Charles Lorenzo Clarke Papers

Charles Lorenzo Clarke (1853-1941) was present when Thomas Alva Edison opened the Pearl Street station in New York, the world's first electric generating plant, which supplied current for the operation of Edison's elecric lamps. Born on April 16, 1853, to Daniel and Mary Lewis (Bragg) Clarke, Charles Clarke grew up in Portland, Maine, attending Portland High School. He then worked as an assistant engineer with the Boston & Maine railroad, which ran between Portland and Boston. He was graduated from Bowdoin College in 1875. On February 1, 1880, Clarke became an assistant to Thomas Edison in his laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey. He was later made chief engineer of Edison Electric Light Co. in New York City. When Edison moved his plant to Schenectady in 1886, Clarke followed and continued to consult and work for General Electric (formerly Edison General Electric Company) until he retired on November 1, 1931. Clarke was the author of Diagonal Functions and their Operation (1937) and various papers, including "Edison's Electric Railway" (Van Nostrand's Eng. Mag., 1880), "Electric Motor Diagrams" (Elec. Eng., 1889), and "High Frequency Oscillatory and Pulsatory Dischory Discharges" (Trans. Amer. Electrotherapeutic Assoc., 1904). Clarke was married three times and had four children: John Curtis, Mary Willatowski, Daniel William, and Charles Lorenzo, Jr. Charles Lorenzo Clarke died on October 9, 1941, in Newton, Massachusetts.