Alfred Ely Beach

Alfred Ely Beach was an American inventor, publisher, and patent lawyer, born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is most known for his design of New York Citys earliest subway predecessor, the Beach Pneumatic Transit. He also patented a typewriter for the blind.

Beach was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and was the son of a prominent publisher, Moses Beach. Alfred Beach worked for his father until he and a friend, Orson Desaix Munn I, decided to buy Scientific American, a relatively new publication. They ran Scientific American until their deaths decades later, and it was carried on by their sons and grandsons for decades more. Munn and Beach also established a very successful patent agency. Beach patented some of his own inventions, notably an early typewriter designed for use by the blind. After the Civil War he founded a school for freed slaves in Savannah, the Beach Institute, which is now the home of the KingTisdell Cottage Foundation.

Source: Wikipedia