John Dixon Gibbs (1834–1912) was a British engineer and financier who, together with

Lucien Gaulard Lucien Gaulard (16 July 1850 – 26 November 1888) invented devices for the Electricity distribution, transmission of alternating current electrical energy. Biography Gaulard was born in Paris, France in 1850. A power transformer developed by Ga ...

, is often credited as the co-inventor of the AC step-down transformer. The transformer was first demonstrated in 1883 at

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

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. At the time the term "transformer" had not yet been invented, so instead it was referred to as a "secondary generator". Although he is usually credited equally with Gaulard, Gibb's role in the invention appears to have been more that of a financial backer and businessman. Although the underlying physics of the transformer, mainly

Faraday's law of induction Faraday's law of induction (briefly, Faraday's law) is a basic law of electromagnetism predicting how a magnetic field will interact with an electric circuit to produce an electromotive force (emf)—a phenomenon known as electromagnetic inducti ...

, had been known since the 1830s, transformers became viable only after the introduction of Gaulard and Gibbs's transformer design in 1883. The breakthrough was to build an iron transformer core which could act as a magnetic circuit. At the time, their invention was seen as overcomplicated since it contained a movable armature. It caught the attention of

Sir Coutts Lindsay Sir Coutts Lindsay, 2nd Baronet (2 February 1824 – 7 May 1913 Kingston upon Thames), was a British artist and watercolourist. Life Lindsay was the eldest son of Lieutenant-General James Lindsay (1793-1855), Sir James Lindsay, son of the H ...

, who used it to power the

Grosvenor Gallery The Grosvenor Gallery was an art gallery in London founded in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche. Its first directors were J. Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé. The gallery proved crucial to the Aesthetic Movement because it provided ...

, which was one of the first lighting systems in Britain powered by a central generating station. In 1885

Ottó Bláthy Ottó Titusz Bláthy (11 August 1860 – 26 September 1939) was a Hungarian electrical engineer. In his career, he became the co-inventor of the modern electric transformer, the tension regulator, the AC watt-hour meter. motor capacitor fo ...

Miksa Déri Miksa Déri (27 October 1854 November, Bács, Kingdom of Hungary, (now: Bač, Serbia) – 3 March 1938) was a Hungarian electrical engineer, inventor, power plant builder. He contributed with his partners Károly Zipernowsky and Ottó Bláthy, ...

and

Károly Zipernowsky Károly Zipernowsky (born as Carl Zipernowsky, 4 April 1853 in Vienna – 29 November 1942 in Budapest) was an Austrian Empire, Austrian-born Hungarians, Hungarian electrical engineer. He invented the transformer with his colleagues (Miksa D� ...

secured a patent on a similar design, using laminated sheets of metal to reduce eddy currents. Information on an exhibition of Gibbs and Gaulard's transformer in Turin, Italy in 1884 was published in 1885 and caught the attention of

George Westinghouse George Westinghouse Jr. (October 6, 1846 – March 12, 1914) was an American entrepreneur and engineer based in Pennsylvania who created the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry, receiving his first patent at the age of ...

. In the summer of 1885 Westinghouse bought the American rights for Gibbs and Gaulard's design and ordered that several transformers from Gibbs and Gaulard be purchased and shipped to his factory in Pittsburgh. Westinghouse then asked the engineer

William Stanley, Jr. William Stanley Jr. (November 28, 1858 – May 14, 1916) was an American physicist born in Brooklyn, New York. During his career, he obtained 129 patents covering a variety of electric devices. In 1913, he also patented an all-steel vacuum bottl ...

to design an electric lighting system using them. Stanley subsequently greatly improved on Gibbs and Gaulard's design and is often credited in their place. John Dixon Gibbs had his work patented under German patent no. 28947, a patent also recognized in Great Britain. The patent was disputed by

Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti Sebastian Pietro Innocenzo Adhemar Ziani de Ferranti (9 April 1864 – 13 January 1930) was a British electrical engineer and inventor. Personal life Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti was born in Liverpool, England. His Italian father, Cesare, was a ...

. Following patent litigation, Gibbs and Gaulard lost the patent. Gibbs appealed the suit, taking the case all the way to the House of Lords, where he again lost. He was financially ruined in the process.

References

1834 births 1912 deaths British electrical engineers {{UK-engineer-stub