Augustus Jesse Bowie Jr. (December 10, 1872 – June 22, 1955, birth name Augustus Jesse Bowie III) was a pioneering American technology engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. His early innovations in large-capacity electrical switches, including the 1000lb. 287Kv disconnecting switch, were important in the spread of electrification on the West Coast of the United States during the 1910s-1920s, and became essential to the New Deal's mass-scale rural electrification efforts in the 1930s. Bowie was an 1896 graduate of the engineering program at MIT in Boston, the region of the United States was the center of innovation in and promulgation of electrification, which was primarily oriented towards centralized urban office/industrial use. Bowie, however, was born and bred in the San Francisco bay area of California, and his mass electrification innovations were put into use in that geographically spread out region first, allowing for the building of an electrical grid that would spawn a decentralized regional culture of technological innovation; a region eventually recognized as Silicon Valley.The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon, 2003, Princeton University Press
Bowie leveraged his many patents in business as the founder of San Francisco's Bowie Switch Company, located in the waterfront Dogpatch district. The Bowie Switch Company would directly supply and implement his large-capacity switches for the San Francisco metro area, Hoover Dam, and Grand Coulee Dam, among many others; and during World War II the company expanded in order to produce switches for the U.S. war effort. More a businessman and inventor than an academic, Bowie's relative paucity of published writing outside electrical engineering journals (and his extensive legacy of patents) kept him largely unheralded outside electrical engineering circles following his death in 1955, despite his pivotal role in mass-scale electrification of the western United States and the bay area/Silicon Valley in particular.
Early life and family
Augustus Jesse Bowie III was born in San Francisco, California, and generally referred to himself as Augustus Jesse Bowie Jr. He was the grandson of Dr. Augustus Jesse Bowie (Oct. 23, 1815 – July 6, 1887), a descendant of the revolutionary period Scottish loyalist and Maryland plantation owner John Bowie.The Reverend John Bowie, Tory by Lucy Lee Bowie, Maryland Historical Magazine, June 1943 Vol. 38 no. 2, pages 145-160 Dr. Bowie came to San Francisco in April 1849, lured by the booming economy of the California Gold Rush. An experienced orthopedic surgeon with the U.S. Navy as early as 1837, he set up a private practice in downtown San Francisco in 1851 and soon occupied a prominent place among San Francisco's arriviste elite. Named first surgeon at St. Mary's hospital in 1861 then Chair of Surgery in the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific in 1863, he was named to the then-new board of UC Regents in 1876.History of the Public School System of California Swett, John. San Francisco: AJ Bancroft and Company, 1895 p.184 However, like his grandson AJ Bowie III, Dr. Bowie's lack of an academic publishing record kept him relatively under-recognized in historic terms.Augustus Jesse Bowie (1815 - 1887). Stanford University School of Medicine and the Predecessor Schools: An Historical Perspective, Part II, Chapter 9. Early Local Medical Societies in California. Retrieved online, 3/5/2017
Augustus Jesse Bowie III's father, Augustus Jesse Bowie II (1845–1917) was Dr. Bowie's son, and was known as Augustus Jesse Bowie Jr. (as his own son would be later). In 1863, Augustus Jesse Bowie II received the first Bachelor of Arts degree to be awarded by San Francisco's St. Ignatius College, then went to Europe, receovog received a doctorate in engineering at Heidelberg UniversitySt. Ignatius Comes of Age (1861–1880) , St Ignatius College Preparatory. Retrieved from web, 03/05/2017 He returned to San Francisco with his German fiancée, Eliza Friedlander, and married her there in 1870.WEDDINGS in Rich Life Section. San Francisco Chronicle, January 8, 1869 An experienced and widely published geologist, hydrologist, and mining engineer, Bowie II wrote treatises on mining in the Sierra and irrigation in the Central Valley that are still found in print, including the seminal ''A Practical Treatise on Hydraulic Mining in California'' (pub. 1885, i online at internet archive). Bowie II and Eliza Friedlander's's eldest son was Augustus Jesse Bowie III (born in San Francisco in 1872),.
Education
Like his father, Augustus Jesse Bowie III studied at Saint Ignatius College (now the University of San Francisco), following which he went east and entered Harvard College, graduating with honors and an A.B. in Mathematics in 1893.Harvard University Catalogue, 1893-94, published by Harvard. p.521Record of the Class of 1893 by Harvard College (1780- ), p.28. Retrieved from web, 3/5/2017 Bowie's coming of age and intellectual interests coincided with the biggest technological shift of the early 20th century – electrification. The locus of innovation in and promulgation of electrification in the United States was in the northeast, where the major players of this tech revolution were Joseph Swan, Thomas A. Edison, Nikola Tesla, and numerous others.Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology. Nye, David E. Cambridge, MA, USA and London, England:The MIT Press, 1990 After Harvard, Bowie III developed a strong interest in electrification and stayed in the Northeast, to pursue an S.B. in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering MIT. in 1896 he got.The Reverend John Bowie, Tory by Lucy Lee Bowie, Maryland Historical Magazine, June 1943 Vol. 38 no. 2, p.160 In his ensuing engineering and business career, Bowie III would generally identify himself by the same title as his father, Augustus Jesse Bowie Jr. This was the name under which he would also patent his inventions and eventually establish his business.
Early career and patents
At some point following his graduation from MIT in 1896, A.J. Bowie III returned to California and took up residence in Sacramento, where he found work as an engineer with the Sacramento Electric, Gas and Railroad Company.Electrical West, Volume 14. McGraw-Hill Company of California, 1904. pp. 168, 182, 215, 243, 246-48 Bowie was back in San Francisco by early 1906, where he filed his first patent application: a sophisticated electrical switch that would cleanly create a break in an electrical circuit, dramatically reducing the risk of damage to the electrical apparatus and/or the potential electrocution of the user. Only rudimentary means for such technology had existed up until this time.Signal and Switch: A Cultural History of the Push-Button Interface. Plotnick, Rachel. Northwestern University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2013. 3563823
Between this start in 1906 and the 1920s, Bowie was busy inventing and patenting products that helped lay the groundwork for this wider-scale electrification, the majority of which were new designs that vastly improved the safety, efficiency, and capacity of electrical current transmission. Among the most important of these patents are:
US 1110374 A: Filed 23 Jan. 1906, pub. 15 Sept. 1914, Electrical Switch.
US 982789 A: Filed 18 Apr. 1907, pub. 31 Jan. 1911, Electromagnetic Power Transmitting Mechanism. Power transmission mechanism comprising a positively driven primary element mounted on a rotatable main shaft, and a sec ondary element mounted on a rotatable counter-shaft, out of alignment with the main shaft and driven therefrom, said primary and secondary elements forming an electromagnetic inductive system involving a magnet having an air gap, and an energizing coil for said magnet, and an electric conductor interposed in said air gap. --Journal of Electricity, Power, and Gas, Jan-June 1911Journal of Electricity, Power, and Gas: Patents Vol:26, Number:6, Jan-June 1911, p.144
US 1230372 A: Filed 9 Dec. 1909, pub. 19 Jun. 1917, Electric Switch.
US 1168595 A: Filed 26 Feb. 1910, pub. 18 Jan 1916, Lightning-Arrester.
US 1287851 A: Filed 12 Mar. 1914, pub. 17 Dec 1918, Electric-energy converter and meter.
Bowie Switch Company and electrification
While George Roe's California Electric Light Company had commenced electrification operations in San Francisco in 1879, with a capacity to light 21 lights, San Francisco did not realize a significant, widely available electrical capacity until over four decades later; partially as a result of the infrastructural devastation wrought by the earthquake of 1906.Pacific Gas and Electric: History Page, retrieved 2/12/2017 Demand for electricity, however, continued to grow exponentially. In 1920, the California Electric Light Company hosted hundreds of people (who were lined up around the block) in a showcase of the first all-electric model home, replete with dozens of new appliances that required electricity to function – electricity that was still not available in many parts of California, particularly rural areas and outlying suburbs.
With the patents he created in the first two decades of the twentieth century, AJ Bowie III was poised to leverage the market potential of demand for electricity as electrification took full force. His eponymously named Bowie Switch Company had been successfully marketing his inventions since at least 1913 and operated a facility at 18th and Folsom Streets in San Francisco,Journal of Electricity, Power, and Gas, Volume 30 no.17, April 26, 1912, p.396Industrial Activities Aided by Pacific Service, Pacific Service Magazine, Volume:9 Number:1, June 1917 p.207 and in 1926 the company moved to a newly built factory at 815 Tennessee Street in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco. The Bowie Switch Company building, a brick-faced classic revival style structure in the utilitarian tradition, was designed by noted Swedish architect August J. Nordin, designer of the historic landmark Swedish American Hall on upper Market Street.Swedish Architect in the USA - August Nordin, Excerpt from the book Swedish Architects in the Americas, 1846–1930. The Nordstjernan, May 19, 2015Landmark Designation Application for 815-825 Tennessee Street, prepared by John Loomis, on behalf of the Dogpatch Neighborhood, dated July 20, 2015 Built to integrate production with the newly emergent long-haul trucking industry, the Bowie Switch Company building was well-positioned to distribute its products to locales both local and national, including in rural areas that were not serviced by existing rail transport networks. This broad distributive capacity, combined with rapidly increasing demand for electrification, would prove to be instrumental in positioning the Bowie Switch Company squarely in the center of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration's efforts in the Rural Electrification Act and related major public works in the American West during the 1930s, including designing switches for the unprecedented amount of hydropower being generated by the newly built Boulder and Grand Coulee DamsHISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD - COLUMBIA BASIN PROJECT, GRAND COULEE DAM & FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT LAKE, pub. 1941, p.195
WPA hydropower projects (Boulder and Grand Coulee dams)