Thomas Parker (inventor)

Thomas Parker was an English electrical engineer, inventor and industrialist, born on 22 December 1843 at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, where his father was a moulder at the Coalbrookdale Ironworks. He began as a moulder himself, became a chemist in the firm's electroplating department and built a dynamo there to replace battery cells. With Paul Bedford Elwell he made dynamos and lead-acid batteries at Wolverhampton under the Elwell-Parker name, supplying electric lighting and early tramway equipment. In 1892 he designed a high voltage direct current distribution scheme for several British cities, and in 1897 he formed the Midland Electric Corporation, described as the first company to distribute electricity over a wide area. He later advised on the electrification of the Metropolitan Railway. For energy history he is also remembered for Coalite, a smokeless solid fuel made from coal that he invented in 1904, which links the growth of electricity supply with the effort to cut coal smoke in cities. He died at Ironbridge on 5 December 1915.