Lowe

Name: Thaddeus Sobieski Coulincourt Lowe

Achievements: Aeronaut and inventor who pioneered the use of balloons for military surveillance.

Born: August 20, 1832; Jefferson Mills, now Riverton, New Hampshire

Died: January 16, 1913; Pasadena, California (Aged 80)

Field & Discipline: Invention; Science; Aeronautics; Meteorology; Aeronaut; Balloonist

Education: Unknown

Major Work:

“Intrepid” airship (1862)

Life & Times:

In 1856, impressed by the work of the [influenced by] Montgolfier* brothers and [influenced by] Conte*, Lowe developed an interest in ballooning as a means of investigating upper-air currents.  A couple of years later, he took off on his first journey by balloon from Ottawa, Canada, as part of the celebrations for the laying of the first Atlantic cable.

In 1859, he built an airship called 'City of New York' and made a flight over Philadelphia the following year. [encouraged by] Joseph Henry*, a physicist at the Smithsonian Institution, took an interest in Lowe’s work and supplied him with various meteorological instruments to assist in his experiments.

Lowe prepared his balloon, 'Enterprise', for an experimental flight,  to see if it could rise above the winds blowing to the west and then use the upper air currents to travel the opposite way. If he proved that this could be done, he would be able to raise funds to support a transatlantic flight.

On 20 April 1861, he left Cincinnati, Ohio, carrying copies of the Cincinnati Daily Commercial newspaper.  The balloon lifted to four miles and,  as it hit the upper air currents, as he had predicted, he was blown to the east.

After travelling more than eight hundred miles in nine hours, he landed near Pea Ridge, close to the boundary between North and South Carolina, but was arrested on suspicion of being a Yankee spy.

He was taken to Unionville, in some danger from the mob but, as luck would have it, a local hotelier knew Lowe to be a scientist, having previously seen him on a descent he had made in Charleston and persuaded the authorities to release him.

Soon after the Civil War began, Lowe went to the army in Washington to sell the idea of using balloons for aerial reconnaissance.  On 6^thJune 1861, Professor Henry arranged for the Secretary of War to take a look and, on 18^thJune, Lowe made a demonstration ascent and sent President Lincoln the first telegraph message from a balloon.

As a direct result he was made Chief of a new Balloon Corps, attached to the Army of the Potomac, in which he served as a military observer under [served under] McClellan*.  [work observed by]  Zeppelin*, another notable pioneer in balloon aeronautics, was also involved in military observation with the Union forces.

On his first mission, Lowe gathered information on Confederate troop deployment after the First Bull Run in mid-July 1861.

He did the same during McClellan’s campaign in the summer and autumn of that year.  During this time, Lowe piloted almost daily flights over Virginia, producing reports and photographs of the Confederate position.

Thanks to additional army funds, he was soon able to expand and improve his fleet and, by mid-1862, had built seven airships with newly designed generators that could produce hydrogen gas in the air. The largest of his ships, called Intrepid, had a volume of 32,000 cubic feet and used 1,200 yards of India silk.

Intrepid carried out surveillance operations during and after Fredericksburg and it played a major part in turning the attack of the Confederates at the Battle of Fair Oaks, by relaying the positions of the troops to commanders on the ground.  At the same time, Lowe sent President Lincoln telegraph messages from the airship, giving him a running commentary of the battle.

Lowe ended his career with the Union Army in late 1863, when the newly appointed Commander, Joseph Hooker, reduced the army’s use of aeronautics.

After the war, he put his energies into the manufacture of artificial ice and, in 1866, he set up the first plant in the United States to produce ice for commercial use. During the 1860s, he designed and produced equipment for a refrigerated steam ship to transport perishable goods.  On 10^thDecember 1868, the steamer Agnes left Texas with a shipment of fresh beef, which arrived in New Orleans, five days later, in perfect condition. As a result of this successful exercise, Lowe set up a refrigerated transport company, but the business failed, leaving him in debt.

After this venture, he started looking at the manufacture of gas and coke.  He built a regenerative metallurgic furnace and, between 1869 and 1872, he succeeded in producing gas and fuel.  Between 1873 and 1875, he designed water-gas apparatus and, in 1879 built the New Lowe Coke Oven system for producing gas and high-quality anthracite coke, used in smelting furnaces.

From1891 to 1894, he lived in California, where he became famous for his construction of an inclined railway, with a 62 percent gradient, at Rubio Canyon on Echo Mountain.  The railway opened on 4^thJuly 1893 and in his honour, a peak near Mount Wilson was named Mount Lowe.

Lowe turned the railway into a tourist attraction and built a hotel and zoo half way up the mountain.  He then set up an observatory on the summit and another resort at nearly 5,000 feet, called the Alpine Tavern.  The setup was later bought by the Pacific Electric Railroad and was very popular for a long time, but it was gradually destroyed by high winds and finally closed more than two decades after Lowe died.

Assessment:  A pioneer in aeronautics, who designed and built many new airships.

Oneliner: Thaddeus Lowe, balloonist and refrigeration pioneer

Bibliography:

• Dictionary of  American Biography, ed. Dumas Malone, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933.

Wikipedia

Language: English

Father: Clovis Lowe

Mother: Alpha Green

Siblings: Unknown

Spouse: Leontine A. Gachon (m. 1855)

Children: Three sons