Abstract
IF any one event can be regarded as the birth of electrical engineering, it is surely the discovery by Faraday in 1821 of the principle of the electro-motor; that is, that a conductor carrying a current in a magnetic field experiences a force tending to move it. It is noteworthy that ten years elapsed before Faraday discovered, in 1831, the magneto-electric induction; that is, the principle of the dynamo. Four years later, Sturgeon added the commutator or “uniodirective discharger,” as he called it, and in 1845 Cooke and Wheatstone used electromagnets, which Sturgeon had discovered in 1825, instead of permanent magnets. It was during the years 1865-1873 that the shunt and series self-excited dynamo, using a ring or drum armature and a commutator of many segments, finally evolved.
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HOWE, G. A Hundred Years of Electrical Engineering. Nature 114, 277–280 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/114277a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/114277a0