John Dixon Gibbs (1834–1912) was a British engineer and financier who, together with

Lucien Gaulard Lucien Gaulard (16 July 1850 – 26 November 1888) invented devices for the transmission of alternating current electrical energy. Biography Gaulard was born in Paris, France in 1850. A power transformer developed by Gaulard of France and Joh ...

, is often credited as the co-inventor of the AC step-down transformer. The transformer was first demonstrated in 1883 at

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. At the time the term "transformer" had not yet been invented, so instead it was referred to as a "secondary generator". Although he is usually credited equally with Gaulard, Gibb's role in the invention appears to have been more that of a financial backer and businessman. Although the underlying physics of the transformer, mainly

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, had been known since the 1830s, transformers became viable only after the introduction of Gaulard and Gibbs's transformer design in 1883. The breakthrough was to build an iron transformer core which could act as a magnetic circuit. At the time, their invention was seen as overcomplicated since it contained a movable armature. It caught the attention of

Sir Coutts Lindsay Sir Coutts Lindsay, 2nd Baronet (2 February 1824 – 7 May 1913 Kingston upon Thames), was a British artist and watercolourist. Life Lindsay was the eldest son of Lieutenant-General Sir James Lindsay, son of the Hon. Robert Lindsay, second ...

, who used it to power the

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, which was one of the first lighting systems in Britain powered by a central generating station. In 1885

Ottó Bláthy Ottó Titusz Bláthy (11 August 1860 – 26 September 1939) was a Hungarian electrical engineer. In his career, he became the co-inventor of the modern electric transformer, the tension regulator, the AC watt-hour meter.motor capacitor f ...

Miksa Déri Miksa Déri (27 October 1854 November, Bács, Kingdom of Hungary, (now: Bač, Serbia) – 3 March 1938) was a Hungarian electrical engineer, inventor, power plant builder. He contributed with his partners Károly Zipernowsky and Ottó Bláth ...

and

Károly Zipernowsky Károly Zipernowsky (born as Carl Zipernowsky, 4 April 1853 in Vienna – 29 November 1942 in Budapest) was an Austrian-born Hungarian electrical engineer. He invented the transformer with his colleagues ( Miksa Déri and Ottó Bláthy) at ...

secured a patent on a similar design, using laminated sheets of metal to reduce eddy currents. Information on an exhibition of Gibbs and Gaulard's transformer in Turin, Italy in 1884 was published in 1885 and caught the attention of

George Westinghouse George Westinghouse Jr. (October 6, 1846 – March 12, 1914) was an American entrepreneur and engineer based in Pennsylvania who created the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry, receiving his first patent at the age ...

. In the summer of 1885 Westinghouse bought the American rights for Gibbs and Gaulard's design and ordered that several transformers from Gibbs and Gaulard be purchased and shipped to his factory in Pittsburgh. Westinghouse then asked the engineer William Stanley, Jr. to design an electric lighting system using them. Stanley subsequently greatly improved on Gibbs and Gaulard's design and is often credited in their place. John Dixon Gibbs had his work patented under German patent no. 28947, a patent also recognized in Great Britain. The patent was disputed by Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti. Following patent litigation, Gibbs and Gaulard lost the patent. Gibbs appealed the suit, taking the case all the way to the House of Lords, where he again lost. He was financially ruined in the process.

References

1834 births 1912 deaths British electrical engineers {{UK-engineer-stub