Some leaders of the A. I. E. E.

Morgan Brooks, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois and Fellow of the Institute since 1913, was born in Boston March 12, 1861. After graduating from Brown University in 1881, he expressed a desire to study engineering, but was opposed by his father, a lawyer, whose ambition it was that his son follow in his footsteps. Finding his son quite determined, however, Mr. Brooks demanded a “brief” substantiating the boy´s claim to a right to digress from law and study engineering, and this brief, produced by dint of much effort, was sufficiently forceful to convince his father of his earnestness of purpose and secure the coveted permission, as well as strengthen his own determination to make a success. He was graduated from Stevens Institute in 1883; his thesis on the gas engine was published in the Van Nostrand Magazine and copied in translation in Paris and Berlin. After a short engagement involving gas engine installation, he accepted an appointment with the American Bell Telephone Company in Boston for research work. In this connection, he was wire inspector for the 7000 miles of wire in the line between New York and Philadelphia, — the first commercial long distance line of copper wire to be established. He also made all necessary electrical tests on the experimental telephone copper circuit between Boston and New York which served to determine many of the early problems of long distance telephony. In 1886 he resigned from the American Bell Telephone Company to become installation engineer in Boston for the Electric Storage Battery Company. In 1887 he was made secretary-treasurer of the St. Paul (Minn.) Gas Light Company. Here his first assignment was to investigate the Westinghouse a-c. system in competition with the d-c. system of the St. Paul Edison Company. Upon Mr. Brooks´ recommendation the Westinghouse system of lighting was installed in St. Paul — one of the earliest plants in western territory.