On March 23, 1876, Russian engineer Pavel Yablochkov received a patent for his invention, which he himself called the "electric candle". At its core, the new lighting fixture was the world's first light bulb. Humanity has entered the era of electric light.

Russian engineer Pavel Yablochkov discovered the so-called "electric candle" back in 1875. The revolutionary lighting device consisted of two charcoal plates separated by a porcelain insert. These plates served as a conductor of electricity that heated the arc. The invention was made back in Russia, in a Moscow laboratory, which the inventor created with his own funds. But as often happened in the history of our fatherland, the ingenious invention found neither support nor application at home.

Soon Yablochkov ended up in Paris, where he completed the development of the design of an electric candle. The "Electric Candle" was the first electric light source. On March 23, 1876, a Russian electrical engineer received French patent No. 112 024 for her invention, containing short description candles in their original forms and the depiction of these forms.

Yablochkov presented his brainchild at an exhibition of physical devices that took place on April 15, 1876 in London. On low metal pedestals, Yablochkov placed four of his candles, wrapped in asbestos and located at a great distance from each other. I brought the current from a dynamo machine located in the next room to the lamps. By turning the handle, the current was turned on, and immediately the vast room was flooded with a very bright, slightly bluish electric light.

The success of the Yablochkov candle was absolutely overwhelming. The world press was full of headlines: “The invention of the Russian retired military engineer Yablochkov - new era in technology "; "Northern light, Russian light - a miracle of our time"; "Russia is the birthplace of electricity", etc.

Companies for the commercial exploitation of Yablochkov's candles were founded in many countries around the world. They appeared on sale and began to disperse in huge numbers. Each candle cost about 20 kopecks and burned for 1.5 hours. After this time, it was necessary to insert a new one into the lantern. Subsequently, lanterns with automatic replacement of candles were invented.

In February 1877, the fashionable shops of the Louvre in Paris were illuminated with electric light. Twenty-two AC carbon arc lamps - "Yablochkov candles" - replaced two hundred gas burners. It was a real sensation. Then Yablochkov's candles flashed on the square in front of the opera house. And in May 1877, for the first time, they illuminated one of the most beautiful highways in the French capital - Avenue de l'Opera.

London followed the example of Paris. On June 17, 1877, Yablochkov's candles lit the West Indies docks in London, a little later - part of the Thames embankment, Waterloo Bridge, the Metropol Hotel, Gatfield Castle, Westgate seaside beaches.

Almost simultaneously with England, Yablochkov's candles flashed in the premises of the trading office of Julius Michaelis in Berlin. New electric lighting is conquering Belgium and Spain, Portugal and Sweden with exceptional speed. In Italy, they illuminated the ruins of the Colosseum, National Street and Colon Square in Rome, in Vienna - the Volskgarten, in Greece - the Falernian Bay, as well as squares and streets, seaports and shops, theaters and palaces in other countries.

Soon, the "Russian light" illuminated city streets, shops and theaters around the world. This invention marked the beginning of the practical use of electric charge for lighting purposes.

Both Yablochkov and Lodygin were "temporary" emigrants. They were not going to leave their homeland forever and, having achieved success in Europe and America, returned back. It's just that Russia has at all times “stopped”, as it is fashionable to say today, innovative developments, and sometimes it was easier to go to France or the United States and “promote” your invention there, and then triumphantly return home by a well-known and sought-after specialist. This can be called technical emigration - not because of poverty or dislike of the native roads, but precisely with the aim of pushing away from abroad in order to interest both the homeland and the world.

The fates of these two talented people are very similar. Both were born in the fall of 1847, served in the army in engineering positions and almost simultaneously quit in close ranks (Yablochkov - lieutenant, Lodygin - second lieutenant). Both made important inventions in the field of lighting in the mid-1870s, developing them mainly abroad, in France and the USA. However, later their fates diverged.

So candles and lamps.

INCANDED THREADS

The first thing to note is that Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin did not invent the incandescent lamp. Nor did Thomas Edison, to whom Lodygin eventually sold a number of his patents. Formally, the Scottish inventor James Bowman Lindsay is considered the pioneer of the use of a red-hot spiral for lighting. In 1835, in the city of Dundee, he held a public demonstration of lighting the space around him with a glowing wire. He showed that such a light allows you to read books without using the usual candles. However, Lindsay was a man of many hobbies and was no longer involved in light - it was just one of his series of "tricks".

And the first lamp with a glass bulb in 1838 was patented by the Belgian photographer Marcellen Jobar. It was he who introduced a number of modern principles of an incandescent lamp - he pumped air out of the flask, creating a vacuum there, used a carbon filament, and so on. After Jobard, there were many more electrical engineers who contributed to the development of the incandescent lamp - Warren de la Rue, Frederic Mullins (de Molaines), Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, John Wellington Starr and others. Robert-Houdin, by the way, was generally an illusionist, not a scientist - he designed and patented the lamp as one of the elements of his technical tricks. So everything was already ready for Lodygin's appearance on the “lamp arena”.

Alexander Nikolaevich was born in the Tambov province in a noble but not rich family, entered the cadet corps (first in preparatory classes in Tambov, then in the main unit in Voronezh), like many noble offspring of that time, he served in the 71st Belevsky regiment, studied at the Moscow cadet infantry school (now - Alekseevskoe), and in 1870 he retired, because his heart was not in the army.

At the school, he trained in engineering, and this played an important role in his passion for electrical engineering. After 1870, Lodygin was closely engaged in work on improving the incandescent lamp, and at the same time he attended St. Petersburg University as a volunteer. In 1872, he applied for an invention called "Method and Apparatus for Electric Lighting" and two years later received a privilege. Subsequently, he patented his invention in other countries.

What did Lodygin invent?

Incandescent light bulb with carbon rod. You will say - after all, Jobar used a similar system! Yes, absolutely. But Lodygin, firstly, developed a much more perfect configuration, and secondly, he guessed that vacuum is not an ideal environment and it is possible to increase the efficiency and service life by filling the flask with inert gases, as is done in similar lamps today. This was the breakthrough of world significance.

He founded the company "Russian Association of Electric Lighting Lodygin and Co.", was successful, worked on many inventions, including, by the way, on diving equipment, but in 1884 he was forced to leave Russia for political reasons. They left at all times. The fact was that the death of Alexander II from the bomb of Grinevitsky led to massive raids and repressions among the sympathizers of the revolutionaries. It was mainly the creative and technical intelligentsia - that is, the society in which Lodygin moved. He did not leave. from accusations of any illegal actions, but rather away from sin.

Before that he had already worked in Paris, and now he has moved to the capital of France to live. True, the company he created abroad quickly went bankrupt (Lodygin was very dubious as a businessman), and in 1888 he moved to the USA, where he got a job at Westinghouse Electric ("Westinghouse Electric"). George Westinghouse attracted leading engineers from all over the world to his developments, sometimes buying them from competitors.

In American patents, Lodygin secured the primacy in the development of lamps with incandescent filaments of molybdenum, platinum, iridium, tungsten, osmium and palladium (not counting numerous inventions in other areas, in particular a patent for a new system of electric resistance furnaces). Tungsten filaments are still used in light bulbs today - in fact, Lodygin gave the incandescent lamp its final look in the late 1890s. The triumph of Lodygin lamps came in 1893, when Westinghouse's company won a tender for the electrification of the World's Fair in Chicago. Ironically, later, before leaving for his homeland, Lodygin sold the patents obtained in the United States not to Westinghouse at all, but to Thomas Edison's General Electric.

In 1895 he moved to Paris again and there he married Alma Schmidt, the daughter of a German émigré, whom he had met in Pittsburgh. And 12 years later, Lodygin with his wife and two daughters returned to Russia - a world famous inventor and electrical engineer. He had no problems either with work (he taught at the Electrotechnical Institute, now ETU "LETI"), or with the promotion of his ideas. He was engaged in social and political activities, worked on the electrification of railways, and in 1917, with the advent of the new government, he again left for the United States, where he was received very cordially.

Perhaps Lodygin is a real man of the world. Living and working in Russia, France and the USA, he achieved his goal everywhere, received patents everywhere and put his developments into practice. When he died in Brooklyn in 1923, even the newspapers of the RSFSR wrote about it.

It is Lodygin who can be called the inventor of the modern light bulb more than any of his historical competitors. But the founder of street lighting was not at all he, but another great Russian electrical engineer - Pavel Yablochkov, who did not believe in the prospects of incandescent lamps. He went his own way.

CANDLE WITHOUT FIRE

As noted above, the life paths of the two inventors were initially similar. In fact, you can simply copy part of Lodygin's biography into this subsection, replacing the names and names of educational institutions. Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov was also born into the family of a small local nobleman, he studied at the Saratov men's gymnasium, then at the Nikolaev engineering school, from where he came out with the rank of second lieutenant engineer and went to serve in the 5th engineer battalion of the Kiev fortress. He served, however, not for long, and less than a year later he retired for health reasons. Another thing is that there was no sensible job in the civilian field, and two years later, in 1869, Yablochkov returned to the army and was sent to the Technical Electroplating Institution in Kronstadt (now the Officer Electrotechnical School) to improve his qualifications. It was there that he became seriously interested in electrical engineering - the institution trained military specialists for all electrical work in the army: the telegraph, mine detonation systems, and so on.

In 1872, 25-year-old Yablochkov finally retired and began work on his own project. He rightly considered incandescent lamps unpromising: indeed, at that time they were dull, energy-consuming and not too durable. Much more Yablochkov was interested in the technology of arc lamps, which at the very beginning of the 19th century began to be developed independently by two scientists - the Russian Vasily Petrov and the Englishman Humphrey Davy. Both of them in the same 1802 (although there are discrepancies regarding the date of Davy's "presentation") presented to the highest scientific organizations of their countries - the Royal Institute and the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences - the effect of the glow of an arc passing between two electrodes. At that time, there was no practical application for this phenomenon, but already in the 1830s, the first arc lamps with a carbon electrode began to appear. The most famous engineer who developed such systems was the Englishman William Edwards State, who received a number of patents for carbon lamps in 1834 - 1836 and, most importantly, developed the most important unit of such a device - the distance regulator between the electrodes. This was the main problem of the carbon lamp: as the electrodes burned out, the distance between them increased, and they had to be shifted so that the arc did not go out. State's patents were used as base by many electrical engineers around the world, and his lamps illuminated a number of pavilions at the 1851 World's Fair.

Yablochkov, on the other hand, set out to correct the main drawback of the arc lamp - the need for maintenance. A person should be constantly present near each lamp, turning the regulator. This negated the advantages of both bright light and the relative cheapness of manufacturing.

In 1875, Yablochkov, never finding an application for his skills in Russia, left for Paris, where he got a job as an engineer in the laboratory of the famous physicist Louis-Francois Breguet (his grandfather founded the Breguet watch brand) and became friends with his son Antoine. There, in 1876, Yablochkov received the first patent for an arc lamp without a regulator. The essence of the invention consisted in the fact that long electrodes were located not with their ends to each other, but side by side, in parallel. They were separated by a layer of kaolin, an inert material that does not allow an arc to occur along the entire length of the electrodes. The arc appeared only at their ends. As the visible part of the electrodes burned out, the kaolin melted and light descended down the electrodes. Such a lamp burned for no more than two or three hours, but it was incredibly bright.

"Candles Yablochkov", as the journalists called the novelty, won a mad success. After the demonstration of the lamps at the London exhibition, several companies at once bought out a patent from Yablochkov and organized mass production. In 1877, the first "candles" lit up on the streets of Los Angeles (the Americans bought the batch immediately after public demonstrations in London, even before mass production). On May 30, 1878, the first "candles" were lit in Paris - near the Opera and in the Place de l'Esta. Subsequently, Yablochkov's lamps illuminated the streets of London and a number of American cities.

How so, you ask, they only burned for two hours! Yes, but it was comparable to the “life” of a conventional candle, and the arc lamps were incredibly bright and more reliable. And yes, a lot of lamplighters were required - but no more than to service the ubiquitous gas lamps.

But incandescent lamps were approaching: in 1879, the Briton Joseph Swan (later his company would merge with Edison's company and become the largest lighting conglomerate in the world) put the first ever street lamp with an incandescent lamp near his house. In a matter of years, Edison lamps have caught up in brightness with the "Yablochkov candles", while having a much lower cost and operating time of 1000 hours or more. The short era of arc lamps is over.

On the whole, it was logical: the insane, incredible rise of "Russian light", as the "Yablochkov candles" were called in the USA and Europe, could not last long. The fall became even more rapid - by the mid-1880s there was not a single factory left that would produce "candles". However, Yablochkov worked on various electrical systems and tried to maintain his former glory, traveled to congresses of electrical engineers, gave lectures, including in Russia.

He finally returned in 1892, spending his savings to buy out his own patents from European copyright holders. In Europe, no one needed his ideas, but at home he hoped to find support and interest. But it did not work out: by that time, due to many years of experiments with harmful substances, in particular with chlorine, the health of Pavel Nikolaevich began to deteriorate rapidly. The heart failed, the lungs failed, he suffered two strokes and died on March 19 (31), 1894 in Saratov, where he lived for the last year, developing the electric lighting scheme for the city. He was 47 years old.

Perhaps, if Yablochkov had lived to see the revolution, he would have repeated the fate of Lodygin and left a second time - now forever.

Arc lamps received today new life - xenon lighting works according to this principle in flashes, car headlights, searchlights. But a much more important achievement of Yablochkov is that he was the first to prove that electric lighting of public spaces and even entire cities is possible.

("Science and Life" No. 39, 1890)

Of course, all readers know the name of P. N. Yablochkov, the inventor of the electric candle. Every day more and more the question of electric lighting of cities and large buildings comes to the fore, and in this matter the name of Yablochkov occupies one of the prominent places among electrical engineers. Placing his portrait in this issue of the magazine, let's say a few words about the life of a Russian inventor, the essence and significance of his invention.

Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov was born in 1847 and received his primary education at the Saratov gymnasium. At the end of the course in it, he entered the Nikolaev Engineering School, where he graduated with the rank of second lieutenant, and then was enrolled in one of the battalions of the Kiev engineer brigade. Soon he was made the chief of the telegraph on the Moscow-Kursk railway and here he thoroughly studied all the subtleties of electrical engineering, which gave him the opportunity to make an invention that made so much noise - an electric candle.

To understand the meaning of this invention, let's say a few words about electric lighting systems.

All appliances for electric lighting can be divided into two main groups: 1) appliances based on the voltaic arc principle, and 2) incandescent lamps.

In order to produce light by incandescence, an electric current is passed through very bad conductors, which therefore become very hot and emit light. Incandescent lamps can be divided into two sections: a) incandescent is performed with air access (Rainier and Verdemann lamps); b) incandescence is performed in the void. In the lamps of Rainier and Verdemann, the current flows through a cylindrical ember; since coal burns out quickly when air is available, these lamps are very inconvenient and are not used anywhere. Now only lamps with incandescent vacuum are used, the device of which, in general, is very simple. The ends of the wires are connected by means of a carbon thread and inserted into a glass flask or bubble, from which air is pumped out by means of a mercury pump almost to a perfect void. Here the advantage is achieved that the carbon thread (usually very thin), although it gets very hot, can last up to 1200 hours or more, almost without burning, due to the lack of air. All systems of incandescent lamps in a vacuum differ from one another only in the way the carbon filament is processed and the shape that is given to the filaments. In Edison's lamp, the threads are obtained from charred fibers of bamboo wood, while the threads themselves are bent in the shape of the letter U. In the Swann lamp, the threads are prepared from cotton paper and bent in a loop one and a half turns. In the Maxim lamp, filaments are made from charred Bristol cardboard and bent into an M. Gerard prepares filaments from pressed coke and bends them at an angle. Cool precipitates coal on a thin platinum filament, etc.

Lamps with a voltaic arc are based on the well-known phenomenon of voltaic arc from physics, which Humphrey Davy first observed back in 1813. Passing through two coals a current from 2000 zinc-copper vapors, he received an arc-shaped fiery tongue between the ends of the coals, which he gave the name of the voltaic arc. To obtain it, you must first bring the ends of the coals closer together until they touch, since otherwise there will be no arc, whatever the current strength; the coals move away from each other only when their ends become hot. This is the first and very important inconvenience of a volt arc. An even more important inconvenience arises with further combustion. If the current is constant, then the coal that is connected to the positive pole is consumed twice as much as the other coal connected to the negative pole. In addition, a depression (called a crater) forms at the end of the positive coal, while the negative one retains its sharp shape. With the vertical arrangement of the coals, the positive coal is always placed at the top in order to use the rays reflected from the concave surface of the crater (otherwise, the rays, going up, would disappear). With alternating current, both coals retain their sharp shape and burn the same, but there is no reflection from the upper coal, and therefore this method is less profitable.

From here, the disadvantages of voltaic arc systems are clearly visible. Before lighting such lamps, it is necessary to bring the ends of the coals closer together, and then, during the entire combustion period, rearrange the ends of the coals as they burn. In a word, almost every lamp had to be assigned a person to observe the combustion. It is clear that such a system is completely unsuitable for lighting, for example, entire cities and even large buildings. To eliminate these inconveniences, many inventors began to invent mechanical regulators, so that the coals themselves converged as they burned, without requiring human supervision. Many very ingenious regulators were invented (Serren, Zhaspar, Siemens, Gram, Bresch, Weston, Kans, etc.), but all of them did not help much. Firstly, they were extremely complex and cunning, and secondly, they did little to achieve the goal and were very expensive.

While everyone came up with only different subtleties in the regulators, Mr. Yablochkov came up with an ingenious idea, at the same time so simple that it’s amazing how nobody had attacked her before. How easy it was to open the chest is seen from the following diagram:

a B C _______ d e _______ f f _______ s

a B C D - old voltaic arc system; the electric current went through and and r, the arc was between b and in; the task of the inventors was to adjust the distance between b and in, which changed according to the current strength, quality and size of coals ab and vr, etc. It is obvious that the task was tricky and difficult, where you cannot do without thousands of screws, etc.

The right half of the diagram represents an ingenious solution to the problem made by Yablochkov. He arranged the coals in parallel; current enters through the ends d and f... Coals de and zhz separated by a non-conductor layer; therefore, a voltaic arc is obtained between the ends e and h . Obviously, if the intermediate layer is made of a combustible material (non-conductive of electricity) and if the current is alternating, then the ends e and s will burn evenly until all the charcoal plates de and zhz will not burn out to the end. No regulators or gadgets needed - the chest was more than easy to open! But the main feature of any ingenious invention is precisely that it is very simple ...

As expected, in Russia they reacted with suspicion to Yablochkov's invention, and he had to go abroad. The first experiment on a large scale was made on June 15, 1877 in London, in the yard West-India-Docks... The experiments were a success, and soon the name of Yablochkov spread throughout Europe. At the present time, many buildings in Paris, London, etc. are illuminated according to the Yablochkov system. Currently in St. Petersburg there is a large "Partnership for Electric Lighting and the Manufacture of Electrical Machines and Apparatuses in Russia" under the firm of P. N. Yablochkov-Inventor and Co. .-Petersburg, Obvodny Canal, No. 80). At present, Mr. Yablochkov has made many improvements to his system, and his candles are now like that.

The diameter of the coals is 4 millimeters; the insulating (interstitial) substance is called colombin. Initially, columbine was made from kaolin (porcelain clay), but now it has been replaced by a mixture of equal parts of sulphate lime and sulphate barite, which is very easily molded into molds, and at the temperature of the voltaic arc turns into vapors.

It was already said above that when igniting the ends of the coals must be connected. In Yablochkov's work, the ends of the coals in the candle were separated by colombine, and, therefore, the problem of joining them had to be solved. He solved it very simply: the ends of the candles are dipped in charcoal dough, which quickly burns out and lights the candle, which continues to burn with the help of the columbine.

It goes without saying that Yablochkov candles require alternating current so that both coals burn evenly.

One of the important disadvantages of the Yablochkov system was that the candles had to be changed frequently when they burned out. Now this drawback has also been eliminated - by the arrangement of candlesticks for several candles. As soon as the first candle burns out, the second comes on, then the third, and so on. To illuminate the Louvre (in Paris), Mr. Clario invented a special automatic switch for Yablochkov's system.

Yablochkov's candles are excellent for lighting workshops, shipyards, shops, railway stations, etc. In Paris, apart from the Louvre, shops are illuminated according to the Yablochkov system. du Printemps», Continental hotel, Hippodrome, workshops of Farco, Guena, a plant in Ivry, etc. In Moscow, the same system illuminates the square near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the Stone Bridge, many factories and plants, etc.

In conclusion, one cannot fail to recall the history of this invention without a feeling of extreme bitterness. Regrettably, there is no place for Russian inventors in Russia until they receive a foreign hallmark. The inventor of the most ingenious method of electrical bonding of metals, Mr. Benardos, long and unsuccessfully pushed through the doors of the Russian capitalists until he achieved success in Paris. Yablochkov would still “vegetate in obscurity” if he had not visited London and Paris. Even Babaev received a stamp of fitness in America ...

There is no prophet in his own country. These words summarize the life of the inventor Pavel Yablochkov in the best possible way. In terms of the level of scientific and technological progress, Russia in the second half of the 19th century in some areas lagged significantly behind the leading european countries and the USA. Therefore, it was easier for compatriots to believe that everything brilliant and progressive comes from afar, rather than being born in the minds of scientists working alongside them.

When Yablochkov invented the arc lamp, the first thing he wanted was to find an application for it in Russia. But none of the Russian industrialists took the invention seriously, and Yablochkov went to Paris. There, he refined the design with the support of a local investor, and success came almost immediately.

After March 1876, when Yablochkov received a patent for his lamp, "Yablochkov candles" began to appear on the main streets european capitals... The Old World Press praises our inventor. "Russia is the birthplace of electricity", "You must see Yablochkov's candle" - such headlines are full of European newspapers of that time. La lumiere russe ("Russian light" - as the French called Yablochkov's lamps) rapidly spread throughout the cities of Europe and America.

Here it is - success in the modern sense. Pavel Yablochkov becomes a famous and rich man. But the people of that generation thought differently - and not in terms of everyday success. Foreign glory was not what the Russian inventor was striving for. Therefore, after the end of the Russian-Turkish war, he made an act unexpected for our modern perception. He bought the right to use his invention in his native country from a French company that invested his work for one million francs (!) And went to Russia. By the way, the colossal amount of a million francs was all the fortune accumulated by Yablochkov due to the popularity of his invention.

Yablochkov thought that after the European success he would receive a warm welcome at home. But he was wrong. Yablochkov's invention was now treated, of course, with greater interest than before his departure abroad, but the industrialists this time were not ready to appreciate Yablochkov's candle.

By the time of the publication of material about Yablochkov in the pre-revolutionary "Science and Life" la lumiere russe began to fade. In Russia, arc lamps have not become widespread. In advanced countries, they have a serious competitor - an incandescent lamp.

Incandescent lamps have been developed since the early 19th century. One of the founders of this trend was the Englishman Delarue, who, back in 1809, received light by passing a current through a platinum spiral. Later, our compatriot, a retired officer Alexander Lodygin, created an incandescent lamp with several carbon rods - when one burned out, the other was automatically turned on. Through constant refinement, Lodygin managed to raise the resource of his lamps from half an hour to several hundred hours. It was he who was one of the first to evacuate air from the bulb. The talented inventor Lodygin was an unimportant entrepreneur, so he played a rather modest role in the history of electric lighting, although he undoubtedly did a lot.

The most famous character in the history of electricity was Thomas Alva Edison. And we must admit that the fame came to the American inventor deservedly. After Edison began developing an incandescent lamp in 1879, he conducted thousands of experiments, spending more than 100 thousand dollars on research work - a fantastic amount at the time. The investment paid off: Edison created the world's first incandescent lamp with a long run (approx. 1000 hours) suitable for mass production. At the same time, Edison approached the matter systematically: in addition to the incandescent lamp itself, he developed in detail the system of electric lighting and centralized power supply.

As for Yablochkov, in last years life, he led a rather modest life: the press forgot about him, and entrepreneurs did not turn to him. The grandiose projects for the arrangement of world capitals were replaced by a more modest work on the creation of an electric lighting system in Saratov, the city where his youth passed and where he now lived. Here Yablochkov died in 1894 - unknown and poor.

For a long time, it was believed that Yablochkov's arc lamps were a dead-end branch in the evolution of artificial lighting. However, at some point, the brightness of the arc lamps was appreciated by car companies. The Yablochkov candle was revived at a new technological level - in the form of gas-discharge lamps. Xenon lamps, which are installed in the headlights of modern cars, are in some way a highly improved Yablochkov candle.

"CANDLE YABLOCHKOVA"

Russian engineer, one of the pioneers of world electrical engineering and lighting engineering Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov (September 14, 1847, the village of Zhadovka, Serdobsky district, Saratov province - March 19 (31), 1894, Saratov) graduated from the Technical Electroplating Institution in St. Petersburg, later transformed into the Officer's Electrical Engineering School, graduating military electrical engineers. The technical galvanizing institution was the first military educational institution in Europe with the task of developing and improving the methods of practical application of electricity in engineering. One of the organizers and leaders of this educational institution was the largest Russian scientist and inventor, pioneer of electrical engineering B.S. Jacobi. P.N. After graduating from the Galvanic Institution, Yablochkov was appointed head of the galvanic team in the 5th Sapper Battalion. However, as soon as the three-year service life had expired, he retired to the reserve, leaving the army forever. Yablochkov was offered the position of the head of the telegraph service on the Moscow-Kursk railway that had just entered into operation. Already at the beginning of his service on the railway P.N. Yablochkov made his first invention: he created a “black-writing telegraph apparatus”. The details of this invention have not reached us.

P.N. Yablochkov began with an attempt to improve the Foucault regulator, the most widespread at that time. In the spring of 1874, he had the opportunity to practically use an electric arc for lighting.

A government train was to follow from Moscow to Crimea. The administration of the Moscow-Kursk road, for the purpose of traffic safety, decided to light the train track at night for this train and turned to Yablochkov as an engineer interested in electric lighting. For the first time in history rail transport a searchlight with the best arc lamp with a Foucault regulator was installed on the locomotive. The arc lamp had to be continuously adjusted. An electric arc, which gives a bright light, arises only when the ends of horizontally located carbon electrodes are at a strictly defined distance from each other.

Slightly it decreases or increases, the discharge disappears. Meanwhile, during the discharge, the coals burn out, so that the gap between them grows all the time. And in order to use coal in an electric arc lamp, it was required to use a special mechanism-regulator, which would constantly, at a certain speed, move the burnout rods towards each other. Then the arc will not be extinguished. The regulator was very complex, operated with three springs and required continuous attention. Although the experiment was a success, he once again convinced Pavel Nikolaevich that this method of electric lighting could not be widely used. It became clear: the regulator needs to be simplified.

An arc discharge in the form of a so-called electric (or voltaic) arc was first discovered in 1802 by a Russian scientist, professor of physics at the Military Medical-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg, and later by Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences Vasily Vladimirovich Petrov. In the following words, Petrov describes in one of the books he published his first observations of the electric arc: “If two or three charcoals are placed on a glass tile or on a bench with glass legs ... and if metal insulated guides ... are connected to both poles a huge battery, bringing them closer to one another at a distance of one to three lines, then a very bright white light or flame appears between them, from which these coals light up more or more slowly and from which the dark peace can be quite clearly illuminated ... " ...

In 1810, the English physicist Devi made the same discovery. They both got a voltaic arc using a large battery of cells between the ends of the charcoal rods. The first manual arc lamp was designed in 1844 by a French physicist who replaced charcoal with sticks of solid coke. In 1848, he first used an arc lamp to illuminate a Parisian square.

For the sake of fairness, it must be said that attempts to use arc lamps were made in Russia before Yablochkov. The Russian inventors Shpakovsky and Chikolev developed their arc lamps with regulators. Shpakovsky's electric lamps were already burning in Moscow on Red Square in 1856 during the coronation of Alexander II. Chikolev, on the other hand, used the powerful light of an electric arc to operate powerful marine searchlights. The automatic regulators invented by these inventors had differences, but they agreed on one thing - they were unreliable. The lamps did not burn for long, but were expensive.

Together with an experienced electrical engineer N.G. Glukhov Yablochkov began to work in the workshop to improve batteries and a dynamo, conducted experiments on illuminating a large area with a huge searchlight. In the workshop, Yablochkov managed to create an electromagnet of an original design. He applied a copper tape winding, placing it on the edge in relation to the core. This was his first invention.

Along with experiments on improving electromagnets and arc lamps, Yablochkov and Glukhov attached great importance to the electrolysis of sodium chloride solutions. During one of the numerous experiments on the electrolysis of table salt, parallel coals immersed in an electrolytic bath accidentally touched each other. Immediately, a dazzling electric arc flashed between them. It was at these moments that he conceived the idea of \u200b\u200bbuilding an arc lamp ... without a regulator.

In October 1875 Yablochkov went abroad and carried with him a dynamo machine he had invented. In the fall of 1875, due to the circumstances, Pavel Nikolaevich found himself in Paris in the Breguet workshop for physical instruments. In a report read on November 17, 1876 at a meeting of the French Physical Society, Yablochkov reported: “I have invented a new lamp, or an electric candle, of an extremely simple design. Instead of placing the coals against each other, I place them side by side and separate them with an insulating substance. Both upper ends of the coals are free. " Yablochkov's candle consisted of two rods made of dense rotary coal, arranged in parallel and separated by a plaster plate.

The latter served both to hold the coals together and to isolate them, allowing a volt arc to form only between the upper ends of the coals. As the coals burned from above, the gypsum plate melted and evaporated, so that the tips of the coals always protruded a few millimeters above the plate.

The simplicity of the candle device, the ease of handling it was simply amazing, especially in comparison with complex regulators. This provided the candle with a resounding success and rapid spread. On March 23, Pavel Nikolayevich took a French patent for it for No. 112024, containing a brief description of the candle in its original forms and an image of these forms. This day became a historical date, turning points in the history of the development of electrical and lighting technology, Yablochkov's finest hour. "Russian light" (as the invention of Yablochkov was called) shone on the streets, squares, in the premises of many cities in Europe, America and even Asia. “From Paris,” wrote Yablochkov, “electric lighting spread throughout the world, reaching the palace of the Shah of Persia and the palace of the King of Cambodia”).

On April 15, 1876, an exhibition of physical devices opened in London. The French company Breguet also showed its products there. Breguet sent Yablochkov as his representative to the exhibition, who participated in the exhibition and independently, exhibiting his candle there. One of spring days astonished London gasped when the inventor held a public demonstration of his brainchild. On low metal pillars (pedestals) Yablochkov placed four of his candles, wrapped in asbestos and installed at a great distance from each other.

I brought the current from the dynamo machine located in the next room to the lamps. By turning the handle, the current was switched on, and immediately the vast room was flooded with a very bright, slightly bluish electric light. The large audience was delighted.

This is how London became the site of the first public display of a new light source and the first triumph of a Russian engineer.

During his stay in France, Pavel Nikolayevich worked not only on the invention and improvement of the electric candle, but also on solving other practical problems. Only in the first year and a half - from March 1876 to October 1877 - he presented to mankind a number of other outstanding inventions and discoveries. P.N. Yablochkov designed the first alternator, was the first to use alternating current for industrial purposes, created an alternating current transformer (November 30, 1876, the date of obtaining a patent, is considered the date of birth of the first transformer) and for the first time used statistical capacitors in an alternating current circuit. The discoveries and inventions of the Russian engineer, which immortalized his name, allowed Yablochkov to be the first in the world to create a light crushing system based on the use of alternating current, transformers and capacitors.

In Russia, the first test of electric lighting according to the Yablochkov system was carried out on October 11, 1878, that is, shortly before the inventor's arrival in his homeland. On this day, the barracks of the Kronstadt training crew, the area near the house occupied by the commander of the Kronstadt seaport were illuminated. The experiments were successful. Two weeks later, on December 4, 1878, Yablochkov's candles (8 balls) first lit the Bolshoi Theater in St. Petersburg. When "the electric light was suddenly turned on," wrote "Novoye Vremya" in the issue of December 6, - a bright white, but not a cutting eye, but a soft light, in which the colors and colors of women's faces and toilets retained their natural in daylight. The effect was amazing. "

Soon after the inventor's arrival in St. Petersburg, the joint-stock company "Partnership for Electric Lighting and the Manufacture of Electrical Machines and Apparatuses PN Yablochkov-Inventor and Co." was established. Yablochkov's candles, manufactured by the Parisian and then St. Petersburg plant of the society, were lit in St. Petersburg, Moscow and the Moscow region, in Kiev, Nizhny Novgorod, Helsingfors (Tallinn), Odessa, Kharkov, Nikolaev, Bryansk, Arkhangelsk, Poltava, Krasnovodsk and other cities of Russia.

And yet, electric lighting in Russia has not received such a wide distribution as abroad. There were many reasons for this: the Russian-Turkish war, which diverted a lot of funds and attention, the technical backwardness of Russia, the inertia, and sometimes the bias of the city authorities. It was not possible to create a strong company with the attraction of large capital, the lack of funds was felt all the time. An important role (again) was played by the inexperience of the head of the enterprise in financial and commercial matters. Pavel Nikolaevich often went away on business to Paris, and in the board, as V.N. Chikolev in "Memoirs of an Old Electrician", "the unscrupulous administrators of the new partnership began to throw tens and hundreds of thousands of money, since they were given easily!" The inventor was greatly disappointed. Had he, like Edison, been able to put his inventions into industrial circulation with the expectation of using the means to continue experiments, the world would probably have received from P.N. Yablochkov, there are many other useful inventions.

On August 1, 1881, the International Electrotechnical Exhibition opened in Paris, which showed that the Yablochkov candle, his lighting system, which played a great role in electrical engineering, began to lose its significance. The candle had a strong competitor in the face of an incandescent lamp, which could burn 800-1000 hours without replacement. It could be ignited, extinguished and re-ignited many times. Moreover, it was more economical than a candle.

Yablochkov switched entirely to the creation of a powerful and economical chemical current source. Conducting experiments with chlorine, Pavel Nikolayevich burned the mucous membrane of his lungs and since then began to choke. In a number of schemes of chemical current sources, Yablochkov was the first to propose wooden separators for separating the cathode and anode spaces. Subsequently, such separators have found wide application in the construction of lead-acid batteries.

Return of the "Yablochkov candle"

None of the car manufacturers now use vacuum incandescent lamps as headlights. Having served humanity for several decades, they have taken pride of place in technical museums and are only occasionally found in spare parts stores.

They were replaced by halogen incandescent lamps. The use of halogens made it possible to significantly increase the service life of the filament and, as a result, to produce lamps of higher power. Until now, in the vast majority of cars produced, halogen incandescent lamps are used for headlights.

But progress does not stand still, history makes a new round and now the Voltaic arc has been tamed and, enclosed in a glass flask, Yablochkov's candle is again involved in work.

Of course, the electrodes, their position, materials are already very far from their predecessors at the beginning of the 20th century, but the principle remains the same - an electric arc as a light source. The fundamentally new gas-discharge lamp is a small-volume quartz glass bulb with two electrodes, filled with chlorides of some metals and xenon (hence the name - xenon light).

« ELECTRIC PLUG» YABLOCHKOVA

Once I asked my friends a simple question at first glance: who invented the light bulb? And the answers were very different. Someone named the American Edison, someone called our compatriot Alexander Lodygin, and someone recalled the name of another Russian inventor - Pavel Yablochkov. So who's right?

Yes, everyone is right. After all, the history of the light bulb is a whole chain of discoveries made by different people at different times. And Edison here made a significant contribution, and Lodygin, and Yablochkov, who is rightly considered one of its discoverers.

And besides, it is imperative to remember the outstanding Russian physicist Vasily Petrov, who back in 1802 observed the phenomenon of an electric arc - a bright discharge that occurs between carbon rods-electrodes brought together at a certain distance. One should also remember the names of V. Chikolev and A. Shpakovsky, who also contributed to this outstanding invention ...

However, we will dwell in more detail on Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov. After all, one of the most curious and instructive "inventive" stories is connected with him.

The waiter, who instantly appeared at a table in a small Parisian cafe, took an unwise order and disappeared into the kitchen. The visitor, while waiting, absentmindedly took a notebook out of his pocket, put it on the table, took up a pencil. One of the pages was dotted with intricate drawings. An uninitiated person would not understand anything in them - a lot of some kind of sticks connected in pairs by thin arcs. And even sketches of drawings of some mechanisms with small, like a clock, gears. And the explanations adjacent to the drawings would all the more remain mysterious for a Parisian, because they were made in a foreign language. The cafe visitor bent over the notes, forgetting where he was, and thought deeply.

This happened in 1876, when the hero of our story, Pavel Yablochkov, was barely twenty-nine years old. Behind his studies at the St. Petersburg Military School, where he became interested in physics, and especially in its so little studied area - electricity. He has already managed to serve as the chief of the telegraph of the newly built Moscow-Kursk railway. But this occupation took a lot of time, and Yablochkov left it in order to devote himself to what he considered to be the main thing in life - the development of a reliable design of an electric arc lamp.

Fate brought him to Paris, since no one showed any particular interest in his experiments at home, in Russia. Here, one of the French firms provided the inventor with a workshop. And for several months Yablochkov fought over a solution that seemed to be somewhere very close, but everything was slipping away.

Vasily Petrov's experiments showed that an electric arc giving a bright light arises only when the ends of horizontally located carbon electrodes are at a strictly defined distance from each other. Slightly it decreases or increases, the discharge disappears. Meanwhile, during the discharge, the coals burn out, so that the gap between them grows all the time. And in order to use coals in an electric arc lamp, it was necessary to come up with a special mechanism-regulator, which would constantly, at a certain speed, move the burnout rods towards each other. Then the arc will not be extinguished.

In fairness, I must say that such attempts were made before Yablochkov. The Russian inventors Shpakovsky and Chikolev developed their arc lamps with regulators. Shpakovsky's electric lamps were already burning in Moscow on Red Square in 1856 during the coronation of Alexander II. Chikolev, on the other hand, used the powerful light of an electric arc to operate powerful marine searchlights. The automatic regulators invented by these inventors had differences, but they agreed on one thing - they were unreliable. The lamps did not burn for long, but were expensive.

It is clear that a different mechanism was required - simple and reliable. Pavel Yablochkov fought over him for a month, only thought about him - in his workshop, and wandering through the Parisian streets, and even here, in a cafe.

The clock mechanism that was used in Shpakovsky's light bulb could not foresee all the "whims" of unevenly burning coal. You need something else. But what?

The waiter came with a tray, Yablochkov removed a notebook from the table. And, continuing to think about his own, mechanically watched as he put the dish, as he put a spoon, fork, knife ...

And suddenly ... Yablochkov abruptly got up from the table and went to the exit, not hearing the calls of the bewildered waiter. He was in a hurry to his studio. Finally, here is the solution! Simplest and absolutely reliable! Found! It came to him as soon as he glanced at the cutlery lying next to each other, parallel to each other.

Yes, this is how the carbon electrodes should be positioned in the lamp - not horizontally, as in all previous designs, but parallel! Then both will burn out exactly the same, and the distance between them will always be constant. And no clever regulators are needed here!

The very next year, Yablochkov's "electric candle" brightly illuminated the Parisian department store "Louvre". Its design was completely different from all the previous ones: two coal rods were separated by an insulating layer of kaolin. They were mounted on a simple stand resembling a candlestick. The electrodes burned out evenly, and the lamp gave a bright light, and for a rather long time. Such an "electric candle" was easy to make, and it was cheap. It is not surprising that she began a triumphant march across the world. A year later, the lamps of the Russian inventor were lit on the embankments of the Thames in London, then in Berlin. Soon Yablochkov returned to Russia, and his "candle" lit up Petersburg ...

Of course, the waiter, who was once surprised by a strange visitor, did not even suspect that he had become, as it were, a co-inventor. But who knows, if he had not then put the knife and spoon so neatly in front of Yablochkov, perhaps a lightning guess would not have dawned on the inventor. True, the "hint" of the waiter found, as they say, fertile ground. After all, Yablochkov was looking for his solution even here, at a cafe table, waiting for an order. If it had not been for this, the visitor's eyes would not have noticed anything but competent table setting.

Over time, the "Yablochkov candle" was supplanted by more economical and convenient incandescent lamps, in which a thin filament heated by electricity gives a bright light. This innovation is associated with the name of Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin. It was he who guessed to pump air out of a glass cone, he came up with the idea to replace a thin thread from coal with a metal one - from molybdenum or tungsten. Edison, on the other hand, invented a bulb holder and invented a perfect pump that allowed air to be pumped out of the bulb almost to a vacuum.

And "Yablochkov's candle" has now become a museum exhibit with interesting story its creation. It kind of reminds us that only prepared minds visit great discoveries.