James Bowman Lindsay

James Bowman Lindsay ( born September 8, 1799 in Carmyllie at Arbroath in Angus, Scotland, † June 29, 1862 in Dundee) was a lecturer, physicist and inventor. He was responsible for several inventions, which were not further developed even after his death, including the bulb, Unterwassertelegrafie and electric welding.

Self-taught, began after a stint at a young age as a weaver in 1820 at St. Andrews University in Dundee with studies. In 1829 he taught already about mathematics, magnetism and electricity as a lecturer of the Watt Institution, Dundee. In 1832 he led his students in front of an electric telegraph in the classroom.

His tireless desire to explore then turned his interest to tests for electrical generation of light. On July 25, 1835, he led the first time publicly by means of a constant applied electric light bulb before. He perfected his device, but focused in the following period again on wireless transmission. His profound knowledge enabled him in 1835 to submit a proposal for electric arc welding. In 1841, he taught for a year's salary of 50 pounds in the local jail.

The inventors also covered the construction of submarine cables for power and communications. He believed in the possibility of the transmission of messages across the Atlantic, in which the water should be head of medium. In 1843 he proposed a non-insulated submarine cable to ground batteries across the ocean. A practical experiment in the port of Dundee over a distance of 120 feet ( 37 meters) in 1853 showed the correctness of his fundamental considerations.

1854 Lindsay received a patent for wireless telegraphy. The water of the River Tay, he used the same year as electrical conductors over a distance of 1,600 meters from Dundee to Woodhaven.

In 1858 he published astronomical tables, which earned him some notoriety. For his services to science, the government granted him a pension of 100 pounds a year. He renounced in the same year on the teaching activities in prison. In 1859, he led further on the River Dee, a demonstration of the transfer option and was praised by, among others, Michael Faraday and Lord Kelvin.

Lindsay would be more front and center of the public, he would have been an urbane and not a shy person, who misjudged the significance of his inventions for practice. The Bachelor took place in life in spite of great ideas only a modest living with his lecturing.