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PROF. W. A. ANTHONY
MANCHESTER: Electrician
The subject of this sketch was born November 17, 1835, at Coventry, Rhode Island. He attended the village school, where he began at an early age the study of algebra and geometry. He also read all the books on science to be found in the school library, and obtained considerable experience with machinery and tools in his father’s mill. At the age of 15 he went to the Friends’ Boarding School in Providence, where he pursued his favorite studies in mathematics and science, and for a time assisted in the preparation of experiments for the lectures on chemistry and physics. Completing his preparations for college at the academy at East Greenwich, he entered Brown University in 1854, but under the compulsion of his deepening interest in mathematical and scientific studies he left Brown to enter the Scientific School at Yale, where he graduated in 1856.
After graduating, Prof. Anthony became the principal of a graded school. He then taught science in an academy, then physics and chemistry at Antioch College, then physics at the Iowa State Agricultural College, and in 1872 he was called to Cornell University to take charge of the department of physics. He remained there till 1887, and left behind him an imprint that the work of Cornell in his special field will long bear. His interest was specially strong in electricity and optics, and he devised a great number of experiments to illustrate his instruction. Even in the academy, in 1863-66, his students in physics were required to perform experiments for themselves. This was the beginning of his physical laboratory instruction, which he tried to improve upon and extend as long as he had to do with students, and to prepare for their careers the physicists and engineers of the next generation.
It is interesting to note that in 1874, after trying in vain to procure a Gramme machine from Europe, as a piece of laboratory apparatus, he designed and constructed one for the university laboratory himself. This machine was exhibited at the Philadelphia centennial exhibition in 1876. It is still in use and doing good service in the physical laboratory at Cornell.
In 1881, appreciating with clear foresight the important place that electrical applications were to take in the near future, Professor Anthony set on foot a movement looking to the establishment at Cornell of a special course of study for the training of electrical engineers. This plan met with great opposition at first, but was finally successful, and the course is now one of the best attended in the university.
In 1887, desiring relief in a change of occupation, Prof. Anthony resigned the appointment he had held with so much credit to himself and so mnch honor to Cornell, and assumed the duties of electrician for the Mather Electric Company of Manchester, in this State, in which capacity he has since continoed, devoting himself to the improvement of the apparatus and the extension of the affairs of the company.
Source: Illustrated Popular Biography of Connecticut - 1891, Compiled and Published by J. A. Spalding, Hartford Conn., Press of the Case, Lockwood and Brainard Company, 1891
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