Adolphe Alexandre Chaillet (July 15, 1867, in Paris – after 1914) was a French inventor in the field of electrical engineering.
He was the son of Samuel Alexander Chaillet, a Swedish watchmaker, and Eugénie Eva Wendawowicz, a Russian.
[citation needed] Chaillet emigrated to the United States in 1892 to manufacture lamps in Marlboro, Massachusetts (probably in what was then known as the Bryan-Marsh Company).
[3][a] In the latter part of July, 1896, John Cooper Whiteside, former superintendent at the Cooper Engine Works in Mount Vernon, Ohio, mentioned to John Chamberlain Fish, a businessman in Shelby, Ohio, that Chaillet had an idea for an improved incandescent lamp that was 20% more efficient and had 30% more life than other models.
On August 7, 1896, a newspaper article announced that a contract had been negotiated between Chaillet, Whiteside, Fish and some other Shelby investors.
A. Chaillet, the technical manager of the company, and upon whom it chiefly depends for its advice regarding all points pertaining to the manufacturing of its product, was engaged in the factory operated by his father near Paris, France, when the incandescent lamp was made by them in Europe.
Wormley & Co. had sole agency for the Shelby tipless lamp in Cook County, Illinois, and Minnesota from the first day of manufacture.
[6][7] Chaillet's light-bulb design involved flattening the elliptically looped carbon filament coil set transversely to the longitudinal axis of the lamp, as well as flattening the end of the globe, or bulb at its tip end, parallel to the loops, so that the greatest intensity of light is thrown downward when the bulb is hung from the ceiling.
Quoting directly from the article: The lamp possesses a number of peculiar features which it is claimed give to it certain elements of superiority above all others.
The filament is square cut by means of automatic machinery from sheets of material produced by a secret chemical process.
The cut filament, after being formed, is attached to platinum terminals which are sealed into the sides at the lower end of the lamp bulb.
In an Electrical Review article of March 10, 1897, pg 111, the origin of Shelby light bulb filaments was discussed.
The filament is much nearer pure carbon than anything on the market, it being so hard after being carbonized that it will scratch glass very readily....We could ourselves secure patents on over a hundred different devices, which we use in our manufacture, but prefer to keep them secret....We are not selling lamps on prices, but on quality....[9]At first, Chaillet did not patent the new lamp design, nor its details, preferring to keep them as trade secrets.