Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin

Alexander Lodygin ( Russian Александр Николаевич Лодыгин ; born October 6 ^{. Jul} / 18th October  1847 ^greg. In Stenschino , Russian Empire ; † 16th March 1923 in New York City ) was a Russian electrical engineer .

Lodygin became known for its long-term development of incandescent lamp technology. He acquired patents for his developments in Russia, the USA and various European countries. He experimented with techniques that caught on much later. From an unknown point in time, he used the names Alexandre de Lodyguine and Alexander de Lodyguine in France and the USA .

Life

Lodygin's light bulb, 1874

Alexander Lodygin was born on October 18, 1847, into a noble but not particularly wealthy family.

He first completed a career in the Russian army. After that he worked in a factory for the manufacture of military equipment. His preoccupation with electrical engineering and light bulbs resulted from this.

In 1874 Lodygin was granted Russian Patent No. 1619 for a developed incandescent lamp . Various sources name 1872 and 1873 for the development and testing in a lighting project in St. Petersburg. However, he did not achieve competitiveness with the gas light introduced in the 1860s. The lifespan of its incandescent lamps, like that of other developments at that time, was only a few hours. Alexander Lodygin exchanged the air in the glass envelope of his lamp constructions for nitrogen. Compared to the vacuum solution customary at the time, the pressure in the glass envelope reduces the sublimation of the glow material. The solution of a filling gas later prevailed. In its further developments, Lodygin also switched to vacuum lamps. It is not clear from the sources whether he already had a vacuum pump in 1873. For his lamp he used thin carbon pencils as a glow material. The lamp was discussed in the journal Electrical World and Engineer on December 1, 1900. The lamp was equipped with two charcoal pins, the second being automatically switched on when the first was consumed, which doubled its useful life.

In the patent litigation in the United States in the 1880s and 1890s for the incandescent lamp patents between the Edison Electric Light Co. and the United States Electric Lighting Co. , the Circuit Court New York, when carefully analyzing the development history of the incandescent lamp, came to the conclusion that the Constructions by Lodygin and Stanislav W. Konn in 1875 were most advanced. Both used multiple thin carbon rods ( rods of diminished section ). The considerable further development of incandescent lamp technology by various inventors up to the Edison patents in 1880 was also pointed out by the court.

Through his achievements, Alexander Lodygin became a kind of representative of Russian technology at international exhibitions.

From 1884 Alexander Lodygin worked in France and other countries for 23 years. He left Russia because of the persecution of socialist revolutionaries of the Narodniki with whom he sympathized. In 1892 he lived in Paris and in 1894 apparently in Pittsburgh , which is evident from patent applications in the USA. The patent application from 1894 suggests that he at that time for the company, based in Pittsburg Westinghouse Electric Co. worked.

According to the memories of a relative, Alexander Lodygin met George Westinghouse at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889 , who offered him a job as a consultant for his company in the USA. In the 1890s, Lodygin evidently changed his place of residence and work several times between different locations in the USA and Paris. In Pittsburgh he met the family of his wife Alma Schmidt, whom he married in Paris in 1895. He didn't always find jobs in the light bulb industry. From 1901 he is said to have worked for a battery manufacturer in Cleveland and Buffalo. He was involved in the electrification of the New York subway for a cable manufacturer and lived there during the project. In 1906 he moved back to Pittsburgh.

In the period after 1890 Lodygin experimented with the material tungsten, which is still common today, for the production of filaments. A working lamp made by Lodygin with a tungsten glow element was shown at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris. It is not clear from the available sources whether platinum filaments with tungsten coating developed by Lodygin were used in commercial lamps. Probably the economical processing of tungsten with the technical level of metallurgy was not possible at that time. The metal then obtained by sintering is extremely brittle and unsuitable for practical lamps. However, Lodygin has applied for patents for tungsten-coated platinum threads, which, according to various sources , were acquired by General Electric in 1906 . After William David Coolidge, who worked for General Electric , had developed a process for the production of mechanically stable thin tungsten filaments, General Electric began commercial production of the incandescent lamps with tungsten filaments that are still used today. The ratio of energy consumption to light output improved by 100% through the use of tungsten.

Lodygin also dealt with numerous other developments, including a. Aircraft, diving equipment and subways. His plans were far ahead of their time and mostly not feasible with the state of the art.

In 1907, Lodygin returned to Russia with his family because he could not find a continuous job in the United States that suited his skills. After his return to Russia in 1907, he worked for a railway company and was tasked with building power stations. His wife, Alma, was an accredited correspondent for a New York newspaper during this time.

After the February Revolution in 1917 , he emigrated again to the United States . The museum in Lodygin's hometown names economic reasons; the political reasons mentioned by other sources in connection with the impending takeover of the Bolsheviks are more likely. After arriving in New York on July 26, 1917, his wife reported to the New York Times about the unrest in Russia and her family's support for the government of Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky . As the reason for her return to the USA, she cited the further education that her daughters wanted there. Alexander Lodygin did not accept a later invitation from the Russian government, which came to power after the October Revolution, to continue his work in Russia. He died in New York on March 16, 1923.

In national terms, Lodygin was considered the inventor of the incandescent lamp before Thomas Alva Edison , who with his developments from 1879 onwards made electric light competitive with gas light. However, a patent for an incandescent lamp was first granted in England in 1841, and numerous patents prior to 1874 are documented in the specialist literature. The merit of Alexander Lodygin are further developments. He did not anticipate the inventions of Thomas Edison, which resulted in durable and competitive lamps. From a national Russian point of view, his lamp of 1873 was a pioneering achievement and the beginning of the age of electric lighting in Russia.

family

Alexander Lodygin comes from a noble family. In 1895 he married Alma Schmidt (1871–1925), the daughter of Franz Xaver Schmid (* 1829 in Bernau am Chiemsee ), and had with her the daughters Marguerite (also called Margarita or Rita) (born 1901) and Vera (born. 1903).

Alma Schmidt's job is reported by the Lodygin Museum as a journalist, her father Franz Xaver Schmidt's job as an engineer. Sources from the family give Alma Schmidt's occupation as a teacher and that of her father as a school director. Franz Xaver Schmidt emigrated to the USA in 1867, his daughter Alma was born in New York.

Honors

Alexander Lodygin

In 1874, Alexander Lodygin received the Lomonosov Prize of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg for his light bulb development . The title of electrical engineer was also awarded to him in 1899 by the Academy of Sciences on an honorary basis.

In 1951 he was posthumously honored with a Soviet postage stamp. The stamp text reads: ANLogygin, famous Russian electrical engineer, inventor of the world's first incandescent lamp. His daughter Marguerite criticized the stamp as Russian propaganda.

The lunar crater Lodygin was named after him.

Patents issued in the United States to Lodygin

• 347,164 Manufacture of Incandescents, August 10, 1886
• 494,149 Process of Manufacturing Filaments for Incandescent Lamps, March 28, 1893
• 498,901 Incandescent Electric Lamp, June 6, 1893
• 575,002 Illuminant for Incandescent Lamps, January 19, 1897
• 575,668 Illuminant for Incandescent Lamps, January 19, 1897

In the patent 575.002 a complex chemical process for the production of filaments is patented, in which molybdenum and tungsten play a role. Lodygin circumvents the problem of the brittleness of tungsten by using an elastic, very thin platinum thread and specifying a chemical process with which it can be coated with tungsten.

A specialist book that honors the contribution of this invention to the further development of the incandescent lamp with tungsten filament, which was then commercially produced from 1911, was not available when the article was written. From line 45 of the patent, the following sentence appears:

I have discovered that the following metals possess all the essential qualities for forming a practical, commercially - efficient metallic illuminant for incandescent electric lamps, namely, molybdenum and tungsten, rhodium and iridium, rhutenium and osmium, and chromium, ...

Although Lodygin could not produce tungsten filaments according to this patent, but only coated platinum filaments, the sentence justifies claims when the metals mentioned are used for filament production.

Alexander Lodygin gave his name to Alexandre de Lodyguine and later Alexander de Lodyguine in patent applications in the USA .

The patent 347164 was also applied for in Germany, France, England and Belgium. No information is available for the other patents.

Web links

Commons : Alexander Lodygin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Lodygin Museum in Tambov (Russian)
• Dr. Cora Angier Sowa: Russian and American Life of Alexander Lodyguine, Russian Inventor and Engineer (engl.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ St. Petersburg City Lights, accessed on October 26, 2010
2. ^ Edison Electric Light Co. v. United States Electric Lighting Co. Statement of reasons for judgment p. 457 (PDF file; 1.51 MB)
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Dr. Cora Angier Sowa: Alexander Lodygin. Retrieved February 18, 2011
4. ↑ The beneficial owner of the patents and sellers was very likely the company for which Lodygin carried out his research and development work with tungsten. Possibly that was Westinghouse Electric Co .. Lodygin's place of residence at the time of patent application and the patent attorney acting suggest it. General Electric had a patent agreement and joint patent administration with this company.
5. ↑ Alexander Lodygin (French) accessed on October 26, 2010
6. ^ The History of Electric Lighting. (Engl.) accessed October 28, 2010
7. ↑ General Electric regained dominance in the incandescent lamp market through lamps with tungsten filament, which the company had lost after the Edison patents expired. A specialist book that documents and appreciates the often affirmed contribution of Lodygin to the development of the tungsten filament was not available when the article was written. Claims of Lodygin are made by numerous information providers without traceable sources.
8. ↑ Alexander Lodygin lived in the United States and France in the 1880s and 1890s and worked in the incandescent lamp industry. He applied for patents in the United States and was obviously very familiar with the patent situation in the incandescent lamp sector. In the patent litigation in the USA during this time for Edison's filament lamp patents, he made no claims. The 1874 Lodygin lamp was known to the US courts.
9. ^ Columbia University Libraries Lodygin Family Papers, accessed February 18, 2011
10. ↑ Alexander Lodygin (English) accessed on October 26, 2010
11. ^ New York Times , July 27, 1917
12. ↑ Lodygin patent 347164
13. ↑ Lodygin Patent 494149
14. ↑ Lodygin Patent 498901
15. ↑ Lodygin Patent 575002
16. ↑ Lodygin patent 575668