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Transformer

Electrical Engineering

A transformer is a passive electrical device that transfers electrical energy from one circuit to another through electromagnetic induction, using a varying current in one coil to produce a varying magnetic flux that induces a voltage in another coil wound on the same core. The underlying principle was discovered independently by Michael Faraday in 1831 and Joseph Henry in 1832. The first widely used transformer design was the induction coil, invented by the Irish clergyman Nicholas Callan of Maynooth College in 1836, and the first efficient closed-core transformer suited to power distribution was developed in 1885 by the Hungarian engineers Karoly Zipernowsky, Otto Blathy and Miksa Deri at the Ganz factory.

Facts
YearSourced to the subject's own account
1884 1
SignificanceSourced to the subject's own account
The ZBD transformer's closed magnetic circuit design was roughly 3.4 times more efficient than the earlier open-core devices of Gaulard and Gibbs, establishing the design principle every later power transformer follows. 1
Connections

Associated With

Amorphous Metal, Materials

Amorphous metal cores reduce eddy-current losses in electrical transformers versus ordinary silicon steel cores.

Copper, Materials
Electrical Engineering, Fields

Field-to-technology association verified live; FROM end owned by fields section

In Field

Source Transformer (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Transformer (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia
  • History section, ZBD paragraph, first unit shipped sentence
    The Ganz factory had also, in the autumn of 1884, made delivery of the world's first five high-efficiency AC transformers, the first of these units having been shipped on September 16, 1884.
  • History section, ZBD efficiency paragraph, sentence 1
    The new transformers were 3.4 times more efficient than the open-core bipolar devices of Gaulard and Gibbs.
  • In Field: Electrical Engineering, Categories
    Electric power conversion
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