Lord William Armstrong one of the greatest inventors
In the 1800's while Britain is in the heart of industrial revolution. Lord William Armstrong (later 1st Baron), is an entrepreneur and an obsessive inventor.
He has fitted his house with 'state of the art' technology. Including central heating and mechanical devices that drive elevators, laundry machines and roast his steaks.
But, there's one place in the house that sadly modern technology is lacking; his picture gallery.
It's full of wonderful Victorian paintings. The gallery is gloomy and a bit dark in the day. And what he want to do is bring his guests in the evening to show them his collection. In the flicker of a candlelight however, it's doesn't work so well.
What Armstrong needs are electric bulbs and a way to power them.
But how do he power the bulbs? Luckily for him Michael Faraday has already discovered the secret. Simply, you move a magnet in relation to a coil of copper wire.
I mean yes it's that simple. You've a generator!
But to make more and realistic amount of electricity. Armstrong need to up the game make a bigger generator.
So he bought a Thomson Vortex Turbine. A grand piece of equipment. The turbine needs a vast volume of flowing water to drive a rotor. But all Armstrong has is a tiny stream of water trickling through his estate.
What he need is a lot of water. But how does he get it from a tiny stream of water? He builds a dam.
He builds a ten feet wall across the river that converts it into a tiny lake. The water creates huge pressure at the bottom of the lake which he then channels with a pipe to a power station below where he uses it to drive his huge turbine. Which turns a shaft linked to a generator which in turn produces 4,000 watts of electricity.
For Armstrong, this is just the first step to enlightenment.
Now he need to get the electricity from the station to his gallery over a kilometer away. He connects two strands of thick copper wires to the generator to carry the electric to his mansion.
All in all he uses 5 tonnes of copper to power a single light bulb.
He has invented a world first: a house powered by hydro electricity.
Of course, he never invented any of the technologies he used. But he invented a hydro electric dam.
It might seem trivial what Armstrong did by today standards. However, it's far from trivial. Hydro power drove the industrial revolution and created a clean environment for us all. Industries and cities have been powered by it for more than a century.
We owe the advancement of technology to it and it remains largely unrivaled in power generation.
Even up to date, it accounts for an excess of 70% of all renewable energy on the global.
His simple invention lead to this:
(The Hoover Dam)
And to this:
(The Three Gorges Dam. A Chinese 22,500MW beast)
In my opinion his invention is one of the greatest in the history of mankind.
By the way he is regarded as the inventor of modern artillery. A story for another day.
