Engineer Marshall W. Hanks, a member of a prominent pioneer Madison, Wisconsin family, was born in 1875, educated in Madison, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in electrical engineering in 1897. After graduation, Hanks was employed in the private laboratory of George Westinghouse, founder of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. In the Westinghouse lab, Hanks worked on the development of the Nernst Lamp--an early electric street light invented by Walter Nernst, a leading expert on electricity in Germany. This lighting device used a porcelain-like rod made of a rare earth mineral rather than a filament. Nernst Lamps were more efficient, brighter, and more color true than existing carbon filament bulbs, but they were also complex and expensive to produce. In 1898 the invention was taken over by the Westinghouse Company, with Alexander J. Wurts in charge of experimentation. Wurts gathered around him some of the most practical electrical engineers of the era, including Hanks, Edward Bennett, and Murray C. Beebe (an 1897 graduate of the University of Wisconsin and a native of Racine).
During his time with the company Hanks became chief engineer of the Nernst Lamp Company, a Westinghouse subsidiary, and later operated the Barringer Mine in Texas which mined gadlonite, the rare mineral used in the lamp. Hanks' health failed and he left the company about 1904. In 1908 tungsten filament bulbs which had all the advantages of the Nernst Lamp and which were cheaper to produce were placed on the market. In 1912 the Nernst system was abandoned.
In 1905 Hanks became the president of the Hankscraft Boat Company of Reedsburg, remaining in that position for seven years. In 1912 he was made western manager of the automotive division of Westinghouse Electric. In 1928 Hanks invented and patented the principle of the liquid conductor heater, and he later founded the Hankscraft Company in Madison for the manufacture of the first automatic baby bottle warmer and other products which utilized the liquid conductor principle. He remained president of the Hankscraft Co., which later relocated at Reedsburg, Wisconsin, until 1949 at which time he became chairman of the board.
During his lifetime Hanks obtained patents on some fifty inventions. Other activities in Hanks' life included his position as director of the Dane County Title Company, membership on the Madison Water Board, and membership in (and presidency of) the Professional Men's Club and the Technical Club. He also held memberships in several national engineering societies and served as standards manager for the Society of Automotive Engineers.
Hanks' first wife, the former Martha Pound of Madison, died in 1909. Four years later he married Mildred Belle Davis of St. Louis, Missouri. Hanks died on May 9, 1952, survived by his wife, his son Marshall B. Hanks, and three grandchildren.
