Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin

To the pride of the Russian people should be on the tables of the history of culture noted the fact that the initiative to apply electrical lighting both volt arc and glow lamps belongs to the Russian inventors Yablochkov and Lodygin; So the slightest details of the whole epic of the birth of electric lighting should be expensive, interesting and encouraging to every Russian heart, and it is our duty to those who initiated such a widespread electric illumination now, to show their works and find out their right to this great discovery. " So he wrote the "Post and Telegraph Journal" in 1900 (No. 2) during the lifetime of the famous inventor Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin.

The name of Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin is mainly connected with the construction of an electric incandescent lamp. As is known, the priority of inventing the incandescent lamp was challenged by many people, and many so-called "patent processes" arose about it.

The principle of an electric incandescent lamp was known before AN Lodygin. But A. N. Lodygin was the one who aroused a great interest in the construction of light sources, acting on the principle of incandescence of a conductor with a current. Having built a more perfect lamp than other inventors, A. N. Lodygin first turned it from a physical device into a practical means of illumination, took her out of the physical cabinet and laboratory to the street and showed her wide possibilities for using it for lighting purposes.

AN Lodygin showed the advantages of the use of metal, in particular tungsten, wire for the production of the glow body and, thus, began the production of modern, much more economical incandescent lamps than early-period coal lamps.

AN Lodygin prepared the ground for the success of PN Yablochkov and undoubtedly had a strong influence on TA Edison and D. Svan, who, using the principle of the incandescent lamp, approved by the works of AN Lodygin, turned this Device in the consumer goods.

After dedicating many years of work to the construction and improvement of the incandescent lamp with a coal and metal body, AN Lodygin did not find favorable ground in contemporary Russia for these works to be applied on a scale appropriate to their significance.

Fate made him seek happiness in America, where the second half of his life flowed. Living far from his homeland, AN Lodygin continued to hope that he would be able to return home for work. He lived to see the Great October Socialist Revolution, but his advanced age deprived him of the opportunity to return to his native country in those years when she began the movement, unknown to her before that time, along the path of cultural and technological progress.

The Soviet technical community did not break off ties with its distinguished ally. He is elected an honorary member of the Society of Russian Electrical Engineers, and in 1923 the Russian Technical Society celebrated 50 years from the first experiments of AN Lodygin on illumination with incandescent lamps.

Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin was born on October 18, 1847 in the estate of his parents in Tambov province. According to the family tradition, he was preparing a military career. To receive secondary education, he was sent to the Voronezh Cadet Corps, where he studied until 1865. At the end of the Cadet Corps, A. N. Lodygin received a course of study at the Moscow Junker School and was promoted to lieutenant, after which his service began as an army officer .

The presence of undoubted engineering abilities distracted A. N. Lodygin from military career. After serving a mandatory period, he retired and never returned to the army. Having started, after retirement, work in the factories, A. N. Lodygin was engaged in some technical issues, in particular, the construction of aircraft.

In 1870, he developed the design of an aircraft heavier than air, and he offered it to the National Defense Committee in Paris for use in the conditions of the Franco-Prussian war that was taking place at the time. His proposal was accepted: he was summoned to Paris to build and test his apparatus. AN Lodygin has already begun preparatory work at the Creso factories, shortly before France was defeated in this war. His proposal in this connection soon lost its relevance, it was abandoned, and Lodygin returned to Russia after an unsuccessful stay abroad.

In Russia, A. Lodygin found himself in a difficult financial situation and was forced to accept the first job he had got in the Sirius Oil Company. He began to work there as a technician, giving free time to developing incandescent lamps.

Before traveling to Paris, AN Lodygin, apparently, did not deal with this issue. This technical problem, he got carried away in connection with the work on the construction of an aircraft, for the illumination of which such a light source was more suitable than any other.

Having begun work on the electric illumination with incandescent lamps, AN Lodygin, undoubtedly, felt the inadequacy of his knowledge in the field of electrical engineering. After returning from Paris, he begins to listen to lectures at the University of St. Petersburg, trying to get closer to the latest trends in scientific thought in the field of applied physics, especially in the field of the doctrine of electricity.

By the end of 1872 A. Lodygin had several copies of incandescent lamps that could be publicly shown. He succeeded in finding excellent mechanics in the person of the Didrikhson brothers, one of whom - Vasily Fedorovich Didrikhson - made all the designs of incandescent lamps, designed by A. N. Lodygin, with his own hands, while making significant technological improvements during the manufacture of lamps. AN Lodygin in his first experiments produced incandescence of iron wire, then a large number of small rods of coke clamped in metal holders.

Experiments with iron wire were left to them as unsuccessful, and incandescence of coal rods showed that by this method one can not only obtain a more or less significant light, but also solve simultaneously another very important technical problem, which at that time was called "crushing light," t Ie, the inclusion of a large number of light sources in the circuit of a single electric current generator.

Sequential inclusion of the rods was very simple and convenient. But incandescence of coal in the open air led to a rapid burnout of the body of incandescence. AN Lodygin built in 1872 an incandescent lamp in a glass cylinder with a carbon rod. Its first lamps had one coal rod in the balloon, and air was not removed from the balloon: oxygen burned out at the first incandescence of coal, and further incandescence occurred in the atmosphere of residual rarefied gases.

The already improved lamp was demonstrated by Lodygin in 1873 and 1874. At the Technological Institute and other institutions, AP Lodygin gave many lectures on lighting with incandescent lamps. These lectures attracted a large number of listeners. But the historical significance was the installation of electric lighting with incandescent lamps, arranged by AN Lodygin in the autumn of 1873 at Odessa Street. In Petersburg.

This is how NV Popov, an engineer, personally present at these demonstrations ("Electricity" magazine, 1923, p. 644) describes this device: "On two street lamps, the kerosene lamps were replaced by incandescent lamps that poured bright white light. A lot of people admired this illumination, this fire from the sky. Many brought newspapers with them and compared the distances at which they could be read under kerosene lighting and electric. On the panel between the lanterns lay wires with rubber insulation, the thickness of the finger.

What kind of 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 injected in series and were fed either by batteries, or magneto-electric machines of the Van-Malderna system, the Alliance company, of AC. "

These experiments were promising and were the first public application of an incandescent lamp. The incandescent lamp made its first step into the technique. The success of the work of AN Lodygin was unconditional, and after that it was necessary to undertake a serious reworking of the design and the removal of those weaknesses that were in it.

Before A. Lodygin, as a designer, complicated technical questions became: the search for the best material for fabrication of the lamp body, the elimination of combustion of the body of incandescence, i.e., the complete removal of oxygen from the balloon, the problem of sealing the entry point, so as to make it impossible for air to enter the interior of the balloon from outside .

These questions required a lot of persistent and collective work. Above them, technicians have not stopped working at the present time. In 1875, a more advanced construction of incandescent lamps was constructed with respect to the methods of compaction and the evacuation of the balloon.

The construction of a lamp built in 1875. The demonstration of illumination with the help of Lodygin lamps in the Admiralty Docks in 1874 showed that the maritime administration could benefit greatly from the use of incandescent lighting in the Navy.

Among scientific and industrial circles, interest in the work of A. N., Lodygin after this greatly increased. The Academy of Sciences awarded him the Lomonosov Prize, emphasizing the scientific value of his works. Brilliant success of AN Lodygin led to the fact that around him began to be grouped entrepreneurs, who care not so much for the improvement of the lamp, but about the possible profits. This ruined the whole thing.

This is how VN Chikolev characterized Electricity (1880, p. 75), always treated with attention and benevolence to the works of A. N. Lodygin, the situation created after everyone recognized the success of works and experiments on lamps Incandescence: "The invention of Lodygin caused great hopes and enthusiasm in 1872-1873. The company, which was designed to operate this completely unprocessed and unprepared method, instead of vigorous works on its improvement, which the inventor hoped, preferred to engage in speculation and trade in shares in the expectation of the company's future huge revenues. It is clear that this was the most reliable, perfect way to ruin the business - a way that did not hesitate to crown with complete success. In the years 1874-1875. There was no more talk about the coverage of Lodygin. "

A. N. Lodygin, having got into the structure of such hastily organized enterprise, has lost essentially independence. This can be seen at least from the fact that all subsequent constructive versions of its incandescent lamp were not even worn by Lodygin, but were called Kozlov's lamps, then by Konn's lamps. Kozlov and Conn are owners of the shares of the so-called "Association of Electric Lighting, A. N. Lodygin and Co.," who never engaged in design work and, of course, did not build any lamps.

The latest design of the lamp had 4-5 individual rods, in which each coal was automatically switched on after the burning of the previous coal. This lamp also was called the "Conna lamp."

The invention of Lodygin in 1877 was made by Edison , who knew about his experiments and got acquainted with the samples of his incandescent lamps brought to America by the naval officer AM Khotinsky, sent by the Navy Ministry to receive cruisers, and began working on improving incandescent lamps.

On the side of official institutions, AN Lodygin also failed to meet a benevolent attitude. Submitting, for example, on October 14, 1872, an application to the Department of Trade and Manufactures for "The Method and Apparatus of Cheap Electric Lighting," A. N. Lodygin received the privilege only on July 23, 1874, that is, his bid for almost two years wandered around Chancelleries. The liquidation of the affairs of the "Partnership" put A. N. Lodygin in a very difficult financial and moral situation.

The belief in the possibility of a successful continuation of the work on the lamp in Russia disappeared, but he hoped that in America he would find better opportunities. He sends to America a patent application for a carbon filament lamp; To pay, however, the established patent fees it could not and did not receive an American patent.

In the middle of 1875, A. Lodygin began to work as a toolmaker in the Petersburg arsenal, in 1876-1878. He worked at the metallurgical plant of Prince Oldenburg in St. Petersburg. Here he had to face completely new questions related to metallurgy; Under their influence and as a result of acquaintance with the electrical engineering acquired during the work on electric lighting, he had an interest in the issues of electric smelting, and he began working on building an electric furnace.

In the years 1878-1879. P. P. Yablochkov was in St. Petersburg, and AP Lodygin began to work with him in workshops organized for the production of electric candles. Working there until 1884, he again made an attempt to produce incandescent lamps, but she limited herself to only a small amount of experimental work.

In 1884, AP Lodygin finally decided to go abroad. Several years he worked in Paris, 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 body of incandescence. Undoubtedly outstanding and fundamental in this direction were those of his works, which were associated with the manufacture of a heated body of refractory metals.

In America, he was granted patents No. 575002 and 575668 in 1893 and 1894. On the calyx 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 works on the construction of incandescent lamps with a metallic thread; In 1906 they were acquired by the concern "General Electric".

A.N. Lodygin possesses the merit that he pointed out the particularly important importance of tungsten for the construction of incandescent lamps. This opinion did not lead immediately to the corresponding results, but 20 years later the electric lamp industry of the whole world switched completely to the production of tungsten incandescent lamps. Tungsten still continues to be the only metal for the production of filaments of incandescent lamps.

In 1894, A. Lodygin went from America to Paris, where he organized an electric lamp factory and at the same time took part in the affairs of the Columbia automobile plant, but in 1900 he again returned to America, took part in the construction of the New York Subway, works at a large battery factory in Buffalo and at cable plants.

His interests are increasingly focused on the use of electricity in metallurgy and on various issues of industrial electrothermy. During the period 1900-1905. Under his leadership, several plants were built and commissioned for the production of ferrochromium, ferrotungsten, ferrosilicon, etc.

The outcome of the Russo-Japanese War greatly upset AN Lodygin. And although at this time his financial situation in America was strong, as a specialist he enjoyed great authority, his creative powers were in full bloom - he wished to return to Russia to apply his extensive and versatile knowledge of the 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 beginning of the impact of post-war economic depression. The methods of American industry and the news of transatlantic technology at that time were of no interest to anyone in Russia. And AN Lodygin himself was superfluous. For A. N. Lodygin, only the place of the head of the substations of the city tram in St. Petersburg was found. This work could not satisfy him, and he went to America.

Last years in America, after returning from Russia, AN Lodygin was engaged exclusively in the construction of electric furnaces. He built the largest electric furnaces for melting metals, melinite, ores, for the extraction of phosphorus and silicon. He built furnaces for quenching 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 electrothermia owes much to AN Lodygin as a pioneer of this new technology field.

March 16, 1923, at the age of 76 years, A. N. Lodygin died and the United States. With his death, an outstanding Russian engineer came to the grave, who first used incandescent light for lighting practice, an energetic fighter for the development of industrial electrothermy.

Source of information: People of Russian science: Essays on outstanding figures in science and technology / Ed. S.I. Vavilov. - M., L .: State. Published in the technical-theoretical literature. - 1948.

See also: Boris Semenovich Jacobi (from the book of SI Vavilov, 1948)