David Alter
American inventor and scientist (1807–1881)
David Alter (December 3, 1807 – September 18, 1881) was an American inventor and scientist of the 19th century. He was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania and graduated from the Reformed Medical School in New York City. He had German and Swiss ancestry.
Inventions
Alter is credited with having invented:
1836 - the electric telegraph, predating the Morse telegraph in 1837.
1840 - his electric buggy - the forerunner of the automobile.
1845 - a patented method to manufacture and purify bromine from salt wells, highly useful in the iron industry and displayed in the World's Fair of 1853 (see: Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York City).
1854 - spectrum analysis, the idea that every element has its own emission spectrum: a breakthrough development in spectroscopy. The published article was: On Certain Physical Properties of Light Produced by the Combustion of Different Metals in an Electric Spark Refracted by a Prism. He included a chart of the colored lines or bands of twelve metals and paved the way by showing the spectral lines of brass corresponded to copper and zinc.
1855 - an expansion of spectrum analysis to include the optical properties of gas.
The public source identifies “David Alter” as american inventor and scientist (1807–1881). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around David, Alter and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2070969. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1807, 1881, 1836 and 1837.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Alter” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.