The electrical generator converts mechanical energy into electricity, and it rests on the discovery of electromagnetic induction by Michael Faraday in 1831. Faraday's disc was the first simple generator, and the French instrument maker Hippolyte Pixii built a hand-cranked machine a year later. The practical dynamo came in the 1860s, when Werner von Siemens and others introduced self-exciting machines, and the Belgian Zenobe Gramme built a widely used ring dynamo in the early 1870s. In 1873 a Gramme machine at the Vienna world exhibition was shown running as an electric motor when connected to another, demonstrating that these machines are reversible. Generators driven by steam and water power then supplied the first electric lighting and power networks, from Thomas Edison's Pearl Street station of 1882 onwards.
Before and after
- 30 November 1872First match of the England men's national association football team
- 30 November 1872The first international football match is played
- 3 December 1872George Smith reads the Babylonian flood story
- from 7 December 1872 to 26 May 1876Challenger Expedition
- 1873Invention of electrical generator
- 1873Founding of Swiss Stock Exchange
- 9 January 1873Death of Napoleon III
- 20 January 1873Birth of Johannes V. Jensen
- 20 March 1873Birth of Sergei Rachmaninoff
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The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 19th century.