American inventor and manufacturer Peter Cooper (1791-1883) was considered New York City's "first citizen" because of his philanthropy and civic activities. He was a self-made millionaire, and his ideas of government were, for his time, politically radical.

Peter Cooper's father, John, was a craftsman whose restlessness and lack of success resulted in less than a year of formal education for his son, although the boy early became an accomplished mechanic. At 17 Cooper apprenticed himself to a New York City coach maker. Subsequently he was employed by a cloth-shearing factory, where he invented a new shearing device that became the basis for his first independent enterprise. He also bought a grocery store in New York. He married in 1813 and his wife, Sarah, baked the bread sold in the store. In 1827 he bought the glue factory which was the nucleus of his later fortune. Through experimentation he produced a product...