Andre Blondel, French Physicist and Inventor

Andre-Eugene Blondel (August 28, 1863 - November 15, 1938) was a French engineer and physicist. Very early in his career he suffered immobility due to a paralysis of his legs, which confined him to his room for 27 years, but he never stopped working. In 1893 he sought to solve the problem of integral synchronization, using the theory proposed by Cornu. He determined the conditions under which the curve traced by a high-speed recording instrument would follow as closely as possible the actual variations of the physical phenomenon being studied. This led him to invent the bifilar and soft iron oscillographs. These instruments won the grand prize at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. He built a theory of rectification with asymmetrical electrodes. He demonstrated that there were three kinds of electric arc: the primitive arc of William Duddell, the secondary arc of Valdemar Poulsen, and a succession of oscillatory discharges. In 1894 he proposed the lumen and other new measurement units for use in photometry, based on the metre and the Violle candle. In 1909 he worked on one of the first long distance schemes for the transmission of AC power. He died in 1938 at the age of 75. Undated, uncredited portrsit of Blondel

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Blondel Electromagnetic Measurement Oscillograph Rectification Theory

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