Talk:Schuyler Wheeler

Schuyler Wheeler was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
March 7, 2021	Good article nominee	Listed
February 26, 2023	Good article reassessment	Delisted

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on April 3, 2017.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Schuyler Skaats Wheeler invented the first electric fan?

Current status: Delisted good article

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Attribution

Text and references copied from Schuyler Wheeler to Electric fire engine. See former page's history for a list of contributors. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 12:12, 30 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Text and references copied from Schuyler Wheeler to Elevator. See former article's history for list of contributors. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:25, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Electric elevator?

This claim needs a better expert than I to decide whether to leave or change it. This article says Wheeler invented the electric elevator, in both the introduction and under Inventions. Both the references cited in the Inventions section do support this claim. However, neither goes into any detail, nor do they employ the level of emphasis I would expect for such a major invention.

In the Wikipedia article on Elevators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator Wheeler's name does not appear, neither in the History section or anywhere else. It states that "The first electric elevator was built by Werner von Siemens in 1880 in Germany.[19] The inventor Anton Freissler developed the ideas of von Siemens and built up a successful enterprise in Austria-Hungary. The safety and speed of electric elevators were significantly enhanced by Frank Sprague ..." The cited reference there supports this claim for von Siemens. The Wikipedia articles on Freissler and Sprague give details on their contributions.

Is it possible that Wheeler, like Freissler and Sprague, contributed to the development of electric elevators, perhaps specifically improving the motors or controls, without actually inventing them? In that case, the two references here (which are both, for lack of a better term, puff pieces? -- biographical sketches written by someone wishing to put the subject in the most impressive light?) may have been overstating his contribution. If so, this article should be changed. If not, then the Elevator article's History section is doing Wheeler an injustice. I don't know how to figure out which is right. Gms3591 (talk) 14:09, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Try Wheeler, Schuyler (February 27, 1883). "SCHUYLER S. WHEELER, OF NEW YORK, N. Y. - Electric Elevator Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 273,208" (PDF). United States Patent Office. Retrieved April 3, 2017 – via Google Patents. Good beginning. I know that the IEEE biography says that and that has substantial reliabiity, IMO. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 14:24, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's an excellent primary reference, but as I interpret it, it casts extreme doubt on this article's contention and supports my initial guess. The patent is *titled* Electric Elevator but the text does not claim that the electric elevator is what's being patented. The text begins "I, SCHUYLER S. WHEELER ... have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Electric Elevators." I am not an engineer or patent attorney (merely a former architect) but as far as I can make out, traction elevators at the time of this patent did not use counterweights as they do today (a traction elevator being the type used in high-rise applications, where the car is raised and lowered by steel ropes passed over pulleys called sheaves at the top of the shaft; low-rise applications use hydraulic elevators). Counterweights minimize the amount of energy needed to raise and lower the car. Without a counterweight, a much larger motor would have been needed, using much more energy. Wheeler apparently invented an electrical device to collect the energy generated by gravity as the car went down (kind of like generating electricity with gravity when water goes through a hydroelectric generator) and use it again when the car was raised (at least I think that's what he did; I really can't tell). According to http://elevation.wikia.com/wiki/Traction_elevators (if it's right) counterweights have been used since 1900; the patent was filed in 1883, which would support it preceding counterweights. Now that counterweights are used, I assume Wheeler's invention is completely obsolete, though I could be wrong -- even with a counterweight, the car always is traveling by gravity in one or the other direction of travel (it will "fall up" if the car plus load weighs less than the counterweight), so maybe Wheeler's invention is still used to harness that energy source. But based on this, he definitely, absolutely did not invent the electric elevator, and didn't claim to. He invented a means of harvesting gravity energy to help operate electric elevators, in a way that may or may not still be relevant. The statement herein that he invented the electric elevator, if based on this patent, is mistaken. Gms3591 (talk) 07:27, 26 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How it was

Schuyler Skaats Wheeler (May 17, 1860 – April 20, 1923) was an American electrical engineer and manufacturer who invented the electric fan, an electric elevator design, and the electric fire engine. He is associated with the early development of the electric motor industry, especially to do with training the blind in this industry for gainful employment. He helped develop and implement a code of ethics for electrical engineers and was associated with the electrical field in one way or another for over thirty years. 103.100.17.193 (talk) 08:22, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright contributor investigation and Good article reassessment

This article is part of Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20210315 and the Good article (GA) drive to reassess and potentially delist over 200 GAs that might contain copyright and other problems. An AN discussion closed with consensus to delist this group of articles en masse, unless a reviewer opens an independent review and can vouch for/verify content of all sources. Please review Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/February 2023 for further information about the GA status of this article, the timeline and process for delisting, and suggestions for improvements. Questions or comments can be made at the project talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:36, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

historical research

This blog has some historical research into the history of the electric fan, including a lot of questions about whether this Wheeler character really invented it and when it was invented https://www.afcaforum.com/forum1/24459.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skysong263 (talk • contribs) 23:26, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Here's an 1854 patent for a fan https://patents.google.com/patent/US12106 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skysong263 (talk • contribs) 23:36, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]