James Blyth (engineer)
James Blyth ( born April 4, 1838 in Mary Kirk, Kincardineshire, † May 15 1906 in Glasgow ) was a Scottish electrical engineer and scientist at Anderson 's College, now the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. He was a pioneer in the field of wind power generation. Built by him wind turbine, which he used to light his holiday home in Maryhill, is considered the first plant, wind power could use to generate electricity. Blyth had patented his design construction and later developed an improved model, the (formerly Montrose Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary and Dispensary ) served for the next 30 years as an emergency power supply in Sunnyside Royal Hospital. Although Blyth was recognized for its scientific merits, the generation of electricity by wind power was considered uneconomical. Until 1951 no other wind turbines in the UK were built.
The Early Years
James Blyth was born on April 4, 1839 in Mary Kirk, County of Kincardine. He attended the local parish school and later the Montrose Academy, before 1886 a scholarship to the General Assembly Normal School in Edinburgh received .. After Blyth graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a Bachelor of Arts, he taught in 1861 mathematics at the Morrison 's Academy in Crieff and helped in the establishment of school classes at the newly founded George Watson 's College in Edinburgh.
Blyth graduated in 1871 his Master of Arts and married in the same year Jesse Wilhelmena Taylor in the United Presbyterian Church in Athol Place, Edinburgh. They had two sons and five daughters, two of which already died in infancy.
Career
「 " His students - gone forth from the classroom, and radiated over the country and to far corners of the world ... all bear in the secret structure of Their Minds the impress of Professor Blyth 's teaching, and will cherish through life, with reverence and affection, the memory of Their teacher and friend. " 」
" His students who drop out of college and have moved all over the country into the deepest corners of the world have ... in the hidden structures of her mind still the impression that Professor Blyth's left is teaching and they are the memory of their friend and teacher with reverence and affection throughout their lives get in honor. "
1880 Blyth received the " Freeland Foundation Professorship " in natural philosophy at Anderson 's College, Glasgow, in 1886 became the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College. While he taught at the technical school, he pursued a research program that dealt with the generation and storage of electricity. Blyth was considered a hard-working scientists and was popular and known by a number of lectures in the community among its students and colleagues.
In July 1887, Blyth built a strung with canvas wind turbine in the garden of his holiday cottage in Mary Kirk and charged with the electricity generated accumulators on. The stored energy he used to feed his living room with light. It was thus the first house in the world, which was powered by wind power generated electricity.
In a paper for the Philosophical Society of Glasgow on May 2, 1888 Blyth describes the wind turbine " as a three-legged structure with a 10 meter high wave, four 4 -meter long, covered with canvas blades and a guarantor - dynamo from the flywheel using a rope is driven. " The turbine produced in moderate wind enough power in order to provide ten 25 V bulbs and could even be used to drive a small lathe.
In the following years he experimented with a number of different designs. The final design was for 25 years in operation and generates more power than needed. This offered Blyth then on the inhabitants of Mary Kirk for lighting the main street. His offer was rejected because it did electricity for " devil's work ". In November 1891 Blyth received a patent in the UK for his wind machine. In 1895 he gave the Glasgow engineering firm Mavor and Coulson the license for the construction of a second, improved turbine, which served as an emergency power supply for the psychiatric hospital of Montrose, and there the next 30 years was operated successfully.
Blyth's original wind power plant was the first known device, generated by the current by means of wind power. However, the absence of a brake mechanism made them vulnerable to damage that can occur in strong winds. In the winter of 1887, a few months after the construction of Blyth's first wind power plant, the American Charles Francis Brush built the first automatically operated wind turbine. Owing to their construction, they could be shut down manually in order to protect them against wind damage. The improved version of the turbine for the Montrose mental hospital ( which is based on John Thomas Romney Robinson anemometer design), although decreased susceptibility to such damage, but it could happen that the locking mechanism does not work in strong winds.
1891 Blyth presented the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a work in which he as wave but especially wind energy advocates his belief in the benefits of renewable energy sources. Later this year, the Brisbane Gold Medal of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts for his work on the generation of electricity by wind power, he was awarded. However, its wind turbine was not considered feasible economically.
At Blyth's other interests included, among others, the relative efficiency of different forms of lightning, telephone connections and microphones. He also contributed a number of topics related to the Encyclopædia Britannica.
The late years
The University of Glasgow gave Blyth in 1900 an honorary doctorate. He died on March 15, 1906 in his home in Glasgow to a stroke. His friend Dr. James Colville remembered him as " a true man of science ... someone who has patience, hard work and mechanical ingenuity afforded by understanding, much in his life and has illustrated many issues of natural science. "
The turbine at the Montrose mental hospital in 1914 dismantled. Britain's first public wind turbine was put into operation until 1951, when the company John Brown Engineering from Glasgow built a prototype at Costa Head ( Orkney ).