A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DW. E. Sawyer (possibly William Eve) Sawyer : ? - 1883
In 1880 the first proposals to transmit images by scanning were indepenently made by W.E. Sawyer, an American, and by Maurice Leblanc of France.
Tracing the name Sawyer I came across SAWYER, William Eve, alleged father of child (Cynthia Smith), 1824 taken from ..."an excellent & very readable history of Braintree and Bocking, Essex (nr Chelmsford & Colchester) by the former Deputy Head of a Braintree School. Braintree and Bocking were very large villages for their time and were strong in cloth manufacture." In an attempt to try and find more about W.E. Sawyer, I traced back through the multitude of genealogy web sites and contacted a Shirley Brown who was listed as a contact to the 'Essex Sawyers' - her answer reads...
Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 Source: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~esfh/genuki/bocking.html
The Litigation Series contains the printed records of civil court litigation, along with the records of Patent Office interferences, which are similar in many respects to litigation. During the 1880s Edison was involved in several patent interferences relating to his work in electric lighting. Of particular importance is the interference with William E. Sawyer and Albon Man, which later moved to the federal courts as a patent infringement suit brought by the Edison Electric Light Company. Together, the patent interferences provide valuable information about Edison's work in electric lighting and power, electric traction, and duplex telegraphy, as well as documentation about the operation of the Menlo Park Laboratory. The printed court records for the period 1879-1886 pertain to two separate cases. The earliest case involves a suit brought against Edison in 1880 by Lucy Seyfert, the wife of an investor who had loaned Edison money. The testimony in this case provides insight into Edison's relations with his financial backers and his financial difficulties during the mid-1870s. The patent infringement suit against Sawyer and Man-Edison Electric Light Company v. United States Electric Lighting Company-was the most important piece of electric light litigation brought by the Edison interests and the only electric light suit initiated prior to 1887. Included as exhibits in this case are parts of the printed records from the earlier patent interference and from two contemporary electric light cases (the McKeesport Case and the Trenton Feeder Case). These records constitute a particularly valuable source for documenting Edison's work in electric lighting.
William Edward Sawyer died in prison in 1883 while serving a sentence for murdering a fellow boarder. He was well know to be cantankerous and hard to get along with. Albon Man was a manhattan attorney and close associate. The company Sawyer Man came to be in 1884. also Sawyer was mainly known for his work in lighting. In fact it's still debatable whether he or Edison perfect the first light bulb. Sawyer is often referred to as being hard to work with [and] quite incorrigible. One book mentions a scientist yelling and screaming after Charles Brush turned on the first lights in Cleveland. It is not confirmed [but is] believed that this scientist was [indeed] Sawyer. After his death a company was put together called Sawyer Man. Man [was] [as in] attorney and real estate developer Albon Man. The company was put together in an effort to get the lighting patents of Sawyer. from: Passer, Harold C., 1953, Electrical Manufacturers 1875-1900
William E. Sawyer and the Rise and Fall of America's First Incandescent Light Company, 1878-1881. Business and Economic History, 2d ser., 13 (1984): 31-48.
William E. Sawyer and the Rise and Fall of America's First Incandescent Electric Light Company, 1878-1881. Charles D. Wrege and Ronald G. Greenwood
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