author
Clair Elmore Anderson
1886–1942
An early electrical engineer, he is remembered today for a concise 1912 study of tungsten lamp design that captures a moment when electric lighting was rapidly changing everyday life.
1 Audiobook
The Fifteen Watt Tungsten Lamp
by Clair Elmore Anderson
About the author
Born in 1886 and died in 1942, Clair Elmore Anderson is known from surviving records as an American writer of technical work rather than fiction. His best-known publication is The Fifteen Watt Tungsten Lamp, a thesis submitted in 1912 for a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois.
That work focuses on the performance and characteristics of tungsten lamps, placing him in the world of early twentieth-century engineering, when electric light was still a fast-moving field of innovation. Today, his writing offers a small but interesting window into the practical science behind technologies that soon became part of ordinary daily life.
Little biographical detail appears to be widely available online beyond these basic facts, but the work that survives suggests a careful, technical mind and a close connection to the development of modern lighting.