Talk:History of superconductivity

Section names
It's probably intended to keep material strictly chronological but the section names discourage this as the tendency is to add some new material to the section whose title it seems to relate to. (as I now realise I did earlier)

Should we add dates to the section names to encourage new material to be added chronologically ? Rod57 (talk) 02:48, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Tesla?
What does Tesla's 1900 patent have to do with superconductivity? He's not mentioned in the main article. Długosz (talk) 22:32, 9 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The research by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was in part motivated by the controversy regarding the effect of cooling on electrical resistance. Thomson (Lord Kelvin) alleged that at low temperatures, electron motion would stop resulting in infinite resistivity. This was consistent with the general conceptual model of the electron at the time (i.e. a small (hollow) sphere having mass orbiting a nucleus). Tesla, by virtue of his patent, and public statements viewed the "solar system" model as being a fantasy inconsistent with experimental observation. Tesla's 1900 patent US 685012 explicitly states "I have discovered that when a circuit adapted to vibrate freely is maintained at a low temperature the oscillations excited in the same are to an extraordinary degree magnified and prolonged, and I am thus enabled to produce many valuable results which have heretofore been wholly impracticable. ... my invention consists in producing a great increase in the intensity and duration of the oscillations excited in-a freely-vibrating or resonating circuit by maintaining the same at a low temperature." The method for low temperature is "... in combination with a receptacle containing an artificial refrigerant in which said circuit is immersed ... The means of increasing the intensifying of an artificial refrigerant combined with and applied to such circuit and adapted to maintain the same at a low temperature."
 * In other words, in 1900 Tesla claimed his conceptual model as more accurate and patented immersing and maintaining his circuitry within an artificial refrigerant bath to achieve "great increase in the intensity and duration" of the electrical and electronic parameters. In modern terms we understand this to be the practical application of the superconductivity phenomenon to electrical and electronic systems. 2603:3021:3703:BF00:44C6:5B49:E6A:2C4A (talk) 20:00, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Tesla originally discovered that metals when cooled lower their resistance. Had someone suggested trying Hg he *may* have been the first person to discover this using Linde's machine. Also he is known to have been very skilled with unusual materials and it is possible evidence of this discovery was lost in the fire around 1895 in New York. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.3.100.29 (talk) 06:51, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Wroblewski and Olszewski
The start of the article made some questionable claims about participation in the discovery of superconductivity by Zygmunt Florenty Wroblewski and Karol Olszewski. The nature of the claims sounded dubious, reminiscent of Soviet-era propaganda claims of priority on any number of discoveries, so I tried to find anything authoritative on the subject. Came up empty. Tracked down the addition a series of changes by a Tesla fan in May 2015, and removed the sentence and phrase in question. If anyone can find a legitimate citation, we'll undo my removal. Tarl N. ( discuss ) 00:57, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Help with a figure
Please help me with... I posted a figure "The number of patent families (in red) and non-patent publications (in blue) about superconductivity by year. Also shown as black vertical lines are the main breakthroughs in the field." here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_superconductivity. It looks OK, but it is not in the right place. I would like to split the Intro section into 2 columns: right with the current text: "Superconductivity is the phenomenon of certain materials exhibiting zero electrical resistance and the expulsion of magnetic fields below a characteristic temperature. The history of superconductivity began with Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes's discovery of superconductivity in mercury in 1911. Since then, many other superconducting materials have been discovered and the theory of superconductivity has been developed. These subjects remain active areas of study in the field of condensed matter physics.

The study of superconductivity has a fascinating history, with several breakthroughs having dramatically accelerated publication and patenting activity in this field, as shown in the figure on the right and described in details below. Noteworthy, the number of non-patent publications about superconductors is much larger than the number of patent families, which is characteristic of a commercially unsuccessful technology."

AND left column with the added figure and caption. Walter Tau (talk) 18:34, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
 * , we do not write prose on Wikipedia in columns, so this request is kind of a non-starter, though I suspect I might have misinterpreted your question. If that is the case please feel free to re-open the help me. If you want more help, stop by the Teahouse, or Wikipedia's live help channel, or the help desk to ask someone for assistance. Primefac (talk) 19:12, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The closest to this that is achievable would be to float the figure to the left side, by adding the left parameter to it. I tried that in preview but the result didn't look very good to me so I didn't do that, but feel free to give it a shot. I moved the figure to the top of the page for now which I think looks okay. ■ ∃ Madeline ⇔ ∃ Part of me ; 20:12, 5 March 2023 (UTC)