Obituary

WILLIAM DUNLAP SARGENT, of 51 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., died on Thursday, August 10, 1911, at his country home in Somerset, Pa. Mr. Sargent was born in Ligonier, Westmoreland County, Pa., on July 2, 1845. He was educated in the public schools of Harrisburg, Pa. In 1861 he entered the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company as telegraph operator. Later he served in the United States Military Telegraph Corps at General Burnside´s Cincinnati headquarters, and when the war was over he went back to Harrisburg and became manager of the Western Union office there. He was in charge of the telegraph service at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and was present when Alexander Graham Bell exhibited his first telephone there. Mr. Sargent then became interested in the telephone and entered the business with Thomas E. Cornish of the Bell Telephone Company, of Philadelphia, as general superintendent and general manager. Later he went to Brooklyn and became vice-president and general manager of the New York and New Jersey Telephone Company, and while there was chosen to take charge of its exhibit at the Paris Exhibition in 1889. In 1885 he developed, in connection with John A. Barrett, the dry core paper cable in a continuous lead covering, the cable which is now in standard use in the telephone business. He was very active, also, in the longdistance work of the telephone officials of early days, and is recognized as one of the first and ablest of the pioneers in the telephone field. Mr. Sargent was a director of the National City Bank of Brooklyn and of the Brooklyn Public Library. He was a Member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the Brooklyn Institute, the Pennsylvania Society, the New England Society and the Long Island Historical Society. The remains were taken to Fresh Pond, Long Island, and cremated. Mr. Sargent is survived by a widow and three children.