Archives:Minor Davis Scrapbook
About Minor Davis
Minor Meek Davis was born in North Chatham, Massachusetts in 1858. He was educated at the Coffin School in Nantucket before moving with his family to Nebraska. There, he entered the telegraphic profession as a messenger for Western Union. The family moved again to Washington, D.C., where Davis took jobs as an operator for various telegraph companies. In 1876 he was hired as an operator in Western Union’s main office in New York, where he remained for the next five years. With no college training, he dedicated himself to studying the engineering behind telegraphy. In 1883 he co-authored The Quadruplex with William Maver, Jr. Among the first textbooks on telegraphy, it described the operation of Thomas Edison’s four way telegraph. During the next two years, Davis worked in various telegraph offices in New York before being taken on by Francis Jones, head of the electrical department at United Lines, as his assistant. When Jones became head engineer at the newly formed Postal Telegraph-Cable Company, Davis continued on as his assistant. A prolific inventor, he received several patents for his innovations with distribution circuits. In 1893 he became one of the pioneer members of AIEEE, and was honored as a fellow in 1912. He retired in 1919 as head electrical engineer of the Postal Telegraph-Cable Company.
Catalogue
Obituary of Minor Davis, unknown newspaper, unknown year
Minor Davis Scrapbook, IEEE Archives, Piscataway, NJ
Media:Minor Davis - Obituary.pdf
Davis, Minor. The Postal Telegraph. New York, 1910
Minor Davis Scrapbook, IEEE Archives, Piscataway, NJ
Media:Minor Davis - The Postal Telegraph.pdf
James T. White & Co. Portrait and biography for entry in The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. 25. New York, 1934
Minor Davis Scrapbook, IEEE Archives, Piscataway, NJ
