Park Benjamin, Jr.
| Park Benjamin Jr. | |
|---|---|
United States Naval academy seal designed by Park Benjamin
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| Born | Park Benjamin May 11, 1849 New York City |
| Died | August 21, 1922 (aged 73) Stamford, Connecticut |
| Occupation | Editor, writer, illustrator, patent attorney, consultant |
| Language | English |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Education |
United States Naval Academy, 1867 Albany Law School, 1870 Union College (PhD), 1877 |
| Genres | Magazines, non-fiction, fiction |
| Subjects | United States Naval Academy, electricity, mechanics, science in general |
| Notable work | History of the United States Naval Academy |
| Spouses | Helen Campbell, Isabel Torrens, Ida Crane |
Park Benjamin (1849–1922) was an American patent lawyer, physician, and writer. He was born in New York City, graduated at the United States Naval Academy in 1867, resigned from the Navy in 1869, and graduated at the Albany Law School in the following year. He was associate editor of The Scientific American from 1872 to 1878 and subsequently edited Appleton's Cyclopedia of Applied Mechanics and Cyclopædia of Modern Mechanism.
Park Benjamin Jr. was born in New York in 1849. His father, Park Benjamin Sr., was extremely famous in his time, as a poet, editor and founder of several newspapers.
Park graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1867 and published a book of his etchings of the academy that year. He resigned from the Navy, and after a year at law school was admitted to the New York Bar in 1870. He studied science at Union College and received his Ph.D. in 1877. Before completing his doctorate he was assistant editor of Scientific American (1872–78) and then editor-in-chief of Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of Applied Mechanics (1879–96). By the time Benjamin began working at Scientific American it had become more associated with the commercial side of science and patenting of inventions. He was editor when Thomas Edison brought in his phonograph to the patent agency, and its uses were for the first time described in an 1877 issue. Both Edison and younger brother Dr. George Benjamin were contributors to Appleton's when P.B. began editing.
In between those editorships Benjamin established, at 37 Park Row, a "Scientific Expert Office" that offered advertising and promotional help, as well as metallurgical and chemical expertise for inventors and manufacturers. Benjamin wrote three books on the history of electricity, one on the Voltaic cell and one on the U.S. Naval Academy. Like the later Scientific American editor John Bernard Walker, he was very interested in the Navy and in coastal defenses, the northeast coast particularly. According to his article in the Who’s Who, his story, "The End of New York" (1881), meant to warn of the navy’s inadequacy, made quite an impression at the time. It features balloons which can float over targets and release bombs, an invention it seems he was quite worried about since he wrote an article warning about the dangers of balloon weapons the year before the story came out. This creative method of siege was used first by Austria against the rebellious Venetians in 1849. The balloon bombs were successful and their use was reported in Scientific American in 1849. Who knows why Benjamin saw it as a threat to New York thirty years later? "The subject is woefully trite," wrote the Nassau Literary Magazine when the story was reprinted in 1885, "the plot is extremely simple...Its interest is derived solely from its novelty."
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