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Woolrich Electrical Generator

The Woolrich Electrical Generator, now in Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum, England, is the earliest electrical generator used in an industrial process.[1] Built in February 1844 at the Magneto Works of Thomas Prime and Son, Birmingham,[2][3] to a design by John Stephen Woolrich (1820–1850), it was used by the firm of Elkingtons for commercial electroplating.[4][5][6]

Woolrich Electrical Generator

John Stephen Woolrich

Thomas Prime and Son

February 1844 (1844-02)

1889S00044

Construction[edit]

The generator in its surviving form consists of eight axial bobbins with a magnetic field applied by four iron horseshoe magnets. The rectangular, wood frame measures 5 feet 4 inches (1.63 m) tall, 6 feet (1.8 m) wide, and 2 feet (61 cm) long.[7] The generator was fitted with a commutator, as electroplating requires direct current.

John Stephen Woolrich[edit]

The generator's designer, John Stephen Woolrich, was born in Lichfield, England in late 1820. The second son of John Woolrich (c.1791–1843) and his wife Mary Woolrich (formerly Egginton),[8] he was baptised at St Mary's Church, Lichfield on 6 November 1820.[8]


In August 1842 he was granted patent number 9431 for the use of a magneto-electrical machine[9] (instead of batteries) in electroplating, and the use of gold sulphite and silver sulphite as electrolytes. He offered to sell the rights to Elkingtons for the enormous sum of £15,000; they declined, and after some heated correspondence eventually, in May 1845, agreed to pay Woolrich £100 initially and then £400 annually for the rest of the term of the patent.[6] Woolrich later relicensed the patent himself to use in his own Magneto-Plating and Gilding Works in Great Charles Street, Birmingham,[6][10] and in 1849 was listed as a "chemist & magneto-plater & gilder", residing at 12 James Street, just off St Paul's Square in the Jewellery Quarter.[11]


He died at the age of 29 in early 1850, and was buried at St Bartholomew's Church, Edgbaston on 4 March 1850.[12]


The elder John Woolrich is listed in the United Kingdom Census 1841 as a "Chemist",[13] and at the time of his death on 20 April 1843 was a lecturer in chemistry at the Royal School of Medicine and Surgery in Birmingham.[14] He had a particular interest in electrochemistry, and in February 1819 wrote a letter entitled On Galvanic Shocks to the Annals of Philosophy, pointing out an error in the editor Thomas Thomson's book System of Chemistry. He was granted a number of patents for chemical processes, including one in 1836 for an improved method of producing "carbonate of baryta" (barium carbonate)[15] and another in 1839 for producing "carbonate of lead, commonly called white lead".[16]

Dynamo

Electromagnetic induction

Faraday's law of induction