Biography of John C. Frémont, Soldier, Explorer

Biography of John C. Frà ©mont, Soldier, Explorer John C. Frà ©mont (January 21, 1813–July 13, 1890) held a controversial and unusual place in mid-19th century America. Called The Pathfinder, he was hailed as a great explorer of the West. While Frà ©mont did little original exploring as he mostly followed trails that had already been established, he did publish narratives and maps based on his expeditions. Many emigrants heading westward carried guidebooks based on Frà ©monts government-sponsored publications. Frà ©mont was the son-in-law of a prominent politician, Sen. Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, the nations most prominent advocate of  Manifest Destiny. In the mid-1800s,  Frà ©mont was famed as the living embodiment of westward expansion. His reputation suffered somewhat due to controversies during the Civil War, when he seemed to defy the Lincoln administration. But upon his death, he was fondly remembered for his accounts of the West. Fast Facts: John Charles Frà ©mont Known For: Senator from California; first Republican candidate for president; known for expeditions to open up the West to settlersAlso Known As: The PathfinderBorn: January 21, 1813 in Savannah, GeorgiaParents: Charles Frà ©mon, Anne Beverley WhitingDied: July 13, 1890  in New York,  New YorkEducation: Charleston CollegePublished Works:  Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Memoirs of My Life and Times, Geographical Memoir upon Upper California, an  Illustration of His Map of Oregon and CaliforniaAwards and Honors:  Namesake for schools, libraries, roads, etc.Spouse: Jessie BentonChildren: Elizabeth Benton Lily Frà ©mont, Benton Frà ©mont, John Charles Frà ©mont Jr., Anne Beverly Fremont, Francis Preston Fremont Early Life John Charles Frà ©mont was born on January 21, 1813 in Savannah, Georgia. His parents were embroiled in scandal. His father, a French immigrant named Charles Fremon, had been hired to tutor the young wife of an elderly Revolutionary War veteran in Richmond, Virginia. The tutor and student began a relationship and ran away together. Leaving behind a scandal in Richmond’s social circles, the couple traveled along the southern frontier for a time before eventually settling in Charleston, South Carolina. Frà ©mont’s parents (Frà ©mont later added the â€Å"t† to his last name) never married. His father died when Frà ©mont was a child, and at the age of 13, Frà ©mont found work as a clerk for a lawyer. Impressed by the boy’s intelligence, the lawyer helped Frà ©mont get an education. The young Frà ©mont had an affinity for mathematics and astronomy, skills that would later be very useful for plotting his position in the wilderness. Early Career and Marriage Frà ©monts professional life began with a job teaching mathematics to cadets in the U.S. Navy, and then working on a government surveying expedition. While visiting Washington, D.C., he met the powerful Missouri Sen. Thomas H. Benton and his family. Frà ©mont fell in love with Benton’s daughter Jessie and eloped with her. Sen. Benton was at first outraged, but he came to accept and actively promote his son-in-law. The role that Bentons influence played in Frà ©monts career cannot be overstated. In the decades before the Civil War, Benton exerted great influence on Capitol Hill. He was obsessed with expanding the United States to the West. He was perceived as the nations greatest proponent of Manifest Destiny, and he was often considered as powerful as the senators in the Great Triumvirate: Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun. First Expedition to the West With Sen. Benton’s help, Frà ©mont was given the assignment to lead an 1842 expedition to explore beyond the Mississippi River to the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains. With the guide Kit Carson and a group of men recruited from a community of French trappers, Frà ©mont reached the mountains. Climbing a high peak, he placed an American flag on top. Frà ©mont returned to Washington and wrote a report of his expedition. While much of the document consisted of tables of geographical data that Frà ©mont had calculated based on astronomical readings, Frà ©mont also wrote a narrative of considerable literary quality (most likely with considerable help from his wife). The U.S. Senate published the report in March 1843, and it found a readership in the general public. Many Americans took special pride in Frà ©mont placing an American flag atop a high mountain in the West. Foreign powers- Spain to the south and Britain to the north- had their own claims on much of the West. And Frà ©mont, acting purely on his own impulse, had seemed to claim the distant West for the United States. Second Expedition to the West Frà ©mont led a second expedition to the West in 1843 and 1844. His assignment was to find a route across the Rocky Mountains to Oregon. After essentially accomplishing his assignment, Frà ©mont and his party were located in Oregon in January 1844. Rather than returning to Missouri, the expedition’s starting point, Frà ©mont led his men southward and then west, crossing the Sierra Nevada mountain range into California. The trip over the Sierras was extremely difficult and dangerous, and there has been speculation that Frà ©mont was operating under some secret orders to infiltrate California, which was then Spanish territory. After visiting Sutter’s Fort, the outpost of John Sutter, in early 1844, Frà ©mont traveled southward in California before heading eastward. He eventually arrived back in St. Louis in August 1844. He then traveled to Washington, D.C., where he wrote a report of his second expedition. The Importance of Frà ©monts Reports A book of his two expedition reports was published and became extremely popular. Many Americans who made the decision to move westward did so after reading Frà ©mont’s stirring reports of his travels in the great spaces of the West. Noted Americans, including Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, also read Frà ©mont’s reports and took inspiration from them. Sen. Benton, as a proponent of Manifest Destiny, promoted the reports. And Frà ©monts writings helped create great national interest in opening the West. Controversial Return to California In 1845 Frà ©mont, who had accepted a commission in the U.S. Army, returned to California and became active in rebelling against Spanish rule and starting the Bear Flag Republic in northern California. For disobeying orders in California, Frà ©mont was arrested and found guilty at a court-martial hearing. President James K. Polk overturned the proceedings, but Frà ©mont resigned from the Army. Later Career Frà ©mont led a troubled expedition in 1848 to find a route for a transcontinental railroad. Settling in California, which by then had become a state, he briefly served as one of its senators. He became active in the new Republican Party and was its first presidential candidate, in 1856. During the Civil War, Frà ©mont received a commission as a Union general and commanded the U.S. Army in the West for a time. His tenure in the Army came to an end early in the war when he issued an order freeing slaves in his territory. President Abraham Lincoln relieved him of command. Death Frà ©mont later served as territorial governor of Arizona from 1878 to 1883. He died at his home in New York City on July 13, 1890. The next day, a New York Times front-page headline proclaimed, The Old Pathfinder Dead. Legacy While Frà ©mont was often caught up in controversy, he did provide Americans in the 1840s with reliable accounts of what was to be found in the distant West. During much of his lifetime, he was considered by many to be a heroic figure, and he played a major role in opening the West to settlement. Sources The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. â€Å"John C. Frà ©mont.†Ã‚  Encyclopà ¦dia Britannica, 8 Feb. 2019.FRÉMONT, John Charles. Congress.gov.â€Å"John C. Frà ©mont.†Ã‚  American Battlefield Trust, 1 Nov. 2018.

Lester Allan Pelton - Hydroelectric Power

Lester Allan Pelton - Hydroelectric Power Lester Pelton invented a type of free-jet water turbine called the Pelton Wheel or Pelton turbine. This turbine is used for hydroelectric power generation. It is one of the original green technologies, replacing coal or wood with the power of falling water. Lester Pelton and the Pelton Water Wheel Turbine Lester Pelton was born in 1829 in Vermillion, Ohio. In 1850, he immigrated to California during the time of the gold rush. Pelton made his living as a carpenter and a millwright. At that time there was a great demand for new power sources to run the machinery and mills necessary for the expanding gold mines. Many mines depended on steam engines, but  those required exhaustible supplies of wood or coal. What was abundant was water power from the fast running mountain creeks and waterfalls. Waterwheels that had been used to power flour mills worked best on larger rivers and did not work well in the faster moving and less voluminous mountain creeks and waterfalls. What worked  were  the newer water turbines that used wheels with cups rather than flat panels.  Ã‚  A landmark design in water turbines was the highly efficient Pelton Wheel. W. F. Durand of Stanford University wrote in 1939 that Pelton made his discovery when he observed a misaligned water turbine where the jet of water hit the cups near the edge rather than the middle of the cup. The turbine moved faster. Pelton incorporated this into his design, with a wedge-shaped divider in the middle of a  double cup, splitting the jet. Now the water being ejected from both halves of the split cups act to propel the wheel faster. He tested his designs in 1877 and 1878, getting a patent in 1880. In 1883, the Pelton turbine won a competition for the most efficient water wheel turbine held by the Idaho Mining Company of Grass Valley, California. Pelton ´s turbine proved to be 90.2% efficient, and the turbine of his closest competitor was only 76.5% efficient. In 1888, Lester Pelton formed the Pelton Water Wheel Company in San Francisco and began to mass manufacture his new water turbine. The Pelton water wheel turbine set the standard until the Turgo impulse wheel was invented by Eric Crewdson in 1920. However, the Turgo impulse wheel was an improved design based on the Pelton turbine. The Turgo was smaller than the Pelton and cheaper to manufacture. Two other important hydropower systems include the Tyson turbine, and the Banki turbine (also called the Michell turbine). Pelton wheels were used to provide electrical power at hydroelectric facilities around the world. One in Nevada City had an output of 18000 horsepowers of electricity for 60 years. The largest units can produce over 400 megawatts. Hydroelectricity Hydropower converts the energy of flowing water into electricity or hydroelectricity. The amount of electricity generated is determined by the volume of water and the amount of head (the height from the turbines in the powerplant to the water surface) created by the dam. The greater the flow and head, the more electricity is produced. The mechanical power of falling water is an age-old tool. Of all the renewable energy sources that generate electricity, hydropower is the most often used. It is one of the oldest sources of energy and was used thousands of years ago to turn a paddle wheel for purposes such as grinding grain. In the 1700s, mechanical hydropower was used extensively for milling and pumping.   The first industrial use of hydropower to generate electricity occurred in 1880, when 16 brush-arc lamps were powered using a water turbine at the Wolverine Chair Factory in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The first U.S. hydroelectric power plant opened on the Fox River near Appleton, Wisconsin, on September 30, 1882. Until that time, coal was the only fuel used to produce electricity. The early hydroelectric plants were direct current stations built to power arc and incandescent lighting during the period from about 1880 to 1895. Because the source of hydropower is water, hydroelectric power plants must be located on a water source. Therefore, it wasn’t until the technology to transmit electricity over long distances was developed that hydropower became widely used. By the early 1900s, hydroelectric power accounted for more than 40 percent of the United States supply of electricity. The years 1895 through 1915 saw rapid changes occur in hydroelectric design and a wide variety of plant styles built. Hydroelectric plant design became fairly well standardized after World War I with most development in the 1920s and 1930s being related to thermal plants and transmission and distribution.