Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin
From Freepedia
Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin (1847 – 1923) (Александр Николаевич Лодыгин in Russian) was a Russian electrical engineer and inventor, one of invetors of the Incandescent light bulb.
Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin was born in village Stenshino', Tambov gubernia, Russia. His parents were of very old noble family (descendants of Andrei Kobyla like Romanovs), but of very moderate means. He studied at Tambov Cadet School (1859-1865). Then he served at 71 st Belev regiment and in 1866-1868 studied at Moscow Infantry School. Soon after graduation from his military school he retired from the military and worked as a worker on Tula weapons factory.
In 1872 he decided to go to Saint Petersburg to attend lectures at Saint Petersburg Institute of Technology and to start working on electrical helicopter (electrolet). The electrical helicopter should have some sort of artificial lightning that must be electrical. He decided to start his works on helicopter from developing an electrical light source for it.
On July 11, 1874, Lodygin was granted Russian patent number 1619 (which he applied for in 1872) for his filament lamp. He also patented this invention in Austria, Britain, France, and Belgium. As a filament, Lodygin used a very thin carbon rod, placed under a bell-glass. In August of 1873 he demonstrated the samples of his electric filament lamp in the physics lecture hall of the Saint Petersburg Institute of Technology. In 1873–1874 he conducted experiments with electric lighting on ships, city streets, etc. In 1874, Petersburg Academy of Sciences awarded him with a Lomonosov Prize for his invention of the filament lamp. That same year, Lodygin established “Electric Lighting Company, A.N. Lodygin and Co”. In 1899, Petersburg Institute of Electrical Engineering awarded Lodygin with the honorary title of electrical engineer.
Since 1875 he became very interested in socialist ideas of Narodniks. In 1880s after Norodniks killed tsar Alexander I of Russia, there were repressions against their organization. Thus, in 1884 he had to emigrate from Russia to France and USA. In 1895 he married German reporter Alma Schmidt, a daughter of an electrical engineer.
In the 1890s, Lodygin invented a few types of filament lamps with metallic filaments; some say he was the first scientist to use a tungsten filament. He got a patent for lamps with tungsten filaments and sold it to General Electric (1906), who started first industrial production of such lamps.
In 1907 Lodygin returned to Russia. He continued works on series of his inventions include new type of electrical motor, electrical welding, tungsten alloys, electrical ovens and smelting furnaces. He teaches at Petersburg Institute of Electrical Engineering and works for Petersburg railroad. In 1914 he was sent by Ministry for Agriculture to develope plans for electrification of Olonets and Nizhny Novgorod gubernias.
After Russian Revolution of 1917 Lodygin emigrated to USA. He refused Soviet proposal to work for their State Plan for Electrification of Russia (1918). In 1923 he died in Brooklyn.
Lodygin's ideas were almost always ahead of his time. He inveneted an incandescent light bulb before Edison but it was not commercially profitable. The lamps with tungsten filament is indeed the only design used now, but in 1906 they were to expensive. His diving apparatus is very similar to modern scuba. Even his ideas of electrical helicopter were used many years later by Igor Sikorsky.
