The great inventors of the energy world

Electricity, electric lamps, renewable energies..., although all this now seems taken for granted, it has not always been so. Humanity has lived most of its time without these technological feats that have profoundly shaped our world and made it as comfortable as we know it.

Today, it seems completely normal to come home after a long day at work, to press a switch to light up your bedroom. However, this would not have been possible without the creative spirit and genius of numerous scientists that can be described as founding fathers of energy.

At SirEnergies, we invite you to discover the great inventors who made it possible to revolutionize the world of energy.

Nikola Tesla, the genius of alternating current

Do you know the company Tesla? It is so named to honor this exceptional character who left an indelible mark on him. The field of energy.

Her short story

Nikola Tesla was an electrical and mechanical engineer of Serbian origin. Born on July 10, 1856 and died on January 7, 1943, he is with his 900 patents, including 111 American ones, one of the most prolific inventors of the story. This precocious genius was able to perform complex mathematical calculations from an early age.

When he was still at École Polytechnique in 1875, he studied Gramme's dynamo, which allowed him to imagine advantages of alternating current. He would later be one of Thomas Edison's fiercest rivals, who swore by direct current. With his genius, he could have been financially successful like some of his contemporaries at the time had he not been such a poor businessman.

The genius with multiple inventions

Nikola Tesla is undoubtedly one of the most renowned inventors in history and an outstanding innovator in the world of energy. One of his greatest discoveries and his most influential work was the invention of alternating current. It is used nowadays to operate various household appliances such as dryers and washers.

One of his patents also concerns a rotating electromagnetic field thanks to which an alternating current made it possible to power a motor without having been converted to direct current upstream. It is this process that allowed the creation of generators and AC transformers.

Fiercely opposed to Edison on the superiority of alternating current over direct current, he nevertheless succeeded in demonstrating it with his friend Westinghouse. Since then, its high efficiency, especially in terms of energy and economy, is no longer in doubt.

During this same period, the brilliant inventor developed A hydroelectric system which made it possible to convert the energy of Niagara Falls into electricity. It was used to feed industries in the city of Buffalo. He even fought for several decades with Edison for several patents.

Nikola Tesla also developed a polyphase system which made it possible to transmit electricity over long distances. He also developed the first radio transmitter capable of sending electromagnetic energy from one point to another without using cables. However, all this is far from being the only invention of the Serbian genius. Nikola Tesla also distinguished himself with the invention of high-frequency generators, the Tesla coil, rotating field theory, and neon signs.

Thomas Edison, the king of direct current

Thomas Alva Edison was one of the emblematic figures in the field of energy in the 19th century^E And in the XX^E century. Born in 1847 in Milan in the United States, he distinguished himself at an early age as a hyperactive child with insatiable curiosity. Forced to drop out of school after only a few months, his education was provided by his mother.

Self-taught at heart and with a futuristic vision, he soon became the prolific inventor as we know him today. At the time of his death, he had more than a thousand patents covering fields as varied as cinema, telegraph or electric rail transport.

The incandescent light bulb

Thomas Edison was actively looking for a way to produce light from electricity. He had his revelation during one of his trips to Sierra Madre in Wyoming. The idea then came to him to introduce a filament heated by an electric current into a bulb in order to produce light.

However, to find the ideal filament capable of accomplishing this feat, he made nearly 1,200 attempts and then filed a patent application for the carbonized bamboo filament. However, it only lasts 30 hours. It was then another inventor by the name of Latimer who addressed this problem by proposing the carbon filament. However, the first form of electric light is Attributed to Humphry Davy in 1802.

However, it is thanks to Thomas Edison's research that many cities in the Old Continent and the United States have benefited from DC electric lighting systems. In terms of mass-produced commercial light forms, the Edison bulb is undoubtedly a leader. Years later, the direct current system so dear to Edison was finally replaced by the alternating current developed by Tesla, one of his former employees.

The power plant

In the field of energy, Thomas Edison did not only shine with the incandescent light bulb. The Edison Electric Light Company of American engineers in fact founded the very first electric power plant in the world based on six dynamos on September 4, 1882. The purpose of this power plant was to produce direct current in the Wall Street district of Manhattan. The energy produced could power 1,200 lamps that will be used to light 85 homes and offices.

A pioneer in renewable energies

Thomas Edison was a pioneer of renewables. He has in fact conducted multiple experiments with wind turbines at home for the production of electricity in order to provide an independent source of energy. He also teamed up with his friend Henry Ford in order to Develop an electric car that works with rechargeable batteries. He saw electric cars as cleaner alternatives.

Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the battery

This time we are going to Italy to better understand the origin of the name given to the unit of electromotive force, it is the volt. This unit has been Donated by the Congress of Electricians in honor of Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, an Italian physicist.

Born on February 18, 1745 in Como, a city not far from Milan in the Italian Alps, he is far from the archetype of early genius as we knew him. In fact, he only started speaking at the age of four. However, being included in this list of inventors, this did not stop him from becoming a luminary in his field.

Later, He taught physics at school royal of his city, but also carried out research on electricity in parallel. Very curious, he was at the origin of numerous discoveries, including that of methane.

The invention of the voltaic battery

Volta has always been passionate about the study of electrical phenomena. In fact, it was he who perfected The electrophore, a machine that allows you to generate static electricity. Thanks to this machine, he discovered numerous laws that explain the functioning of the capacitor. However, his greatest invention is undoubtedly that of the voltaic battery.

Curious by nature, Volta had a click when he read a publication by the professor of biology and physiology Luigi Galvani. This was about his observations on a dead frog that had its spinal nerve attached to a copper wire. When it and its legs touched an iron disc, a contraction was observed. It was Volta who proposed the most plausible explanation for this phenomenon: theElectricity is produced by contact between copper and iron and not by living matter as Luigi thought.

Volta also understood one thing by observing the electricity released by torpedo rays, on the back made up of repeated patterns: it is possible to produce electricity by stacking pairs of zinc-copper disks separated by a cloth dipped in a salt water solution. He then developed a tension table.

His research then led to the creation of the first electric battery in 1800. This cell was the first continuous source of electricity and is the precursor to dry batteries commonly used today. This invention allowed him to be knighted in 1810 by Napoleon I.^Er and to obtain the title of Count of the Kingdom.

Joseph Swan, another pioneer of the electric lamp

While Edison was famous for his contribution to the advent of electrical lighting systems, he is not the only one. Across the Atlantic in Europe, more precisely in England, another genius is also rightly considered to be one of the pioneers of these systems. It's Joseph Swan.

Zoom on the character

Sir Joseph Wilson Swan was an English physicist and chemist born on October 31, 1828 and died on May 27, 1914 in Warlingham. In particular, it is known as theInventor of the photographic plate dryer that allowed a significant improvement in photography and in the development of modern photographic films. From an apprentice to a pharmacist to an assistant in a chemical manufacturing company, he soon developed a functional electric lamp.

Joseph Swan's electric lamp

Between the years 1850 and 1860, Joseph Swan conducted numerous experiments in order to create your own lighting system electric. However, his first tests were inconclusive because vacuum pumps of the time were unable to remove enough air from the lamps. With the design of better pumps in the mid-1870s, Swan resumed his experiments and demonstrated his functional lamp at the Newcastle Chemical Society in 1879.

However, in his lamp, he used a carbon rod with low thermal resistance. As a result, the conductors responsible for bringing electricity back to the lamp had to be rather short or very thick. While the use of such a lamp was not prohibitive in the context of an experiment, it was for real use.

Looking for the best filament for his lamp, just like Edison, Swan ended up develop a patented process which allowed nitrocellulose to be pressed through holes to form fibers.

As you can see, the world of energy has been marked by great discoveries and inventions that have profoundly changed our lifestyles: alternating current, direct current, invention of the electric battery... This was possible with the genius of scientists like Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Alessandro Volta, Alexander Graham Bell, Joseph Swan...

Do not hesitate to read our article on the history of electricity in France.

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