Ányos Jedlik

Ányos István Jedlik (1800 to 1895) was a Hungarian Benedictine priest, physicist and inventor who taught physics and mechanics at the University of Budapest. Beginning in 1827 he built electromagnetic rotating devices, an early electric motor, and he formulated the principle of dynamo self-excitation around 1861, using electromagnets in place of permanent magnets, although he said little about it publicly until years later. He also improved batteries for arc lighting by lowering their internal resistance, and devised a voltage multiplying cascade condenser that won a prize at the Vienna World Exhibition of 1873. Hungarians and Slovaks often call him the unsung father of the dynamo and the electric motor. He lectured in Hungarian rather than Latin from 1845 and helped create a Hungarian vocabulary of physics.