John Ambrose Fleming
Sir John Ambrose Fleming | |
---|---|
Doctoral advisor | Frederick Guthrie |
Doctoral students | Harold Barlow |
Other notable students | Hidetsugu Yagi Balthasar van der Pol |
Sir John Ambrose Fleming
He was the eldest of seven children of James Fleming DD (died 1879), a
In 1932, he and
Early years
Ambrose Fleming was born in
Education and marriages
This section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2023) |
Fleming started school at about the age of ten, attending a private school where he particularly enjoyed geometry. Prior to that his mother tutored him and he had learned, virtually by heart, a book called the Child's Guide to Knowledge, a popular book of the day – even as an adult he would quote from it. His schooling continued at the University College School where, although accomplished at maths, he habitually came bottom of the class at Latin.
Even as a boy he wanted to become an engineer. At 11 he had his own workshop where he built model boats and engines. He even built his own camera, the start of a lifelong interest in photography. Training to become an engineer was beyond the family's financial resources, but he reached his goal via a path that alternated education with paid employment.
Fleming enrolled for a BSc degree at
Financial problems again forced him to work for a living and in the summer of 1874 he became science master at
He was among the "two or perhaps three University students who attended
On 11 June 1887, he married businessman.
Activities and achievements
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After leaving the University of Nottingham in 1882, Fleming took up the post of "electrician" to the Edison Electrical Light Company, advising on lighting systems and the new Ferranti alternating current systems. In 1884 Fleming joined University College London taking up the Chair of Electrical Technology, the first of its kind in England. Although this offered great opportunities, he recalls in his autobiography that the only equipment provided to him was a blackboard and piece of chalk. In 1897 the Pender Laboratory was founding at University College London and Fleming took up the Pender Chair after the £5000 was endowed as a memorial to John Pender, the founder of Cable and Wireless.[10]
In 1899
Although Fleming was responsible for the design, the director of the Marconi Co. had made Fleming agree that: "If we get across the Atlantic, the main credit will be and must forever be Mr. Marconi's". Accordingly, the worldwide acclaim that greeted this landmark accomplishment went to Marconi, who only credited Fleming along with several other Marconi employees, saying he did some work on the "power plant".[11] Marconi also forgot a promise to give Fleming 500 shares of Marconi stock if the project was successful. Fleming was bitter about his treatment. He honoured his agreement and did not speak about it throughout Marconi's life, but after his death in 1937 said Marconi had been "very ungenerous".
In 1904, working for the Marconi company to improve transatlantic radio reception, Fleming invented the first
This invention of the
In 1906,
Fleming retired from University College London in 1927 at the age of 77. He remained active, becoming a committed advocate of the new technology of Television which included serving as the second president of the
- One century ago, in November 1904, John Ambrose Fleming FRS, Pender Professor at UCL, filed GB 190424850 in Great Britain, for a device called the Thermionic Valve. When inserted together with a galvanometer, into a tuned electrical circuit, it could be used as a very sensitive rectifying detector of high frequency wireless currents, known as radio waves. It was a major step forward in the 'wireless revolution'.
In November 1905, he patented the "Fleming Valve" (US 803684). As a rectifying diode, and forerunner to the triode valve and many related structures, it can also be considered to be the device that gave birth to modern electronics.
In the ensuing years, valves quickly superseded "
Today, descendants of the original valve (or vacuum tube) still play an important role in a range of applications. They can be found in the power stages of radio and television transmitters, in musical instrument amplifiers (particularly electric guitar and bass amplifiers), in some high-end audio amplifiers, as detectors of optical and
In 1941 the
On 27 November 2004 a
Creationism
Fleming was a Christian creationist who argued against evolution.[17] He was President of the Victoria Institute from 1927 to 1942.[1]
Lectures
In 1894 and 1917 Ambrose Fleming was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Work of an Electric Current and Our Useful Servants : Magnetism and Electricity respectively.
Collections
In 1945 Fleming's widow donated Fleming's library and papers to University College London. Fleming's library, which totals around 950 items, includes first editions of works by prominent scientists and engineers such as James Clerk Maxwell, Oliver Lodge, James Dewar and Shelford Bidwell.[18] Fleming's archive spans 521 volumes and 12 boxes; it contains his laboratory notebooks, lecture notes, patent specifications, and correspondence.[19]
Books by Fleming
- Electric Lamps and Electric Lighting: A course of four lectures on electric illumination delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1894) 228 pages, OCLC 8202914.
- The Alternate Current Transformer in Theory and Practice "The Electrician" Printing and Publishing Company (1896)
- Magnets and Electric Currents E. & F. N. Spon. (1898)
- A Handbook for the Electrical Laboratory and Testing Room "The Electrician" Printing and Publishing Company (1901)
- Waves and Ripples in Water, Air, and Aether MacMillan (1902).
- The Evidence of Things Not Seen Christian Knowledge Society: London (1904)
- The Principles of Electric Wave Telegraphy (1906), Longmans Green, London, 671 pages.[20]
- The Propagation of Electric Currents in Telephone and Telegraph Conductors (1908) Constable, 316 pages.
- An Elementary Manual of Radiotelegraphy and Radiotelephony (1911) Longmans Green, London, 340 pages.
- On the power factor and conductivity of dielectrics when tested with alternating electric currents of telephonic frequency at various temperatures (1912) Gresham, 82 pages, ASIN: B0008CJBIC
- The Wonders of Wireless Telegraphy : Explained in simple terms for the non-technical reader Society for promoting Christian Knowledge (1913)
- The Wireless Telegraphist's Pocket Book of Notes, Formulae and Calculations The Wireless Press (1915)
- The Thermionic Valve and its Development in Radio Telegraphy and Telephony (1919).
- Fifty Years of Electricity The Wireless Press (1921)
- Electrons, Electric Waves and Wireless telephony The Wireless Press (1923)
- Introduction to Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons Ltd. (1924)
- Mercury-arc Rectifiers and Mercury-vapour Lamps London. Pitman (1925)
- The Electrical Educator (3 volumes), The New Era Publishing Co Ltd (1927)
- Television Television Press London. (1928)
- Memories of a Scientific life Marshall, Morgan & Scott (1934)
- Evolution or Creation? (1938) Marshall Morgan and Scott, 114 pages, ASIN: B00089BL7Y – outlines objections to Darwin.
- Mathematics for Engineers George Newnes Ltd (1938)
- Physics for Engineers George Newnes Ltd (1941)
References
- ^ S2CID 192193265.
- ^ Harr, Chris (23 June 2003). "Ambrose J. Fleming biography". Pioneers of Computing. The History of Computing Project. Retrieved 30 April 2008.
- ^ "Right and left hand rules". Tutorials, Magnet Lab U. National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Retrieved 30 April 2008.
- .
- ^ "Fleming, John Ambrose (FLM877JA)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- S2CID 143665764.
- ^ "Encyclopedia of John Ambrose Fleming".
- ^ Fleming, Ambrose (1931). Some memories of Professor James Clerk Maxwell, pp. 116–124, in: James Clerk Maxwell: A Commemorative Volume, 1831–1931. New York: Macmillan.
- ^ "Electronic Notes: Ambrose Fleming Facts & Quotes".
- ^ "History: The early years, 1885–1950". UCL Electronic and Electrical Engineering. 24 September 2018. Retrieved 13 January 2023.
- )
- ^ Fleming Valve patent U.S. patent 803,684
- ^ "Misreading the Supreme Court: A Puzzling Chapter in the History of Radio" Archived 19 December 2009 at the Wayback Machine. November 1998, Mercurians.org.
- ^ J.Summerscale (ed.) (1965). "The Penguin Encyclopedia", Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, UK.
- ISBN 978-0-670-82698-8.
The electronics age may be said to have been ushered in with the invention of the vacuum diode valve in 1902 by the Briton John Fleming (himself coining the word "electronics"), the immediate application being in the field of radio.
- ^ Anderson, James B (2008). Sommerville, Iain (ed.). "Ships built by the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company Ltd: arranged by date of launch". Welcome to Burntisland. Iain Sommerville. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
- S2CID 201792104.
- ^ UCL Special Collections (23 August 2018). "Fleming Book Collection". UCL Special Collections. Retrieved 6 December 2023.
- ^ UCL Special Collections. "Fleming Papers". UCL Archives Catalogue. Retrieved 6 December 2023.
- The Athenaeum(4196): 386–387.
External links
- Media related to John Ambrose Fleming at Wikimedia Commons
- Works by John Ambrose Fleming at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about John Ambrose Fleming at Internet Archive
- Mitchell, John; Griffiths, Hugh; Boyd, Ian (2006). ISBN 0-471-71814-9.
- IEEE History Center biography
- Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, UCL – home of the original Fleming valve
- 100 Years of Electronics 2004 – The Centenary of the Fleming Valve
- Life and Times of Ambrose Fleming
- Fleming Book Collection at University College London
- Fleming Papers at University College London