William Sturgeon

William Sturgeon was a British electrical engineer and inventor, born May 22, 1783 in Whittington, Lancashire and died December 4, 1850 in Prestwich, Lancashire, credited with building the first practical electromagnet. Self-taught in mathematics and physics after joining the army as a young man, he became a lecturer at the East India Company's military seminary in 1824, the same year he exhibited an electromagnet capable of lifting nine pounds of iron with a coil weighing only seven ounces, a demonstration that helped launch the practical use of electromagnetism. In 1832 he demonstrated an improved direct-current electric motor fitted with a commutator, and in 1836 he built a moving-needle galvanometer for measuring electric current and founded the journal Annals of Electricity, Magnetism and Chemistry, followed in 1837 by co-founding the London Electrical Society and improving the induction coil. He later became superintendent of the Royal Victoria Gallery of Practical Science in Manchester in 1840.