Johann Heinrich Winckler

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Johann Heinrich Winckler (also Winkler; born March 12, 1703 in Wingendorf near Lauban ( Oberlausitz ), † May 18, 1770 in Leipzig ) was a German philosopher , philologist , natural scientist and rector of the University of Leipzig .

life and work

Winckler spent his childhood in Wingendorf, the family moved to Bertelsdorf , where his father leased a mill. At first he was tutored by his mother before he attended the Lyceum in Lauban at the age of eleven. He began his studies in Leipzig in 1724 . He studied theology, philosophy and ancient languages. His teachers included the theologian Johann Gottlob Pfeiffer, the philosopher Johann Andreas Rüdiger and the philologist Christian Ludovici . In 1731 he became Collega quartus at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig . At the same time, Johann Sebastian Bach was working at this school. Winckler created the libretto for Bach's cantata “ Happy Day, Requested Hours ” (BWV Anh. 18) . The associated music of Bach has been lost. Among the visitors to his physics and philosophical lectures was Johann Wolfgang Goethe .

As a supporter of Christian Wolff , a leading exponent of the Enlightenment , he received an extraordinary professorship in philosophy in 1739. From 1742 to 1750 he was a full professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Leipzig . From 1750 he also taught physics in Leipzig. In 1747 he was the first person from Leipzig to be accepted into the renowned Royal Society .

Winckler was a versatile scholar; he was an enlightener and an excellent experimenter. He is considered one of the founders of experimental physics at the University of Leipzig.

Researches

Soon after he started working at Leipzig University, Winckler began to be interested in electricity. In 1744 Winckler described in his publication: "Thoughts on the properties, effects and causes of electricity" an electrifying machine by Francis Hauksbee which he had improved by constructing a pedal mechanism. The basic structure was similar to a wood lathe.

Beer glass electrifying machine by Johann Heinrich Winkler, around 1730–1740

If the static electricity was previously caused by rubbing with the hand, Winckler used a chalk-strewn rubbing device in his new device. He let the glass to be electrified rotate at a speed of up to 680 revolutions per minute. As an electrifying material, glass was much cheaper than sulfur . Sulfur balls were the first to be used by Otto von Guericke in his electrifying machines.

Winckler also worked on improving the Leiden bottle . He noted that for a particularly large storage capacity, the conductors must be as close as possible to the bottle. He therefore moved the middle conductor to the inner wall of the Leyden bottle and surrounded the outside with a metal foil. He experimented with different liquids like water, melted butter and wine. He investigated the physiological effects of electrical discharges in experiments on himself and on his wife.

Winckler was one of the first natural scientists to see the only difference in thunderstorm lightning and an artificially produced electrical discharge as the strength. In 1746 he published the view that the electrical cloud discharge discharged to earth as lightning .

In 1744 Winckler already suspected the possibility of being able to transmit signals with the help of electricity - an idea that was later realized through the development of telegraphy . He wrote, for example, that electricity could be propagated to the limits of the earth if a body had been placed on insulators by then. Among other things, he dealt with the determination of the speed of electrical charge transfer.

Winckler was also the first to pump out glasses, add a small amount of mercury to them , and shape them into letters. During his demonstrations in Apple's garden on the Pleiße, he heated the glass molds so that the mercury evaporated. If he now drove behind the glasses with a wire connected to an electrifying machine, there were bright light phenomena as a result of the ionization of the residual air mixed with mercury vapor. (Today known as gas discharge excited by an external electric field.)

Works

  • Thoughts on the properties, effects and causes of electricity: together with a description of two new electric machines (1744)
  • The properties of electrical matter and of electrical fire explained from various new experiments, and described, along with a number of new machines for electrification (1745)
  • The strength of the electrical power of water in glass vessels, which became known through the Musschenbrök experiment (1746)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Winckler, Johann Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Winkler, Johann Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher, philologist, natural scientist and rector of the University of Leipzig
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1703
PLACE OF BIRTH Wingendorf (Upper Lusatia)
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 1770
Place of death Leipzig