Abstract :
A recently acquired painting of an electrical grandfather at the Burndy Library is presented. The 1838 painting has been submitted for identification to British and American authorities, all of whom have been unable to identify the personage in the picture. The baffling part is the fact that obviously the gentleman is an important person in the electrical field, inasmuch as he is shown with a Leyden jar held in his left hand and a Henley electrometer in his right hand. The Burndy Library, Norwalk, CT, USA, has turned to Electrical Engineering to help in solving this mystery. It is hoped that a reader may know the man as an ancestor, or be able to identify him by other means. The portrait represents an early experimenter in the then newly established field of electrical science. His identity remains unknown. By publishing this portrait, it is hoped that it may lead to establishing the correct identity of the subject. The name of the artist, Thomas H. Gregg, appears in three different locations on the painting, but no clue is given or has been found as to who the sitter might be.
