Joseph B Stearns
American
Joseph B Stearns was born in 1831 in the town of Weld, Franklin County, Maine. The story of Stearns life reads like a Horatio Alger book that was never written.
After several early failures which left him deeply in debt, Stearns went into a telegraph office in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1850. Four years later in 1854, Stearns became the superintendent of the Boston Fire Alarm Telegraph office, a post which he held for 12 years.
In 1867 he was elected president of the Franklin Telegraph Company, operating between Boston and Washington, a post which he held for two and one-half years. It was during this short tenure of office that Mr Stearns invented the duplex system of telegraphy, by which two messages could be sent over the same wire at the same time. This invention revolutionized the telegraph industry and eventually made Mr Stearns a millionaire.
Between 1869 and 1885, Mr Stearns introduced his invention to Europe, Canada and South America. For his efforts he continued to receive royalties from England, France and Italy.
In 1885 Joseph B. Stearns ended his active career and returned to Maine. It was at this time that he built his great stone villa at Camden. The surrounding land, Stearns stocked with valuable herds of cattle and completed his dream home in 1891 by building an astronomical observatory about twenty rods from his villa. - NRHP