Hundred years of electrical engineering

Hundred years of electrical engineering by Hans Dominik is a technical and scientific chat. It appeared in 1911 in the annual book series " Das Neue Universum " (Volume 32).

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Volume 32 of the New Universe contains some contributions on the then current state of electrical engineering about electric mainline locomotives , new arc lamps , an electric milking machine, portable receivers for radio telegraphy, the new development of wireless telegraphy with large new transmitters , the forerunners of fluorescent tubes ( Moore- Licht ) and the Edison accumulator , the ancestors of today's nickel-cadmium battery and nickel-metal hydride battery .

In keeping with this, Hans Dominik chats about the development of electrical engineering from around 1800 to around 1900. He begins with Luigi Galvani's "animal electricity" and the subsequent development of the battery by Alessandro Volta , then goes on to the discovery of electrolysis and the carbon arc lamp Humphry Davy and on the discovery of the magnetic effect of a current by Hans Christian Ørsted . He tells of the first attempt at electric telegraphy by Gauß and Weber in 1833, and how an arc lamp was installed in a lighthouse for the first time in 1855 and the electric motor was invented in the same year at the first major world exhibition. He reports on the laying of the first telegraph cable through the Mediterranean from North Africa to France and how Werner von Siemens from Berlin made a significant contribution to the success. In 1867 there was a breakthrough in the construction of electrical generators with the "dynamo-electric principle" invented by Siemens. In 1891, in the large electrotechnical exhibition in Frankfurt am Main, electricity proved its suitability for everyday use, because the electricity was supplied by high-voltage transmission from Lauffen am Neckar over 175 km.

Hans Dominik ends with a brief overview of the performance of electricity in 1910: Telegraph cables run through continents and oceans. The telephone bridges 1000 km, and the transmission of images over the lines is also possible with Professor Korn's apparatus . The use of electricity is a matter of course in everyday life.