John Jays Hammond Jr.

John Hays Hammond, JR.

John Hammond was one of the greatest electrical and mechanical inventors of his time. The things he invented during his lifetime impacted history a great deal.

According to John Pettibone, John Hays Hammond, Jr. was born in 1888 in San Francisco, California (Pettibone 1). Most of his life Hammond was known as Jack. He was the second son and namesake of a world-famous mining engineer, who was the friend, confidant, and almost running mate of William Howard Taft. Jack's father grossed a supposed one million dollars a year as well as bonuses at the South African gold and diamond fields where his father relocated his family in 1893. While in South Africa, Jack's father got imprisoned by accident and in prison got really sick. Mark Twain was on tour of Africa and visited the prison and soon afterwards the Hammond family moved to recuperate in England (Dandola1-2). Young Hammond became devoted to studying life in the past and castles after his family relocated to England in 1898. At the beginning of the century his family moved back to the United States. Years later, as a marriage gift for his wife Irene, Hammond started building a medieval castle home in Gloucester, MA. In 1929 the couple took up residence in the castle and in 1930 revealed it as a museum (Pettibone 1).

To invent, John Hays Hammond would at no time have to look far for ideas. He was born into an educated family in 1888 and some of the family's associates included Nikola Tesla, the Wright brothers, and Thomas Edison. Hammond was both a realistic and fanciful inventor; his attractions varied from culinary and music to torpedoes and electronics (John 1).

In New Jersey where John Hammond enlisted at the Lawrenceville School in 1903, his first invention came along. To elude the school's 8:00 PM rule for lights out, Hammond was delighted to install into a lot of his friend's dorms a sensor and an over current protection device that automatically turned off the rooms lighting as the door was opened. Hammond was disappointed years afterwards, that he had not listened to Edison's advice, when a device similar to his became commonplace in vehicles and refrigerators. Edison had told him: Patent all your ideas, and get yourself a good lawyer (John 1).

Jack never lost interest in medieval history, which became one of his passions after he was exposed to castles while enrolled in an English prep school. The Hammonds had come back to the United States in late December 1899, precisely on the eve of the new century. Jack did not do to well when he enrolled in school in the U.S., so his father took him in a business appointment to try to remedy things. They went to the latter' West Orange, New Jersey, laboratory with Thomas Edison, and there Edison took a liking to Jack and gave him a personal tour of the lab. Jack became captivated with inventing and started inventing on his own. He then attended the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University to continue his education. There he met Alexander Graham Bell who would later become his tutor (Dandola 2). At the Sheffield Scientific School he applied himself in radiodynamics and telephony and received a Bachelors in Science (1910). Jack acquired a humble job as a clerk at the U.S. Patent Office in Washington even though he had a privileged education. By doing this he desired to get a good idea of his favorite fields and the current work being completed in them. Hammond talked his father into lending him $250,000 to start a company of his own in Gloucester, MA (John 2).

Hammond started testing with radio-operated remote control in ardor. He laid the groundwork for all following radio control by 1914. He guided a ghost ship around Gloucester Bay by constructing a gyroscope into its receiving system. This Gyrad system of his permitted an unmanned boat to be sent on a successful 120-mile journey from Gloucester to Boston and back. An anti-interference innovation was added, since World War I had just begun, and that would stop others from interfering with his systems signals. Another thing that he invented, that permitted a remote controlled boat to seek out an enemy ship's searchlights, was a target seeking system, and he also started work on the first radio-guided torpedo (John