Leeds, Morris E.
Morris Evans Leeds was born in Philadelphia, 6 March 1869, son of Barclay Robert and Mary (Maule) Leeds. He received his preparatory education at the Westtown (PA) Boarding School of the Society of Friends, and graduated with a B.S. at Haverford College in 1888. During 1892-93 he was a graduate student in physics at the University of Berlin.
In 1899 Leeds organized and became managing partner in the firm of Morris E. Leed's & Co., manufacturers of electrical instruments. Four years later he joined Edwin F. Northrup in forming the Philadelphia firm of Leeds & Northrup Co., manufacturers of electrical instruments and pyrometers. He was president of this firm from its inception until 1939, and thereafter until the close of his life was chairman of the board of directors. Leeds made the technical development of the company his particular interest, and he was the inventor of some of the electrical and temperature measuring instruments which it manufactured. These included a recorder (U.S. Pat. No. 965,824), 1910; speed control apparatus (No. 1, 057,416), 1913; measuring apparatus (No. 1,097,651), 1914; electrical recorder (No. 1,125,699), 1915; composite resistance (No. 1,192,911), 1916; and an automatic control (No. 1,332,182), 1917. Under his direction the products of Leeds & Northrup included such instruments as galvanometers, standard resistances, and Wheatstone bridges, condensers, and potentiometers; temperature recording and copies; trolling apparatus, including resistance thermometers, optical pyrometers and thermocouples with potentiometer reading, recording and con trolling de vices; and electrochemical apparatus such as that for determining the conduct electrolytes and hydrogen ion concentration, this apparatus being used in a wide range of industrial plants and in laboratories of public service corporations, government departments, colleges, and schools.
Leeds was active in the organization and maintenance of an industrial system within his company for stabilizing employment and for protection from unemployment, all voting stock being owned by executives and workers in the business. During the 1930's he served the federal government in various capacities. He was a member of the industrial advisory board of the National Recovery Administration, of the Emergency Employment Committee under Herbert Hoover, of the advisory council to the President's Committee on Economic Security under Franklin D. Roosevelt, of the advisory committee on industrial relations of the National Industrial Conference Board, and of the business advisory council of the U.S. Department of Commerce (1933-39). He was co-author of Towards Full Employment (1934), and for two years he was lecturer on practical business at the University of Buffalo.
Leeds was an organizer of the Association of Scientific Apparatus of the United States of America and served as its president during 1920-26. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, American Academy of Political and Social Science, American Physical Society, and the American Philosophical Society. In 1920 he was awarded the Edward Longstreth Medal of the Franklin Institute for his invention of the Leeds & Northrup recorder; in 1936 the Gantt Medal of the Institute of Management; in 1946 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Medal; and in 1948 the Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers "For his contributions to industry through development and production of electrical precision measuring devices and controls." An honorary D.Sc. was conferred on him by Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1936, and an honorary LL.D. by Haverford College in 1946. Leeds died on 8 February 1952.
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