Edward Alfred Cowper

Edward Alfred Cowper (10 December 1819 London – 9 May 1893 Rastricke, Weybridge, Surrey) was a British mechanical engineer.

Biography He was born on 10 December 1819 in London to professor Edward Shickle Cowper (1790–1852), head of the department of engineering at King's College London; and Ann Applegath. The elder Cowper, together with his brother-in-law Augustus Applegath, had helped to develop the vertical printing press in the 1820s.

In 1833, he was apprenticed to John Braithwaite, a railway engineer in London.

In around 1841, he invented the detonating railway fog signal, first tried on the Croydon railway and widely used to this day as an emergency safety measure. The same year, he joined Fox, Henderson and Co, structural and railway engineers in Smethwick, where he devised a method of casting railway chairs. He oversaw the company's contract drawings for the 1851 Exhibition Building, The Crystal Palace. George Gilbert Scott praised Cowper's roof at New Street, stating "An iron roof in its most normal condition is too spider-like a structure to be handsome, but with a very little attention this defect is obviated. The most wonderful specimen, probably, is that at the great Birmingham Station . . . "

In 1879, Cowper invented the writing-telegraph; a device which allowed hand-written messages to be transmitted by telegraph. The exact position of the pencil of the operator at the sending-station was communicated to the writing-pen at the receiving-station through two wires, one giving the vertical and the other the horizontal position of the pencil.

Cowper also took part in founding the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He was a founding member of the Institution in 1847 and in the following year was elected a member of the council. In 1880-81 he served the office of President.

Cowper was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal of The Franklin Institute in 1889.

He married Juliana Hanson in 1847 in Kensington, London and they had six children, the youngest being the actor and singer Vernon Cowper (1871-1922). He died at home of pneumonia at the age of 73.