Watt
James Watt was an engineer at the University of Glasgow. He was a steam-engine guy who invented the steam-condensing engine and subsequent improvements in the 1700s. Watt was probably very motivated to work with steam: Scotland is cold in the winter, even with today’s central heating. It must have felt like Antarctica back in the eighteenth century.
Edison coupled his own generator with Watt’s steam engine to produce the first large-scale electricity generation. As you can guess, the term “watt,” a unit of power, was named after Watt.
The Amp Man
André Marie Ampère, the first notable French electrophile, researched electricity and magnetism, essentially developing the field of electrodynamics. Not much for quotable sound bites, Ampère’s most important publication, Memoir on the Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from Experience (1827), is a book only a physicist could love.
A unit of electric current is called an “ampere” in his honor, but Americans, blatant and unapologetic in messing with the French language, call it an “amp” instead.
Simon Ohm
In 1827, Georg Simon Ohm, a German physicist and mathematician in Cologne, published The Galvanic Circuit Investigated Mathematically, a tome never destined to make the New York Times Bestseller list in any category. Lacking acceptance in his native Germany, Ohm eventually was awarded the Copley Medal in 1841 by The Royal Society of Great Britain. Ohm discovered one of the most fundamental laws of electricity:
the relationship among resistance, current, and voltage. The resulting law, V = IR (in which V is voltage, I is the current, and R is resistance), gave him a place in the electricity hall of fame. A unit of resistance, the ohm, is named after him
Coulomb
Charles Augustin de Coulomb was an all-around brilliant eighteenth-century French scientist who made major contributions in the areas of physics, civil engineering, and the natural sciences. The unit of electric charge—the coulomb—is named for him. Who could forget “Chuck” Coulomb’s 1773 address to the Academy of Science in Paris when he discussed pioneering soil mechanics theory? Coulomb served as “Ingenieur du Roi” (“Engineer of the King”) until the French Revolution came calling. He then took a powder and retired to the countryside for a while.
Coulomb is known in the electrical world for verifying the law of attraction or electrostatic force. Basically, he confirmed the notion that opposite charges (+ and –) attract each other and like charges repel. Unlike other observers of this behavior, Coulomb worked the numbers and came up with a nice, neat theory that no one outside the fields of electrical engineering and physics will ever use.
James Watt was an engineer at the University of Glasgow. He was a steam-engine guy who invented the steam-condensing engine and subsequent improvements in the 1700s. Watt was probably very motivated to work with steam: Scotland is cold in the winter, even with today’s central heating. It must have felt like Antarctica back in the eighteenth century.
Edison coupled his own generator with Watt’s steam engine to produce the first large-scale electricity generation. As you can guess, the term “watt,” a unit of power, was named after Watt.
The Amp Man
André Marie Ampère, the first notable French electrophile, researched electricity and magnetism, essentially developing the field of electrodynamics. Not much for quotable sound bites, Ampère’s most important publication, Memoir on the Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from Experience (1827), is a book only a physicist could love.
A unit of electric current is called an “ampere” in his honor, but Americans, blatant and unapologetic in messing with the French language, call it an “amp” instead.
Simon Ohm
In 1827, Georg Simon Ohm, a German physicist and mathematician in Cologne, published The Galvanic Circuit Investigated Mathematically, a tome never destined to make the New York Times Bestseller list in any category. Lacking acceptance in his native Germany, Ohm eventually was awarded the Copley Medal in 1841 by The Royal Society of Great Britain. Ohm discovered one of the most fundamental laws of electricity:
the relationship among resistance, current, and voltage. The resulting law, V = IR (in which V is voltage, I is the current, and R is resistance), gave him a place in the electricity hall of fame. A unit of resistance, the ohm, is named after him
Coulomb
Charles Augustin de Coulomb was an all-around brilliant eighteenth-century French scientist who made major contributions in the areas of physics, civil engineering, and the natural sciences. The unit of electric charge—the coulomb—is named for him. Who could forget “Chuck” Coulomb’s 1773 address to the Academy of Science in Paris when he discussed pioneering soil mechanics theory? Coulomb served as “Ingenieur du Roi” (“Engineer of the King”) until the French Revolution came calling. He then took a powder and retired to the countryside for a while.
Coulomb is known in the electrical world for verifying the law of attraction or electrostatic force. Basically, he confirmed the notion that opposite charges (+ and –) attract each other and like charges repel. Unlike other observers of this behavior, Coulomb worked the numbers and came up with a nice, neat theory that no one outside the fields of electrical engineering and physics will ever use.
No comments:
Post a Comment