(1800 – 1895)

Inventor, engineer, physicist, Benedictine monk. ‘Unsung Father of the Dynamo’.

From 1858 he was a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and from 1873 was an honorary member. The first electromotor (1828) made by him, and Jedlik’s operating instructions, are kept at the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. The motor still works perfectly. In the 1850s he conducted optical and wave-mechanical experiments, and at the beginning of the 1860s he constructed an excellent optical grate.

Jedlik was ahead of his contemporaries in his scientific work, but he did not speak about his most important invention (the dynamo) until 1856. It was not until 1861 that he mentioned it in writing in a list of inventory of the university!

Invented: the electromotor, the dynamo, the carbonated water (soda water).