William Duddell

William Du Bois Duddell ( born July 1, 1872 in London, † November 4, 1917 ) was an English electrical engineer.

From 1893 to 1901 he taught at the City & Guilds College and experimented here in detail with electro- physical apparatus. He invented an oscilloscope, a thermo - ammeter and a thermo - galvanometer.

He obtained with his singing arc lamp, which he presented on 13 December 1900 the London Institution of Electrical Engineers awareness. Before Edison had in 1880 received a patent for his incandescent lamp, carbon arc lamps were distributed, of which he wanted to eliminate hum. In his experiments Duddell had discovered that he can change the hum of the arc by changing the voltage. He built a coil and capacitors with a keyboard to it and had the first electric musical instrument. ( Valdemar Poulsen had then in 1903 the idea as to screw an antenna. )

1912 gave to him the Hughes Medal, and in 1913 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society.