Lodygin Alexander Nikolaevich (1847-1923) is a famous Russian inventor who created an incandescent lamp, which became widespread due to its efficiency. Thomas Edison made the first experiment with his lamp in 1879, which happened 6 years later than Lodygin did. But thanks to the aggressive promotion of his brainchild, it was the American who began to be considered in the mass consciousness as the inventor of the incandescent lamp.
early years
Alexander Lodygin was born on October 6 (18), 1847 in the village of Stenshino, Tambov province. He was of noble origin, and his family belonged to the category of very noble ones, which, like the then reigning Romanov family, descended from Andrei Kobyla himself. Despite the title, the family lived rather modestly and could not boast of much wealth.
Many ancestors of the future inventor devoted themselves to military service, achieving a lot of success in this field. But young Sasha was not at all attracted by this prospect, although he could not escape the family tradition. In 1859, Lodygin entered the local preparatory classes of the Voronezh Cadet Corps, and after graduation he was sent to Voronezh with a very positive description. After graduating from the educational institution in 1865, Alexander was enrolled as a cadet in the Belevsky infantry regiment, and then spent three years studying at the Moscow cadet infantry school.
In 1870, Lodygin submitted his resignation and moved to the capital. Here he plunged headlong into creating a flying machine with an electric motor and at the same time began actively working on incandescent lamps.
Creation of an electroplane
In 1870, a document was placed on the desk of the Minister of War of the Russian Empire, Dmitry Alekseevich Milyutin, the author of which was retired cadet Alexander Lodygin. It reported on the invention of a special aeronautical machine (electric aircraft), capable of moving at different heights and in arbitrary directions. It was designed to transport goods and people, but could also perform military operations. However, the official did not support this idea in any way and did not even bother to personally communicate with the inventor.
The Minister of War did not suspect then that the electric plane anticipated the appearance of the familiar helicopter. The inventor saw it as an oblong cylinder, cone-shaped in front and spherical in the back. A screw was located at the back of the device, which provided horizontal movement. Another screw was located on top - it controlled the speed of the machine when moving in the vertical and horizontal directions.
Faced with an indifferent attitude in his homeland, Lodygin, at the invitation of the French side, goes to Paris to continue the development of the aircraft. However, failure awaited him here too - the outbreak of war with Prussia and the imminent defeat of France crossed out all plans, which forced the scientist to return to Russia. The electrolet was not destined to acquire a material form, but it contributed to the birth of Lodygin’s most famous invention - the electric light bulb, which was to become one of its elements.
Incandescent lamp
The possibility of obtaining artificial lighting using electricity excited scientific minds long before Lodygin was born. There were many ideas offering solutions in many different directions. Some tried to provoke the glow of rarefied gases with electricity, others sought luck in heating bodies with electric current, and still others used the flame of an electric arc. Most of the prototypes never left the walls of the laboratories until a Russian inventor got involved in the work.
After returning from France, Lodygin found himself in a difficult financial situation and was forced to agree to find a job as a technician at the Sirius Oil Gas Society. But the young man devoted all his free time from work to developing an electric lamp. He immediately realized the lack of theoretical training and signed up for lectures at St. Petersburg University, where he became acquainted with the latest achievements in the field of electrical engineering.
Hard work on the invention yielded results - by the end of 1872, Lodygin had several incandescent lamps at his disposal. The Didrikhson brothers helped materialize the inventor’s plans, among whom Vasily Fedorovich stood out, who personally made most of the samples. At first, iron wire was used for incandescence; later, coke rods were used in experiments.
Iron quickly showed its ineffectiveness, but working with carbon rods gave a positive result. It turned out that they not only provide better light, but also allow us to find an approach to solving the problem of “light fragmentation” - integrating a large number of lighting sources into the circuit of one generator. The sequential operation of the carbon rods turned out to be very convenient, but in outdoor conditions in the open air the filament body burned out quite quickly.
This gave Lodygin the idea to make lamps in the form of a glass spherical vessel in which two copper rods with a diameter of 6 mm were placed. A small rod with a diameter of 2 mm, made of retort coal, was attached to them. Electricity was supplied through wires through a frame that was located above the opening of the device.
Despite the fact that Lodygin's first lamps only shone for about 40 minutes, he received privileges for his invention in many European countries. Subsequent improvements made it possible to increase durability - Vasily Didrikhson proposed removing air from the lamps. In addition, carbonized substances of plant origin began to be used. As a result, the service life of the lamps was increased to 700-1000 hours.
Practical application of incandescent lamps
The first street lighting using Lodygin's electric lamps appeared in St. Petersburg on Peski in 1873. The two kerosene lanterns were replaced with electric ones, emitting a bright white light that many people came to see. Some of them brought newspapers to compare the distance of light from kerosene and electric lanterns.
In 1874, lighting appeared on the Admiralty docks, opening up the prospect of using the technology in the navy. A few years later, Florent’s store on Morskaya Street was lit in a similar way. The devices performed excellently - only two coals burned out in two months.
After this success, businessmen began to circle around the inventor, wanting to make as much profit as possible from the invention. Alexander Nikolaevich became a participant in one of these enterprises, which exploited his creations. A number of modernized devices even bore the name of third-party people - Conn, Kozlov, who owned a controlling stake in the electric lighting partnership they created. The latest version, called the “Conn lamp,” had up to 5 separate rods, which were turned on sequentially after the previous ones burned out.
Technology patents
In 1872, the inventor submitted an application for his invention and waited for a response from officials for two years. Only in 1874 did he receive privilege No. 1619.
After the termination of the partnership, the inventor again found himself on the brink of poverty, which forced him to send a patent application for a carbon incandescent lamp to the United States, but he was unable to find the required amount. Lodygin would still receive a patent in 1890, but for a lamp with a metal thread. Here, by law, he will have the right to be considered the inventor of lamps with an incandescent filament made of refractory materials.
Lodygin's molybdenum and tungsten lamps were demonstrated at the World Exhibition in Paris, held in 1900. A year earlier, the St. Petersburg Electrotechnical Institute awarded the inventor the title of honorary electrical engineer. In 1906, the patent for a lamp with a tungsten filament was bought by the famous General Electric Company, which later merged with Edison's enterprise. In 1909, the scientist was granted a patent for an induction furnace.
For his invention, Alexander Nikolaevich received the Lomonosov Prize of 1000 rubles from the Academy of Sciences. Lodygin's merits in this field are obvious - he created a more advanced example of an incandescent lamp and was the first to turn it from a physical device into a device for practical mass use, took his brainchild out of the laboratory and made it available to the street. Alexander Nikolaevich convincingly demonstrated the advantages of tungsten wire as a material for an incandescent body, becoming the founder of the production of more economical incandescent lamps. He had a decisive influence on the work of Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan, which contributed to the mass distribution of these devices.
Russia - abroad
The strengthening of the radical wing of the social movement in the second half of the 70s of the 19th century and the subsequent terrorist attacks, one of which killed Emperor Alexander II, affected the fate of Lodygin. At this time, he actively became close to the populists and even spent some time in their colony in Tuapse. The defeat of Narodnaya Volya, which began after the death of the Tsar, affected many of the inventor’s friends and acquaintances. Partly, a shadow of suspicion fell on himself, so he decides to go abroad.
After several years in Europe, the inventor moved to the USA in 1888, where he worked on the introduction of electricity into metallurgy. They began to pay him a good salary and the family’s financial situation improved noticeably. After the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, he returned to his homeland in order to put his accumulated experience into practice. But Russian reality exceeded all expectations - the inveterate conservatism and indifference of officials fettered any initiative.
The advanced methods used in American industry turned out to be of no interest to anyone here. Therefore, the world-famous inventor received only the position of head of the substation of the St. Petersburg tram depot. In addition, he showed great interest in the electrification of handicrafts and was engaged in the practical implementation of the theory of electromagnetic induction of Faraday and Maxwell.
In 1914, under the leadership of Alexander Nikolaevich, work on the electrification of the Olonets and Nizhny Novgorod provinces was supposed to begin, but the outbreak of the First World War confused all the cards. Having not achieved serious success in his native field, Lodygin returned to the USA in 1916. He devoted the last years of his life to the development of electric furnaces. Under his leadership, installations for the production of silicon and phosphorus, as well as ore smelting, were built. In addition, the Russian inventor designed special furnaces for heating bandages, hardening and annealing metals. During this period, he was sick a lot, which often distracted him from his work.
Lodygin's inventive activity was not limited to the incandescent lamp. He created an electric heater, improved an electric furnace for smelting ores, and developed the idea of quenching furnaces, as well as respirators based on the electrolytic method of generating oxygen. Alexander Nikolaevich became one of the founders of the electrical engineering department of the Russian Technical Society and was at the origins of the periodical “Electricity”.
In 1871, the inventor prepared a design for a diving suit that would allow him to stay under water autonomously using an oxygen-hydrogen mixture. In this case, oxygen was produced directly from water through the process of electrolysis.
Interesting Facts
Thomas Edison made the first experiment with his lamp in 1879, which happened 6 years later than Lodygin did. But thanks to the aggressive promotion of his brainchild, it was the American who began to be considered in the mass consciousness as the inventor of the incandescent lamp.
After coming to power, Lenin suggested that Lodygin return to Russia to develop the GOELRO plan, but the scientist’s serious illness prevented this.
Since 1970, one of the craters on the far side of the Moon has been named after Alexander Lodygin.
Lodygin was one of the few domestic inventors awarded the Order
Stanislav III degree. He was awarded an honorary award for his participation in the Vienna Electrotechnical Exhibition.
- Russian inventor and electrical engineer. He created an electric incandescent lamp with a tungsten filament. It was he who first proved the viability of using a refractory metal conductor as a luminous element for electric light bulbs.
Alexander Nikolaevich was born October 6, 1847 in the village of Stenshino, Tambov region, in a very old and noble noble family. At the age of 12, he entered the Tambov Cadet Corps, and then the Moscow Junker School. In 1867 He graduates from college, having received the education of a military engineer. After this, his short military career begins. After serving his mandatory service (3 years), Lodygin left the army and plunged headlong into engineering developments, for which he had an undoubted inclination.
In 1870 He develops a heavier-than-air aircraft, while at the same time beginning experiments to improve the incandescent lamps created at that time. As for the aircraft, although it turned out to be quite functional, it did not find approval from the Russian government, and then from the French. From 1871 to 1874 Lodygin is a free student at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology and at the same time demonstrates incandescent lamps. For his developments, he initially uses metal filaments, but they quickly burn out and Lodygin turns his attention to carbon rods. In 1872 Alexander Nikolaevich applies for a patent for his incandescent lamp with a carbon rod, and only two years later he receives it. The St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences even awarded him the Lomonosov Prize.
Before 1884 Lodygin fruitfully works not only on improving incandescent lamps, but also on the development of diving equipment. He cooperates with various Russian factories and participates in electrical exhibitions. For his engineering developments he receives the Order of Stanislav, III degree - a rare award for Russian inventors. In 1884 mass arrests of revolutionary-minded members of various organizations forced Lodygin to leave Russia and move first to France and then to America. In Paris, he organizes the production of incandescent lamps according to his own calculations. In 1993 he again returns to experiments with metal filaments, but this time from refractory metals - tungsten, chromium and titanium. A year later he organized his own lamp company, Lodygin and de Lisle.
In the USA, he creates new lamps based on refractory metals and builds a plant for the electrochemical production of tungsten, chromium and titanium. He develops electric furnaces for melting and hardening metals, producing phosphorus and silicon.
It cannot be said that it was Alexander Nikolaevich who was the sole father of the discovery of the electric light bulb. Its creation is a whole chain of events and inventions of various scientists and inventors. But it was Lodygin who first proposed and actually began to use tungsten filaments, which are still used today. In addition, it was he who suggested using not a straight thread, but a thread twisted into a spiral. It was he who came up with the idea of pumping air out of the flask and filling it with an inert gas. It was his inventions that became the impetus for the creation of modern incandescent lamps.
On May 20, 1873, St. Petersburg residents were lucky enough to look at the first electric illumination right on the street. Inventor Alexander Lodygin demonstrated his invention - an incandescent lamp, replacing several kerosene burners in the lanterns on Odesskaya Street with electrical appliances of his own design.
These were the first lamps in the world, similar to those that are now burning in our apartments everywhere. They were glass flasks, each with two electrodes and one incandescent element fixed between them. The lamps burned for two hours. They could be turned on and off.
the site recalls how the demonstration of electric flashlights took place, and explains why the American Edison, and not Alexander Lodygin, is considered the inventor of the incandescent lamp.
Unflickering Light
Nowadays you won’t surprise anyone even with laser shows on the walls of the General Staff of St. Petersburg. And that May evening, a lot of people gathered on Odesskaya Street to look at the eight miracle lanterns, burning with a bright, flickering-free light, in which one could read newspapers as if during the day. People actually brought newspapers with them, walked away from the lanterns and approached them, checking how much light there was enough to distinguish the printed letters.
Alexander Lodygin, meanwhile, mentally calculated the profits that his invention could bring. In 1874, he received a patent for his incandescent lamp and the Lomonosov Prize from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Then the scientist patented the lamp in Austria-Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Sweden, Saxony and even in India and Australia, but, unfortunately, not in the USA. Later he founded the company “Russian Electric Lighting Partnership Lodygin and Co.” to continue development and improve his lamp.
Dream Shard
Hereditary nobleman Alexander Lodygin, although he did not follow in the footsteps of his ancestors and left military service early, still did not part with the military path. He got a job as a hammer hammer at the Tula Arms Plant and there he began to develop his first invention - an electric plane. A military flying machine equipped with an electric motor. It was supposed to be something between a balloon and a helicopter. The French, who were fighting with the Prussians, became interested in the invention, but by the time Lodygin reached Paris, the war had come to an end. The inventor was left without money and without a realized dream.
It is not known what prompted him to further improve just one part of the electric plane - an incandescent lamp, which he planned to use during night flights. Maybe it was a desire to grab onto a fragment of a dream, or maybe just curiosity, the excitement of a natural scientist. And Lodygin began his experiments. Knowing about the experiments of Vasily Petrov, who discovered the electric arc back in 1802, Alexander Nikolaevich took a different path - he began to sort out incandescent elements and the environments in which they can be used. So I came to a carbon rod attached to copper electrodes in a glass flask, from which the air had previously been evacuated. The lamp was invented.
But unfortunately for Lodygin, literally side by side with him, another Russian inventor, Pyotr Yablochkov, conducted his experiments with an electric arc. And soon Yablochkov’s arc lamps eclipsed the light of incandescent lamps, but only because Lodygin lacked funds and did not know how to advertise himself. They simply forgot about him.
Beat Edison
Thomas Edison's incandescent lamp. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Lodygin finally left the competition in the lamp business in 1879, when the American Edison appeared on the world stage with his incandescent lamp. But Thomas Alva Edison, the same age as Alexander Lodygin, struggled with his invention, presumably, for at least six years. The Russian pioneer of electric street lighting sent his patent application to the United States as early as 1873, but could not find the money to pay the necessary fees. It is logical to assume that it was then that Edison received some information about the breakthrough of his counterpart from the distant Russian Empire.
And Lodygin, having actually lost another dream, continued to work. He lived in St. Petersburg, improved the diving apparatus, and worked on other inventions. For participation in the Vienna Electrotechnical Exhibition, Lodygin received the Order of Stanislav, III degree.
In 1884, Alexander Nikolaevich moved to France, then to the USA. There he invents new incandescent lamps, electric furnaces, electric cars, builds factories and the subway. In the USA, he won one important, but unnoticed victory by the world community over businessman Edison. Lodygin in 1906 sold his patents for improved lamps with filaments made of refractory metals to the General Electric Company. As they say, he beat Thomas Alva cleanly on his own field.
In 1907, Alexander Nikolaevich returned to Russia, taught, introduced technologies for melting and welding metals, was engaged in the electrification of the country, and during World War I worked on a helicopter prototype. But after the February Revolution of 1917, he emigrated again, because... does not find a common language with the new government.
Streets of burning lanterns
Many have forgotten the merits of Alexander Lodygin. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
In the triumphant year of 1873, Lodygin shed light not only on one of the shortest streets of St. Petersburg, but also illuminated the entire future of Russia.
Who knows if Edison would have had his own light bulb without his experiments? What about Ilyich?
What would happen to the GOELRO plan? What would the series “Streets of Broken Lanterns” be called today? What pictures would shine on the façade of the General Staff on New Year's Day?
On May 20, not everyone who came to look at the heavenly light hidden in glass understood what kind of invention it was.
But the newspaper articles describing that event did not lie: today St. Petersburg is really flooded with the bright light of electric lights.
First, the darkness cleared over Odessa Street, and in 1879 - over the Liteiny Bridge and the Neva... So gradually the light of Lodygin came to every house of our vast country.
To the pride of the Russian people, the fact that the initiative to use electric lighting, both with a volt arc and with incandescent lamps, should be noted on the tablets of cultural history belongs to the Russian inventors Yablochkov and Lodygin; Therefore, the slightest details of the entire epic of the origin of electric lighting should be dear, interesting and gratifying to every Russian heart, and our duty to those who laid the foundation for electric lighting, which is now so widespread, is to show their work and find out their right to this great discovery.” This is what the Postal and Telegraph Journal wrote in 1900 (No. 2) during the life of the famous inventor Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin.
The name of Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin is associated mainly with the construction of an incandescent electric lamp. As you know, the priority of the invention of the incandescent lamp was disputed by many people, and many so-called “patent processes” arose regarding it.
The principle of an electric incandescent lamp was known before A. N. Lodygin. But A. N. Lodygin was the one who aroused enormous interest in the construction of light sources operating on the principle of incandescent conductor current. Having built a more perfect lamp than other inventors, A. N. Lodygin for the first time turned it from a physical device into a practical means of lighting, took it out of the physics office and laboratory into the street and showed the wide possibilities of its use for lighting purposes.
A. N. Lodygin showed the advantages of using metal, in particular tungsten, wire to make an incandescent body and thus laid the foundation for the production of modern, much more economical incandescent lamps than carbon lamps of the early period.
A. N. Lodygin prepared the way for the successes of P. N. Yablochkov and, undoubtedly, had a strong influence on T. A. Edison and D. Swan, who, using the principle of the incandescent lamp, approved by the works of A. N. Lodygin, turned this device into a consumer item.
Having devoted many years of work to the construction and improvement of an incandescent lamp with a carbon and metal filament body, A. N. Lodygin did not find favorable soil in his contemporary Russia for these works to receive practical application on a scale corresponding to their significance.
Fate forced him to seek happiness in America, where the second half of his life passed. Living far from his homeland, A. N. Lodygin continued to hope that he would be able to return home to work. He lived to see the Great October Socialist Revolution, but old age deprived him of the opportunity to return to his native country in those years when it began a previously unknown movement along the path of cultural and technical progress.
The Soviet technical community did not break ties with its outstanding comrade-in-arms. He was elected an honorary member of the Society of Russian Electrical Engineers, and in 1923 the Russian Technical Society solemnly celebrated 50 years since A. N. Lodygin’s first experiments in lighting with incandescent lamps.
Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin was born on October 18, 1847 on his parents’ estate in the Tambov province. According to family tradition, a military career was being prepared for him. To receive secondary education, he was sent to the Voronezh Cadet Corps, where he studied until 1865. After graduating from the cadet corps, A. N. Lodygin completed a course of study at the Moscow Junker School and was promoted to second lieutenant, after which his service began as an army officer .
The presence of undoubted engineering abilities distracted A. N. Lodygin from his military career. After serving his mandatory term, he retired and never returned to the army. Having started working in factories after retiring, A. N. Lodygin was engaged in some technical issues, in particular the construction of aircraft.
In 1870, he developed the design of a heavier-than-air aircraft, and he proposed it to the National Defense Committee in Paris for use in the conditions of the Franco-Prussian War that was taking place at that time. His proposal was accepted: he was summoned to Paris to build and test his apparatus. A. N. Lodygin had already begun preparatory work at the Creuzot factories, shortly before France was defeated in this war. His proposal in this regard soon lost its relevance, they refused to implement it, and A. N. Lodygin returned to Russia after an unsuccessful stay abroad.
In Russia, A. N. Lodygin found himself in a difficult financial situation and was forced to accept the first job he came across at the Sirius Oil Gas Society. He began working there as a technician, while devoting his free time to developing incandescent lamps.
Before his trip to Paris, A.N. Lodygin, apparently, did not deal with this issue. He became interested in this technical problem in connection with his work on building an aircraft, for the illumination of which such a light source was more suitable than any other.
Having started work on electric lighting with incandescent lamps, A. N. Lodygin undoubtedly felt the insufficiency of his knowledge in the field of electrical engineering. After returning from Paris, he began listening to lectures at St. Petersburg University, trying to become more familiar with the latest trends in scientific thought in the field of applied physics, especially in the field of electricity.
By the end of 1872, A. N. Lodygin had several copies of incandescent lamps that could be publicly demonstrated. He managed to find excellent mechanics in the person of the Didrikhson brothers, one of whom, Vasily Fedorovich Didrikhson, personally manufactured all the designs of incandescent lamps developed by A. N. Lodygin, introducing significant technological improvements already during the manufacture of the lamps. In his first experiments, A. N. Lodygin heated an iron wire with current, then a large number of small coke rods clamped in metal holders.
Experiments with iron wire were dismissed by him as unsuccessful, and the incandescence of carbon rods showed that with this method it was possible not only to obtain more or less significant light, but also to simultaneously solve another very important technical problem, which at that time was called “fragmentation of light”, i.e. i.e. including a large number of light sources in the circuit of one electric current generator.
Sequential activation of the rods was very simple and convenient. But heating coal in the open air led to rapid burnout of the filament. A. N. Lodygin built an incandescent lamp in a glass cylinder with a carbon rod in 1872. His first lamps had one carbon rod in a cylinder, and air was not removed from the cylinder: the oxygen burned out when the coal was first heated, and further heating took place in an atmosphere of residual rarefied gases.
The already improved lamp was demonstrated by Lodygin in 1873 and 1874. At the Technological Institute and other institutions, A.P. Lodygin gave many lectures on lighting with incandescent lamps. These lectures attracted a large number of listeners. But the installation of electric lighting with incandescent lamps, arranged by A. N. Lodygin in the fall of 1873 on Odesskaya Street, was of historical significance. In Petersburg.
This is how engineer N.V. Popov, who was personally present at these demonstrations, describes this device (magazine “Electricity”, 1923, p. 644): “On two street lamps, kerosene lamps were replaced by incandescent lamps that emitted bright white light. A mass of people admired this lighting, this fire from the sky. Many brought newspapers with them and compared the distances at which they could read under kerosene lighting and under electric lighting. On the panel between the lights lay wires with rubber insulation, the thickness of a finger.
What kind of incandescent lamp was this? These were pieces of retort coal, about 2 millimeters in diameter, sandwiched between two vertical coals of the same material, 6 millimeters in diameter. The lamps were introduced in series and were powered either by batteries or by magneto-electric machines of the Van Maldern system, Alliance company, alternating current.”
These experiments were promising and represented the first public use of an incandescent lamp. The incandescent lamp took its first step into technology. The success of A. N. Lodygin’s work was unconditional, and after that it was necessary to undertake a serious reworking of the design and elimination of the weak points that it had.
A. N. Lodygin, as a designer, faced complex technical issues: finding the best material for making the lamp filament body, eliminating the combustion of the filament body, i.e., completely removing oxygen from the cylinder, the problem of sealing the inputs in order to make it impossible for air to penetrate inside the cylinder from the outside .
These issues required a lot of persistent and collective work. Technicians have not stopped working on them to this day. In 1875, a more advanced design of incandescent lamps was built in terms of sealing methods and with evacuation of the cylinder.
Design of a lamp built in 1875. The demonstration of lighting using Lodygin lamps at the Admiralty Docks in 1874 showed that the naval department could greatly benefit from the use of incandescent lighting in the fleet.
Among scientific and industrial circles, interest in the works of A. N. Lodygin increased greatly after this. The Academy of Sciences awarded him the Lomonosov Prize, thereby emphasizing the scientific value of his works. The brilliant successes of A. N. Lodygin led to the fact that entrepreneurs began to group around him, caring not so much about improving the lamp as about possible profits. This ruined the whole thing.
This is how V. N. Chikolev (“Electricity”, 1880, p. 75), who always treated the work of A. N. Lodygin with attention and goodwill, characterized the situation created after everyone recognized the success of the work and experiments on lamps incandescent: “Lodygin’s invention aroused great hopes and enthusiasm in 1872-1873. The company formed to exploit this completely undeveloped and unprepared method, instead of vigorously working to improve it, as the inventor had hoped, preferred to engage in speculation and trading in shares in anticipation of the future enormous profits of the enterprise. It is clear that this was the most reliable, perfect way to ruin the business - a method that was not slow to be crowned with complete success. In 1874-1875 there was no more talk about covering Lodygin.”
A. N. Lodygin, having become part of such a hastily organized enterprise, essentially lost his independence. This can be seen at least from the fact that all subsequent design versions of his incandescent lamp did not even bear the name of Lodygin, but were called either Kozlov lamps or Conn lamps. Kozlov and Conn are the owners of shares in the so-called “Electric Lighting Partnership A. N. Lodygin and Co.”, who have never been involved in design work and, of course, have not built any lamps.
The latest lamp design had 4-5 separate rods, in which each coal was automatically turned on after the previous coal burned out. This lamp was also called the Conn lamp.
Lodygin’s invention was used in 1877 by Edison, who knew about his experiments and got acquainted with samples of his incandescent lamps brought to America by naval officer A. M. Khotinsky, sent by the Naval Ministry to accept cruisers, and began working on improving incandescent lamps.
A. N. Lodygin also failed to meet with a favorable attitude from official institutions. Having submitted, for example, on October 14, 1872, an application to the Department of Trade and Manufactures for “Method and apparatus for cheap electric lighting,” A. N. Lodygin received the privilege only on July 23, 1874, i.e., his application traveled around for almost two years offices. The liquidation of the Partnership's affairs put A. N. Lodygin in a very difficult financial and moral situation.
He lost faith in the possibility of successfully continuing work on the lamp in Russia, but he hoped that he would find better opportunities in America. He submits a patent application to America for a carbon incandescent lamp; However, he could not pay the established patent fees and did not receive an American patent.
In mid-1875, A. N. Lodygin began working as a toolmaker at the St. Petersburg Arsenal, in 1876-1878. he worked at the metallurgical plant of the Prince of Oldenburg in St. Petersburg. Here he had to face completely new questions related to metallurgy; Under their influence and as a result of his familiarity with electrical engineering acquired while working on electric lighting, he developed an interest in electric smelting issues and began working on building an electric furnace.
In 1878-1879 P.P. Yablochkov was in St. Petersburg, and A.P. Lodygin began working for him in workshops organized for the production of electric candles. Working there until 1884, he again made an attempt to produce incandescent lamps, but it was limited to only small-scale experimental work.
In 1884 A.P. Lodygin finally decided to go abroad. He worked in Paris for several years, and in 1888 he came to America. Here he worked first in the field of incandescent lamps to find a better material than coal for the filament body. Undoubtedly outstanding and fundamental in this direction were those of his works that were associated with the manufacture of incandescent bodies from refractory metals.
In America he was issued patents Nos. 575002 and 575668 in 1893 and 1894. on a glow body for incandescent lamps made of platinum filaments coated with rhodium, iridium, ruthenium, osmium, chromium, tungsten and molybdenum. These patents played a significant role in the development of work on the construction of incandescent lamps with a metal filament; in 1906 they were acquired by the General Electric concern.
A. N. Lodygin deserves the credit for pointing out the particularly important importance of tungsten for the construction of incandescent lamps. This opinion of his did not immediately lead to corresponding results, but 20 years later the electric lamp industry around the world completely switched to the production of tungsten incandescent lamps. Tungsten continues to be the only metal for the production of incandescent lamp filaments.
In 1894, A. N. Lodygin went from America to Paris, where he organized an electric lamp plant and at the same time took part in the affairs of the Columbia automobile plant, but in 1900 he returned to America again, participated in the construction of the New York subway, works at a large battery plant in Buffalo and at cable plants.
His interests are increasingly concentrated on the application of electricity in metallurgy and on various questions of industrial electrothermy. For the period 1900-1905. under his leadership, several factories were built and put into operation for the production of ferrochrome, ferrotungsten, ferrosilicon, etc.
The outcome of the Russian-Japanese War greatly upset A. N. Lodygin. And although at that time his financial position in America was strong, as a specialist he enjoyed great authority, his creative powers were in full bloom - he wished to return to Russia in order to apply his extensive and versatile knowledge of an engineer at home.
He returned to Russia at the end of 1905. But here he found the same reactionary government course and the same technical backwardness. The post-war economic depression began to take its toll. At that time, no one in Russia was interested in the methods of American industry and the news of overseas technology. And A. N. Lodygin himself turned out to be superfluous. For A. N. Lodygin, only a position was found as the manager of city tram substations in St. Petersburg. This work could not satisfy him, and he left for America.
In recent years in America, after returning from Russia, A. N. Lodygin was exclusively engaged in the design of electric furnaces. He built the largest electric furnace installations for smelting metals, melinite, ores, and for the extraction of phosphorus and silicon. He built furnaces for hardening and annealing metals, for heating bandages and other processes.
A large number of improvements and technical innovations were patented by him in America and other countries. Industrial electrothermy owes a lot to A. N. Lodygin as the pioneer of this new branch of technology.
On March 16, 1923, at the age of 76, A. N. Lodygin died in the United States. With his death, an outstanding Russian engineer, who was the first to use an incandescent lamp for lighting practice, and an energetic fighter for the development of industrial electrothermy, went to his grave.
Source of information: People of Russian science: Essays on outstanding figures of natural science and technology / Ed. S.I. Vavilova. - M., L.: State. publishing house of technical and theoretical literature. - 1948.
Today we will tell you who actually invented the incandescent lamp, Thomas Edison or Alexander Lodygin.
Thomas Alva Edison
American inventor and entrepreneur who received 1093 patents in the United States and about 3 thousand in other countries of the world; creator of the phonograph; improved the telegraph, telephone, cinema equipment, developed one of the first commercially successful versions of the incandescent electric lamp. It was he who suggested using the word “hello” at the beginning of a telephone conversation. In 1928 he was awarded the highest US award - the Congressional Gold Medal. In 1930 he became a foreign honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
And Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin
Russian electrical engineer, one of the inventors of the incandescent lamp.
Born in the village of Stenshino, Lipetsk district, Tambov province. He came from a very old and noble noble family.
His parents were poor nobles. According to family tradition, Alexander was supposed to become a military man, and therefore in 1859 he entered an unranked company (“preparatory classes”) of the Voronezh Cadet Corps, which was located in Tambov, then was transferred to Voronezh with the characteristic: “kind, sympathetic, diligent.”
In 1870, Lodygin retired and moved to St. Petersburg. Here he is looking for funds to create the flying machine he had planned with an electric motor (electric aircraft) and at the same time begins his first experiments with incandescent lamps.
He also worked on a diving apparatus project. Without waiting for a decision from the Russian War Ministry, Lodygin writes to Paris and invites the republican government to use the aircraft in the war with Prussia. Having received a positive answer, the inventor goes to France. But the defeat of France in the war stopped Lodygin’s plans.
incandescent lamp
The notorious “Thomas Edison light bulb” was actually invented by Russian engineer Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin.
Returning from Paris to St. Petersburg, he attended classes in physics, chemistry, and mechanics at the Technological Institute. In 1871-1874 he conducted experiments and demonstrations of electric lighting with incandescent lamps at the Admiralty, Galernaya Harbor, on Odesskaya Street, and at the Technological Institute.
In 1872, Lodygin replaced plant fibers in incandescent lamps with carbon rods, and in the 90s he proposed making filament from tungsten. Three years later, the first public demonstrations of incandescent electric lamps suitable for practical use took place. But these lamps burned for only 40 minutes. Vasily Fedorovich Didrikhson, one of Lodygin’s employees, proposed pumping air out of the lamps, as a result of which the life of the lamps increased to almost 1000 hours of operation.
In 1872, Lodygin applied for the invention of an incandescent lamp, and in 1874 he received a patent for his invention (privilege No. 1619 dated July 11, 1874) and the Lomonosov Prize from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Lodygin patented his invention in many countries: Austria-Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Sweden, Saxony, and even India and Australia.
In 1873, in St. Petersburg on Peski (the area of modern Soviet streets), Lodygin made the first experiment in street lighting using an electric incandescent lamp. But Lodygin’s affairs did not receive financial support from the state.
The company he created together with his friend and assistant Didrikhson, “Russian Electric Lighting Partnership Lodygin and Co,” soon went bankrupt. In the 1870s, Lodygin became close to the populists. In 1875-1878 he spent in the Tuapse colony-community of the populists.
Although Thomas Edison began his experiments with an electric incandescent lamp only in 1878. he had the worldwide support of American financiers, in particular John Pierpont Morgan. Together with him, he created the Edison Electric Lighting Company with a capital of 300 thousand dollars. Edison improved Lodygin's invention, creating a modern lamp shape, a screw base with a socket, a plug, a socket, and a fuse. And today, when the word comes about Edison, looking back, you understand that everything turned out this way because Lodygin did not receive funding from the state. But the fact is that the incandescent lamp was created not by Thomas Edison, but by the Russian engineer Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin himself.
Source – Wikipedia, magazine Mysteries of History, author of the text – Anna Semenenko.
Thomas Edison, incandescent lamp and Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin updated: October 25, 2017 by: website
