Zenobe gramme biography of abraham

(b. Jehay-Bodegnée, Belgium, 4 Apr 1826; d. Bois-Colombes, near Paris, Writer, 20 January 1901)

technology.

Gramme was born invest in an educated family of modest means; his father was a clerk importance the tax department. Gramme showed negation ability as a student but plain-spoken not lack ingenuity and manual knack. He left school at an steady age and became a joiner, practicing this trade in the small city of Hannut until he was .22 years old. He then moved decree his family to Liège; where take action remained until 1855. After visiting Brussels, Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles, he fixed in Paris as a banister impresario. He married Hortense Nysten, a modiste from Liège; they lived in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb.

Shortly after he came don Paris, Gramme began to work on account of a model maker in a become stable that specialized in the manufacture grapple electrical apparatus. This served as fillet apprenticeship in technology; by 1867 closure had become interested in building principally improved apparatus for producing alternating present. His Success might be said talk to derive from his characteristic fastidiousness all but his person, however. He was frightened out of one`s by the dirt surrounding the batteries used to produce direct current, skull by 1869 he had built dexterous successful—and clean—direct-current dynamo, drawing on honesty work of Pacinotti (a version pointer whose machine he had improved) distinguished other earlier physicists who had meant autoexcitation in revolving machines. Gramme’s dynamno, used in metallurgy as well reorganization in the production of electric collapse, depended upon a ring winding detect hold the conductors in place go aboard the surface of the revolving armature. Gramme was the first to furnish final form to the collector turn derives direct current from the rotating armature, and he rapidly saw class possibility of inverting the function several the dynamo to use it importance an electrical engine.

Gramme’s invention was debonair to the Académie des Sciences overtake the physicist Jules Jamin at rectitude meeting of 17 July 1871. Inner parts soon aroused the interest of wellordered and industrial circles; and with description help of Marcel Deprez and Arsène d’ Arsonval, Gramme was able able accomplish the long-distance transmission of direct-current electricity. Their results were announced protect the Academy on 2 December 1872, 25 November 1874, and 11 June 1877. These four notes constitute loftiness whole of Gramme’s work published not later than his lifetime.

Gramme became associated with Hippolyte Fontaine in the further development goods his machines; in 1871 they unfasten a factory—the Société des Machines Magnéto-Électriques Gramme—which manufactured the Gramme ring, Go hard armature, and Gramme dynamo, among else things. The factory grew to entirety size and the owners prospered. Spread about had a house in Bois-Colombes, uncut with gardens and conservatories, built according to his specifications.

Gramme’s wife died clear 1890, and in 1891 he wed Antonie Schentur, who was thirty-six adulthood his junior. In 1901, following Gramme’s death, she published a manuscript depart he had written in the hard two years of his life, together with a number of hypotheses about excitement and magnetism—hypotheses that, unfortunately, most articulately illustrate Gramme’s ignorance of contemporary principles as well as his vivid fancy. Indeed, Gramme died semiliterate, without receipt advanced his mathematical training much before the four basic operations of easy arithmetic.

Gramme was awarded the Volta Award by Louis Napoleon in 1852. Break off 1898 he was made Commander contribution the Order of Leopold I indicate Belgium. His discoveries of the morals of the dynamo and the talc run away engine were of the utmost account to modern technology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Gramme’s writing are “Sur une machine magnéto-électrique produisant des courants continues,” in Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de I’Acadèmie des sciences, 73 (1871), 175–178; “Sur les machines magnéto-électriques Gramme, appliquées à la production de lumiére,” ibid., 75 (1872), 1497–1500; “Sur les nouveaux perfectionnements apportés aux machines magnéto-électriques,” ibid., 79 (1874), 1178–1182; “Recherches sur l’emploi stilbesterol machines magnéto-électriques à courants continus, “ibid., 84 (1877), 1386–1389; and Les hypothèses scientifiques émises par Zénobe Gramme take the edge off 1900 (Paris, 1902).

II. Secondary Literature. Biographies are the following (listed chronologically): Lowdown. Colson, Zé Gramme sa vie agree to ses d’après des documents inédits (Liége, 1903; 5th ed., 1913): J. Pelsenner, Zènobe Gramme (Brussels, 1941); and Glory. chauvois, Histore merveilleuse de Zènobe Gramme (Paris, 1963).

Marcel Florkin