The great inventions of Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov

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

On September 14, 1847, Pyotr Yablochkov was born, who made many inventions, but went down in history exclusively as the creator of the “Yablochkov candle”.

The greatest reward for any inventor - if his name, which is named after one of his inventions, forever enters the history of mankind. In Russia, many scientists and engineers have managed to deserve such an award: just remember Dmitry Mendeleev and his table, Mikhail Kalashnikov and his assault rifle, Georgy Kotelnikov and his knapsack parachute … Among them is one of the pioneers of world electrical engineering, the most talented Russian engineer Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov. After all, the phrase "Yablochkov's candle" has been known in the world for almost a century and a half!

But the greatest curse for the scientist is hidden in the same greatest award - the perpetuation of a name in an invention. Because all his other developments and discoveries, even if there were more than a dozen of them against the only one world famous, remain in his shadow. And in this sense, the biography of Pavel Yablochkov is a classic example. He, who was the first to illuminate the streets of Paris with electric light, with his entire life confirmed the validity of the French proverb “If you want to remain unnoticed, stand under the lantern”. Because the first and only thing that comes to mind when Yablochkov's surname is mentioned is his candle. Meanwhile, it is our fellow countryman who owns, for example, the invention of the world's first electric transformer of alternating current. As contemporaries said about him, Yablochkov opened two eras in electrical engineering: the era of the direct application of electric current to lighting and the era of the use of transformed current. And if we judge his actions by the Hamburg account, then we must admit: it was Yablochkov who brought the electric light out of the laboratory cramped into the wide streets of the cities of the world.

From Saratov to St. Petersburg

By origin, the future genius of electrical engineering was the most aristocratic nobleman. The Yablochkov family, which is quite numerous and spread over three provinces - Kaluga, Saratov and Tula, traces its history back to the second half of the 16th century from Moisey Yablochkov and his son Daniel.

Most of the Yablochkovs, as befits the Russian nobility, were classical representatives of the service class, showing themselves both in military affairs and in government, receiving well-deserved awards both in money and lands. But over time, the family became impoverished, and the father of the future inventor of the electric candle could no longer boast of a large estate. Nikolai Pavlovich Yablochkov, according to family tradition, chose the military path, enrolling in the Naval Cadet Corps, but was forced to resign from service due to illness. Alas, poor health was one of the few components of the legacy that the retired sailor passed on to his son …

However, the other part of the same inheritance was more than worthy. Despite the small wealth, the Yablochkov family, who lived in the estate of Petropavlovka in the Serdobsky district of the Saratov province, were distinguished by their high culture and education. And the boy, who was born on September 14, 1847 to Nikolai and Elizabeth Yablochkov and baptized in honor of the confessor Paul of Nicaea, must have had a brilliant career.

Little Paul did not disappoint these expectations. An intelligent and receptive boy, like a sponge, he absorbed the knowledge that his parents and older brothers and sisters shared with him. Pavlik showed particular interest in technology and the exact sciences - here, too, his father's "inheritance" was reflected: the Naval Cadet Corps has always been famous for teaching precisely these disciplines.

In the summer of 1858, Pavel Yablochkov was enrolled in the Saratov men's gymnasium for incomplete 11 years. Like all other applicants, he was subjected to an entrance test - and according to the results he was immediately enrolled in the second grade, which was not very common. The teachers appreciated the high level of the boy's training and later on more than once drew attention to the fact that Yablochkov Jr. is doing better than most of his classmates, showing particular success in the same exact and technical disciplines.

Is it any wonder that the father's decision to take his son out of the gymnasium in November 1862, almost at the beginning of the school year, caused painful bewilderment among the teachers. But the reason was obvious and understandable: it became too difficult for the family to pay for the boy's education. Equally obvious was the solution that the Yablochkovs found: it was decided to send their son to a military school. The choice was also obvious: the Nikolaev Engineering School, which trained military engineers for the Russian army, was best suited to the inclinations of 15-year-old Pavel.

Officer youth

It was impossible for a fifth-grade schoolboy who had dropped out of school to enter the school right away: it was necessary to improve knowledge in basic subjects and wait for the start of the next academic year. Pavel Yablochkov spent these several months in an amazing place - a private cadet corps created by the famous military engineer and composer Caesar Cui. Invented by Caesar Antonovich together with his brave wife Malvina Rafailovna Bamberg "preparatory engineering boarding house" cost Yablochkov's parents less than the Saratov gymnasium. And then to say: this boarding house, although it was designed to improve the financial situation of a young family, was not calculated for substantial earnings, but rather provided new students, who taught at the Nikolayevsky Engineering School Cui, whom he already knows well.

Caesar Antonovich quickly appreciated the potential of the new pupil from the Saratov province. A talented engineer himself, Cui immediately noticed Pavel Yablochkov and realized how gifted the boy was in engineering. In addition, the new pupil did not hide from his tutor either his technical inclinations or the inventions already made - a new land-measuring device and a device for calculating the path traveled by a cart. Alas, no exact information has been preserved about either invention. But there is no doubt that they were: after Yablochkov became famous for his experiments in the field of electricity, many contemporaries spoke about his first inventions, claiming that both devices were used with great success by peasants in the Saratov province.

By the summer of 1863, Pavel Yablochkov had improved his knowledge to the required level, and on September 30, he passed the entrance exam to the Nikolaev Engineering School with honors and was enrolled in the junior conductor class. At that time, training at the school consisted of two stages: the school itself, into which adolescents from noble families were admitted and from which engineers-ensigns and second lieutenants were graduated, and the Nikolaev Engineering Academy, which had just merged with it, which gave a two-year higher military education.

Pavel Yablochkov never reached the academic bench, despite the fact that he was among the first students during all three years of study at the school and was distinguished by excellent knowledge and amazing diligence. In 1866, he passed the final exams in the first category, which gave him the right to immediately receive a second junior officer rank - engineer-second lieutenant - and went to his duty station in Kiev. There, the young officer was enlisted in the fifth sapper battalion of the engineering team of the Kiev fortress. But, unlike the school, the actual military service clearly weighed on Yablochkov, who strove to engage in scientific activities rather than engineering support for the army. And just a year later, at the end of 1867, Pavel Nikolaevich, with good reason citing poor health (even the serious physical exertion that the students of the Nikolaev school endured did not help to correct it), resigned.

True, it did not last long. Yablochkov quickly realized that in order to gain the knowledge he needed in the engineering field, and especially in the field of electrical engineering, the army was still the best option, and in 1868 he returned to service. He was attracted by the Kronstadt Technical Electroplating Institution - the only electrical engineering school in Russia at that time. Pavel Nikolaevich seeks a secondment to Kronstadt and eight months later he returns to the Kiev fortress, but this time as the head of the galvanic team. This meant that from now on the young officer was responsible in the citadel for all work with the use of electricity, primarily for mine work and the telegraph, which was actively part of the army's technical arsenal.

With a spotlight on a steam train

To the great regret of his father, who saw in his son the continuation of his failed military career, Pavel Nikolayevich did not stay in the service for a long time. Three years later, in 1872, he resigned again, this time for good. But he still has to deal with the military, and not with the army, but with the navy (here it is, his father's inheritance!). After all, the first lanterns equipped with the "Yablochkov candle" will be lit in Russia in six years precisely in Kronstadt - at the walls of the house of the commander of the Kronstadt seaport and in the barracks of the Training crew.

And then, in 1872, Yablochkov went to Moscow - where, as he knows, they are most actively engaged in research in the field of electrical engineering. The center of attraction for active young scientists performing electrical experiments was then the Polytechnic Museum. In the local circle of electricians-inventors, work is in full swing on devices that will turn electricity into everyday energy available to all, helping to make life easier for mankind.

Spending all his free time on joint experiments with other enthusiastic electricians, Yablochkov makes a living for himself and his young wife, working as the head of the telegraph of the Moscow-Kursk railway. And it was here, so to speak, right at the workplace, that in 1874 he received an amazing offer: to put into practice his knowledge in the field of electrical engineering and electric lighting, equipping a lighting device … a steam locomotive!

Pavel Nikolayevich received such an unexpected order, because the authorities of the Moscow-Kursk railway urgently needed to impress the family of Emperor Alexander II, who was traveling by train from Moscow to Crimea, for a summer vacation in Livadia. Formally, the railway workers sought to ensure the safety of the royal family, for which they needed night lighting of the track.

A floodlight with a Foucault regulator - the prototype of the "Yablochkov candle", and at that time one of the most widespread electric arc light sources - became the world's first lighting device installed on a steam locomotive. And, like any innovation, he demanded constant attention to himself. For more than two days, which the tsar's train followed to the Crimea, Yablochkov spent almost 20 hours on the front platform of the steam locomotive, constantly monitoring the searchlight and turning the screws of the Foucault regulator. Moreover, the locomotive was far from alone: the tractor of the train was changed at least four times, and each time Yablochkov had to manually transfer lighting equipment, wires and batteries from one locomotive to another and reinstall them on the site.

Way to the West

The success of this enterprise prompted Pavel Yablochkov to start his own business, so as not to carve out hours and minutes for experiments, but to make them the main business of his life. At the end of the same 1874 Yablochkov left his telegraph service and opened an electrical engineering workshop and a shop in Moscow.

But, alas, how great was the engineering talent of the heir to an old noble family, his commercial abilities turned out to be just as small. Within literally one year, Pavel Yablochkov's workshop and shop fell into complete decay: the inventor spent much more money on his research and experiments than he could manage to earn. And then Pavel Nikolaevich decided to take a desperate step: he decided to go overseas, to America, hoping to find there either a demand for his research, which was not in his homeland, or an investor who could turn his experiments into capital.

Yablochkov set off on a long journey in the fall of 1875, hoping to make it to the end of the Philadelphia Exhibition. Pavel Nikolaevich really wanted to demonstrate on it the recently invented flat-wound electromagnet - his first invention, which he brought to obtain a patent.

But the Russian inventor never made it to Philadelphia: financial difficulties stopped him long before the ocean shore, in Paris. Realizing that now he can only rely on his own knowledge in electrical engineering and on someone who can evaluate and attach his inventions to the case, Yablochkov goes to the academician Louis Breguet, a well-known telegraph specialist and owner of an electrical workshop at that time. And the French academician immediately understands that luck brought him a genius: he hires Pavel Nikolayevich without unnecessary formalities, expecting that the newcomer will quickly show himself.

And these expectations were fully justified at the beginning of 1876. On March 23, Yablochkov received in France his first patent No. 112024 for an electric arc lamp - then no one called it "Yablochkov's candle". Fame came a little later, when Breguet's workshop sent its representative, that is, Yablochkov, to an exhibition of physical devices in London. It was there that on April 15, 1876, a Russian inventor publicly demonstrated his invention for the first time - and went down in history forever …

The bright light of the "Yablochkov candle"

From London "Yablochkov's candle" began a triumphal procession around the world. The inhabitants of Paris were the first to appreciate the advantages of the new light source, where lanterns with "Yablochkov's candles" appeared in the winter and spring of 1877. Then came the turn of London, Berlin, Rome, Vienna, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Rio de Janeiro, Delhi, Calcutta, Madras … By 1878, the "Russian candle" reaches the homeland of its creator: the first lanterns are installed in Kronstadt, and then they illuminate the Stone Theater in St. Petersburg.

Initially, Pavel Yablochkov transferred all rights to his inventions to the Union for the Study of Electric Light (Yablochkov's system), in French - Le Syndicat d'études de la lumière électrique (système Jablochkoff). A little later on its basis arose and became the world famous General Electric Company - Société Générale d'électricité (procédés Jablochkoff). How high the turnover of the company that produced and sold "Yablochkov's candles" was, can be judged by the following fact: every day it produced 8000 such candles, and they all sold out without a trace.

But Yablochkov dreamed of returning to Russia to put his inventions at her service. In addition, the success he achieved in Europe encouraged him and, apparently, gave him hope that now he could be commercially viable in Russia as well. As a result, having redeemed for a crazy amount at that time - a million francs! - the rights to his patents are held by a French company, Pavel Nikolaevich sets off on his way back to his homeland.

In 1879, in St. Petersburg, the “P. N. Yablochkov the Inventor and Co. , and soon Yablochkov also organizes an electromechanical plant. Unfortunately, it did not work out to repeat the success of Société Générale d'électricité in Russia. As the second wife of Yablochkov wrote in her memoirs, “it was difficult to meet a less practical person like Yablochkov, and the choice of employees was unsuccessful … The money was spent, the idea of organizing a Russian society with capital from the outside did not work out, and the business in Russia stalled.”

In addition, the trade in "Yablochkov's candles" was not at all the life goal of Pavel Nikolaevich: he was much more inspired by work on new electrical machines - alternators and transformers, as well as further work on the distribution of electric current in circuits and on chemical sources of electric current. And just these scientific investigations, unfortunately, did not find understanding in the inventor's homeland - despite the fact that fellow scientists highly appreciated his work. Deciding that European entrepreneurs would be much more likely to be interested in new units, Yablochkov left his homeland again and returned to Paris in 1880. Less than a year later, in 1881, at the Paris World Exhibition, the "Yablochkov candle" will once again bring glory to its creator - and then it will become clear that its economic age was as short as the operating time of each individual candle. The incandescent lamps of Thomas Edison appeared on the world stage, and Yablochkov could only watch the triumph of the American, who built his business on the minimal modifications of the inventions of his Russian colleague and his fellow countrymen.

Pavel Yablochkov returned to Russia only 12 years later, in 1893. By this time, his health was completely undermined, commercial affairs were in disorder, and there was no longer enough strength for full-fledged scientific work. On March 31, 1894, the greatest inventor, one of the first world-renowned Russian engineers, Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov, died - as witnesses of his last months of life say, without stopping his experiments. True, he had to conduct the last of them in a modest room in a Saratov hotel, from which the ingenious electrical engineer never came out alive.

"… The world owes all this to our compatriot"

What scientific and technical legacy did Pavel Yablochkov leave behind? It should be noted that to this day it was not possible to appreciate it at its true worth: a considerable part of Pavel Nikolaevich's scientific archive simply disappeared during his numerous travels. But even the information that has been preserved in patent archives and documents, memoirs of contemporaries, gives an idea that Yablochkov should be considered one of the founding fathers of modern electrical engineering.

Of course, the main and most famous invention of Yablochkov is the legendary “Yablochkov candle”. It is ingeniously simple: two carbon electrodes connected by a thin metal thread for ignition and separated along the entire length by a kaolin insulator that evaporates as the electrodes burn out. In kaolin Yablochkov quickly guessed to add various metal salts, which made it possible to change the tone and saturation of the light of the lamps.

Secondly, this is an alternating current magnetoelectric machine without rotational motion (the predecessor of one of the famous inventions of the engineer Nikola Tesla): Yablochkov received one of the French patents for it. He issued the same patent for a magnetodynamic electric machine, in which there were no moving windings. Both the magnetizing winding and the winding, in which the electromotive force was induced, remained stationary, and the toothed iron disk rotated, changing the magnetic flux as it moved. Due to this, the inventor managed to get rid of sliding contacts and make a machine that is simple and reliable in design.

The “Yablochkov's clip-on machine” was also completely original in design, the name of which the inventor gave, as he himself wrote, by the location of “the axis of rotation at an angle relative to the axis of the magnetic field, which resembles the inclination of the ecliptic”. True, there was little practical sense in such a tricky design, but Yablochkov's modern electrical engineering largely came not from theory, but from practice, which required, among other things, such unusual constructions.

And research in the field of generating electricity through chemical reactions and the creation of galvanic cells, which Yablochkov became interested in in the last decade of his life, received an adequate assessment only half a century later. In the middle of the twentieth century, experts evaluated them as follows: "Everything created by Yablochkov in the field of electrochemical cells is distinguished by an unusually rich variety of principles and design solutions, testifying to exceptional intellectual data and outstanding talent of the inventor."

Best of all, the role of Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov in the world history of electrical engineering was formulated by his colleague in the electrical engineering circle at the Polytechnic University Vladimir Chikolev. Moreover, he formulated it, being a categorical opponent of many of Yablochkov's ideas. However, this did not prevent Chikolev from appreciating the innovation of Pavel Nikolaevich. In 1880, he wrote about him as follows: “I believe that the main merit of Yablochkov is not in the invention of his candle, but in the fact that under the banner of this candle he, with inextinguishable energy, perseverance, consistency, raised electric lighting by the ears and put it on the appropriate pedestal. If then electric lighting received a credit in society, if its progress, supported by the trust and means of the public, then took such gigantic steps, if the thoughts of workers rushed to improve this lighting, among whom the famous names of Siemens, Jamen, Edison, etc. appear, then everyone the world owes this to our compatriot Yablochkov."