William Sturgeon

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William Sturgeon (born May 22, 1783 in Whittington , Lancashire , † December 4, 1850 in Prestwich ) was an English physicist and inventor who made the first electromagnets .

William Sturgeon
The first electromagnet, invented by Sturgeon in 1824. Drawing of Sturgeon from his paper for the British Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce from 1824. The magnet consisted of 18 turns of bare copper wire (insulated wire had not yet been invented)

Life

Sturgeon was born in Whittington, Lancashire and trained with a shoemaker. He joined the army in 1802 and learned the basics of mathematics and physics in self-study. In 1824 he became a lecturer at the East India Company's Royal Military College in Addiscombe ( Surrey ); the following year he presented his first electromagnet.

In 1825, Sturgeon, who worked at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich , developed the first electromagnet with the help of Francis Watkins from London. Based on the ideas of André-Marie Ampère and François Arago , they went one step further to develop their magnet. With a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron that formed a core with 16 turns of the wire that didn't touch. When current was passed through the wire, the magnet could lift 9 pounds (4 kg) of metal, or 20 times its own weight. The electromagnet was exhibited in London that same year and Sturgeon was awarded a silver medal from the Society for Promoting Arts and Commerce (now the Royal Society of Arts )

In 1832 he was hired by the Adelaide Gallery of Practical Science in London. In 1836 he founded the Annals of Electricity magazine , and in the same year invented a galvanometer .

In 1840 he became superintendent of the Royal Victoria Gallery of Practical Science in Manchester , which was closed in 1842 due to lack of funding. From 1844 until his death he earned money with lectures and demonstrations. He used his "magnetic electric machine" ( dynamo ) to give electric shocks to the arms of the audience and to demonstrate on freshly killed rabbits.

In 1847 he received a one-time settlement of £ 200 from the Navy's Royal Bounty Fund, which was later funded by a government pension of £ 50 p. a. was increased. But that was hardly enough for a living.

Sturgeon married Mrs. Hilton. They had three children who died in childhood. After the child from his second marriage to Mary Bromley died, the couple adopted a girl named Ellen Coates.

Sturgeon died impoverished after a long illness on December 4, 1850 in Prestwich, Manchester, where he was buried in the churchyard of Saint Mary's. Because of his inventions, he was better known in Europe than in his home country.

Publications

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sylvanus P. Thompson: Lectures on the Electromagnet . WJ Johnson Co., New York 1891, pp. 17-19
  2. ^ Addiscombe Military Seminary ( Memento from April 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ On the Magnetic Powers of Soft Iron (January 1, 1833) Publisher: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
  4. ↑ Arago in the technical dictionary
  5. ^ Whittington and William Sturgeon's experiments
  6. ↑ Kenneth George Beauchamp: Exhibiting Electricity . IET, 1997, ISBN 978-0-85296-895-6 , p. 13f ( google.de ).
  7. ^ Royal Bounty
personal data
SURNAME Sturgeon, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English physicist and inventor who made the first electromagnets
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1783
PLACE OF BIRTH Whittington , Lancashire
DATE OF DEATH 4th December 1850
Place of death Prestwich