Joshua Lionel Cowen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Lionel_Cowen

Joshua Lionel Cowen (August 25, 1877 – September 8, 1965) was an American inventor and the cofounder of Lionel Corporation, a manufacturer of model railroads and toy trains.[1] Cowen also invented the flash-lamp in 1899, an early photographer's flash light source.[2] Joshual Lionel Cowen was born in New York City’s Lower East Side, the eighth of nine children. His Jewish immigrant parents were Hymen Nathan Cohen, a hatmaker, and Rebecca Kantrowitz. Cowen had built his first toy train at age 7,[1] attaching a small motor under a model of a railroad flatcar. He studied at Columbia University, Cooper Union and the City College of New York but did not complete his degrees.[3]

Marketing and business career[edit] He received his first patent in 1899, for a device that ignited a photographer's flash. The same year, Cowen received a defense contract from the United States Navy to produce mine fuses that netted him $12,000. The following year, Cowen and one of his partners founded Lionel Corporation in New York City.[4]

Cowen sold his first electric train in 1901 to a store owner in Manhattan, intending to use the train to call attention to other merchandise.[1] The store owner returned the next day to order six more trains, because customers wanted to buy the store display. By 1902, Lionel was primarily a toy train manufacturer. He started his company, the Lionel Corporation.[1][4] His trains continue to sell today.

He legally changed the spelling of his last name in 1910.[5]

Cowen's marketing skills ultimately made him more money than his talents at invention. The tradition linking toy trains to Christmas originated in Germany in the mid-19th century. It was expanded by Cowen, who in the 1920s convinced the owners of large department stores to incorporate elaborate train setups, which he provided, around their large Christmas tree displays, hoping to increase demand among small boys for toy trains as Christmas gifts.[6] Lionel was soon the largest of three American toy train manufacturers, and for a short time in the early 1950s, Lionel was the largest toy manufacturer in the world. However, by the mid-1950s, public interest had shifted from trains to airplanes and slot cars.[1][4]

Cowen retired in 1959, selling his 55,000 shares of Lionel stock to his great-nephew Roy Cohn.[1] He died September 8, 1965 in Palm Beach, Florida. He is buried in Union Field Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery maintained for the Congregation of Rodeph Shalom in Brooklyn, New York.

Timeline[edit] 1893 entered the College of the City of New York

1896 joins Henner & Anderson, an early dry cell battery manufacturer

1897 he took a job at the Acme Lamp Company in New York as a battery lamp assembler

1899 Cowen received his first patent for a device that ignited a photographer's flash

1899 Cowen received a defense contract from the United States Navy to produce mine fuses

1900 Cowen and Harry C. Grant founded Lionel Manufacturing Company in New York City

1900 he filed his second patent which improved on the first design of his flash igniter

1901 Lionel Manufacturing Company begins selling electric fans, battery operated with a small motor

1901 Cowen developed the first Lionel train—a battery-powered “Electric Express.”

1904 Cowen married Cecelia Liberman

1909 Cowen was calling his model trains "The Standard of the World."

1910 Joshua changes his last name from Cohen to Cowan

1915 O-Gauge was introduced, which eventually became the most popular scale of train

1918 Lionel Manufacturing Company renamed Lionel Corporation

1947 In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Cowan claims he invented the flashlight

1953 Lionel became was the largest toy manufacturer in the world

1959 Joshua sold all of his stock to his nephew, the infamous attorney, Roy Cohn

1959 Retired from Lionel Corporation

1999 Lionel trains were selected as one of the top 10 toys of the 20th century

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/this-day-in-jewish-history/.pr...

This day in Jewish history / Pioneer of electric model trains dies New York-born self-made electrical engineer Joshua Lionel Cowen used a battery he developed for a failed electric fan to create a toy sensation. By David B. Green | Sep. 8, 2013 | 9:50 AM Joshua Lionel Cowen was born in New York City’s Lower East Side on August 25, 1877, the eighth of nine children. His parents were Hymen Nathan Cohen, a hatmaker, and the former Rebecca Kantrowitz. (The son legally changed his name to “Cowen” in 1910.)

Already as a child and adolescent, Joshua displayed a propensity to take apart his toys to see how they operated – or in the case of his sisters’ dolls, to see how their eyes blinked. Despite his curiosity and cleverness, he was an inattentive student, and despite enrolling in both City College of New York, in 1893, and later Columbia University, he dropped out of both institutions early on.

In place of school, Cowen began working as an apprentice at Henner and Anderson, a company that manufactured one of the first dry-cell batteries, before moving on to the Acme Electric Light Company. He registered his first patent in 1899 for something he called a “flash lamp,” which used dry-cell batteries to ignite the magnesium powder used by photographers for illuminating flash pictures. The lamp was very similar to what we think of today as a flashlight, or torch, but wasn’t marketed for that purpose, and was soon abandoned.

The same year, 1899, Cowen received a contract from the U.S. Navy to design and manufacture a fuse to ignite 24,000 submarine mines. A year or two later, he created a battery-powered electric fan. The only problem with it, he later recalled, was that, “you could stand a foot away from the thing and not feel any breeze.”

While still pondering how to exploit the motor that ran the non-cooling fan, Cowen happened by a toy-store display window containing, among other things, a push train. It occurred to him that a miniature, self-powered train running around a track would be a great draw for customers, and he approached the store-owner with his idea. Having tried his first experiment with a toy train at age 7, outfitting it with a steam engine – which then exploded – it was not a great leap for Cowen to attach his newly designed motor to a model train.

He and his partner, Harry C. Grant, a partner from Acme Electric Light, assembled an open, flatbed car, onto which they attached the fan motor. They created a track with two brass strips mounted on wooden ties. They powered the invention, which they called the Electric Express, with a battery.

Within days, the owner of the shop, ordered another six of the trains, which had been intended merely for display, after customers clamored to buy them for home use. Very soon, Cowen and Grant were manufacturing their model trains for retail sale, and expanding the line. By 1902, they had added a trolley car and a locomotive, as well as suspension bridge for the tracks. For power, they switched from a battery to a 110-volt electric transformer. By 1906, they had added a third rail, which now carried the current, and changed the width between the rails to 2-1/8 inches, which now became the industry standard.

As more American homes were wired for electricity, Lionel trains, as they were called, became increasingly popular toys, and large, elaborate displays of trains in department and toy stores were a much-anticipated element of the Christmas buying season. The cost of a 1929 Blue Comet 400E engine was equivalent to that of a used Model T automobile.

The company, and Cowen personally, were hit hard by the Great Depression, and the company went into receivership. Relief came in 1934 with the sale of the first Mickey and Minnie Mouse hand cars, which sold 253,000 units during their first season.

Cowen married Cecelia Liberman in 1904, and the couple had two children. Cecelia died in 1946, and three years later, Cowen married Lillian Appel Herman.

By 1954, by which time one of Cowen’s sons, Lawrence, had taken over management of the company, sales had reached $33 million annually: Lionel Trains was the world’s largest toy manufacturer. Within six years, however, sales had dropped by half, the company was in debt, and Joshua, then followed by Lawrence, sold off their shares in the company to a great-nephew of Joshua’s – attorney Roy Cohn. Cohn was already well known for his work as a prosecutor in the Federal case against nuclear-espionage defendants Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and as counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy in his pursuit of Communists in government employ.

Having also purchased Lionel shares on the open market, Cohn was able to take over the company, but he suffered such severe losses that by 1963, he was forced to sell out, at a significant loss.

In the following decades, Lionel Trains went through bankruptcy, buy-outs, reorganization several times. But by the early years of the current decade, the company seemed to be in strong financial hands and the trains were still being produced. One of those who helped steer the company back into viability was musician Neil Young, a fan of model trains. For some time, Young was actually an investor in Lionel. Although today, he no longer owns part of the company, he remains a technical consultant.

Joshua Lionel Cowen retired from business in 1959, at the same time he sold his shares in the company he created. He moved to Palm Beach, Florida, where he died on this day in 1965. "New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949," database, FamilySearch

(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2WY3-TNC : 20 March 2015), Joshua Lionel Cowen in entry for Cecelia Liberman Cowen, 12 Jun 1946; citing Death, Manhattan, New York, New York, United States, New York Municipal Archives, New York; FHL microfilm 2,132,947.