William Sturgeon

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William Sturgeon (May 22, 1783 - December 4, 1850) was an English physicist and inventor who made the first electromagnets, and invented the first practical electric motor.

Sturgeon was born in Whittington, Lancashire and apprenticed to a shoemaker. He joined the army in 1802 and taught himself mathematics and physics. In 1824 he became lecturer in science at the East India Company College at Addiscombe, Surrey and in the following year he exhibited his first electromagnet. He displayed its power by lifting nine pounds with a seven-ounce piece of iron wrapped with wire through which a current from a single battery was sent. In 1828 he put into practice Ampere's idea of a solenoid.

In 1832 he was appointed to the lecturing staff of the Adelaide Gallery of Practical Science in London, where he first demonstrated the DC electric motor incorporating a commutator. In 1836 he established the journal Annals of Electricity, and in the same year he invented a galvanometer.

Sturgeon was a close associate of John Peter Gassiot and Charles Vincent Walker and the three were instrumental in founding the London Electrical Society in 1837.

In 1840 he became superintendent of the Royal Victoria Gallery of Practical Science in Manchester. He formed a close social circle with John Davies, one of the Gallery's promoters, and Davies' student James Prescott Joule, a circle that eventually extended to include Edward William Binney and John Leigh. The Gallery closed in 1842, and he earned a living by lecturing and demonstrating. He died in Prestwich in 1850.

References

Bibliography

• Gee, W. (2004) " Sturgeon, William (1783–1850)", rev. Frank A. J. L. James, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 25 July 2007

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