Harvey Hubbell
| Harvey Hubbell II | |
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| File:Harvey Hubbell.jpg
Harvey Hubbell II
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| Born | 1857 |
| Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Bridgeport, Connecticut |
| Residence | United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Electrical engineering |
| Institutions | Harvey Hubbell, Incorporated |
Harvey Hubbell II (1857 – December 17, 1927), was a U.S. inventor, entrepreneur and industrialist. His best-known inventions are the U.S. electrical plug[1] and the pull-chain light socket.[2]
In 1888, at the age of thirty-one, Hubbell quit his job as a manager of a manufacturing company and founded Hubble Incorporated in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a company which is still in business today, still headquartered near Bridgeport. Hubbell began manufacturing consumer products and, by necessity, inventing manufacturing equipment for his factory. Some of the equipment he designed included automatic tapping machines and progressive dies for blanking and stamping. One of his most important industrial inventions, still in use today, is the thread rolling machine. He quickly began selling his newly devised manufacturing equipment alongside his commercial products.
Hubbell received at least 45 patents;[3] most were for electric products. The pull-chain electrical light socket was patented in 1896, and his most famous invention, the U.S. electrical power plug, in 1904, this brought the convenience of portable electrical devices, already enjoyed in Great Britain since the early 1880s, to the U.S.[4]
References
- ↑ U.S. Patent #774,250, Separable Attachment Plug
- ↑ U.S. Patent #565,541, Socket for Incandescent Lamps
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ John Mellanby, "The History of Electric Wiring" (1957), p165, London: Macdonald.
