Thomas H. Wright (October 24, 1873 – June 4, 1928) was a teacher and electrician. While working for Portland General Electric, he designed the electrical lighting for the 1905

Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition The Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, commonly also known as the Lewis and Clark Exposition, and officially known as the Lewis and Clark Centennial and American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair, was a worldwide exposition held in Portlan ...

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

Early life

Wright was born on October 24, 1873 to George and Eliza Wright. He had two older siblings, Jane and Samuel Wright, and was raised on a dairy farm in northern

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...

, near

Fort Dodge Fort Dodge is a city in, and the county seat of, Webster County, Iowa, United States, along the Des Moines River. The population was 24,871 in the 2020 census, a decrease from 25,136 in 2000. Fort Dodge is a major commercial center for North Cen ...

. At the age of 17, Wright traveled to

to experience life in the West. Upon arriving in Portland, Wright worked odd jobs: building houses, loading and unloading ships at the Port of Portland, and teaching in the Portland Schoolhouse for 6 months from 1892. On February 21, 1893, the following opinion article was published in the '' Oregonian'' newspaper:

Thomas Wright has brought new inspiration to the education system. .. In addition to the required English and Mathematics courses, he has provided a refreshing addition of Practical skills, most notably Construction. He is a firm believer of the "hands-on" method of instruction, and has taken his classes on a number of botanical field-trips, most centered around the discovery of edible plants.

Lewis and Clark Exposition

In 1893, Wright was hired in the

Portland General Electric Portland General Electric (PGE) is a Fortune 1000 public utility based in Portland, Oregon. It distributes electricity to customers in parts of Multnomah, Clackamas, Marion, Yamhill, Washington, and Polk counties - 44% of the inhabitants of O ...

's new City-Eastside Electric Light Plant. In 1904, as preparations for the Lewis and Clark exposition were underway, Wright advised Portland General Electric to consider lighting the fairgrounds, which would give it a greater standing in the eyes of Portland and the world. The company was not well respected by major eastern

stockholders A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of a corporation is an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the legal owner ...

, which had limited its growth, and would need greater funding if it was to build another generator to power the fairgrounds. Henry H. Goode, the president of Portland General Electric, traveled to New York in the spring of 1905, so stockholders would invest a total of three thousand dollars to build a new plant. Wright, meanwhile, was put in charge of designing the electrical plans for the fairgrounds. When Goode returned confirming that the money was available, construction began on Wright's plans. Many of the lighting technologies of the World's fair had never been implemented in such a scale before the fair, including the

incandescent lights An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxida ...

around

Guild's Lake Guild's Lake (also Guild Lake) was a flood-prone lowland near the confluence of Balch Creek with the Willamette River in the U.S. state of Oregon. Indigenous Multnomah people established villages on nearby Sauvie Island but not in the swampy area ...

and the Forestry Building, and large

searchlight A searchlight (or spotlight) is an apparatus that combines an extremely bright source (traditionally a carbon arc lamp) with a mirrored parabolic reflector to project a powerful beam of light of approximately parallel rays in a particular direc ...

s on top of the fair's Government building.

Later life

After the fair, Wright continued to work as an electrician. On June 2, 1928, Wright fractured his skull, after falling while repairing electrical cables. He died two days later, in Portland, Oregon, and was buried in

Lone Fir Cemetery Lone Fir Cemetery in the southeast section of Portland, Oregon, United States is a cemetery owned and maintained by Metro, a regional government entity. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the first burial was in 1846 with the ceme ...

Legacy

In the book ''Bringing Power to Ideas'', the Portland General Electric Company recognized the influence that Wright had had on their company's continued prosperity throughout the twentieth century.

References

{{Portland Public Schools 1873 births 1928 deaths Educators from Portland, Oregon People from Fort Dodge, Iowa American electricians 19th-century American educators Accidental deaths from falls Accidental deaths in Oregon Burials at Lone Fir Cemetery