William Morrison (chemist) was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the
good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be
renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that in 1890 William Morrison invented the first successful practical electric automobile (illustration shown) in the United States?
Current status: Delisted good article
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I changed the name of the Sources section to External links because they are not currently cited in in the article. Please see
WP:ELNO. Those external links should be significantly trimmed or moved to citations. I recommend
WP:PR if there is any interest in nominating this for GA status.
TJMSmith (
talk)
11:46, 6 March 2020 (UTC)reply
@
TJMSmith: Shouldn't the Header you labeled "External links" actually be correctly labeled Sources? The reason I think it should be Sources as they are the actual books and hard copy sources for the footnotes in the section labeled References. Maybe this section could be bettered labeled Citations as it has the actual source page numbers. I believe External links would be links to other places that talk about the subject of the article, in this case William Morrison the chemist. An example here would be the
Library of Congress link to electric car history. If you agree, could you change that Header title back to Sources. Also consider changing References to Citations. Thanks! --
Doug Coldwell (
talk)
14:38, 6 March 2020 (UTC)reply
Sorry, I wasn't clear that the sources were cited in the article. Would something like the references section in
Dorothy Thomas (entrepreneur) work? Specifically, a Citations and Bibliography section underneath the References heading. I'll go ahead and make the switch.
TJMSmith (
talk)
15:17, 6 March 2020 (UTC)reply
General comments
Great job with this article. I had a few comments/questions.
Is Morrison's hometown/birthplace known other than the whole country of Scotland?
No, not known.
Which university did Morrison attend?
No, not known
Do any sources explain why Morrison emigrated to the United States?
For whatever reason (not known why) he had a desire to emigrate to America and settled in Des Moines since he had a job there as an assistant watchmaker. Check out McClellan reference (pg 563) in article.
What is Dr. Arntz's first name?
Lew = furnished
Should the lede state that he was an "inventor and chemist"?
Chemist! He became an inventor by accident as he was trying to prove the value of his storage batteries. It turned out he "invented" a new type of storage battery (patent 464,676) and the practical electric carriage (aka electric car and electric automobile) as a means to prove how powerful his batteries were based on a unit of weight. He was far ahead of others of the day from this standpoint = state-of-the-art battery technology.
Did Morrison acquire American citizenship? If so, should he be listed as a Scottish-American inventor and chemist?
Never did find a reference to this effect. Suspect he may have since he lived in Des Moines and Chicago for a long time.
I know it can be difficult writing articles using old sources. Best,
TJMSmith (
talk) 11:55, 6 March
2020 (UTC)
Replies to your questions. No sources of the many I researched show the answers to the other ones. I not only used Google Books, but used actual hard copy books also, as Michigan has an excellent ILL system and I can get most any book I am interested in (if it shows in WorldCat). --
Doug Coldwell (
talk)
14:18, 6 March 2020 (UTC)reply
I figured you had already included everything that could be found in the existing sources but thought it was worth checking. Great work!
TJMSmith (
talk)
15:12, 6 March 2020 (UTC)reply
Thanks! I think the person that invented the electric automobile is significant, especially now-a-days as there has been a recent revival of that idea (i.e.
hybrids). That's why I am aiming to make it a Good Article. I have it now as a request at GOCE for a thorough copy edit by a professional. --
Doug Coldwell (
talk)
15:43, 6 March 2020 (UTC)reply
Copyright contributor investigation and Good article reassessment
This article
has been revised as part of
a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See
the investigation subpage) Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept
copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original orplagiarize from that source. Please see our
guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously.
SandyGeorgia (
Talk)
20:22, 4 March 2023 (UTC)reply