Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, FRS

Wikipedia Biographical Summary

"...Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge(12 June 1851 – 22 August 1940) was a British physicist and writer involved in the development of key patents in wireless telegraphy. In his 1894 Royal Institution lectures ("The Work of Hertz and Some of His Successors"), Lodge coined the term "coherer" for the device developed by French physicist Édouard Branly based on the work of Italian physicist Temistocle Calzecchi Onesti. In 1898 he was awarded the "syntonic" (or tuning) patent by the United States Patent Office. He was also credited by Lorentz (1895) with the first published description of the length contraction hypothesis, in 1893, though in fact Lodge's friend George Francis FitzGerald had first suggested the idea in print in 1889.

Life

Oliver Lodge was born in 1851 at Penkhull in what is now Stoke-on-Trent, and educated at Adams' Grammar School, Newport, Shropshire. He was the eldest of eight sons and a daughter of Oliver Lodge (1826–1884) – later a ball clay merchant at Wolstanton, Staffordshire – and his wife, Grace, née Heath (1826–1879). Sir Oliver's siblings included Sir Richard Lodge (1855–1936), historian; Eleanor Constance Lodge (1869–1936), historian and principal of Westfield College, London; and Alfred Lodge (1854–1937), mathematician.

In 1865, Lodge, at the age of 14, entered his father's business (Oliver Lodge & Son) as an agent for B. Fayle & Co selling Purbeck blue clay to the potteries, travelling as far as Scotland. He continued to assist his father until he reached the age of 22. His father's wealth obtained from selling Purbeck ball clay enabled Lodge to attend physics lectures in London and attend the local Wedgwood Institute.

Lodge obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of London in 1875 and a Doctor of Science in 1877. He was appointed professor of physics and mathematics at University College, Liverpool in 1881. In 1900 Lodge moved from Liverpool back to the Midlands and became the first principal of the new Birmingham University, remaining there until his retirement in 1919. He oversaw the start of the move of the university from Edmund Street in the city centre to its present Edgbaston campus. Lodge was awarded the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society in 1898 and was knighted by King Edward VII in 1902. In 1928 he was made Freeman of his native city, Stoke-on-Trent.

Lodge married Mary Fanny Alexander Marshall at St George's church, Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1877. They had twelve children, six boys and six girls: Oliver William Foster (1878–1955), Francis Brodie (1880–1967), Alec (1881–1938), Lionel (1883–1948), Noel (1885–1962), Violet (1888–1924), Raymond (1889–1915), Honor (1891–1979), Lorna (1892–1987), Norah (1894–1990), Barbara (1896–1983), and Rosalynde (1896–1983). Four of his sons went into business using Lodge's inventions. Brodie and Alec created the Lodge Plug Company, which manufactured sparking plugs for cars and aeroplanes. Lionel and Noel founded a company that produced an electrostatic device for cleaning factory and smelter smoke in 1913, called the Lodge Fume Deposit Company Limited (changed in 1919 to Lodge Fume Company Limited and in 1922, through agreement with the International Precipitation Corporation of California, to Lodge Cottrell Ltd). Oliver, the eldest son, became a poet and author.

After his retirement in 1920, Sir Oliver and Lady Lodge settled in Normanton House, near Lake in Wiltshire, just a few miles from Stonehenge. Lodge and his wife are buried at St. Michael’s Church, Wilsford (Lake), Wiltshire. Their eldest son Oliver and eldest daughter Violet are buried at the same church.

Accomplishments

Electromagnetism and radio

Maxwell's "Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism" appeared in 1873 and by 1876 Lodge was studying it intently. But he was fairly limited in mathematical physics both by aptitude and training and his first two papers were a description of a mechanism (of beaded strings and pulleys) that could serve to illustrate electrical phenomena such as conduction and polarization. Indeed, Lodge is probably best known for his advocacy and elaboration of Maxwell's aether theory – a later deprecated model postulating a wave-bearing medium filling all space. He explained his views on the aether in "Modern Views of Electricity" (1889) and continued to defend those ideas well into the twentieth century ("Ether and Reality", 1925).

As early as 1879 Lodge became interested in generating (and detecting) electromagnetic waves, something Maxwell had never considered. This interest continued throughout the 1880s but three obstacles slowed Lodge's progress. First, he thought in terms of generating light waves with their very high frequencies rather than radio waves with their much lower frequencies. Second, his good friend George FitzGerald (on whom Lodge depended for theoretical guidance) assured him (incorrectly) that "ether waves could not be generated electromagnetically." FitzGerald later corrected his error but by 1881 Lodge had assumed a teaching position at University College, Liverpool the demands of which limited his time and his energy for research. And so it was Heinrich Hertz in Germany who was the first to demonstrate the transmission of electromagnetic waves in 1888.

Lodge carried out scientific investigations on lightning, the source of the electromotive force in the voltaic cell, electrolysis, and the application of electricity to the dispersal of fog and smoke. Lodge simulated lightning by discharging Leyden jars. When he attached a long wire to a Leyden jar in a darkened room, he noted a glow at intervals along the wire, evidence that he was observing electromagnetic waves. Lodge performed these experiments at the same time that Hertz was investigating the propagation of electromagnetic waves in free space.

On 14 August 1894, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford University, Lodge gave a memorial lecture on the work of Heinrich Hertz (recently deceased) and the German physicist's proof of the existence of electromagnetic waves 6 years earlier. Lodge set up a demonstration on the quasi optical nature of "Hertzian waves" (radio waves) and demonstrated their similarity to light and vision including reflection and transmission at distances up to 50 meters. Lodge used a detector called a coherer (invented by Edouard Branly), a glass tube containing metal filings between two electrodes. When received waves from an antenna were applied to the electrodes, the coherer became conductive allowing the current from a battery to pass through it, with the impulse being picked up by a mirror galvanometer. After receiving a signal the metal filings in the coherer were reset or "decohered" by a manually operated vibrator or by the vibrations of a bell placed on the table near by that rang every time a transmission was received. Since this was one year before Marconi's 1895 demonstration of a system for radio wireless telegraphy and contained many of the basic elements that would be used in these later systems, Lodges lecture became the focus of a 1906-1911 priority dispute with the Marconi Company over invention of wireless telegraphy (radio). At the time of the dispute some, including the physicist John Ambrose Fleming, pointed out that Lodges' lecture was a physics experiment, not a demonstration of telegraphic signaling. Lodge would later work with Alexander Muirhead on the development of devices specifically for wireless telegraphy.

In January 1898 Lodge presented a paper on “syntonic” tuning which he received a patent for that same year. Syntonic tuning allowed specific frequency's to be used by the transmitter and receiver in a wireless communication system. The Marconi Company had a similar tuning system adding to the priority dispute over the invention of radio. When Lodge's syntonic patent was extended in 1911 for another 7 years Marconi agreed to settle the patent dispute, purchasing the syntonic patent in 1912 and giving Lodge an (honorific) position as "scientific adviser"..."

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Joseph_Lodge

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Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge was born in 1851. He married Mary Fanny Alexander Marshall. He died in 1940.
He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Law (LL.D.) He graduated with a Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) He was invested as a Fellow, Royal Society (F.R.S.) He was decorated with the award of the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society in 1898. He was Professor of Physics and Mathematics at University College, Liverpool, Lancashire, England. He was involved in developing wireless communication. He was Principal at Birmingham University, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England. He was invested as a Knight in 1902.
Children of Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge and Mary Fanny Alexander Marshall

1. Oliver William Foster Lodge+ b. 1878, d. 1955
   
2. Francis Brodie Lodge b. 1880, d. 1967
   
3. Alec Lodge b. 1881, d. 1938
   
4. Lionel Lodge b. 1883, d. 1948
   
5. Noel Lodge b. 1885, d. 1962
   
6. Violet Lodge b. 1888, d. 1924
   
7. Raymond Lodge b. 1889, d. 1915
   
8. Honor Lodge b. 1891, d. 1979
   
9. Lorna Lodge b. 1892, d. 1987
   
10. Norah Lodge b. 1894, d. 1990
    
11. Rosalynde Lodge+ b. 1896
    
12. Barbara Lodge b. 1896, d. 1983
    

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