Oliver Joseph Lodge
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| Born: | June 12, 1851 |
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| Died: | August 22, 1940 |
| Occupation: | inventor and physicist |
Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge (June 12, 1851 - August 22, 1940), born at Penkhull near Stoke-on-Trent and educated at Adams' Grammar School, was a physicist and writer involved in the development of the wireless telegraph. Lodge, in his Royal Institution lectures ("The Work of Hertz and Some of His Successors") coined the term "coherer" and gained the "syntonic" (or tuning) patent from the United States Patent Office.
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[edit] Career
Lodge obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of London in 1875. He was appointed professor of physics and mathematics at University College, Liverpool, in 1881. Lodge received the Doctor of Science degree in 1887. In 1900 he moved from Liverpool back to the Midlands and became the first principal of the new Birmingham University, remaining there until his retirement in 1919, overseeing the start of the move from Edmund Street in the city centre to the present Edgbaston campus. Lodge was awarded the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society in 1898 and was knighted by King Edward VII in 1902.
[edit] Accomplishments
Lodge is notable for his work on the ether, which had been postulated as the wave-bearing medium filling all space. He transmitted radio signals on August 14, 1894 at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford University,[1] one year before Marconi but one year after Tesla. Lodge improved Edouard Branly's coherer radio wave detector by adding a "trembler" which dislodged clumped filings, thus restoring the device's sensitivity. Lodge did other scientific investigations on lightning, the source of the electromotive force in the voltaic cell, electrolysis, and the application of electricity to the dispersal of fog and smoke. He also made a major contribution to motoring when he invented electric spark ignition for the internal combustion engine (the Lodge Igniter). Later, two of his sons developed his ideas and in 1903 founded Lodge Bros, which eventually became known as Lodge Plugs Ltd.
In 1889 Lodge was appointed President of the Liverpool Physical Society. A position he held until 1893. The society still runs to this day though under a student body.
Lodge is also remembered for his studies of life after death. He first began to study psychical phenomena (chiefly telepathy) in the late 1880s. After his son, Raymond, was killed in World War I in 1915, Lodge visited several psychics and wrote about the experience in a number of books, including the best-selling "Raymond, or Life and Death" (1916). Altogether, he wrote more than 40 books, about the afterlife, aether, relativity, and electromagnetic theory.
Lodge had twelve children, six boys and six girls. Four of his sons went into business using Lodge's inventions. His sons Brodie and Alec created the Lodge Plug Company, spark plugs for cars and airplanes. Lionel and Noel created a company that produced a machine for cleaning factory smoke. Besides inventing the spark plug and wireless, Lodge also invented the moving-coil loudspeaker, the vacuum tube (valve) and the variable tuner.
Lodge's papers were split up after his death. Some were deposited at the University of Birmingham and University of Liverpool and others at the Institute of Psychical Research at the University of London; a proportion of his scientific correspondence ended up at University College London.
Before he died, Sir Oliver Lodge declared that he would prove the existence of an afterlife by making public appearances to the living after his death. Since that event, however, there is no record of him.
[edit] Publications
- Lodge, Oliver Joseph, "Electric Theory of Matter". Harper Magazine. 1904. (Oneill's Electronic Museum)
- Lodge, Oliver Joseph, and Paul Tice, "Reason and Belief". Book Tree. February 2000. ISBN 1-58509-226-6
- Lodge, Oliver Joseph, "The Work of Hertz and Some of His Successors", 1894
- Lodge, Oliver Joseph, "Ether", Encyclopedia Britannica, Thirteenth Edition (1926).
- Lodge, Oliver Joseph, "The Ether of Space". ISBN 1-4021-8302-X (paperback) ISBN 1-4021-1766-3 (hardcover)
- Lodge, Oliver Joseph, "Ether and Reality". ISBN 0-7661-7865-X
- Lodge, Oliver Joseph, "Past Years: An Autobiography". Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932.
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Lodge, Oliver J (1932). This first broadcast demonstrattion by Lodge was two years before Marconi's first broadcast of 1896. In 1995 the Royal Society recognized this scientific break through at a special ceremony at Oxford University. Past Years: An Autobiography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p231.
[edit] External links
- U.S. Patent 609154, "Electric Telegraphy" (wireless telegraphy using Ruhmkorff or Tesla coil for transmitter and Branly coherer for detector, the "syntonic" tuning patent) August, 1898. Sold to Marconi in 1912.
- "Oliver Joseph Lodge, Sir: 1851 - 1940". Adventures in CyberSound.
- "Sir Oliver Lodge 1851-1940". First Spiritual Temple. 2001.
- "Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph". Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2004.
- "http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/lodge.html", containing further information on Lodge's life and work.
- University of Birmingham Staff Papers: Papers of Sir Oliver Lodge '
