Electric candle Yablochkov - the start of the electrification of our world

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

The outstanding Russian electrical inventor Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov was born in 1847 in the very center of Russia - in the Serdobsky district of the Saratov province.

At the age of 19, young Pavel, who brilliantly graduated from the Nikolaev Engineering School in St. Petersburg, became an officer in the engineer troops of the Russian army. It was during the army service in Kronstadt that Pavel Yablochkov first met and became interested in the secrets of electrical engineering for the rest of his life - in the second half of the 19th century, it was the development of electricity that was the most advanced frontier of science.

After serving the due date and retiring to the reserve, engineer Yablochkov did not leave the electrical business. As a competent technician, he became the head of the telegraph office on the Moscow-Kursk railway. Since 1874, Yablochkov was a member of the Natural Science Society at the Moscow Polytechnic Museum, where he demonstrated his first invention - an original electromagnet with a flat winding.

The next year, 1875, Pavel Nikolayevich went to the USA for the world exhibition in Philadelphia, and later to London for an exhibition of precision and physical instruments. Fascinated by electrical engineering, he strove to personally see all the most advanced scientific achievements of that time.

Soon Yablochkov arrived in Paris, where, as an experienced technician, he easily got a job in the workshop of physical instruments of the Swiss engineer Breguet - at that time it was one of the most advanced scientific and technical centers in Europe. Here, by the beginning of the spring of 1876, Yablochkov completed the development of his design for an electric lamp and on March 23 received the world's first patent No. 112024 for it, containing a brief description and drawings of an electric "candle". This day became a historical date, a turning point in the history of the development of electrical engineering, and the finest hour of the Russian inventor.

The electric "Yablochkov Candle" immediately received recognition from the scientific world. In comparison with the previous versions of electric "carbon lamps" (in particular, the Russian inventor Alexander Lodygin), it turned out to be smaller, simpler, without unnecessary complications in the design in the form of springs, and as a result - cheaper and more convenient to use.

If all the previous constructions of incandescent lamps that were available in the world at that time were just experimental samples that served for experiments or entertainment, then the "Yablochkov candle" became the first practical light bulb that could be widely used in everyday life and in practice. The Russian "candle" consisted of two carbon rods separated by an insulating gasket made of kaolin, a special refractory grade of clay. The rods and insulating material “burned out” at the same speed, the light turned out to be bright, capable of illuminating both premises and night streets.

The Russian invention, brilliant for that time, immediately found practical application - first in Paris, where an electrical engineer was finalizing his invention for industrial use. In February 1877, "Yablochkov's Candle" first illuminated the most fashionable shops in the capital of France, then candles engraved with "Russian light" appeared in the form of garlands of matte white balls on the square in front of the Opera House, which caused a stormy delight of the European public. As the newspapers of that time wrote: "Yablochkov truly gave the people of the 19th century a miracle … Light comes to us from the North - from Russia."

On June 17, 1877, "Yablochkov's candles" were first widely used in industry - they illuminated the West Indies docks in London. Soon, the lamps of the Russian inventor illuminated almost the entire center of the British capital - the Thames embankment, Waterloo Bridge and other architectural structures. Almost simultaneously, the "Russian light" conquered other European cities, and in December 1878 Yablochkov's candles lit up shops in Philadelphia, the squares of Rio de Janeiro and Mexico. They appeared in India, Burma, and even in the royal palaces of Cambodia.

Yablochkov's electric light came to Russia on October 11, 1878, illuminating the Kronstadt barracks, then eight balls on metal pedestals illuminated the building of the Bolshoi Theater in St. Petersburg. "Nothing spread as quickly as Yablochkov's candles," wrote the newspapers of those years.

Although much more perfect designs of electric incandescent lamps soon appeared in the world, but it was the Russian "Yablochkov Candle" that launched the electrification of our world. As contemporaries admitted, Yablochkov "brought electric lighting from the physicist's laboratory to the street." The inventor was awarded an award by the Russian Imperial Technical Society for solving the problem of electric lighting in practice.

Soon after the triumph of his "candle" Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov returned to Russia and began to create a powerful and economical chemical current source. The inventor continued to work until his last day, he died in 1894 in Saratov, working on a lighting scheme for his hometown. Nowadays, on the reconstructed memorial of the scientist, a candle is "burning" and his prophetic words, said 137 years ago, are engraved: "Electric current will be supplied to houses like gas or water."