Abstract
IT would seem that at the present time there is being developed in the United States a new kind of engine, capable, at least in theory, of turning, by a magnetic method, the latent energy contained in fuel either into mechanical work or into the energy of electric currents. In this kind of machine the variations produced in the magnetic power of metals, such as iron and nickel, by heating and cooling them, are made the means of generating in the one case electric currents, in the other mechanical motion. The latter application was the earliest to be suggested. In the columns of NATURE (vol. xix. p. 397) will be found a note, extracted from the Journal of the Franklin Institute, upon a thermo-magnetic motor devised by Prof. E. J. Houston and Prof. E. Thomson, of Philadelphia. In this curious apparatus a disk or ring of thin steel is mounted on a vertical axis so as to be quite free to move, with its edges opposite the poles of a horse-shoe magnet. This wheel becomes of course magnetized by induction. When, however, heat is applied at a point on the circumference, the change thereby produced in the magnetic susceptibility of that part causes the disk to move round so as always to bring into line with the poles those portions of the disk which are for the time being the most susceptible to magnetization. Hence if the heating is continuous there will be a continuous rotation; the parts of the disk cooling as they leave the source of heat, and again becoming heated as they pass through the place where heat is being applied. The very same kind of thermo-magnetic motor was reinvented, in 1886, by Prof. Schwedoff, of Odessa, who, in a paper in the Journal de Physique, pointed out that this was a genuine case of conversion of heat into work, and gave the theory of the transformation and the cycle of operations from the thermo-dynamic point of view.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Thermo-Magnetic Machines . Nature 37, 33 (1887). https://doi.org/10.1038/037033a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/037033a0
This article is cited by
-
A new twist
Nature Energy (2019)