9.3 Electric Lighting
Today the electric lamp is ubiquitous, mundane, part of everyday life and
noticed only when it fails, but in the early part of the last century the
technology was ‘white hot’ attracting the best brains and intense research
effort. The subject was so ‘hot’ it was ‘cool’. By the time Robert joined the
‘Auer’, electric light already had a history of 100 years, first being seen
publicly in 1808 at a demonstration of the ‘arc lamp’ by Sir Humphrey Davy.
The arc lamp operated by positioning two-pointed carbon rods opposite one
another, each connected to a different pole of the power supply. The tips were
then brought into contact so that the electricity flowed through them causing
the tips to heat up slightly. They were then pulled apart very slowly and a
spark, or arc, of electricity leapt the gap, causing the temperature of the tips to
Plate 9.1 A very rare photograph of the banker and entrepreneur, Leopold Koppel,
1910. Courtesy of Archiv der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem. Later illustrated
by David Vandermeulen, from ‘One hundred years of the Fritz Haber Institute’.
2
Courtesy of Fritz-Haber-Institut, der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem
190
D. Sheppard
Today the electric lamp is ubiquitous, mundane, part of everyday life and
noticed only when it fails, but in the early part of the last century the
technology was ‘white hot’ attracting the best brains and intense research
effort. The subject was so ‘hot’ it was ‘cool’. By the time Robert joined the
‘Auer’, electric light already had a history of 100 years, first being seen
publicly in 1808 at a demonstration of the ‘arc lamp’ by Sir Humphrey Davy.
The arc lamp operated by positioning two-pointed carbon rods opposite one
another, each connected to a different pole of the power supply. The tips were
then brought into contact so that the electricity flowed through them causing
the tips to heat up slightly. They were then pulled apart very slowly and a
spark, or arc, of electricity leapt the gap, causing the temperature of the tips to
Plate 9.1 A very rare photograph of the banker and entrepreneur, Leopold Koppel,
1910. Courtesy of Archiv der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem. Later illustrated
by David Vandermeulen, from ‘One hundred years of the Fritz Haber Institute’.
2
Courtesy of Fritz-Haber-Institut, der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem
190
D. Sheppard