiar to all as leading spirits of the electrical world. It has, however, apparently come to Sullivan county to produce an invention in this line second to none in practical utility and the useful application of electricity to the wants of today. A sketch of the inventor and what he has accomplished is fittingly placed on the pages of the history of his native county. George Lowe Campbell, the inventor of the Campbell System of Electric Traction, was born at Hillsgrove, Sullivan county, Pennsylvania, on May 28, 1866, the son of John C. and Margaret M. Campbell, of Highland Scotch origin. (See sketch of John C. Campbell on another page of this volume.) From 1868, when his parents moved to Williamsport, this state, until 1890, when he returned to this invigorating region in quest of health, Mr. Campbell did not make his home here. Attending the public schools of Williamsport until he was thirteen years old, he then left school to enter the employ of the Central Pennsylvania Telephone & Supply Company. He gave his steady attention for four years to the telephone and electric-light work, and then passed two years in special studies at home. Removing to Washington, District of Columbia, he there engaged in newspaper work, which he successively and successfully conducted in Washington, Rochester and Buffalo, New York, and Marion, Indiana. He represented the Pittsburg Pennsylvania Press during the exciting period of the Homestead strike and riots. His health failing, he returned to Sullivan county and spent three years at Eaglesmere and in western Sullivan, finally locating permanently in Dushore. He now turned his attention again to electricty [sic] and brought his special knowledge of that science into practical utility and invented the Campbell Electric Bulletin and System of Telegraphy, and organized a company for its development. He is also the inventor of an auto-electric semaphore known as the Automatic Rock-Cut Signal System. In all of these inventions Mr. Campbell has developed new and startling principles, the application of which enables him to produce results long desired and sought after, but which, until his ideas were brought into tangible form, no one had reached. Of one of his inventions the Commercial and Financial World says: "The Campbell system of electric traction is well described as the simplest, best and most economical system yet invented for the propulsion of cars, street railways, elevated railroads and tramways. It has so few working parts and is so solidly constructed that the chances for accident are reduced to a minimum." This system has been submitted to the judgment of experts and practical street railway men who have had experience in underground trolley work, and their unanimous opinion is that this is a system posessing [sic] absolutely none of the faults of the other magnetic or third-rail systems, and having many advantages peculiary [sic] its own. The great objection to other systems is their multiplicity of parts, separate contacts, switches, etc. As the Campbell system dispenses with all such mechanism, it is entirely free from such objections. Mr. Campbell is the present manager of the Campbell Electric Traction Company of Towanda, Pennsylvania, incorporated to introduce this invention. He has also well under way other valuable inventions, among which is a printing telegraph, which can be constructed very simply and at a slight expense compared with the enormous cost of former instruments of that kind. Experiments made with it indicate that it will print a message, not one at both ends of the line as transmitted by the operator, but by as many like instruments as may be connected with the transmitting wire. This invention may eventually revolutionize telegraphy as it enables one to send a message, whether there is an operator at the other end of the wire or not, for the message will be clearly printed and await the operator's coming, if he be absent. Mr. Campbell is yet a young man. He has a quick, active temperament, in which brain predominates. As a consequence he is never quiet. His temperament has been classed by phrenologists as "mental motive." When not otherwise engaged he is occupied in literary work, in which he wields a facile pen. He has written a number of humorous and descriptive sketches that have appeared in New York and Philadelphia papers, and is the author of a novel with local color entitled, "A Champion of Amateurs," now in process of publication by a New York publishing house. Mr. Campbell was married in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 1879, to Miss Reba J. Sanders. They have had six children, of whom four, three sons and a daughter, are now living, the eldest being eleven years of age. Mr. Campbell's permanent home he has made at Dushore, on account of the rare healthfulness of this region, and here he is contemplating developing a beautiful country seat on a hill overlooking the little valley in which nestles the pleasant village. He is a pleasant, genial companion, and his many friends wish him all the success that his future now promises. Additional Comments: Extracted from: History of Sullivan County Pennsylvania by Thomas J. Ingham Compendium of Biography The Lewis Publishing Company Chicago: 1899 This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/pafiles/ File size: 6.1 Kb