Who laid the groundwork for modern technology? Modern inventions like transistors, ICs and wireless communications didn’t come out of thin air; thousands of brilliant scientists and inventors had to discover every aspect of the electronic technology that made them possible over the last few hundred years. by Dr David Maddison
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The theoretical foundation was laid in the early 1830s, with the independent discovery of electromagnetic induction by Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry. They showed that a changing magnetic field can induce a current of a higher voltage (known as “stepping up”) or a lower one (“stepping down”). But it took another half-century before Lucien Gaulard, John Dixon Gibbs, Charles Brush, and Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti could design the first useful transformer prototypes. Next, a trio of Hungarian engineers Ottó Bláthy, Miksa Déri, and Károly Zipernowsky improved the design by building a toroidal (doughnut-shaped) transformer, which they exhibited in 1885.