Park Benjamin (1849–1922) was an American patent lawyer and writer. He was born in New York City, graduated at the United States Naval Academy in 1867, resigned from the Navy in 1869, and graduated at the Albany Law School in the following year. He was associate editor of The Scientific American from 1872 to 1878 and subsequently edited Appleton's Cyclopedia of Applied Mechanics and Cyclopædia of Modern Mechanism. He is also famous as the father-in-law of operatic tenor Enrico Caruso.
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Early life
Park Benjamin Jr. was born in New York in 1849. His father, Park Benjamin Sr., was extremely famous in his time, as a poet, editor and founder of several newspapers.
Park Benjamin graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1867, and published a book of his etchings of the academy that year. He resigned from the Navy, and after a year at law school was admitted to the New York Bar in 1870. He studied science at Union College and received his Ph.D. in 1877. Before completing his doctorate he was assistant editor of Scientific American (1872–78) and then editor-in-chief of Appleton's Cyclopaedia of Applied Mechanics (1879–96). By the time Benjamin began working at Scientific American it had become more associated with the commercial side of science and patenting of inventions. He was editor when Thomas Edison brought in his phonograph to the patent agency, and its uses were for the first time described in an 1877 issue. Both Edison and younger brother Dr. George Benjamin were contributors to Appleton's when P.B. began editing.