WILDE, H.

On a Property of the Magneto-Electric Current to Control and Render Synchronous the Rotations of the Armatures of a Number of Electromagnetic Induction Machines.

[No place], 1869. 8vo. In the original printed wrappers, no backstrip. Offprint from the "Philosophical Magazine", January 1869. With authors presentation inscription to front wrapper: "With the author's Compliments.". Fine and clean. 9 pp.

Offprint issue with author's presentation insciption to front wrapper of Wilde's paper on how to control and render the magneto-electri current which nearly led to the discovery of the principle of self-excitation. This was, however, achieved by other inventors first, notably Charles Wheatstone and the Siemens brothers.

"In 1856 Wilde established a business in Manchester as an electric-telegraph and lightning-conductor engineer, and spent some years on the development of a magneto-electric alphabetic telegraph, which was demonstrated at the international exhibition in London in 1862. In December 1863 he patented a twin-armature machine in which a magneto-electric generator provided excitation current for the field winding of another generator. These machines were made in quantity by Wilde & Co., but in use they had the disadvantage of becoming very hot. In 1867 [Described in the present paper]. he patented an entirely different type of multipolar machine, which was used for electro-deposition and arc lighting. Among his other patents was one in 1875 for the making of copper rollers for calico printing.". (Oxford DNB).

Henry Wilde (1833 - 1919) was a wealthy individual from Manchester, England who used his self-made fortune to indulge his interest in electrical engineering. He invented the dynamo-electric machine, or self-energising dynamo, an invention for which Werner von Siemens is more usually credited and, in fact, discovered independently. At any rate, Wilde was the first to publish, his paper was communicated to the Royal Society by Michael Faraday in 1866. The self-energising dynamo replaces the permanent magnets of previous designs with electro-magnets and in so doing achieved an enormous increase in power. The machine was considered remarkable at the time, especially since Wilde was fond of spectacular demonstrations, such as the ability of his machine to cause iron bars to melt.

Order-nr.: 47911