Louis Bell (December 5, 1864 to June 14, 1923) was an American engineer, physicist, inventor, and academic.
His father was a New Hampshire lawyer who died in 1865 while serving as a Union Army colonel at the battle of Fort Fisher during the American Civil War.
[10] Two years later, Bell was sent to be educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, and he matriculated to Dartmouth College in 1880.
[4] He next joined the staff of Purdue University as a professor seated in the newly established chair of applied electricity.
[3] In 1892, he was hired as chief engineer for the power transmission department of the General Electric company.
During 1893, he supervised the installation of the nation's first three-phase generators at the Redlands Power Plant in Mill Creek, California.
Using a system Bell designed, this generator transmitted a now-standard 60 Hz frequency alternating current over long-distance lines, 35 miles (56 km) to Sacramento in 1895.
[3] Bell became a Boston engineering consultant in 1895, and he remained in this job for the rest of his life.
For a period of ten years he served as vice president of the Illuminating Engineering Society of Great Britain.