2026-10-06 Google search (Chrome) - Peek-Frank
Investigator, Step I, first run. Browsing window 17:06:10-17:13:52 CDT (7.7 min of the 10-minute cap).
Queries
- "F. W. Peek" General Electric Pittsfield 1933 obituary lightning
- Peek "Law of Corona and the Dielectric Strength of Air" pdf
- "Peek" "lightning" 1922 Pittsfield "million volts" artificial lightning generator
- "Peek's law" derivation theoretical evaluation corona onset streamer criterion 0.301
- "Hundredth Anniversary of the Peek's Law"
- site:worldradiohistory.com "F. W. Peek"
- Whitehead Johns Hopkins "disruptive strength of air" corona 1910 1911 Peek
- Hartmann "Theoretical evaluation of Peek's law" ieeexplore
- Franklin Institute awards "F. W. Peek" Levy Medal 1926
- "In 1916 Charles Steinmetz argued that F. W. Peek"
Found (result snippets; each followed up where noted)
- New York Times, 28 July 1933, headline "F.W. PEEK JR. DIES AS TRAIN HITS CAR; Inventor of Lightning-Maker Meets Death on Automobile Trip in Canada" (NYT site map, July 28 1933) [web: https://www.nytimes.com, site map 1933 July]. Article text not read (paywalled TimesMachine).
- Union College Schaffer Library (arches.union.edu): an index facet "Peek, F. W. (Frank William), 1881-1933 (84)", and items "Letter from F. W. Peek to Percy H. Thomas" and, in the William Stanley Jr. Collection, "Letter to F. W. Peek, November 5, ..." [web: https://arches.union.edu]. The site itself was blocked by a bot check (see 2026-10-06-arches-union-edu.md).
- Peek 1911, "The Law of Corona and the Dielectric Strength of Air" (Part I), preprint "Subject to final revision for the Transactions", 77 pages, in the Internet Archive collection crossref-pre-1923-scholarly-works [web: https://archive.org/download/crossref-pre-1923-scholarly-works/10.1109%252Fpaiee.1910.6660428.zip/10.1109%252Fpaiee.1911.6659605.pdf]. Not downloaded (see sites.md note on downloads).
- Third edition of the book (McGraw-Hill 1929, third impression) on the Internet Archive [web: https://archive.org/details/dielectricphenom0000unse; metadata: creator F.W. Peek, date 1929, 442 images].
- Peek 1924, "Lightning and Other Transients on Transmission Lines", Trans. AIEE, PDF on IEEE Xplore [web: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/4763772/5060960/05061070.pdf]; the snippet shows a lightning-generator table ("Lightning Generator Constants: Resistance 5000 ohms") and "at a million volts".
- Facebook history-page snippets (secondary, unsourced): "In March 1922, Steinmetz unveiled a 120,000-volt lightning generator. Then in September 1923, Peek, who had been transferred to Pittsfield in 1916..." Recorded as a lead only.
- "The Berkshire Hills" (archive.org, 430 pages): "Steinmetz, F. W. Peek, and their successors. In 1921 the generation and transmission of electricity in excess of a million volts was dramatically ..." [web: archive.org, "Full text of The Berkshire Hills"].
- Catalog of Copyright Entries: third edition registered "3d ed New York ... McGraw-Hill book company, inc., 1929. xv, 410 p. ... $5.00 (c) Dec. 7, 1929" [web: archive.org bub_gb_CKUhAQAAIAAJ].
- "Who's who in Massachusetts, 1940-41" mentions a GE engineer working under "F. W. Peek, Jr., chief engr., 1918-33" (wording of the snippet; dates belong to the entry's subject's career) [web: archive.org].
- "Wrestling with Nature: From Omens to Science" (book, c.2011): snippet "In 1916 Charles Steinmetz argued that F. W. Peek Jr.'s experiments on high-voltage lines, conducted in Steinmetz's engineering ..." The only hit was on dokumen.pub (an unauthorised copy site); not opened. Lead: obtain the book through a library and read the passage.
- Modern evaluations of Peek's law: Hartmann 1984 (followed up on IEEE Xplore, see 2026-10-06-ieeexplore.md); Protsenko and Trotsenko 2014 (see 2026-10-06-kpi-ua.md); Riba et al. 2018 MDPI comparative AC/DC corona study discussing Peek's law for sphere-plane gaps [web: https://www.mdpi.com, result snippet].
- Whitehead and Fitch: see 2026-10-06-archive-org.md.
Bearing on the claims
See the per-site notes; this file is the query log for Google itself.