Ottó Bláthy

The native form of this personal name is Bláthy Ottó. This article uses the Western name order.

Ottó Bláthy
Native name	Bláthy Ottó
Born	(1860-08-11)11 August 1860 Tata, Hungary
Died	Budapest, Hungary
Nationality	Hungarian
Fields	Electrical engineering
Known for	Electric transformer

Prototypes of the world's first high-efficiency transformers. (Széchenyi István Memorial Exhibition Nagycenk)

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, (voltage stabilizer), the AC watt-hour meter, motor capacitor for the single-phase (AC) electric motors, the turbo generator, and the high efficiency turbo generator.

Ottó Titusz's career as an inventor began during his time at the Ganz Works in 1883. It is noteworthy, that the name "transformer" was created by Ottó Titusz Bláthy. There, he conducted experiments for creating a transformer. In 1885 the ZBD model alternating-current transformer was invented by three Hungarian engineers: Ottó Bláthy, Miksa Déri and Károly Zipernowsky. (ZBD comes from the initials of their names). In the autumn of 1889 he patented the AC watt-meter.

Bláthy's Wattmeter

Early life

He attended schools in Tata and Vienna where he obtained diploma of machinery in 1882. Between 1881-1883 he worked at the machinery workshop of the Hungarian Railways (MAV). Attracted by the successes of Károly Zipernowsky, he joined his team on 1 July 1883. He admitted he had learnt nothing about electrotechnics in university, so he started to learn about the theory himself. Using the Maxwell equations he invented a practical approach of sizing magnetic coils. Kapp and Hopkinson (for whom Hopkinson's law is named) only published their findings later in 1886, and 1887.

Professional life

His practical calculation method was crucial in building the first practical transformer. Based on his findings, he rebuilt his machines in 1883 and obtained better efficiency with the same weight. He was the first to investigate the heat dissipation problems of electric motors, and at that time the connection between current density and heat was determined.

At the Turin Italian National Exhibition in 1884, he saw Gaulard and Gibbs's "secondary generator"' (i.e. AC transformer) system, and he decided to improve it. Including a closed loop magnetic field, based on the findings of Faraday, he conducted experiments with Miksa Déri in the summer of 1884 at the Ganz factory. Based on these experiments, they invented the transformer in 1885, which was unveiled at the Budapest National Exhibition in 1885.

Based on the opinions of Galileo Ferraris, the Italian government ordered a power transformer for Rome, which was installed in October 1886. Later, they designed a power plant for Tivoli, built by Ganz, with six water turbines and 5000 V, which were worked in parallel with the old steam engine generators. This was the first time in history two high-voltage power plants were connected.

His other invention, the electricity meter, was first introduced to the market in 1889. He tried to improve it and decrease its weight.

Chess works

Besides his scientific work, Ottó Titusz Bláthy is well known as an author of chess problems. He specialized in the field of very long moremovers, also known as longmovers. (see grotesque (chess) for one of his problems).

External links

• Bláthy's Inventions [1]
• Technical University of Budapest, "Ottó Titusz Bláthy".Budapest, 1996 .
• Blathy's problems on PDB Server
• Biography and inventions of Otto Titusz Bláthy