Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.11594

    Spark discharge figure

    Date
    1892
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (drawing): 86mm
    width (drawing): 109mm
    Subject
    Description
    Diagram created by sparking from Lord Armstrong’s machine for producing high tension electricity. These patterns were made in a powder of magnesium oxide (‘calcined magnesia’) and carbon black. The images were then photographed and drawings produced from them.

    The author states in his paper that: ‘No.2 may be regarded as a transverse section of No.1, being produced by similar sparks delivered vertically through a hole in the dust plate when fixed horizontally midway between the sparking points. It shows that the discharge is surrounded by circular lines in the transverse as well as the longitudinal direction’.

    Illustration from the manuscript version of the paper ‘On a multiple induction machine for producing high tension electricity, and on some remarkable results obtained with it’, by Lord Armstrong, Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol.52 (1892), pp.176-191. Printed as figure 2 plate 3 in the published paper.

    The image is inscribed below in ink and pencil: ‘No.2’ over and erasure of ‘II’ and in pencil ‘4/10’. Imprint details verso.

    William George Armstrong, Baron Armstrong (1810-1900) armaments manufacturer and industrialist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1846.
    Associated place
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