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Researching magnetism with the great mathematician and astronomer Karl Friedrich Gauss in the 1830s, German physicist Wilhelm Weber developed and enhanced a variety of devices for sensitively detecting and measuring magnetic fields and electrical currents.
In addition to wave theory, Weber was very interested in the phenomena of electricity and magnetism. His interest in these areas he held in common with Carl Friedrich Gauss, with whom he forged a very fruitful association when he accepted a professorship at the University of Göttingen in 1831. The pair built one of the world’s first working electrical telegraphs in 1833, the line of which stretched nearly a mile between Weber’s physics laboratory and the astronomical observatory where Gauss spent most of his time. The galvanometer, a device that Weber would later significantly improve, served as the telegraph’s receiver. Together Weber and Gauss also embarked on the study of terrestrial magnetism, coordinating measurement efforts at magnetic surveying stations around the globe and correlating their results.
Over the course of his investigations on magnetism with Gauss, Weber developed and enhanced a variety of devices for sensitively detecting and measuring magnetic fields and electrical currents. Included among these devices was theelectrodynamometer, which was capable of measuring electric current, voltage or power through the interaction of the magnetic fields of two coils. Using this device, Weber experimentally validated André-Marie Ampère’s force law, but due to his sudden dismissal from the University of Göttingen in 1837 on political grounds, the publication of this research was delayed. When it finally appeared in 1846, it was accompanied by Weber’s generalized electrical law, which essentially integrated Ampère’s law with the laws of induction and the Coulomb-Poisson law.
Accurate measurements were very important to both Weber and Gauss, who realized they were crucial for verifying and developing physical laws. Both scientists would contribute much towards making such measurements possible and establishing units and definitions that could be used to consistently express concepts encountered in the study of electricity and magnetism. Gauss developed a system of magnetic units expressed in terms of length, mass and time in the early 1830s, and Weber began developing a similar system of electric units around 1840. When an official Committee on Electrical Standards was formed by the British Association for the Advancement of Science in the early 1860s, the group adopted the systems created by Gauss and Weber as the foundation to which they added new units and definitions as necessitated by ongoing developments in the field.
After his dismissal from Göttingen, Weber journeyed to England for a time. But for the most part he remained in Germany without an appointment until 1843, when he became a professor of physics at the University of Leipzig. Six years later he returned to Göttingen, where his previous academic position was restored to him. In 1855, he was temporarily installed as director of the university’s astronomical laboratory, but his main endeavors continued to be in the fields of electricity and magnetism. His work on the ratio between the electrodynamic and electrostatic units of charge, which Weber’s calculations indicated was approximately the speed of light, would later become extremely important for James Clerk Maxwell’selectromagnetic theory. In his later years, Weber also delved into the electrical structure of matter. His studies led him to speculate that atoms contain positive charges around which negative particles rotate, and that applying a voltage to a conductor results in the movement of the negative particles between atoms.
>> Wilhelm Eduard Weber was a German physicist interested in magnetism and electricity and noted for contributions that proved crucial to the development of the electromagnetic theory of light. Weber was born in Wittenberg, Germany. His father was a theologian and moved the family to Halle, where Weber attended the University of Halle and received his doctorate in physics in 1826. In 1831, he was appointed professor of physics at Göttingen, where he began a close collaboration and friendship with physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss who was also interested in electricity and magnetism. With Gauss, Weber worked on terrestrial magnetism and developed several magnetic instruments, including an instrument for measuring small electrical currents called the electrodynamometer.
Weber's career was temporarily sidetracked in 1837 when Weber joined six of his colleagues at the university to protest against the abrogation of the German constitution by the King of Hanover. Known as the "Göttingen Seven," all the faculty members were dismissed from their positions. Weber remained in Göttingen without an official appointment until 1843, when he was appointed a physics professor in Leipzig. Three years later, Weber published Electrodynamical Measurements, in which he modified the central force concepts of physics and established an absolute system of electrical units. After returning to his former position at Göttingen in 1948, Weber worked on the ratio between the electrodynamic and electrostatic units of charge that became fundamental to the later development of the electromagnetic theory of light . Weber continued his work in electrodynamics and the electrical structure of matter. The magnetic unit, the weber, is named after him.
In addition to his work in magnetism and electricity, Weber co-wrote a treatise on walking called the Mechanics of the Human Walking Tool with his brother Eduard Friedrich Weber. With another brother, Ernst Heinrich Weber, he published a book on wave motion. Weber died in Göttingen at the age of 86. <<
Weber:
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In physics, the weber /ˈveɪbər/[1] (symbol: Wb) is the SI unit of magnetic flux. A flux density of one Wb/m2 (one weber per square metre) is one tesla.
The weber is named after the German physicist Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804–1891).
(And at last we get to something measurable)
The weber may be defined in terms of Faraday's law, which relates a changing magnetic flux through a loop to the electric field around the loop. A change in flux of one weber per second will induce an electromotive force of one volt (produce an electric potential difference of one volt across two open-circuited terminals).
Officially,
Weber (unit of magnetic flux) — The weber is the magnetic flux that, linking a circuit of one turn, would produce in it an electromotive force of 1 volt if it were reduced to zero at a uniform rate in 1 second.[2]
The weber is commonly expressed in a multitude of other units:
where:
Wb = weber,
V = volt,
T = tesla,
J = joule,
m = meter,
s = second,
A = ampere,
Mx = maxwell.
Ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber_(unit)
The Weber - Primary Thesis:
DETERMINATIONS OF ELECTRODYNAMIC MEASURE: Concerning a Universal Law of Electrical Action by Wilhelm Weber [Treatise at the founding of the Royal Scientific Society of Saxony on the day of the 200th anniversary celebration of Leibniz's birthday, published by the Prince Jablonowski Society, Leipzig
Weber, unit of magnetic flux in the International System of Units (SI), defined as the amount of flux that, linking an electrical circuit of one turn (one loop of wire), produces in it an electromotive force of one volt as the flux is reduced to zero at a uniform rate in one second. It was named in honour of the 19th-century German physicist Wilhelm Eduard Weber and equals 108 maxwells, the unit used in the centimetre–gram–second system.
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Procès-Verbaux des Séances du CIPM (1946), p. 129