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Talk:Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky

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How came it be this is only a mid importance article?. The invention of 3 phase transformer (and induction motors) led to the second Industrial Revolution (electricity), and it´s still the core of the transmission grids.--Xareu bs (talk) 08:07, 2 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Whoever is in charge of upping the importance of articles needs to watch Kathy Joseph Balistreri's video (starting at t=430s or 7:10) about how the world managed to forget Dolivo-Dobrovolsky. Hopefully Balistreri's video plus Wikipedia can raise Dolivo-Dobrovolsky from the ranks of the forgotten geniuses of the 19th century. Wikipedia gives him a passing mention in History of electric power transmission which however is easily overlooked. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 20:38, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Kathy didn't dig up the dirt there. Controversial: Charles EL Brown of the AC company Oerlikon started this 1891 project, as a full test of AC long-lines using bare conductors. (Experts called the bare conductors impossible, and Brown was going to prove them wrong.) When Brown teamed up with the DC company AEG, he also decided to make this a test of Nikola Tesla's 1888 patents on 3-phase. Ever since then, various European countries have been (wrongly) insisting that Dolivo-Dobrovolsky invented the polyphase system and the AC induction motor. That appears to be nationalism in action, distortion of history. Brown himself was later moved to announce in the press, that the system being tested was "due to the efforts of Nikola Tesla." Apparently AEG remained silent about using the Tesla patents, and issuing no corrections when others ascribed the invention to Dolivo-Dobrovolsky.
D-D certainly did invent an improved Tesla-style motor not covered under those 1888 patents (owned by Westinghouse. Tesla took a lump-sum payment, then left the project.) But D-D's motor was just an intermediate stage, while the modern motor widely used today is due to Westinghouse Corp ...the slotted-rotor squirrel-cage motor, invented by Shallenberger. Tesla's original 3-phase motor-invention used wound rotors, not shorting-bars buried in iron slots. (Analogously, Edison's bulb didn't use tungsten filaments in argon, and the first Bell Labs transistor was not William Shockly's later improved version.) 128.95.172.170 (talk) 04:40, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]