Ányos Istvân Jedlik

Jedlik, Ányos Istvân 

Born Jan. 11, 1800, in Simö, now Zemno, Slovakia; died Dec. 13, 1895, in Győr. Hungarian scientist and inventor in electrical engineering. Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1858). Son of a peasant.

After graduating from a Benedictine lycée in Győr, Jedlik became a teacher in a Gymnasium. In 1840 he became a professor of physics at the University of Pest. He constructed the first model of a rotating electric motor (1827–28) and was the first to discover the principle of self-excitation, which he used in the multidisk unipolar generator he built in 1861. He invented a device that was the prototype of the capacitance voltage multiplier; the invention received a medal at the Vienna World’s Fair in 1873, but it was never produced. Jedlik improved the design of voltaic cells and storage batteries, and he built a precision dividing machine. A number of his works dealt with optics and other areas of physics.

REFERENCES

Tsverava, G. K. An’osh Iedlik. Leningrad, 1972.
Ferenczy, V. Jedlik Ányos István élete és alkotásai, parts 1–4. Gyoőr, 1936–39.

G. K. TSVERAVA