How Edison stole a sweetheart from Lodygin

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

An incandescent lamp is a vivid example that, in addition to talent and hard work, an inventor must have a "wolf" grip in business affairs, so that the glory of a "discoverer" is fixed to him.

Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin was born in a noble family on 1847-18-10, and was supposed to become a military man - a family tradition. But, after graduating from the Voronezh cadet corps, and then the Moscow cadet school, Lodygin in 1870, having retired from military service, settled in St. Petersburg. Then his thoughts were directed to the first invention - an ekranolet: a machine for aeronautics at different heights, suitable for the transport of goods and people.

A. N. Lodygin's electrolet

The main difference between this aircraft and the existing ones was that it was driven by electricity. It should be noted that Alexander Nikolaevich was a pure self-taught in matters of electricity. Lodygin offered his ekranolet to the Russian War Ministry, but did not receive a response from officials. But he attracted the attention of the French Security Committee: France was at war with Prussia and was ready to offer Lodygin fifty thousand francs for the construction of an ekranolet.

These plans were not destined to come true. When Lodygin reached Paris, Prussia forced France to capitulate - the aeronautical vehicle was no longer needed. Perhaps it was this failure that made Lodygin reconsider the direction for activity. Upon returning home, Alexander Nikolaevich had a new idea - to use electricity for lighting.

By that time, experiments were being carried out in several laboratories around the world to create lighting lamps. Basically, these were projects for the use of an electric arc (V. Petrov spoke about such a possibility back in 1802), projects for the glow of gas or the incandescence of electrically conductive bodies under the influence of electricity. We can recall the experiments on the creation of lamps by Jobar (1838), King and Starr (1945), G. Gebel (1846) and others, but the experiments remained "locked" in laboratories.

While working, Lodygin tried many options until he settled on a design made of a glass ball, in which a coal rod (about two mm in diameter) was fixed on a pair of copper rods. But the design was imperfect - the coal rod burned out in just thirty to forty minutes.

Vasily Didrikhson, one of Lodygin's assistants, found a way out: it was necessary to pump out air from the ball. And when, instead of a carbon rod, the same Didrichson suggested placing somewhat thinner ones, then the service life of the lamps began to fluctuate from seven hundred to a thousand hours!

No one has ever been able to achieve such a service life. And Alexander Nikolaevich decided to develop his success. To begin with, he and Vasily Didrikhson open a new company: "Russian Association of Electric Lighting Lodygin and K" and begin to advertise their invention. For this, a "PR campaign" was carried out in 1873 on one of the St. Petersburg streets - Odessa. There were installed seven lamps with Lodygin lamps instead of the usual kerosene ones, and on May 20 they flashed like "little suns".

Such a ticket gave the right to be the first to look at Lodygin's light bulb

The action attracted attention. Lodygin patented his lamp in many European countries, and then in Russia (although this happened already in 1874, but with a note about the "priority of 1872"). In 1876, advertising continued - on Morskaya Street, in the windows of Florent's store, illumination with new electric bulbs flashed. This interested even the Academy of Sciences, which allocated a thousand rubles for the prize to Alexander Nikolaevich.

Lantern with installed Lodygin lamp

But this was the end of the successes of the Russian Association of Electric Lighting Lodygin and Co. In 1875 Yablochkov invents, patents, and then refines his carbon arc lamp. And, thanks to competent promotion, as well as the fact that the lamps were bright, relatively cheap and easy to use, soon everyone knew about Yablochkov's lamps, and they began to forget about Lodygin: he lost the advertising war. The company went bankrupt, there was even nothing to renew the patents with.

Candle P. N. Yablochkov - another great Russian man

Lodygin leaves Russia and lives in two countries - America and France, improving his invention: carbon threads are eventually replaced by tungsten threads (which, as history shows, was the right decision). At the same time, Lodygin is developing many innovative devices and technologies: obtaining tungsten by electrochemical means, an electric resistance furnace, melting metals and methods for producing alloys …

Meanwhile, in 1879 in America, Thomas Edison, a born businessman, founded the Edison Electric Lighting Society and began to actively advertise tungsten incandescent lamps. Then the world still remembered the real inventor of such lamps, and, after court proceedings, in 1890, Lodygin proves who was the "discoverer" of a new type of lamps.

Lamps of the talented businessman-inventor T. Edison

Only "business is business": A. N. Lodygin is again almost ruined, and in 1906 he sells (for very little money) his patents to General Electric, which includes T. Edison's enterprise. And they were able to bring the finished development to commercial use perfectly.

The next ten years A. N. Lodygin spent at home, developing projects for a helicopter and electric lighting in the Olonets and Nizhny Novgorod provinces. But the revolution forced him to leave for America again - they did not agree with the new government. In 1923, the great inventor who gave the world the miracle of electric lighting died, and "not quite the truth about the Thomas Edison light bulb" began to spread around the world.