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Alexander Nikolaevich Ladygin was born in the village of Stenshino, Lipetsk district, Tambov province (now Petrovsky district, Tambov region). He came from a very old and noble noble family (his family, like the Romanov family, traced its origins to Andrei Kobyla). His parents are poor nobles, Nikolai Ivanovich and Varvara Alexandrovna (nee Velyaminova).
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 named after Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, which was located in Tambov, then was transferred to Voronezh with the characteristic: “Good, responsive, diligent." And in 1861 the whole Lodygin family moved to Tambov. In 1865, Lodygin was released from the Cadet Corps as a cadet into the 71st Belevsky Infantry Regiment, and from 1866 to 1868 he studied at the Moscow Junker Infantry School. In 1870, Lodygin retired and moved to St. Petersburg. Here he is looking for funds to create the flying machine he conceived (electroplane) and at the same time begins his first experiments with incandescent lamps. Work is also underway on a diving apparatus project. Without waiting for a decision from the Russian War Ministry, Lodygin writes to Paris and proposes that the republican government 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.
Returning to St. Petersburg, he attended classes in physics, chemistry, and mechanics at the Technological Institute as a volunteer. 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.
Initially, Ladygin tried to use iron wire as a filament. Having failed, he moved on to experiments with a carbon rod placed in a glass container.
In 1872, Ladygin 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. He founded the company “Russian Electric Lighting Partnership Lodygin and Co.”
In the 1870s, Ladygin became close to the populists. He spent 1875-1878 in the Tuapse colony-community of populists. Since 1878, Lodygin has been back in St. Petersburg, working at various factories, improving his diving apparatus, and working on other inventions. For participation in the Vienna Electrotechnical Exhibition, Lodygin was awarded the Order of Stanislav, III degree - a rare occurrence among Russian inventors. Honorary Electrical Engineer ETI (1899).
In 1884, mass arrests of revolutionaries began. Among those wanted are Lodygin's acquaintances and friends. He decided to go abroad. The separation from Russia lasted 23 years. Ladygin worked in France and the USA, creating new incandescent lamps, inventing electric furnaces, electric cars, building factories and subways. Of particular note is the patents he received during this period for lamps with filaments made of refractory metals, sold in 1906 to the General Electric Company.
In 1884, he organized the production of incandescent lamps in Paris and sent a batch of lamps to St. Petersburg for the 3rd Electrical Engineering Exhibition. In 1893 he turned to filaments made of refractory metals, which he used in Paris for powerful lamps of 100-400 candles. In 1894, he organized the lamp company Lodygin and de Lisle in Paris. In 1900 he participated in the World Exhibition in Paris. In 1906, in the USA, he built and put into operation a plant for the electrochemical production of tungsten, chromium, and titanium. An important area of inventive activity is the development of electric resistance and induction furnaces for melting metals, melenite, glass, hardening and annealing of steel products, and producing phosphorus and silicon.
Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin (1847-1923)
To the pride of the Russian people, the fact that the initiative to use electric power should be noted on the tablets of cultural history; lighting with both voltaic arc and incandescent lamps belongs to 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." Thus wrote " Postal and Telegraph Magazine" in 1900 (No. 2) during the lifetime 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 cases” 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 the Fraction 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 first incandescent lamp of A. N. Lodygin had the following device: through holes drilled in a round copper washer 1, two conductors 2 and 3, bent at right angles, were passed through, of which the left one was directly soldered to the washer, and a glass tube 4 was put on the right one. 4. The outer surface of this tube was matted, and a solution of silver salt was applied to it, from which an even coating of metallic silver was released by repeated heating on a flame. On this layer of silver, a layer of red copper of the desired thickness was grown by galvanic means. The tube prepared in this way was put on the conductor. Its ends were soldered with tin to the conductor, and its middle part to the copper washer 1, and to isolate the tube from the washer, the copper deposited on the tube, together with silver, was left only in the form of a narrow ring in the middle and two narrow rings at the ends 5-5, and scraped off the rest of the surface. The filament body was coal 6, the ends of which were covered with a layer of copper and embedded in holders. The glass cylinder 7 had a neck 8, which was covered with a layer of silver and copper, like tube 4-4, and soldered to the washer 1. The ember had a burning duration of approximately 30 minutes, mainly due to the fact that the seal of the cylinder and electrodes was not sufficient, and when heated, due to the difference in the expansion coefficients of glass and metal, air penetrated into the flask and accelerated the burnout of the coal.
The lamp of this design was unsuitable for practical use. In 1873, a lamp was built that was more improved in terms of service life. It contained two coal rods, of which one burned for 30 minutes and burned off oxygen, after which the second rod burned for 2-2 1/2 hours. The sealing of the inputs in this lamp was more perfect. It consisted of a cylindrical cylinder 1-1 closed at the top, which is inserted into a glass beaker 2-2 and a hollow cylinder 3-3 is placed in it, the purpose of which is to displace the largest possible volume of air from the cylinder and thereby reduce the combustion of carbon rods. To seal, use oil poured into a glass. A stand 4 is fixed on a copper cylinder, to which two coal rods are suspended using platinum hooks 5-5. From the rods 6-6, conductors 7 extend below, threaded through two glass tubes inserted into the cylinder 3-3. A switch is installed next to the lamp, allowing you to turn on the second coal after the first one has burned out. This lamp was demonstrated by Lodygin in 1873 and 1874. At the Technological Institute and other institutions, A. N. 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 (Electricity magazine, 1923, p. 544): “On two street lamps, kerosene lamps were replaced by incandescent lamps, which emitted a bright white light. The 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 with kerosene lighting and with electric lighting. On the panel between the lanterns lay wires with rubber insulation, the thickness of a finger. What kind of incandescent lamp was it? ?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, the 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. This lamp design is like this. A glass cap is hermetically inserted into the metal base of the lamp. The current is supplied through the clamp to one of the embers 1 and returns through the hinge 2-2 along the second metal rod 5 to the lamp body. When coal 1 burns, hinge 2-2 falls automatically and closes the circuit through coal 4. Using the valve shown in the figure on the right, it was possible to remove air from the cylinder with a pump.
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 energetically 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 Lodygin's lighting." A. N. Lodygin, having become part of such a hastily organized enterprise, essentially lost his independence. This is evident 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's lamps or Conn's lamps. Kozlov and Koni are the owners of shares of the so-called "Electric Lighting Partnership A. N. Lodygin and Co.", who were never involved in design work and, of course, did not build any lamps. The latest design by the time of release The lamp 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 the offices for almost two years.
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. N. Yablochkov was in St. Petersburg, and A. N. 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. N. 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 in a large battery plant in Buffalo and in 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 in his homeland. 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, there was only a position as 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 USA. 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.
The main works of A. N. Lodygin: Notes on arc lamps and incandescent lamps (in French), Paris, 1886; Induction electric furnaces, "Electricity", 1908, No. 5.
About A. N. Lodygin: Popov N.V., Speech at the general meeting of the Russian Technical Society in Petrograd on November 2, 1923, dedicated to the memory of A.N. Lodygin, “Electricity”, 1923, No. 12; Chatelain M.A., From the history of the invention of incandescent lamps (on the tenth anniversary of the death of A.N. Lodygin), "Archive of the history of science and technology", M., 1934, century. 4; Essay on Russian electrical engineering work from 1800 to 1900; St. Petersburg, 1900; Hoffman M., Inventions and successes of material culture, Odessa, 1918; Ivanov A.P., Electric lamps and their manufacture, Leningrad, 1923.
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
Date of birth: October 18, 1847
Place of birth: Tambov, Russia
Date of death: March 16, 1923
Place of Death: Brooklyn, USA
Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin- Russian inventor of the incandescent lamp.
Alexander Lodygin was born on October 18, 1847 in the village of Stenshino, Tambov province, into an old family of nobles, but not rich, who had the same ancestor as the Romanovs.
Like his father, Alexander became a military man, for which in 1859 he began studying in preparatory classes in the Voronezh Cadet Corps, and then in a similar corps in Tambov. In 1861, his family joined him in Tambov, and 4 years later Lodygin graduated with the rank of cadet.
After that, he began to be listed in the 71st Belevsky Infantry Regiment. In 1866-1868 he trained at the Moscow Junker Infantry School.
In 1870, in retirement, he began working in St. Petersburg. Here he began to fully demonstrate himself as an inventor. So, he came up with an electric plane - a flying machine powered by electricity. After that, his attention is drawn to incandescent lamps and a diving apparatus.
He sends his proposals to the Russian Ministry of Military Affairs, but without receiving a response, he receives an invitation to Paris to build his own aircraft for the war with Prussia, but the defeat of France in this war suspended his plans. After staying there for some time, he returns to Russia.
In St. Petersburg, he attends classes in physics, chemistry and mechanics at the Technological Institute as a free student.
From 1871 to 1874 he experiments with incandescent lamps and conducts the first demonstration of his invention in several places in St. Petersburg.
His first experiments were based on the use of an iron wire in the form of a filament, but it could not withstand the voltage and the scientist switched to a carbon rod in a glass vial.
In 1872 he registered a patent for his lamp, and a couple of years later he received it. For the incandescent lamp he was awarded the Lomonosov Prize on behalf of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Lodygin’s invention is spreading throughout Europe and the world.
After success, Lodygin creates his own company, Russian Electric Lighting Partnership Lodygin and Co.
In the 1870s he communicated with the populists, and from 1875 to 1878 he even lived in Tuapse with their community. In 1878 he returned to the capital, worked on a diving apparatus and invented other mechanisms.
Takes part in the Vienna Electrotechnical Exhibition and becomes the owner of the Order of Stanislav. In 1899 he became an honorary electrical engineer from the St. Petersburg Electrotechnical Institute.
In 1884, due to the development of revolutionism, his friends were arrested, and he himself, in order to avoid the same fate, went to France, and then to the USA. He lives there for 23 years and continues to invent and improve his lamps. In exile, he created electric furnaces and electric cars, took part in the construction of factories and subways.
In the early 1900s, he invented filaments made of refractory metals, the patent for which he sold to General Electric in 1906.
In 1884 he created his own factory for the production of incandescent lamps and sent the first samples to St. Petersburg to exhibit them at the 3rd Electrical Engineering Exhibition. In 1894 he created the company Lodygin and de Lisle in Paris, and in 1900 he participated in the World Exhibition.
In 1906, in the USA, he built a plant to produce tungsten, chromium and titanium for his incandescent filaments. He also invented an electric furnace for melting these metals using the induction method.
He married in 1895 and later raised 2 daughters. In 1907 he returned to Russia and became a teacher. He works at the Electrotechnical Institute and at the St. Petersburg Railway.
In 1913 he visited the provinces of Olonetsk and Nizhny Novgorod to electrify them, but then the First World War began and plans for electrification had to be replaced by the development of an aircraft similar to helicopter takeoff.
In the 1910s he participated in politics, wrote articles and pamphlets about nationalists. After 1917, he did not come to terms with the Bolshevik government and left Russia, moving to the USA.
He was invited to return back to develop the GOELRO plan, but due to serious illness he refused.
Achievements of Alexander Lodygin:
Invented the incandescent lamp and tungsten filament
Dates from the biography of Alexander Lodygin:
October 18, 1847 - born in Tambov
1859-1865 - training in the Voronezh and Tambov cadet corps
1870 - move to St. Petersburg
1874 - patent for an incandescent lamp
1884-1907 – emigration
1907 – return to Russia, electrification
1917 – emigration to the USA
March 16, 1923 - death
Interesting facts of Alexander Lodygin:
A crater and streets in some cities bear his name.
The incandescent lamp was invented by several people, but it was Lodygin who made its most important discoveries
Russian electrical engineer, one of the inventors of the incandescent lamp (July 11, 1874), entrepreneur.
Lodygin was born in the village of Stenshino, Tambov province, into a noble family. The family of the future inventor was very noble and traced its origins to Andrei Kobyla, from whom the Romanovs also descended.
In 1859, Lodygin entered the cadet corps in Tambov, and in 1867 he graduated from the Moscow Junker School, where he studied to become a military engineer. After 3 years, Alexander moved to St. Petersburg. Even then, his interest in incandescent lamps showed. As a free listener, he began to attend lectures at the Institute of Technology. In 1871-1874, Lodygin devoted himself to experiments, trying to use incandescent lamps for electric lighting of the Admiralty, Galernaya Harbor, Technological Institute, etc.
At first, the inventor tried to use iron wire as an incandescent filament, but such experiments were not successful, and Lodygin began to conduct experiments with a carbon rod, which was placed in a glass cylinder.
In 1872, Lodygin filed an application for his invention, and 2 years later received privilege (patent) No. 1619 (dated July 11, 1874). The St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences awarded the inventor the Lomonosov Prize. Lodygin eventually received patents for his invention from Austria-Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Sweden, Saxony, India and Australia. The inventor also founded the company “Russian Electric Lighting Partnership Lodygin and Co.”
The first incandescent lamp, a carbon lamp, was invented in 1838 in Belgium. A little later, in 1840, an incandescent lamp with a platinum spiral appeared in Great Britain. The German inventor G. Gebel in 1854 created a semblance of a modern lamp, which was a charred bamboo thread in a evacuated vessel.
In parallel with his experiments with incandescent lamps, Lodygin worked on a diving apparatus project. Research and experiments in this area have been successful. In 1871, Lodygin designed a diving suit in which oxygen was supposed to be produced from water through electrolysis - reduction chemical reactions that occur when using electric current.
In the period 1875-1878, the inventor became close to representatives of the socio-political populist movement; He spent these years in Tuapse in the populist community. In 1878, Lodygin returned to St. Petersburg, where he worked at various factories, improved the design of the diving apparatus he invented, and created projects for other inventions.
In 1884, Lodygin went abroad, where he spent about 23 years. The Russian inventor worked in France and the USA, where he created a series of new models of incandescent lamps, designs for electric furnaces, electric vehicles, etc. Soon after he left Russia, Lodygin organized the production of incandescent lamps in Paris. In the early 90s of the 19th century, the inventor began to use filaments made of refractory metals for powerful lamps of 100-400 candles, and in 1894 he organized the company Lodygin and de Lisle in Paris, which produced incandescent lamps.
The Russian inventor was the first to propose using tungsten filaments in incandescent lamps and twisting them in the shape of a spiral, as is still done in light bulbs. Another innovation was that Lodygin was the first to pump air out of lamps, which made it possible to increase their service life many times over. In addition, to increase the service life of the lamps, Lodygin began filling them with inert gas. Patents obtained by a Russian researcher at the end of the 19th century for lamps with filaments made of refractory metals were sold to the American company General Electric Company in 1906.
In 1900, Lodygin took part in the World Exhibition in Paris with his inventions. Later, having moved to the USA, in 1906 the inventor supervised the construction and commissioning of a plant for the electrochemical production of tungsten, chromium and titanium. In addition, Lodygin created projects for electric resistance furnaces and induction furnaces for melting metals, melinite, glass, hardening and annealing steel products, and producing phosphorus and silicon.
In 1895, Lodygin married journalist Alma Schmidt, and in 1907, together with his wife and two daughters, he came to Russia. He was engaged in teaching at the Electrotechnical Institute and worked in the construction department of the St. Petersburg Railway. At the beginning of the First World War, the inventor began developing a vertical take-off aircraft.
Soon after the February Revolution of 1917, the inventor and his family left for the USA again. Representatives of the new government invited Lodygin to return to Soviet Russia to participate in the development of the GOELRO (country electrification) plan, but the inventor refused due to illness. Lodygin died in Brooklyn (USA) in March 1923.
Lodygin's inventions, especially the incandescent lamp, played a huge role in the further development of world civilization. Now it is difficult to imagine life without electric lighting. Currently, several types of incandescent lamps are produced, differing in purpose and design features. These are incandescent lamps for general and local use, decorative and illumination, mirror, signal, transport, floodlight, lamps intended for use in optical instruments, and halogen. Previously, small switch lamps were used as indicators in various devices, but nowadays LEDs are used for similar purposes.
