Abstract
BY the death on August 4 of Mr. S. A. Varley, at eighty-nine years of age, we have lost almost the last of those pioneers who were associated with the application of electricity. A young'er brother of the late Cromwell Varley, F.R.S., and an early student and disciple of Michael Faraday, Mr. Varley was a notable inventor even comparatively early in life, when in the service of the Electric Telegraph Company. His name and fame will always be especially associated with dynamo-electric machinery, the first example of which he produced in 1866. This was a self-exciting machine with soft iron magnets. Ten years later Mr. Varley patented the original compound-wound dynamo. This afterwards became the subject of litigation, when Mr. Varley's claims to priority were in the end completely established. The machine may be seen amongst the historical apparatus at the South Kensington Museum. His other inventions included a lightning protector for telegraph lines and cables, a polarised needle telegraph instrument, and the time-ball as now used at Greenwich Observatory and elsewhere.
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B., C. Samuel Alfred Varley. Nature 107, 789–790 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/107789b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/107789b0