author
Clair Elmore Anderson
1886–1942
An early electrical engineer rather than a conventional literary author, he is remembered for a focused 1912 University of Illinois thesis on tungsten lamps. His surviving work offers a small but vivid window into the practical science and industrial technology of the early twentieth century.
1 Audiobook
The Fifteen Watt Tungsten Lamp
by Clair Elmore Anderson
About the author
Born in 1886 and deceased in 1942, Clair Elmore Anderson is known today through The Fifteen Watt Tungsten Lamp, a technical thesis preserved by Project Gutenberg and library collections.
The work was submitted in 1912 as part of his Master of Science studies in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois. In it, Anderson examined the performance of 15-watt tungsten lamps and compared them with larger units, reflecting the kind of careful, hands-on engineering research that mattered during a period of rapid change in electric lighting.
Very little biographical information appears to be widely available online beyond those basic facts. Even so, his surviving thesis gives modern readers a useful glimpse of the engineers and researchers who helped shape everyday electrical technology in the early 1900s.