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			Frederick G. Cottrell Born Jan 10 1877 - Died Nov 16 1948 Art of Separating Suspended Particles from Gaseous Bodies Electrostatic Precipitator Patent Number(s) 895,729 Inducted 1992 As industrial smokestacks became a common sight at the turn of the century, Frederick Cottrell realized that pollution might be controlled and that valuable raw materials were vanishing into the atmosphere with the unwanted gases. In 1907 he applied for a patent for a device that passed high-voltage direct current to a discharge electrode which leaked the charge onto particles passing by in the fumes. These charged particles were then electrically attracted to an electrode with an opposite charge, where they could be collected and retrieved as valuable minerals or chemical compounds. Invention Impact Cottrell's electrostatic precipitator, which became known simply as a 'Cottrell,' removed from 90 to 98 percent of all particles from escaping smoke and gases. The term 'cottrell' can still be found in the unabridged dictionary. Inventor Bio Cottrell was born in Oakland, California, and his childhood hobbies included photography, electricity, telegraphy, and publishing a weekly newspaper. In 1896 he received his B.S. from the University of California at Berkeley. He then taught high school chemistry, before receiving his doctorate from the University of Leipzig in 1902. In 1912, with the help of Charles Walcott, then secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Cottrell founded Research Corporation, a nonprofit group that plowed money from the precipitator and other inventions back into the advancement of science. The Research Corporation has since funded basic research on such important inventions as Williams' Vitamin B1, Goddard's rockets, and Lawrence's cyclotron. Later Cottrell worked for the Federal Bureau of Mines, the National Research Council, and the Department of Agriculture.