George B. Simpson

George B. Simpson, of Saratoga County, New York was issued US Patent 65,019 in 1867 after a protracted and precedent-setting legal dispute. His 1848 application disclosed the use of gutta-percha to insulate metallic wire for electro-magnetic signalling. It was this invention of a practical insulation which had already made the first submarine telegraph cables viable, shrinking the globe from weeks to minutes. By the time the case concluded in 1867 he was a paymaster in the U.S. Army. He died a few months later of yellow fever.