Lucien Gaulard (1850 - November 26, 1888) invented devices for the transmission of alternating current electrical energy. Gaulard was born in Paris, France.
A power transformer developed by Gaulard of France and John Gibbs of England was demonstrated in London, and attracted the interest of Westinghouse. Gaulard and John Gibbs , first exhibited a device in London in 1881 and then sold the idea to American company Westinghouse. They also exhibited the invention in Turin in 1884, where it was adopted for an electric lighting system.
In 1885, William Stanley, Jr. built the first practical induction coil based on Gaulard and Gibbs' idea. It was the precursor of the modern transformer. Transformers were nothing new, but the Gaulard-Gibbs design was one of the first that could handle large amounts of power and promised to be easy to manufacture. Westinghouse imported a number of Gaulard-Gibbs transformers and a Siemens AC generator to begin experimenting with AC networks in Pittsburgh.
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Last updated: 10-14-2005 12:17:02
