Sturgeon, William (1783-1850)

English physicist and inventor who made the first practical electromagnets. He also invented a galvanometer in 1836.

Sturgeon was born in Whittington, Lancashire, and apprenticed to a shoemaker. He was in the army 1802-20, and in 1824 became a lecturer in science and philosophy at the East India Royal Military College of Addiscombe. In 1832 he was appointed to the lecturing staff of the Adelaide Gallery of Practical Science, and in 1840 he moved to Manchester to become superintendent of the Royal Victoria Gallery of Practical Science. When this failed, he became an itinerant lecturer. In 1836 he established Annals of Electricity, the first English-language journal devoted wholly to electricity. It ran until 1843, after which he founded other publications.

In 1828 Sturgeon put into practice the idea of a solenoid, first proposed by French physicist André Ampère, by wrapping wire round an iron core and passing a current through the wire. He found that a magnetic field was formed, which seemed to be concentrated in the iron core and disappeared as soon as the current was switched off. His device was capable of lifting 20 times its own weight.