Biography of Yablochkov

It’s impossible to even imagine the candle of Yablochkova, that just a hundred years ago, the words “electrical engineering” did not exist, even in dictionaries you couldn’t find it yet, everything was still so vaguely, shameless, vaguely, everything completely obvious today seemed so controversial, and it seemed that there would be no end to the disputes, but it was necessary to find it in all years and in matters of the theory of the discovere experimental.

So it is written in textbooks: Pythagoras Theorem, Archimedes Law, Copernicus system, Newton's bin, Mendeleev’s table, Einstein theory. But here is a simple question: who gave us electric light? Who created this, already such a familiar small glass cone with thin metal hairs inside - the most common physical device of our time, the number of which is measured by many billions of pieces - an electric bulb?

Oh, it is not easy to answer this question. One could write a fascinating, almost adventure novel, what a pity that it was not written! And in the system of these heroes, the figure of the Russian inventor Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov rises. It rises not only due to its growth - centimeters - but also by the works that laid the beginning of electrical lighting. In the year of birth, Paul in the Volga region raged Choler, and the Great Mor frightened his parents - they did not carry to the church, then historians later searched for his name in church notes.

Childhood is a large landowner house with a mesonin and booby enfilads of half -empty rooms, fruit gardens, which the Saratov land is famous for this time - a quiet childhood of a small -grade barchonka. The eleven years were determined by Pavel in the Saratov gymnasium four years before that the teacher-military-gunner Nikolai Chernyshevsky left it for the St.

Petersburg Cadet Corps, but did not study there for long, his family was impoverished, and the exit was one-a military career, since this has already become a family tradition. And so fate and parental will transfer Pavel Yablochkov from the modest Saratov gymnasium to St. Petersburg, to the Pavlovsky Tsarist Palace, named after their current residents with an engineering castle.

Ten years have not yet passed since the Sevastopol campaign, the glorious not only in the valor of the sailor, but also in the high art of Russian fortifiers, and the work of military engineering was held in high esteem, the engineering school where Pavel arrived, General E. Totleben, the Hero of the Crimean War. Pavel Yablochkov lived in the boarding house of the school teacher Caesar Antonovich Kui, a talented military engineer and an even more talented musical critic and composer, whose opera and romances live today.

Perhaps these years of study in the capital were the happiest for Pavel Nikolaevich. No one rushed him, did not drive him, there were still no creditors and philanthropists, and although there were no more insights, but also disappointments that had been overwhelming his whole life, too, fortunately, there were no more. The first disappointment occurred when, after graduating from the school, he was promoted to the second seconds to the secondary school “with the appointment in the 5th sapper battalion” of the Kyiv fortress garrison.

How unlike the whole battalion reality turned out to be that interesting, full of creative joys, the life of an engineer who seemed to him in St. Petersburg. It did not work out of him a military man: about a year later, Pavel Nikolaevich quits from the army “due to illness”. The most unsettled period of his life occurs, but he opens with an event for his entire subsequent being very important.

A year after the resignation of Yablchkov, it is not clear how it is in the army again.

He studies in a technical galvanic institution, where his knowledge in the field of "galvanism and magnetism" deepen and expands, after all, I repeat, the words "electrical engineering" did not exist yet. Many great scientists and famous engineers in their youth, like Yablochkov, circled like this in life, stumbled upon one or another, looking closely, looking around, looking for something that they themselves could not explain, but when they suddenly found, they immediately understood that they were looking for.

Like good hounds, finally took a trace, and no power, no temptation could distract them and knock them down the path. So the summer Yablochkov “took the trace” of electricity in order to never leave it. Having finally parted with the army, Pavel Nikolaevich arrives in Moscow and soon becomes head of the Directorate of the Telegraph Service of the Moscow-Kursk Railway.

This is already "electricity". There is already a laboratory, you can already check some, albeit timid, your own ideas. There is a strong scientific society where natural scientists gather - let's call them like this, because if there is no word “electrical engineering”, then there can be no “electrical engineers”. Finally, there is a newly discovered first polytechnic exhibition - a review of the latest achievements of Russian technology.

And - maybe this is more important - there are friends, like -minded people, who, like him, do not give rest the secrets of tiny man -made lightning - electric sparks!With one of these friends, Nikolai Gavrilovich Glukhov, and decides Yablochkov to open his “business” - a universal electrical workshop. Unfortunately, and apple and Glukhov were inventors, but were not businessmen.

There, in Paris, in the spring of the year and he patents his “electric candle”. In order, without climbing into the technical jungle, to explain the essence of the main invention of Yablochkov, you need to make a small historical retreat about lamps in general. The first lamp - Luchin - was known to the prehistoric person. A long, for centuries, the calculated chain begins from the beam: the torch - the oil lamp - the candle - the kerosene lamp - the gas lamp.

With all the variety of these lamps, they are united by a general principle: something burns in all, combines with oxygen of air. The wonderful Russian scientist V. Petrov described his experience “with a huge battery” of galvanic elements, as a result of which he received an electric arc - the world's first artificial electric light. The natural was known for a long time: lightning.

Another thing is that the nature of this light was not understood. The modest Petrov’s work, written in Russian, did not send anywhere, in Europe it was unknown, and the honor of opening an arc was attributed to the famous English chemist Davy, who, not knowing anything about Petrov, repeated his experience after 12 years and dubbed an arc in honor of the famous Italian physicist of Volta.

Interestingly, the “Voltova arc” has absolutely nothing to do with Alessandro Volta. The discovery of Petrov gave an impetus to the creation of fundamentally new, electric, arc lamps: two electrodes came together, an arc flashed, bright light illuminated everything around. But the coal electrodes gradually burned out, the distance between them increased and the arc was faded.

Electrodes were required to be constantly brought together. So there were a variety of manual, hourly, differential and other adjustment mechanisms, which, with all their cunning, required the vigilant observation. It is clear that each such lamp was an extraordinary phenomenon. True, Zhobar in France proposed to use not arc for lighting, but a heated electric conductor, his compatriot Shangi tried to arrange such a lamp, the Russian inventor A.

Lodygin brought it, as they say, “to mind”, creating the first suitable incandescent light to practice, but its coke rod was so gentle and fragile in a glass flask so quickly burned it that it was so fast that it was so fast that it was so fast that it was so fast A cross was placed on the incandescent bulb in the middle of the x. We again turned to the arc.

And then Yablochkov appeared. How he invented his candle is unknown. Maybe the thought of her appeared to him when he suffered with the regulators of an arc lamp, which he installed for the first time in the practice of railways! Maybe he sunk into his soul a spectacle of a suddenly flashed arc in his Moscow workshop. There is a legend that in the Paris cafe, he accidentally laid two pencils on the table next to the table, and then he dawned on him: there is no need to bring anything closer!

Let the electrodes stand nearby, between them - fading isolation that burns in the arc - the electrodes burn and at the same time shorten! And it is true that they say: everything is brilliant - simple. In the simplicity of Yablochkov’s candle, a great advantage was hidden: its meaning was available to businessmen who did not know anything in technology. She was too clear so that she could argue with her.

That is why she won the world at the speed of unheard of. The first demonstration of the “candle” took place in London in the spring of the year, and Pavel Nikolaevich, who was running away from creditors, returned to Paris, returned to the already famous inventor. An instant campaign arises for the operation of its patents. A special plant produces eight thousand “candles” per day.

They illuminate the famous Parisian shops, hotels, a port in Havra, an opera and a hippodrome covered in Paris, a whole garland of lamps hangs in a night sky on the Opera Street - an unprecedented, fabulous, “Russian light” on everyone's lips. In one of the letters they admires P. Turgenev writes to his brother from the French capital: “Yablchkov, our compatriot, really invented something new in the lighting matter, because of the amazing things in the history of science: for about five years, all world electric lighting equipment, led by Yablochkov under the thunder of the triumphal orchestras, moved, in essence, along a false, unpromising path.

The holiday "candle" did not last long, as well as the material independence of its inventor. Of course, the work of Lodygin, Svan, Maxim, Nernst, Edison and other “parents” of a modern incandescent bulb also did not immediately convince everyone of its many advantages. Even in the year, when Auer installed his cap on a gas burner, increasing its brightness, there were cases when the city authorities again replaced the newly arranged electric lighting with gas.

Nevertheless, during the life of Yablochkov it was already clear that he was. Why, to this day, the name of the author of “Russian Light” is so firmly inscribed in the history of electrical engineering and is surrounded by honor and respect for years? Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov was the first inventor in the world to approve the electric light in the minds of people. The lamp, yesterday as rare as the overseas parrot, today ceased to be an exotic miracle, approached the person, convinced him of her near happy future.

The short and stormy history of this invention accelerated the solution of many pressing tasks of the then technique, showed the need to centralize current sources, helped solve the problem of crushing electric energy, and contained the beginnings of the future electrical industry. Yablochkov lived a short and not very happy life. After the “candle”, he worked a lot in Russia and abroad.

But no other invention - this can now be seen - did not affect the progress of technology as much as his “candle” - truly a great error. Pavel Nikolaevich died in Saratov from heart disease when he was only 47 years old. They say that his last words were: "It was difficult there, but it was not easy here." Summing up this sad result, whether the poor, forgotten inventor, whose glory focused as quickly as his “candle” could think, that after a hundred years we, his descendants, will remember him with deep respect for his difficult life, thanks to which this new word appeared in our dictionaries - electrical engineering.