FROM THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

PAVEL NIKOLAYEVICH YABLOCHKOV

N. A. Kaptsov, Moscow

“The spiritual life of a people and its stature are measured by those services which its men of action have rendered in the history of culture for all mankind; therefore every people that respects itself, values its own self, and loves it must duly appreciate its men of action and strive to make the entire intelligent world recognize these services.”1

On March 31, 1944, fifty years had passed since the death of one of the remarkable Russian men of the last century, Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov. P. N. Yablochkov’s great service to his homeland and to all mankind consists not only in the fact that he invented a convenient and inexpensive source of electric light—the famous “Yablochkov candle.” His chief and fundamental service lies in the fact that he demonstrated in practice the possibility of the extensive everyday use of electric current for lighting and introduced electric lighting in practice on a broad European scale.

Thoughts on the possibility of electric lighting had been expressed long before, from the very discovery of the first more or less powerful source of current—the voltaic pile. Already the professor of physics V. V. Petrov, who was the first (several years before Davy) to observe the phenomenon of the voltaic arc, describing the appearance of this arc between two carbon rods, says: “there appears between them a very bright white-colored light or flame, from which those coals ignite sooner or more slowly, and by which the dark quiet may be rather clearly illuminated”2 (emphasis ours). Very many attempts were made to realize this idea in practice, both along the line of applying the voltaic arc and by using candle—

of solid bodies heated white-hot by an electric current. But in the latter case the “incandescent body” was quickly consumed, burning up or oxidizing in the air. The voltaic arc, in its turn, required constant regulation of the distance between the carbons, which gradually shortened as the arc burned. The presence of automatic arc regulators invented before the appearance of Yablochkov’s candle did not solve the problem: these regulators were very imperfect and required the constant intervention of a mechanic’s hand. They could not at all be used when several “burners” with a voltaic arc were connected in series. The parallel use of several “arcs” from a single current source was likewise impossible, because only that arc would ignite for which, to use the terminology familiar to us today, the ignition potential was lower than for the others. Hence arose the problem of the “division of electric light,” i.e., the problem of using, as far as possible, a large number of comparatively small light sources fed by one more or less powerful source of electric current. Under conditions familiar to us today, the solution of this problem is extremely easy—it simply does not exist as such—but in the seventies of the last century this problem not only seemed, but was, extremely difficult and complex. It was not without reason that the major Russian electrical engineer and inventor V. N. Chikolev, bypassing a direct solution of the question, proposed such a practically unacceptable method as the literal division of light obtained from a powerful source by means of a series of tubes and mirrors. P. N. Yablochkov gave a practical solution to this difficult problem, and by several methods at that.

As a result of the difficulties enumerated above, before the invention of Yablochkov’s candle electric lighting had not become widespread in practice and was used only for short periods, on ceremonial occasions, like fireworks, as a parade spectacle and an expensive toy; it was also used occasionally, in exceptional cases, for night illumination of very important construction works, when the high cost of lighting, the complexity of its installation, the use of a special current source for each of the “burners,” and the need for constant supervision of the operation of the regulators were of no importance, since they were offset by the advantage achieved through night work.

Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov was born on September 14 (26), 1847, into a poor landowning family in the Serdobsk district of Saratov Province. The Yablochkov family, along with many small-estate nobles, was unable to adapt to Russia’s transition onto the rails of capitalist economy, which began with the peasant reform of 1861. Therefore, although his father’s small estate remained in P. N. Yablochkov’s possession until his very death, it could not provide him with the means of subsistence. His parents first sent Yablochkov to study at a civil gymnasium in Saratov. Then, guided by Yablochkov’s great abilities and successes in the mathematical sciences,

they decided that he was capable of passing the difficult entrance examinations for the Nikolaev Military Engineering School. Completion of the latter promised an advantageous material career as a military engineer. P. N. Yablochkov did indeed pass the examinations and successfully completed the course of the Engineering School in 1866, being appointed a junior officer in the 5th Sapper Battalion in the city of Kiev. At the end of 1867 he left the battalion because of illness and enrolled as a student in the “Officers’ Galvanic Classes” in Petersburg. After completing the course of the Galvanic Classes, he served for one further compulsory year of military service, after finishing them, in the same 5th Sapper Battalion. At the beginning of 1870 Yablochkov was transferred to the reserve and finally broke off his career as a military engineer, contrary to the wishes of his relatives. An aptitude and inclination for invention had already shown themselves in him at the Saratov gymnasium, while the Engineering School and the Galvanic Classes gave him a fairly solid technical education, especially in the field of electrical engineering. Yablochkov’s cherished dream was to bring to fruition several inventions he had conceived. He managed to obtain the post of head of the telegraph of the Moscow–Kursk Railway. The telegraph department of the railway had workshops. This provided Yablochkov with certain experimental possibilities. However, the duties of head of the telegraph took up much of his time. In 1873 P. N. Yablochkov made the acquaintance of Vladimir Nikolaevich Chikolev. Chikolev had a university education. He left a deep mark on the history of Russian electrical engineering as organizer of the Electrical Engineering Department of the Moscow Polytechnic Museum and as initiator, from 1880, of the publication of the well-known Russian journal Electricity, which continues its useful existence to this day. One of Chikolev’s principal inventions, completed after the appearance of the “Yablochkov candle,” was the more or less improved “differential” regulator for the voltaic arc.

Chikolev was a zealous popularizer of the science of electricity, gave a number of public lectures, and conducted “conversations” on electrical-engineering topics in the Russian Technical Society. At one of these conversations Yablochkov met Chikolev. Chikolev’s work on regulators of the voltaic arc made a strong impression on Yablochkov. Chikolev had only exceedingly small technical possibilities at his disposal. Many of his inventions were never tested in practice; others waited a long time for experimental realization. Yablochkov proposed to Chikolev that he make, in the telegraph workshop—and indeed he did make—one specimen of the then stage of Chikolev’s differential regulator. Carried away, after meeting Chikolev, by the idea of using the voltaic arc as a source of light, P. N. Yablochkov in 1874 made an attempt to apply it in practice in railway work. He proposed placing an electric lantern on the locomotive of the tsar’s train when that train traveled from Petersburg to the Crimea. The effect achieved was successful, but P. N. Yablochkov had personally to

to watch in the frost the burning of the arc throughout the entire nighttime run of the train, and he became finally convinced of the imperfection of the existing regulator systems.

The passionate desire to have greater technical possibilities and greater scope for research and inventive work compelled P. N. Yablochkov to take a bold step. He left government service and, with his own small means and at his own risk, opened a workshop for physical instruments. But his calculations as to a sufficiently great demand for these instruments did not prove justified. He was ruined. Yablochkov did not wish to return to military or civil service. His relatives refused him any support whatsoever in continuing his inventive activity, and P. N. Yablochkov decided to go to America, to seek there an application for his knowledge and abilities. On the way to America Yablochkov stopped in Paris. There, among other sights, he visited the workshop for watches and precision instruments of the Breguet firm. The owner and technical director of this world-famous enterprise1 had been, since 1833, Louis François Clément Breguet, himself an enlightened technician and inventor, elected in 1874 an extraordinary member of the Paris Academy of Sciences for his scientific and technical merits.

Louis François Breguet became greatly interested in Yablochkov, who proposed that he purchase Yablochkov’s patent for an improved design of electromagnet. In conversation with Yablochkov, Breguet understood what major achievements could be expected from Yablochkov, and proposed that he enter his workshop and work on assembling and improving the dynamo machine, instead of going to the unknown expanses of America. At the same time, Breguet gave P. N. Yablochkov broad opportunity, in parallel with serving the interests of the firm, to make use of the workshop’s technical facilities for work on his inventions and for his own research. Thus P. N. Yablochkov at last found the favorable conditions for work on the beloved cause which he had so long and vainly sought. Under these conditions he soon succeeded, by inventing the “candle,” in making unnecessary the use of capricious regulators, and also succeeded in solving the problem of dividing the electric light, and in doing much else.

In Yablochkov’s candle both cylindrical carbon electrodes of the arc are placed not on one straight line—one opposite the other—but parallel to one another. If the arc is fed by alternating current, the carbons are made

of one and the same diameter; when powered by direct current, the positive carbon must have a diameter twice as large as the negative carbon. Under these conditions both carbons are shortened during the burning of the arc at one and the same rate, and the length of the arc remains unchanged. The carbons are separated by a layer of insulator closely adjoining them, which evaporates simultaneously with the burning away of the carbons. The initial “igniter” of the arc was a special small carbon that connected the ends of the electrodes. Soon Yablochkov replaced this igniter with a strip of metallic powder applied to the surface of the insulator between the ends of the electrodes. At the same time Yablochkov began mixing metallic compounds into the substance of the insulating layer, which formed just such a strip on the surface of the insulator as the latter gradually evaporated; this ensured the presence of an igniter when the arc was lit again after it had been extinguished by interrupting the current.

Here is how P. N. Yablochkov himself tells of his invention of the “candles” in a report read in Petersburg at a meeting of the First Section of the Russian Technical Society on March 21, 18791:

“I carried out my first experiments with electric lighting here, in Russia, in 1872 and 1873; I was then working with ordinary regulators of various systems, and then for some time with the Lodygin burner, with the incandescent system, which had appeared at that time. Around that time there came to me an idea connected with my subsequent work. I then performed the following experiments: I took very thin carbons, placed them between two conductors, and, in order that the carbon should not burn up, I wrapped it in fibers of asbestos... Nothing came of these experiments, and moreover I carried them out with long interruptions and even, in the end, abandoned them altogether, while retaining... the idea of applying clay and other earths to electric lighting. I took up work again only in 1875 in Paris, and began using the same clay and all sorts of other suitable insulating substances, placing them in the voltaic arc in order to maintain the distance between the carbons. In conducting experiments here, in Russia, I used a small number of (galvanic)2 cells and therefore could not make extensive observations. But while working in Paris at Breguet’s, I had to deal with large electric machines; it was there that I investigated the properties of these clays. Being in the voltaic arc with a fairly strong current, they melted and then evaporated, so that it was difficult to maintain combustion. Then I devised an arrangement now known under the name of my candle, i.e., the placing between the carbons of an insulation that evaporates simultaneously with the burning of the carbon. The insulation

has far greater significance than could have been supposed. It serves not only to keep the carbons at a certain distance, but also imparts, in addition, new properties to the illumination itself, both with respect to the steadiness of burning and with respect to the inclusion of a large number of sources in a single circuit...” As in the case of a great many other major inventions and discoveries, popular rumor attributes the invention of Yablochkov’s candle to a fortunate accident. P. N. Yablochkov, so the legend says, was sitting after his day’s labors at a table in one of the Paris cafés, looking through his notes, and, beside a pencil already lying on the table, thoughtfully placed another parallel to it. At the sight of these two pencils peacefully lying side by side, Yablochkov suddenly had the thought that the problem of electric burning without a regulator might be solved by arranging the carbons in parallel. The history of science and technology has preserved a number of similar legends. We have all heard or read in our time about the apple that fell from a tree and supposedly played the same role in relation to Newton’s great discoveries. Yablochkov’s candle was invented by him, of course, not as a consequence of pencils accidentally placed on a table, but as the result of many years of persistent work. This work at the same time led P. N. Yablochkov to another essential discovery and major invention, the importance of which Yablochkov, unfortunately, underestimated. Namely, contrary to the prevailing opinion that the resistance to electric current of all solid bodies increases with an increase in temperature, P. N. Yablochkov discovered, in the experiments described in the quotation from the “Report” cited above, that the resistance of clay, kaolin, aluminum oxide, zirconium oxide, and many other refractory bodies decreases with an increase in temperature. If a plate or small rod made of such a refractory substance is placed in an electric circuit and then heated, this body begins to pass a strong current and heats up still more. The result is a brightly incandescent “glowing body,” which does not burn up in air and evaporates more or less slowly. Making use of this phenomenon, Yablochkov constructed a special incandescent lamp in which the glowing body was a kaolin plate. A “privilege,” i.e., a Russian patent, for this lamp was applied for by him on 20/II 1877. Subsequently, in practice, he illuminated with such lamps the cabins of three naval vessels1. But P. N. Yablochkov was a principled opponent of electric lighting by means of incandescent lamps, as is evident from his public lecture on electric lighting, delivered on April 4 (16), 1879, in the Salt Town in Petersburg2. Yablochkov considered the conversion of electrical energy—

...electric current into light by means of “incandescence” a very disadvantageous undertaking in comparison with the voltaic arc, in which he attributed a significant role in the generation of light to the energy of chemical reactions involving the “cheap” oxygen of the air. He therefore proposed using his kaolin incandescent lamp only in those cases where a light source of low intensity was needed (on the order of the light of a single gas burner), since he was unable to construct strong and reliable “candles” with such a low luminous intensity. In general, he did not attach great importance to the kaolin lamp and did not develop it further. Meanwhile the idea of this lamp was the same as that of the Nernst lamp, patented by the latter in 1897, i.e., more than twenty years after Yablochkov’s invention. The Nernst lamp became fairly widely known in 1900–1902 and in a number of cases successfully competed with the Edison lamp, already considerably improved by then, with its carbon filament. Had Yablochkov paid more attention to his lamp with a kaolin incandescent body, in the later history of “electric lighting by Yablochkov’s method” he would have had additional possibilities in the struggle against competitors to this method, including Edison’s incandescent lamp.

Having achieved good results with the voltaic arc between two carbon electrodes separated by an insulating layer, P. N. Yablochkov, making use of the facilities of Breguet’s workshop, immediately gave his invention a technical form that made it possible to apply this invention in practice. This was at the beginning of 1876. At that time he had to travel to an exhibition of physical instruments in London as a representative of the Breguet firm.

Among other exhibits, Yablochkov also brought his “candle” to London. The “Yablochkov candle” enjoyed great success at the exhibition. Immediately upon returning from the London exhibition, Yablochkov began promoting the “candle” in Paris and introducing it into practice. Breguet did not wish, in his old age, to take up a new line of work somewhat alien to him, and declined to carry out the practical implementation of Yablochkov’s invention. But he brought P. N. Yablochkov together with another enterprising French technician and inventor, Denayrouze, who had acquaintances in financial circles. Denayrouze placed his workshops (which were engaged in the manufacture of diving apparatus) at Yablochkov’s disposal for the mass, as it is now customary to say, production of the “candles” and all the accessories of electric lighting. With Denayrouze’s assistance, in a short time a fairly powerful joint-stock company was created under the name “General Society of Electric Lighting by Yablochkov’s Method” (Société générale d’Électricité procédé Jablotschkoff). The company proceeded to trial installation of Yablochkov candles in the most fashionable shops of Paris, in several theaters, on one of the main streets of Paris, and so on. The success exceeded all expectations: electric lighting by Yablochkov’s method proved not only better, more convenient, and safer than the gas-burner lighting accepted at that time

or stearin candles (in enclosed spaces), but also considerably cheaper. Contracts for electric lighting were concluded one after another. In London and in some other European cities, independent joint-stock companies arose for the operation of the Yablochkov candle. To describe these successes, let us give the floor to P. N. Yablochkov himself. In a public lecture he describes, among other things, the method of connecting several candles in parallel in a single candlestick. In this case, when first switched on, the arc arises in the candle whose ignition voltage is the lowest (which has the least “resistance,” as they said then); after the carbons of the first candle have been consumed, the next candle, in order of ignition voltage, is automatically lit, and so on. Yablochkov says on p. 16:

“Thus, at the present moment, the lighting is completely guaranteed both against going out and against various accidents.... Among installations actually operating with candlesticks of this kind, one may mention the lamps in the Halles Centrales (the Central Market of Paris) and in the shop Ville de Paris (the large Parisian department store ‘City of Paris’)... I shall not enumerate all the existing installations, but shall name only a few: the squares of the Grand Opéra, the Théâtre Français, the Place de Bastille (Bastille Square), Avenue de l’Opéra (the avenue or alley of the Opera—one of the main streets of Paris), part of the Halles Centrales in Paris, part of the Thames embankment, the British Museum in London; the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid, the Place de Dome in Naples; lighting is being installed in the Chamber of Deputies in Berlin. In Petersburg the first lighting was installed in the Bolshoi Theatre. It is now being tested on the Palace Bridge, in the Gostiny Dvor, and it is proposed to place it in the square before the Alexandrinsky Theatre. These are public installations. But the greatest number of lamps belong to private installations. It would be difficult to enumerate them all. Recently the Paris society has been putting up more than 100 lamps a month; but I shall mention here only the installation in the Louvre store, as the oldest...

“...After an 11-month trial, during which about 22% savings were established compared with the former gas lighting, not to mention the increase in light, the constancy of the colors, and other conveniences, 86 lamps were installed.... Magneto-electric machines, which formerly were made only a few units a year, began to be made by several dozen per month; candles, formerly prepared in quantities of several dozen, are now produced by workshops in Paris at more than 8000 a day. This workshop directly employs more than 200 people.”

At the Paris Exhibition of 1878, “the system of electric lighting by Yablochkov’s method” was demonstrated with great triumph in all its details in a special pavilion. In European technical and popular journals of that time one can find a number of enthusiastic-

descriptions of this system. The electric light implemented by Yablochkov’s method received the resounding name “La lumière du Nord,” “La lumière Russe” (“Northern light,” “Russian light”). Technical and moral successes were accompanied by material ones as well. In 1879 Yablochkov came to Russia with the reputation of a wealthy man and a European celebrity. According to Chikolev, “he was invited everywhere eagerly; his portraits were sold everywhere; sympathetic, and sometimes even enthusiastic, articles were devoted to him in newspapers and journals.”

But before Yablochkov had yet acquired this fame on a European scale, his first attempt to organize the realization of his invention in Russia likewise had no success. Russian moneybags did not wish to risk capital, and Russian technical circles at first not only did not support Yablochkov, but greeted the first news of the candle’s invention even with a certain ill will. Among these people at one time was Chikolev as well, who asserted in his popular lectures that only a differential regulator and the “division of light” by means of tubes and mirrors could provide a solution to the question of mass electric lighting. Only in 1878 did Yablochkov succeed in creating in Petersburg the joint-stock company “P. N. Yablochkov, Inventor, and Co. Society for Electric Lighting and the Manufacture of Electric Lamps and Apparatuses in Russia.”

P. N. Yablochkov solved the problem of dividing electric light in those same years of the greatest successes of his activity in three different ways. First, because of the absence of regulators, the “candles” could be connected in series, several at a time. Second, Yablochkov proposed connecting into the main current circuit the primary windings of a number of induction coils and feeding, from the secondary winding of each of the coils, several lamps connected in series (the privilege was filed on 30/XI 1876). In this way Yablochkov was the first to propose the practical application of the principle of transformers of electric current. Third, Yablochkov made use of alternating current and capacitors (the privilege was filed on 11/X 1877). The circuit proposed by him is very simple from our modern point of view and is a simple branching of alternating current with regulation of the current strength in each of the branches by means of capacitive resistance. But in Yablochkov’s time the theory of alternating current had not yet been created. Before implementing the circuit he proposed, Yablochkov had, as is evident from the Public Lecture, independently to think through the process of charging and discharging a capacitor, one of the plates of which is connected to a source of direct current and the other to earth, and then to consider what character the currents would have in the wires connecting those same plates with one of the poles of an alternating-current machine or with earth when the other pole of the machine was grounded. To confirm his considerations, P. N. Yablochkov tried to detect experimentally the very rapidly flowing current of charging a capacitor from a source of constant voltage and,

PAVEL NIKOLAEVICH YABLOCHKOV

finally, he did in fact discover this current, “taking large surfaces for charging and elements with an insignificant quantity of current.” Yablochkov attached great fundamental significance to this whole question, whose essence he defined as “the transformation of dynamic electricity into static electricity and of static electricity into current.” Of the experiments illustrating this transformation he speaks as “at present representing both scientific interest and a broad future, the limits of which are difficult to foresee and which is opened up by the transition of electricity from one state into another.” The conception of “two states of electricity” is quite natural for Yablochkov, who had studied in the sixties, and is an echo of the very slowly and stubbornly outliving its age opposition of “electrical” and “galvanic” phenomena. Let us note that even A. G. Stoletov, ten years later, still considered it necessary in 1889 to note specially that, in investigating the actino-electric effect, he had decided to pass from high-voltage electricity to low-voltage electricity1.

Thus P. N. Yablochkov appears here before us not only as a major inventor, but also as a physicist successfully making his way in a question unknown to him. As for Yablochkov’s ideas about the voltaic arc, he compares illumination by means of an arc with illumination by incandescence, as the obtaining of light with the combustion of coals and without their combustion, and sees in these methods two different cases of transformation of other forms of energy into the energy of light. He regards the glow of gas in the arc as the glow of incandescent particles rushing from one electrode to the other, and moreover in both directions. He attaches great importance to the chemical processes in the arc, in particular, as was already mentioned above, to the reactions of oxygen. In this he coincides with the professor of physics, Academician V. V. Petrov, of whose works, like all his contemporaries, Yablochkov was unaware, and in the question of the discovery of the voltaic arc he refers to Davy, and not to Petrov. Wishing to find further confirmation of his idea of the significant role of chemical reactions in the generation of light in the voltaic arc, P. N. Yablochkov, in search of further improvement of his electric burner, invented a candle in which the chief source of light energy was in fact the energy of chemical affinity.

“A rod of iron wire is surrounded by a layer of magnesia with magnesium chloride. If two such pencils are placed opposite one another so that a voltaic arc is formed between their ends, then the red-hot iron reduces magnesium from magnesium oxide, which, burning with a strong brilliance, gives ferric magnesia. Such a candle burns very slowly, no more than 1 cm per hour”2.

The prosperity of Yablochkov and the triumph of his “candle” proved short-lived. Yablochkov, essentially alone and without assistants, worked on the “candle” and on the entire system of electric lighting. At the same time he was the soul and, in fact, the technical head of both the Paris and the Petersburg joint-stock companies; he also had to draw up projects for other cities.

In addition, much of his strength and time was taken up by polemics with the open and hidden supporters of the gas companies, frightened by the prospect of the complete replacement of gas lighting by electric lighting, and with other ill-disposed competitors. There were many of the latter. All of them tried, by means of various lies, dishonest calculations, and direct distortion of the actual facts, to prove—some that electric lighting in general, and others that Yablochkov’s system in particular—was expensive, dangerous, inconvenient, inexpedient, and so on. Yablochkov speaks vividly of these attacks in his Public Lecture. Meanwhile Edison, under entirely different conditions, having at his disposal both a laboratory and assistants and funds, worked persistently on the incandescent lamp, which Yablochkov did not recognize. And although many regarded the first reports of Edison’s successes as an American bluff1, emphasizing that Edison’s inventiveness had been placed at the service of a joint-stock company: Edison filed one patent after another and continuously improved the incandescent lamp. Having reached a certain stage of perfection, this lamp began its triumphant spread throughout the whole world, backed by powerful American capital. The use of Edison’s lamp was simpler than the use of the candle. It was longer-lived and permitted a finer “division of light.” And it defeated the voltaic arc on a broad front. Subsequently, thanks to the use of the ideas and patent of another major Russian inventor, A. N. Lodygin, concerning the use of metallic filaments made of tungsten and other refractory metals in a vacuum2, the incandescent lamp completely displaced the voltaic arc and other gas-discharge light sources from the field of general illumination. Only in our own days, very recently, has the incandescent lamp acquired a new serious competitor in the form of the low-pressure mercury gas-discharge lamp using the phosphorescence of so-called luminophores applied to the inner surface of the glass tube of this lamp. Improved in recent years in America, lamps of this type have significantly better indicators than the incandescent lamp, both with respect to the economy of the lamps and to their color quality. In 1941 lamps of this kind were already being produced in America in quantities of tens of millions.

Yablochkov’s candle yielded its place not only to the incandescent lamp. For a number of years incandescent lamps were still not so perfected as to replace the voltaic arc in those cases where a powerful source of light was required. But simultaneously with Edison’s lamp there also appeared regulators for the voltaic arc more perfect than before. There is reason to assert that, in technical and economic respects, Yablochkov’s candle could have competed with these rivals as well, or at any rate have existed alongside them. But despite all his successes, P. N. Yablochkov stood alone among technical circles hostile to him, especially foreign ones. At the first failures Russian capitalists recoiled from him, instead of supporting the Russian inventor at a difficult moment for him. And without financial support nothing could be done. With regard to the role of various factors in the history of Yablochkov’s candle, the testimony of the major French electrical engineer and businessman Hippolyte Fontaine is characteristic. In the book Electric Lighting at the Exhibition of 1889 Fontaine writes:

“The Application of Transformers to Yablochkov’s Candle. The Société d’Éclairage Électrique for the first time exhibited the automatic candlestick of Bobenrieth (M. Bobenrieth), and also showed the application of transformers for feeding Yablochkov candles. Bobenrieth’s candlestick makes it possible to connect several candles to one and the same electric circuit and to burn a whole series of candles without the necessity of making any switchings by hand...

“The application of transformers to feeding candles has this distinctive feature, that it leads to the simultaneous practical realization of two inventions by one and the same electrician. Indeed, it was precisely Yablochkov who first indicated the principle and method of applying transformers, just as he also created the first electric candle.

“This application makes it possible to achieve a considerable economy in wires by feeding 16 points from one and the same circuit, instead of only 5, as is the utmost possible with ordinary direct connection into the circuit.

“Thus, thanks to automatic candlesticks and transformers, the use of the candle becomes entirely acceptable in practice: the installation of lighting costs much less, and operating expenses are considerably reduced.

“If these two improvements had been carried out in 1882, I, of course, would not then have given the order to extinguish the magnificent illumination of the Avenue de l’Opéra, and the candle would probably today illuminate all our boulevards and large avenues.” As if apologizing in some way, with an unclean conscience, Fontaine adds in a footnote on p. 136:

“At the time when I, as chairman of the administrative council of the society ‘L’Éclairage Électrique,’ then only just founded by me, gave the order to discontinue the lighting of the Avenue de

9 Advances in the Physical Sciences, vol. XXXVII, issue 1.

l’Opéra, the term of the contract was expiring. The Municipal Council offered us a renewal for 3 years, but I did not agree to renew the contract, since during this illumination the Company was losing approximately 100 francs per day.”

In 1882 Fontaine could not have been unaware of the proposals made much earlier by Yablochkov for the parallel connection of candles and the use of transformers. Therefore we have every right to conclude that the discontinuation of the lighting of the Avenue de l’Opéra by Yablochkov candles occurred at his, Fontaine’s, initiative. At the same time, one cannot fail to mention that Fontaine himself was one of the electrical engineers who worked on the invention of the differential arc regulator. Meanwhile, such a major fact as the abandonment of the lighting of the Avenue de l’Opéra by Yablochkov’s method could not but cause very great harm to the whole of the latter’s cause, disorienting public opinion on the question of the further applicability and value of Yablochkov’s invention.

The year 1879 was the culminating point of the successes and prosperity of P. N. Yablochkov. At the beginning of the 1880s the fame of the Yablochkov candle, as the only “electric burner” acceptable in practice, began to fade. Demand for new lighting installations according to Yablochkov’s method and for the “Yablochkov candles” themselves began to decline. The affairs of the joint-stock companies he had founded went from bad to worse. At the same time his personal financial affairs were shaken, and he again fell into want. True, at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889, at which Yablochkov was head of the Russian Department in the electrical engineering section, about a hundred of his “candles” still shone, but this could not restore their former fame or help the cause. Yet even in these difficult times for him P. N. Yablochkov did not lay down his arms and continued, as far as possible, to work on carrying out his inventive ideas. Only he shifted the center of gravity of his activity to the field of chemical sources of electric current, as well as to the field of improving alternating-current dynamos. To this period belongs a series of privileges and patents applied for by him for special, ingeniously devised galvanic cells and accumulators—for example, a cell with sodium—and for a number of successful designs of dynamos. He no longer worked either on the voltaic arc or on the incandescent lamp. But without money for research work and mass testing, he, as at the very beginning of his activity, could no longer bring any one of his old or new inventions to wide practical dissemination. Many years of overstrained work, a series of vexations connected with the final failure that befell the cause he loved, and material privations undermined P. N. Yablochkov’s health. After returning to Russia from the Paris Exhibition of 1889, which had required of him much effort and time, P. N. Yablochkov felt himself very tired, despite his still not advanced age. He became seriously ill. He suffered two strokes of paralysis in succession. Yablochkov decided to go to his native land, to the Serdobsky district, to his father’s estate. Here he

for several years he was gravely ill and died on March 31 (19), 1894, in Saratov, at the age of 46. Thus was prematurely cut short the life of this major, highly talented Russian, who did very much for the technical progress of humanity, but who, under other, more favorable conditions, could have done still much more, had he not been overtaken by a fate so typical of many Russian inventors and progressive people in the days of tsarist Russia. The distinctive features of this fate were almost always a profound lack of understanding on the part of those around them, a refusal to give material support to their great and useful undertakings, the classification of the latter as “chimeras,” and the demand for a foreign stamp of approval on major inventions that spoke for themselves. All this took place against a background of the insuperable inertia, routine, and ignorance of the ruling circles, and often of official representatives of technology as well. All the more highly, therefore, must we value everything achieved by P. N. Yablochkov, who selflessly gave all of himself, his whole life, and sacrificed his material well-being to the disinterested and boundless service of the idea of technical progress and to his ardently beloved homeland. With this selflessness P. N. Yablochkov combined the utmost purposefulness in all his work, extreme perseverance, and the expenditure of enormous energy in elaborating not only each of his inventions as a whole, but also every detail, as well as in the scientific and practical verification of every thought that arose in his bright mind. For this reason his activity, carried on under very difficult conditions, constitutes a lofty positive example also for all those working in the field of scientific and technical progress in our own great Stalinist epoch, so favorable as never before in human history for the development of advanced science and technology.

1. See Proceedings of the Department of Physical Sciences of the Society of Lovers of Natural Science, vol. 1, issue 1, p. 17, item 6 of the minutes of the meeting of 17/III 1880, and p. 18, item 5 of the minutes of the meeting of 29/IV 1880. ↩↩↩↩↩↩

2. Lodygin’s American patent of 1890, purchased from him by the American General Electric Company in 1906. ↩↩↩↩↩