William Sturgeon

English electrical engineer

• Born: May 22, 1783
• Birthplace: Whittington, Lancashire, England
• Died: December 4, 1850
• Place of death: Prestwich, Lancashire, England

Sturgeon, a self-educated scientist, is credited with inventing the first electromagnet. He also invented the electric motor, a galvanometer, and a long-lasting battery cell. He was an energetic participator in the amateur scientific and learned societies of nineteenth century London.

Primary fields: Electronics and electrical engineering; physics

Primary invention: Electromagnet

Early Life

William Sturgeon was born in Whittington, Lancashire, England, in 1783. His father, John Sturgeon, was a shoemaker of unsavory character and harsh with William. William’s mother, Betsy Adcock Sturgeon, died when he was ten. At thirteen, William was apprenticed to a shoemaker, who was also known to treat the boy harshly. As a youth, Sturgeon, like many future inventors, showed mechanical skill, learning to clean clocks and watches. When his apprenticeship ended in 1802, he enlisted in the army, becoming an artilleryman. Sometime thereafter, he married Mary Hutton. Sadly, all three of their children died in infancy and Mary herself died in the 1820’s.

Sturgeon told his friend John Leigh that his scientific interest in electricity was aroused while he was stationed in a military post in Newfoundland. Fascinated in watching a violent thunderstorm, he found no one who could explain to him the scientific causes of lightning. He therefore embarked on an impressive course of self-education. An artillery sergeant friend had a small collection of books, which Sturgeon borrowed, learning basic principles of Latin, mathematics, and science at night, after finishing his guard duty. He also studied optics and improved his mechanical skills. In 1820, Sturgeon retired from the military to reside in Woolwich, England. He supported himself with his former trade as a shoemaker, devoting his spare time to making his way in science. He also helped form the Woolwich Literary Society and began writing articles for the popular press.

Life’s Work

With his unusual and self-taught learning, Sturgeon would always remain an outsider to the established British scientific community, despite his impressive accomplishments. Nevertheless, his scientific successes came quickly upon his 1820 return to England. With his tradesman background, Sturgeon began making his own instruments with a lathe he had purchased. Hans Christian rsted and André-Marie Ampère had recently discovered the fundamental principles of electromagnetism, and Sturgeon followed in their footsteps. He conducted experiments in magnetism and thermoelectricity and published his results in the scientific journal the Philosophical Magazine.

In the early 1820’s, Sturgeon constructed a variety of apparatuses that demonstrated a range of electromagnetic effects. These dozen or so electromagnetic instruments were compact enough to be displayed on a tabletop. They were thus easily shown and demonstrated to an audience. One of the devices was a soft iron bar in the shape of ahorseshoe. A coil of varnished copper wire was wrapped around the bar. When a voltaic current was passed through coil wire, the bar became magnetic. Sturgeon’s iron bar is now considered the first working electromagnet, although Michael Faraday was never willing to credit Sturgeon for its invention. On the basis of this work, Sturgeon was awarded a silver medal and thirty guineas by the British Society of Arts. He was also appointed lecturer in experimental philosophy at the East India Company’s Royal Military Academy at Addiscombe in Surrey. In addition, he gave paid lectures in other London scientific institutes, including the Adelaide Gallery, the Lowther Arcade at the Laboratory of Science, and the Western Literary and Scientific Institution. He could now give up shoemaking for his scientific pursuits.

Sturgeon’s success followed from his decision, as he explained it, to increase the magnetic, rather than the galvanic, power of his electromagnetic inventions. He designed his experiments such that they could be witnessed and understood by the emerging English middle class, who were transfixed by this amazing new force called electricity. A religious man, Sturgeon saw his new apparatuses as symbolic of the workings of the universe, actuated by the electriclike powers of the Creator. In 1826, he experimented with the firing of gunpowder by electrical discharges. In 1829, Sturgeon married Mary Bromley. In 1832, he invented an electric motor capable of turning machinery. The motor included a direct-current (DC) commutator. Over the next few years, Sturgeon invented the moving-coil galvanometer, improved the battery cell by amalgamating zinc plates with mercury, and discovered the unequal heating effects at the two poles of the voltaic arc. Making more than five hundred observations of experimental kites, Sturgeon published a meteorological study establishing that when weather is calm, the atmosphere is charged positively with respect to the earth, with the charge becoming more positive as the altitude increases. Joseph Henry, the American inventor and scientist of electricity, sought out Sturgeon on a trip to England to discuss their scientific work.

In 1836, Sturgeon launched a journal of experimental science, the Annals of Electricity, the first English journal devoted to electricity. Although the Annals of Electricity would publish important papers of Sturgeon and other inventors during its seven-year span, the contentious Sturgeon would also use its pages to critique rival scientists, particularly Faraday. Disdaining Great Britain’s established Royal Society, chartered in 1662, and the Royal Institution, chartered in 1800, Sturgeon helped found a rival London Electrical Society in 1837. After a tenuous existence, the London Electrical Society disbanded in 1843 because of its accumulated debt. At the time, Sturgeon and Faraday had something of a rivalry. They both came from humble beginnings, but Faraday was well established as a fellow of the Royal Society. Faraday was, of course, the greater scientist and indeed was the leading experimenter of his day. Sturgeon’s greatest talent lay perhaps not in theoretical work but in fashioning instruments demonstrating the latest scientific advances. In the invention of electromagnetic devices, he was hardly surpassed.

In 1840, Sturgeon became superintendent of the Royal Victoria Gallery of Practical Science in Manchester, leaving his London appointments. As superintendent, Sturgeon continued his lectures on electromagnetism. However, the gallery too had difficulty supporting itself, and it closed in 1842. Sturgeon started the Manchester Institute of Natural and Experimental Science in 1843, but it hardly got off the ground. Likewise, his new Annals of Philosophical Discovery folded after six issues.

For the rest of his life, Sturgeon supported himself as an itinerant lecturer with occasional bounties: two hundred pounds from the Royal Bounty Fund in 1847 and a fifty-pound annual pension from the British government in 1849. In his career, Sturgeon published sixty-nine papers cataloged by the Royal Society. He was able to collect and publish his major papers in an attractive volume titled Scientific Researches, funded by subscription. He was debilitated from a severe case of bronchitis in 1847. In 1850, he died at Prestwich, Manchester, possibly of influenza. He was survived by his wife, Mary.

Impact

Sturgeon is important to the world of invention and science on several fronts. He was a member of the remarkable group of scientists such as rsted, Ampère, and Faraday who discovered and advanced the basic principles of electromagnetism in the 1820’s and 1830’s. Although each of these scientists experimented with some form of charged magnet, Sturgeon’s horseshoe-shaped “Improved Electro-Magnetic Apparatus” has a good claim to be the world’s first workable electromagnet. Sturgeon’s successful demonstration influenced Peter Barlow to attempt to apply the electromagnet to telegraphy and Joseph Henry to intensify the electromagnet, eventually leading to an electromagnetic telegraph as well as magnets capable of lifting three thousand pounds. In addition, Sturgeon invented the first electric motor capable of turning machinery.

Sturgeon was an active member in scientific societies, which helped to disseminate scientific ideas in early nineteenth century London and its surroundings. With scientific figures such as Barlow, Samuel Hunter Christie, Olinthus Gilbert Gregory, and James Marsh, London had an impressive number of learned men at the time, several of whom assisted Sturgeon with his career. An important element of Britain’s industrial and scientific revolution, these societies also represent perhaps the first direct involvement of a prosperous middle class in the workings and publications of scientists. Sturgeon was tireless and hopeful in forming new societies and journals supported by popular subscription. Their existence was precarious and rarely survived a decade, but they did represent an alternative to the haughty royal societies, long the sole dispenser of scientific prestige and patronage in Britain. Sturgeon’s efforts to publicize the details of his experiments were not only learned; they can now also be seen as an effort to democratize scientific effort.

With his mean upbringing and idiosyncratic education, Sturgeon stood outside the often aristocratic world of self-supporting, gentleman scientists. Sturgeon’s journals reflect his grudge against Faraday, the most famous scientist of electromagnetism, and of the learned royal societies. Sturgeon appealed to his subscribers to validate his results, as opposed to Faraday, who presented his science as correct in itself and not dependent on wider acclaim. This is perhaps the reason Sturgeon was so eager to lay his instruments and the workings of his theories before a larger public. Sturgeon was not only making a rival claim about scientific discourse but also anticipating the competitive, journal-based and resource-driven nature of modern science.

Bibliography

Hirshfeld, Alan. The Electric Life of Michael Faraday. New York: Walker, 2006. Crisply told life of the leading electrical scientist of his day, often at odds with Sturgeon.

Kargon, Robert. Science in Victorian Manchester: Enterprise and Expertise. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Places Sturgeon’s scientific efforts and endeavors in the context of the largely gentleman-amateur scientists of the Victorian era.

Miller, T. J. E., ed. Electronic Control of Switched Reluctance Machines. Boston: Newnes, 2001. Contributor Anthony Anderson traces the evolution of modern switched reluctance motors, a type of synchronous electric motor, to Sturgeon’s electric motor.

Morus, Iwan Rhys. Frankenstein’s Children: Electricity, Exhibition and Experiment in Early Nineteenth Century London. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998. Chapter 2 is devoted to Sturgeon’s experiments with electricity, showing him to be a near rival to Michael Faraday in the nineteenth century world of electromagnetism.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. When Physics Became King. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. History of the rise of modern physics. Recounts several of Sturgeon’s successes with electromagnetism.

Thompson, Silvanus. The Electromagnet and Electromagnetic Mechanism. New York: E. and F. N. Spon, 1891. Although long out of print, Appendix A contains a life of Sturgeon, drawn largely from James Joule’s “A Short Account of the Life and Writings of the Late William Sturgeon,” published in Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society 14 (1857): 53-83.

Windelspecht, Michael. Groundbreaking Scientific Experiments, Inventions and Discoveries of the Nineteenth Century. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2003. A book in a series spanning the modern centuries. Describes more than sixty major inventions from Sturgeon’s century, including the electromagnet.