Peter Cooper, inventor, industrialist, and idealist, was born in New York City and raised in Peekskill, New York. Not given the opportunity for a formal education, Cooper developed a mechanical inclination at an early age, which led to his pioneering, inventive, and philanthropic spirit.

At the age of seventeen, Cooper left his country home to become an apprentice to a prominent coach builder in New York City. In the years that followed, he owned and operated a furniture factory, a grocery, and a glue-making factory. The foundation of Cooper's wealth came through the development of a glue-making process which he patented in 1830. During this period he married Sarah Bedell (1813). Their marriage produced six children, of which only Edward Cooper and Sarah Amelia survived.

Cooper's other contribution to the industrialization of America included the first American-built stream locomotive (called the Tom Thumb), isinglass, gelatin (jello), and a new method of salt-making. He was also a founding member of the company that laid the first Trans-Atlantic telegraph cable.

Peter Cooper's greatest achievement was the establishment of the Cooper Union School for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences in 1854. Cooper Union provided a free education to the gifted working class of New York City. He wanted to "give to the world an equivalent in some form of useful labor for all that I consumed in it."

One hundred and fifty years later, Peter Cooper's legacy of Cooper Union still provides scholarship for those students that excel in the arts, engineering, and architecture.

Peter Cooper died at the age of 92 from pneumonia at his home in New York City. An editorial from The Nation stated that Peter Cooper "was a man that united the highest integrity with the highest success."

For more information on Peter Cooper, see:

• The Making of a Modern Museum, by Eleanor Garnier Hewitt
• Cooper Union
• More Links

The text in this section was prepared by the Friends of Ringwood Manor.