When was william sturgeon born




















The Gallery closed in , and he earned a living by lecturing and demonstrating. Biography Lists News Also Viewed. William Sturgeon. The basics. The details from wikipedia. The greater part of the scientific world hastened to cultivate the new field thus opened to investigation, and no one distinguished himself more than Mr. Sturgeon in the research, although the competitors numbered in their ranks such men as Faraday, Herschel, Arago, Ampere, Davy, Seebeck, and others of the highest distinction.

Sturgeon had already obtained a thorough acquaintance with the existing state of the sciences of electricity and magnetism, and he had moreover the great advantage of possessing the mechanical genius by which he was enabled to construct his own instruments of research, to which he could give an accuracy and finish not to be surpassed by the most eminent instrument makers.

The piece of his apparatus which became known to the scientific world was a modification of Ampere's rotating cylinders, which has been thus described by Mr.

Jones:— "The apparatus consists of two sets of revolving cylinders, one suspended on each pole of an inverted horse-shoe magnet. Upon the insertion of dilute nitric acid, the two sets of cylinders simultaneously enter into rotations in a very interesting and striking manner.

The effect is the most pleasing I have ever seen. Sturgeon began to give the fruits of investigations to the public in the leading scientific periodicals of the day. In that year, no fewer than four papers of great merit appeared from his pen, on the subjects of electro and thermo-electricity, in the pages of the London Philosophical Magazine.

Sturgeon was enabled to perform, with a voltaic battery of the size of a pint pot, experiments which had previously required the use of a cumbrous and costly battery. The Society of Arts testified their sense of the importance of this contribution by awarding to its author their large silver medal, with a purse of thirty guineas. Sturgeon made his great discovery of the soft iron electro-magnet, and having observed the high degree of polarity acquired by a straight bar of iron on making a current of electricity to circulate around it, as well as the suddenness with which the direction of polarity could be reversed by changing the direction of the current, he proceeded to construct electro-magnets on the same principle, but bent into the form of a horse-shoe, so that the poles, by being brought near one another, could concentrate their action on any given object.

This soft iron electro-magnet has entered into the structure of every form of electric telegraph. In this work, Mr.

Sturgeon first pointed out the superior effects to be derived from the use of amalgamated plates of rolled zinc in the voltaic battery, instead of the unprepared cast zinc, then in general use. He prepared his plates, by dipping them first into a dilute solution of acid, to cleanse their surfaces, and afterwards plunging them into mercury.

He showed that plates prepared in this way do not effervesce in dilute sulphuric acid, as the unprepared plates do, and, in consequence, require to be much less frequently renewed than the latter; whilst, at the same time, the electric current produced is much more intense and constant. It is a remarkable fact, that no further improvement has been effected in the preparation of the positive plates of the galvanic apparatus, and that Mr.

Sturgeon's amalgamated zinc plates are, at the present day, employed in every form of improved battery, whether patented or not. Sturgeon's discoveries, we may next note a highly valuable paper on the Thermo-Magnetism of Homogenous Bodies , a work the merit of which can only be duly appreciated by those who are acquainted with the extreme minuteness of the currents of which it was the object to discover the existence and direction.

By a happy combination of industry and sagacity, our author succeeded in proving that electric currents can be developed in any individual mass of pure metal by a mere disturbance of temperature at some particular point, and that the direction of those currents is determined the position of the point of greatest heat and the crystalline structure of the metal—a fact of the highest importance, and which, along with others developed by him about the same time, paved the way to Dr.

Faraday's celebrated discovery of magnetic-electricity! Sturgeon communicated a paper to the Royal Society, which contains the description of a perfectly original magnetic electrical machine, in which a most ingenious contrivance was adopted for uniting the reciprocating electric currents developed, so as to give them one uniform direction.

By this contrivance Mr. Sturgeon succeeded in producing all the effects due to ordinary voltaic currents, by means of the action of magnets on rotating coils of wire.

In the same year, the great industry of Mr. Sturgeon was rewarded by two other important inventions. The first of these was that of the electro-magnetic coil machine, an instrument devised for the purpose of giving a succession of electric shocks in medical treatment, and which has been generally preferred by medical men to all others intended for similar purposes. The other was an electro-magnetic engine, for giving motion to machinery.

Sturgeon noticed a highly interesting electro-calorific phenomenon, produced by a powerful battery of one hundred and sixty pairs, provided by Mr. Gassiot and Mr. On breaking the battery circuit it was observed that the disruptive discharge of electricity made the positive wire red hot, while the negative remained comparatively cool. Sturgeon applied this fact to elucidate some important points in the theory of heat.

About this time also Mr. Sturgeon prepared a paper for the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the very important subject of marine lightning conductors. His researches on this subject enabled him to point out the danger likely to arise from the conductors then proposed for use in the Royal Navy, by which the lightning was sought to be conveyed through the body of the ship. He propounded at the same time a new system whereby this danger might be obviated.

It looks like he had made friends with Faraday as he was listed as a subscriber to the collection. Sturgeon Final Publication. With his collection published, and friendship rebuilt, William died in Prestwich on 4th December He is buried in the churchyard of St Mary's, his funeral attended by several of his esteemed colleagues such as James Joule, his stone paid for by Edward William Binney, and he is identified on his grave slab in clear understatement as "William Sturgeon — The Electrician".

William's Grave slab. The names of scientists such as Watt, Farraday, Joule and Babbage are now part of the curriculum and general knowledge, twice-married Sturgeon however died a pauper is unmentioned.

His good friend James Joule attended his funeral wrote a 30 page biography about him and his work. A further memorial is displayed in Kirkby Lonsdale Parish Church and another was on display in a local pub - The Green Dragon Inn, now the Snooty Fox as he spent some time lecturing in the assembly hall that stood to the rear of the Inn, while staying there recovering from broncitis.



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