Warren Johnson gran industrial y visionario lider

1. Warren S. Johnson History
Warren Seymour Johnson was born in Rutland County, Vermont in 1847. Two years later his family
moved to Wisconsin, first to Waukesha, then Kilbourn City (Milwaukee) and then, nearly 300 miles
northwest to Dunn County. Largely self-educated, Johnson worked as a printer for a Durand newspaper,
taught in Menomonie, and also worked as a land surveyor. After fulfilling a two year term as Juneau
County's superintendent of schools, he was appointed a professor at the State Normal School in
Whitewater (now the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater) in 1876. At Whitewater, Johnson taught a
variety of subjects including penmanship, drawing, science, and mathematics -- an indication of his
eclectic interests.
In a 1939 letter, Johnson's son Paul described what is probably the most accurate scenario for the
invention of the temperature control system that established his father's name: "The Normal School was
heated by enormous hot-air furnaces. On cold days when they were going full blast, from the large
registers in the floor of the lower halls we could see the red glow of the cast-iron furnaces. The only
control of room heat was by hand-operated dampers at the furnaces. Once an hour or so, the janitor
would make the rounds of the rooms, inspect the thermometers and note which rooms were too warm
or too cold. He would then go to the basement to open or close dampers accordingly. The janitor
disturbed the classes considerably, so Professor Johnson installed electric thermostats in each room and
connected the to annunciators, which he invented, so made that when the thermostat made contact on
the warm side, the indicator for that room would show 'Warm' and ring a bell, and when the contact was
on the cold side, the indicator showed 'Cold.' All the janitor had to do besides firing his furnaces and
keeping the place clean, was to watch the annunciator every time it rang and shift the proper damper.
That was the first Johnson System of Temperature Regulation."

2. Johnson was granted the first patent for a room thermostat on July 24, 1883. Called an "electric tele-
thermoscope," it used a sealed bimetal and hard rubber element with one wire of an electrical circuit
attached to the fixed end and the other wire connected to a small pool of mercury in a cup-like reservoir.
Changes in air temperature moved the free end of the thermal element into and out of the mercury to
close or open the electrical circuit.
Professor Warren Johnson continued to invent devices in his laboratory: springless door locks,
chandeliers, puncture-proof tires, thermometers, and gasoline machines that converted kerosene into
gas for home heating and lighting. There were also side-by-side bicycles, an "impulsive" railway, and a
hose coupling for providing steam heat to passenger railcars. Some of the Professor's inventions were
more successful than others. His pneumatic tower clocks, however, helped to establish the Johnson
Electric Service Co.'s reputation. Johnson clocks were located in many cities around the country, including
Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Johnson also experimented with telegraph and the
automobile. While his telegraph experiments were not very successful, his work with early steam and gas
powered automobiles proved more rewarding. However, the company's board of directors did not share
the Professor's enthusiasm for automobiles and he spent much of his final years in Los Angeles seeking
West Coast agents for the automotive business. He died there on December 5th, 1911 of Bright's disease,
at age 64.