Professor Warren Seymour Johnson was born in Leicester, Vt., Nov. 6, 1847. In 1849 the family moved, by sailing vessel from Buffalo to Milwaukee, to Waukesha, Wisconsin, and later to Central and Northern Wisconsin. He attended school and learned the printers' trade in Kilbourn, Wisconsin, and was foreman in the newspaper office, "The Lean Wolf," published by Van Waters in Durand. There he attended high school for a term, his schooling being mostly like Lincoln's, study by candle light at home. He taught school, was county surveyor of Dunn County, school Principal in Menomonie, Wis., and Superintendent of Schools in New Lisbon, in 1874. In the Fall of 1876 he took the position of Professor of Mathematics, Sciences and Drawing at the State Normal School at Whitewater, Wisconsin. At home he maintained his private laboratory where he carried on electrical and other experiments. Among these experiments was one on the storage of electric charges by means of lead plate and acid accumulator, now called storage batteries. Here he started his heat regulation experiments.
In 1883 he went to Milwaukee and, with William Plankinton as partner, started the Johnson Electric Service Company, to build and develop the Johnson System of Heat Regulation. The company was incorporated in 1885 and later the name was changed to Johnson Service Company. The business has grown so that it has a factory in Milwaukee and branch offices in all important cities in the United States and Canada. The business now amounts to several millions of dollars a year. Professor Johnson had a great many inventions, one of which was his pneumatic time system. The great 25 foot clock in the tower of the City Hall in Philadelphia, started Jan. 1, 1899 and running ever since, was one of these. The great 115 foot Floral Clock at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis in 1905 was another. The Johnson Service Company started building steam automobile trucks in 1899 and later built steam and gasoline pleasure cars till 1912. They carried the mails by contract for eight years in Milwaukee, being the first to succeed in carrying the mails by auto. Whiting and Mead were the agents for Johnson cars in the city of Los Angeles, California, and a truck they sold was the first to carry a load of freight from Los Angeles to Death Valley.
In the winter of 1899 and 1900 Professor Warren S. Johnson and Charles L. Fortier of Milwaukee started experimenting with wireless telegraphy. They organized the American Wireless Telegraph Company, a Wisconsin Corporation, and in the factory of Johnson Service Company they built many experimental receivers and a few transmitters. An exhibition set, capable of operating from one room to another, was made and in the spring of 1900 Mr. Fortier took it to the World's Exposition in Paris, where it was exhibited. For that exhibit the American Wireless Telegraph Company was awarded a diploma and silver medal, the second prize. Both of those are now in the library of Paul Franklin Johnson. Marconi for some reason did not win a prize, the gold medal going to a forgotten exhibitor.
While Mr. Fortier was in Paris, Professor Johnson heard of a Yale graduate who was working for the Western Electric Company in Chicago, but who had done considerable experimenting with Wireless Telegraphy. So he went to Chicago and after a short interview hired Dr. Lee DeForest, to come to Milwaukee and help with the experiments. This gave Dr. DeForest his start in Radio, tho the experiments did not result in anything sufficiently practical to be continued.
The transmitters (ordinary spark coils of large size) were first set up at the factory of Johnson Service Company, then located at 120 Sycamore Street. Then various locations were tried, such as the flagstaff in Juneau Park and the East Side Water tower, both on the lake front, in Milwaukee. Then a fight lattice mast 115 feet high was built at South Point. This was destroyed by an untimely windstorm in June 1900. Receivers were placed at various points in the City and on the Goodrich Line steamers running to Chicago. This was doubtless the first radio tower erected west of the Atlantic Seaboard, and messages were the first to be transmitted on the Great Lakes. Coherers and telegraph sounders were used for receivers and ten words per minute was the maximum speed possible. The distance covered was seldom over five miles.
After Mr. Fortier came back in mid-summer, Dr. DeForest left, to carry on experiments for himself, which resulted after several years, in his invention of the "Audion" the original three electrode radio tube, on which all radio receivers and transmitters, as well as long distance telephone, and the "talkies" are based.
Professor Johnson and Mr. Fortier discontinued their experiments about 1903.
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Warren Seymour Johnson: Father of Paul Franklin Johnson
Paul Franklin Johnson: At the age of 2, eldest son of Warren Seymour and Cora Estella (Smith) Johnson.
Sources: F1, G1, G3.
He married Cora Estella Smith, daughter of Royal Brewster Smith & Lydia Holt Goodwin, on 3 Aug 1873 in Menomomie, Wis. Born Canaan, Maine, on 11 Apr 1852. Died Flintridge, Calif. near Pasadena, on 29 Jul 1932.
Birth year may have been 1853. She resided at Weston, Downsville, Durand, Memomonie, Kilbourn, New Lisbon, Whitewater and Milwaukee, Wis., and Los Angeles, Calif. Ashes deposited in Los Angeles Cemetery.
Smith Lineage
1. John Smith (5th generation) married May 11, 1782 Betsey McLellan, at Gorham, Maine. Of their children, George, Royal Brewster and James are three of the sons.
2. James Smith (6tb generation) born Feb. 19, 1785 at Berwick, Maine, and died on Aug. 21, 1863. He married on May 21, 1810, Hannah Nason at Clinton, Maine. She was born Sept. 9, 1792 and died Dec. 18, 1859. Both are buried in the Oren Smith lot in Village Cemetery, Clinton, Maine. They had children: Oren, Harriet, Othniel, Emeline, Cynthia, Elkanah, Royal Brewster, Damaris, Freedom, Elizabeth, and Martha Van Buren.
3. Royal Brewster (7th generation) born July 13, 1826 at Canaan, Maine, and died Oct. 1, 1902 at Lake Geneva, Wis. He married at Fairfield, Maine, June 9, 1850 Lydia Holt Goodwin, daughter of George and Achsa (Holt) Goodwin. She was born April 23, 1832, near Clinton, Maine, and died at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, March 25, 1901. Both are buried at Downsville, Wisconsin. They bad children: Cora Estella, Lottie Ethlyn and George Wilder.
4. Cora Estella (8th generation) born April 11, 1852 at Canaan, Maine. She died July 29, 1932 at the home of her son, Carl Francis, in Flintridge, California, near Pasadena. She married Aug. 3, 1873, at Menominie, Wisconsin, Warren Seymour Johnson, son of Charles DeForest and Emeline (McCollough) Johnson. He was born Nov. 6, 1847 at Leicester, Vermont and died Dec. 5, 1911, at Los Angeles, California.
5. They had children Paul Franklin and Carl Francis.
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Lydia Goodwin Smith and Daughter Cora Estella: Grandmother and mother respectively of Paul Franklin Johnson and Carl Francis Johnson. Copied in 1930 from small photograph by C. G. Carleton, Waterville, Maine, probably in 1854.
Royal Brewster Smith: Grandfathr of Paul Franklin Johnson and Carl Francis Johnson. Copied in 1930 from a small photograph by C. G. Carleton, Waterville, Maine, probably in 1854. This photograph and the one of his wife and daughter were probably taken at the same time.