The New York Daily News on June 16, 1936, mentioned Daniel McFarlan Moore as one of the electric industry's top three wizards, alongside Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. The brilliant inventor and electrical engineer had been gunned down the day before on the lawn of his New Jersey home.

McFarlan was born in Northumberland, Pennsylvania on February 27^th, 1869. He was the son of the Reverend Alexander Davis and Maria Louisa Douglas Moore. 

Following graduation from Lehigh University in 1889, Daniel McFarlan Moore worked in the engineering department of the United Edison Manufacturing Company. He left in 1894 to form his own companies, the Moore Electric Company and the Moore Light Company.

He developed a light source, the "Moore lamp", and a business that produced them in the early 1900s. The Moore lamp was the first commercially viable light source based on gas discharges instead of incandescence; it was the predecessor to contemporary neon lightning and fluorescent lighting. In his later career, Moore developed a miniature neon lamp that was extensively used in electronic displays and vacuum tubes used in early television systems. The General Electric Company absorbed the two Moore companies and Moore's patents in 1912. Moore himself rejoined General Electric's laboratory force. [1]

Unfortunately, Moore met an untimely death when he was gunned down on the front lawn of his home in East Orange New, Jersey on June 15^th, 1936.  The following day, an unemployed electrician killed himself while being approached by a rural police officer for questioning. An investigation revealed that the bullet used in his suicide matched the caliber of the weapon used to kill Moore.

An investigation revealed that the suspect had become upset after learning that an invention he had filed for was already the subject of a patent given to Moore.