Everyone knows that Kulibin is a great Russian inventor, mechanic, and engineer. His surname has long become a common noun in the Russian language. But, as a recent survey showed, only five percent of respondents could name at least one of his inventions. How so? We decided to conduct a small educational program: so, what did Ivan Petrovich Kulibin invent?
Ivan Petrovich, born in the settlement of Podnovye near Nizhny Novgorod in 1735, was an incredibly talented person. Mechanics, engineering, watchmaking, shipbuilding - everything was developed in the skillful hands of the Russian self-taught man. He was successful and was close to the empress, but none of his projects, which could make life easier for ordinary people and promote progress, were either properly financed or implemented by the state. While entertainment mechanisms - funny automata, palace clocks, self-propelled guns - were financed with great joy.
watercraft
At the end of the 18th century, the most common method of lifting cargo on ships against the current was barge labor - hard, but relatively inexpensive. There were also alternatives: for example, machine ships driven by oxen. The design of the power-driven vessel was as follows: it had two anchors, the ropes of which were attached to a special shaft. One of the anchors on a boat or along the shore was delivered forward 800-1000 m and secured. The oxen working on the ship rotated the shaft and wound the anchor rope, pulling the ship towards the anchor against the current. At the same time, another boat carried the second anchor forward - this ensured continuity of movement.
Kulibin came up with the idea of how to do without oxen. His idea was to use two wheels with blades. The current, rotating the wheels, transferred energy to the shaft - the anchor rope wound, and the ship pulled itself to the anchor using the energy of the water. During his work, Kulibin was constantly distracted by orders for toys for the royal offspring, but he managed to get funding for the manufacture and installation of his system on a small ship. In 1782, loaded with almost 65 tons (!) of sand, it proved to be reliable and much faster than a ship drawn by oxen or burlats.
In 1804, in Nizhny Novgorod, Kulibin built a second waterway, which was twice as fast as the Burlatsky barks. Nevertheless, the Department of Water Communications under Alexander I rejected the idea and prohibited funding - water conveyances never became widespread. Much later, capstans appeared in Europe and the USA - ships that pulled themselves to the anchor using the energy of a steam engine.
Screw elevator
The most common elevator system today is a winch-mounted cabin. Winch elevators were created long before Otis's patents in the mid-19th century - similar structures were in operation in Ancient Egypt, they were driven by draft animals or slave power.
In the mid-1790s, the aging and overweight Catherine II commissioned Kulibin to develop a convenient elevator for movement between floors of the Winter Palace. She definitely wanted an elevator chair, and Kulibin was faced with an interesting technical problem. It was impossible to attach a winch to such an elevator, which was open at the top, and if you “picked up” the chair with a winch from below, it would have caused inconvenience to the passenger. Kulibin solved the problem ingeniously: the base of the chair was attached to a long axis-screw and moved along it like a nut. Catherine sat on her mobile throne, the servant turned the handle, the rotation was transmitted to the axis, and it raised the chair to the second floor gallery. The Kulibin screw elevator was completed in 1793, but the second such mechanism in history was built by Elisha Otis in New York only in 1859. After Catherine's death, the elevator was used by courtiers for entertainment and was then bricked up. To date, drawings and remains of the lifting mechanism have been preserved.
Theory and practice of bridge construction
From the 1770s until the early 1800s, Kulibin worked on the creation of a single-span permanent bridge across the Neva. He made a working model, on which he calculated the forces and stresses in various parts of the bridge - despite the fact that the theory of bridge construction did not yet exist at that time! Through experience, Kulibin predicted and formulated a number of laws of strength of strength, which were confirmed much later. At first, the inventor developed the bridge at his own expense, but Count Potemkin gave him money for the final layout. The 1:10 scale model reached a length of 30 m.
All bridge calculations were presented to the Academy of Sciences and verified by the famous mathematician Leonhard Euler. It turned out that the calculations were correct, and tests of the model showed that the bridge has a huge margin of safety; its height allowed sailing ships to pass without any special operations. Despite the Academy's approval, the government never allocated funds for the construction of the bridge. Kulibin was awarded a medal and received a prize; by 1804, the third model had completely rotted, and the first permanent bridge across the Neva (Blagoveshchensky) was built only in 1850.
In 1936, an experimental calculation of the Kulibin bridge was carried out using modern methods, and it turned out that the self-taught Russian did not make a single mistake, although in his time most of the laws of strength of strength were unknown. The method of making a model and testing it for the purpose of force calculations of the bridge structure subsequently became widespread; various engineers independently came to it at different times. Kulibin was also the first to propose using lattice trusses in the bridge design - 30 years before the American architect Itiel Town, who patented this system.
On the bridge over the Neva
Despite the fact that not a single serious invention of Kulibin was ever truly appreciated, he was much luckier than many other Russian self-taught people, who were either not allowed even to the threshold of the Academy of Sciences, or were sent home with a 100 ruble bonus and no more recommendations. mind your own business.
Self-running stroller and other stories
Often, Kulibin, in addition to the designs he actually invented, is credited with many others, which he actually improved, but was not the first. For example, Kulibin is often credited with the invention of the pedal scooter (the prototype of the velomobile), while such a system was created 40 years earlier by another self-taught Russian engineer, and Kulibin was the second. Let's look at some of the common misconceptions.
So, in 1791, Kulibin built and presented to the Academy of Sciences a self-propelled carriage, a “self-propelled carriage,” which was essentially the predecessor of the velomobile. It was designed for one passenger, and the car was driven by a servant standing on the backs and alternately pressing the pedals. The self-running carriage served for some time as an attraction for the nobility, and then was lost in history; Only its drawings have survived. Kulibin was not the inventor of the velomobile - 40 years before him, a self-propelled stroller of similar design was built in St. Petersburg by another self-taught inventor Leonty Shamshurenkov (known in particular for the development of the Tsar Bell lifting system, which was never used for its intended purpose). Shamshurenkov’s design was a two-seater design; in later drawings, the inventor planned to build a self-propelled sled with a verstomer (a prototype of a speedometer), but, alas, did not receive proper funding. Like Kulibin’s scooter, Shamshurenkov’s scooter has not survived to this day.
Prosthetic leg
At the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, Kulibin presented to the St. Petersburg Medical-Surgical Academy several projects of “mechanical legs” - prosthetic lower limbs that were very advanced at that time, capable of simulating a leg lost above the knee (!). The “tester” of the first version of the prosthesis, made in 1791, was Sergei Vasilyevich Nepeitsyn, at that time a lieutenant who lost his leg during the assault on Ochakov. Subsequently, Nepeitsyn rose to the rank of major general and received the nickname Iron Leg from the soldiers; he led a full life, and not everyone knew why the general limped slightly. The prosthesis of the Kulibin system, despite favorable reviews from St. Petersburg doctors led by Professor Ivan Fedorovich Bush, was rejected by the military department, and mass production of mechanical prostheses imitating the shape of a leg later began in France.
Spotlight
In 1779, Kulibin, who was fond of optical instruments, presented his invention to the St. Petersburg public - a searchlight. Systems of reflecting mirrors existed before him (in particular, they were used in lighthouses), but Kulibin’s design was much closer to a modern searchlight: a single candle, reflecting from mirror reflectors placed in a concave hemisphere, gave a strong and directional stream of light. The “Wonderful Lantern” was positively received by the Academy of Sciences, praised in the press, approved by the Empress, but remained only entertainment and was not used to illuminate streets, as Kulibin initially believed. The master himself subsequently produced a number of spotlights for individual orders of shipowners, and also made a compact lantern for a carriage based on the same system - this brought him some income. The master was let down by the lack of copyright protection - other craftsmen began making carriage “Kulibino lanterns” en masse, which greatly devalued the invention.
What else did Kulibin do?
He established the work of workshops at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, where he was engaged in the manufacture of microscopes, barometers, thermometers, telescopes, scales, telescopes and many other laboratory instruments.
Renovated the planetarium of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
He came up with an original system for launching ships.
Created the first optical telegraph in Russia (1794), sent to the Kunst Chamber as a curiosity.
He developed the first iron bridge project in Russia (across the Volga).
He designed a row seeder that ensures uniform sowing (it was not built).
He arranged fireworks, created mechanical toys and automata for the entertainment of the nobility.
I repaired and independently assembled many clocks of different layouts - wall, floor, tower.
Common surnames
The surname Kulibin has become a household name meaning “jack of all trades.” This is not a unique case: the words “pullman”, “diesel”, “raglan”, “whatman” and others also come from proper names. Most often, the invention was simply named after the name of the inventor, but popular rumor made Kulibin’s surname a household name. We have collected several more similar stories.
The word “boycott” comes from the name of the British captain Charles Boycott (1832−1897), who was the manager of the Irish lands of the large landowner Lord Erne. In 1880, Irish laborers refused to work for Boycott because of dog-like lease conditions. Boycott's struggle with the strikers led to the fact that people began to ignore the manager, as if he did not exist at all: he was not served in stores, they did not talk to him. This phenomenon was called "boycott".
The word “silhouette” appeared thanks to the appointment of Etienne de Silhouette (1709−1767) to the post of Comptroller General (Minister) of Finance of France. He became a minister after the Seven Years' War, which plunged France into crisis. Silhouette was forced to tax almost every sign of wealth, from expensive curtains to servants, and the rich disguised their wealth by buying cheap things. Household items that disguise wealth began to be called silhouette things, and in the middle of the 19th century, the simplest and cheapest type of painting - outline along a contour - received this name.
The word "hoodlum" appeared in London police reports in 1894 when describing youth gangs operating in the Lambeth area. They were called the Hooligan Boys by analogy with the London thief Patrick Hooligan, already known to the police. The press picked up the word and elevated it to the rank of a whole phenomenon called hooliganism (hooliganism).
In the factory Urals, Kulibin was from Nizhny Novgorod, a city that then played a prominent role in the country's economy.
Various crafts have long been developed in Nizhny - blacksmithing, carpentry, shoemaking, hat-making, tailoring and many others. There were anchor factories, rope factories, tanneries, and beer factories.
Located at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga, Nizhny was one of the main Volga ports. There were extensive warehouses of salt, grain, leather and other goods. Not far from the city there was the famous Makaryevskaya fair (in the 19th century it was moved to Nizhny and subsequently called Nizhny Novgorod). Russian and foreign goods were brought to the Makaryevskaya fair from the entire Volga region, from Moscow and St. Petersburg, from Ukraine and the North, from Siberia, etc. In turn, the “Makaryevskaya luggage” along the Volga and its tributaries and other routes was sent to all these close and remote areas of the country.
Ivan Petrovich Kulibin was born on April 10, 1735 in the family of a poor flour merchant. In some later documents, Kulibin is called “Nizhny Novgorod Posad”.
Kulibin did not receive a school education, since his father intended him to engage in trade, and therefore believed that it would be enough for his son to learn to read and write from a sexton. However, selling flour in his father's shop did not satisfy young Kulibin. He was most interested in all kinds of mechanisms, which he began to make from a young age.
He built small crowds, mills and other self-propelled toys, and one day this fact attracted his attention. In the Kulibins' garden there was a pond where the water had no flow and therefore the fish died in it. Young Kulibin came up with a way to use a special hydraulic device to deliver water to a special pool, and from there to the pond. Excess water was drained from the pond. Since then, the fish in the pond began to multiply.
Of all the mechanisms, Kulibin was most interested in watches, and this is no coincidence. The 18th century was a time of fascination with machine guns in Russia and throughout Europe. The clock was the first automatic device created for practical purposes. In the 17th-18th centuries, outstanding scientists and inventors both in Russia and abroad made a variety of clocks: wall, table, pocket, tower, often connected to complex decorative automatic machines. In the 18th century, work on clock construction first gave inventors the idea of using winding machines in production. The designers transferred the operating principle of the clock mechanism to other devices.
Kulibin, when he was in Nizhny Novgorod, wanted to understand the structure of the tower clock of the Stroganov Cathedral. For this purpose, he repeatedly climbed the bell tower of the cathedral and watched the work of this clock.
In the house of the Nizhny Novgorod merchant Mikulin, Kulibin saw a cuckoo clock. He tried to make the same clock from wood. This required tools that could not be obtained in Nizhny Novgorod. When Kulibin was sent to Moscow on business, he was lucky enough to get the necessary tools there at a low price from the Moscow watchmaker Lobkov. This master treated Kulibin very carefully. He not only helped him acquire tools, but also shared with him his knowledge and experience in watchmaking.
Upon returning from Moscow, Kulibin set up a workshop and began producing clocks of various complex systems. After the death of his father, Kulibin, who was then 28 years old, left trade and devoted himself entirely to his favorite business - mechanics.
From the production of wall clocks, Kulibin moves on to studying pocket watch and in a short time becomes the most popular watchmaker in Nizhny Novgorod. However, even at that time he was not just an experienced artisan. Through self-education, Kulibin constantly sought to expand his knowledge. In his free time, he studied physics, mathematics, and drawing.
Kulibin also studied articles by G.-V. Kraft (author of “A Brief Guide to the Knowledge of Simple and Complex Machines”), published in “Additions to the St. Petersburg Gazette,” and other manuals on exact and applied sciences that he managed to get in Nizhny Novgorod. And there were already many such benefits. It is interesting to note that Kraft’s articles, which Kulibin became acquainted with, were published in translation by M.V. Lomonosov.
Kulibin's art as a watchmaker continued to improve. From 1764 to 1769 he worked on the production "egg figure clock"- a highly complex miniature machine the size of a goose egg, amazing in its subtlety and elegance of decoration. These clocks not only played cantatas composed by Kulibin, they also housed an automatic theater where tiny doll-actors acted out a mystery play. Currently, this clock is kept in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
Egg figure watch
Although Kulibin outsourced some of the operations for the manufacture of watches and other mechanisms, Kulibin had to carry out a significant part of the operations himself with the help of only one student, Pyaterikov. Thus, he had to be a carpenter, mechanic, metal turner and at the same time a master of precision mechanics.
While manufacturing his complex machine gun, Kulibin could not devote enough time to working for customers, and his financial affairs began to deteriorate. But he had to feed himself with his family and an assistant - watchmaker Alexei Pyaterikov. The days of severe need have come.
Unexpectedly, the mechanic received support from his friend the merchant Kostromin. This merchant helped Kulibin with money, hoping that the inventions of the talented mechanic would be appreciated by the government and part of Kulibin’s fame would spread to him, Kostromin, the mechanic’s friend and patron. Kostromin especially hoped that the “egg figure clock” would be shown to Catherine II herself, whose arrival was expected in Nizhny Novgorod in the spring of 1767.
Almost simultaneously with the production of this watch, Kulibin made a microscope, a telescope, a telescope and an electric machine. At the same time, he had to independently solve the most complex problems of optical technology, develop alloy formulations for mechanical mirrors, grind glass, etc.
In May 1767, Catherine, who was making one of her trips around the country in pursuit of popularity, actually arrived in Nizhny Novgorod, accompanied by a brilliant retinue. Among the latter was the director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences V.G. Orlov.
Kostromin ensured that Kulibin was allowed to see Catherine. The inventor showed the queen his automatic watch and some other devices.
In this regard, the question was raised about the desirability of transferring such an outstanding instrument maker to the workshops of the Academy of Sciences. Orlov supported this proposal, and Catherine promised to summon Kulibin to St. Petersburg. However, the fulfillment of this promise had to wait two years, during which the mechanic continued to work on the “egg figure clock” and build other devices. At the beginning of 1769, Kulibin and Kostromin went to St. Petersburg, where they waited for a long time to be accepted into the academic service.
Only on December 23, 1769, the directorate of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg issued a resolution: “For the better success of the arts and skills that depend on the Academy of Sciences in the Valkov House, accept into the academic service, under the conditions [conditions] attached to this, the Nizhny Novgorod townsman Ivan Kulibin, who has already shown his art experiments, and swear him in.” Kulibin was appointed to the post of head of the mechanical workshops of the Academy of Sciences and moved to the capital. Thus began the long and fruitful activity of Ivan Petrovich Kulibin in St. Petersburg.
The mechanic had the opportunity to consult on all issues that interested him with outstanding scientists of the time, including Lomonosov’s direct students and L. Euler. Communication with the latter gave Kulibin especially a lot. He could keep abreast of the latest scientific literature published not only in Russia, but partly also abroad (in Russian translations - Kulibin himself did not speak foreign languages).
Kulibin also had connections through his work with D. Bernoulli, with the astronomer S.Ya. Rumovsky, physicist L.Yu. Kraft, adjunct of the Academy M.E. Golovin and others.
Academic workshops led by Kulibin, and after M.V. Lomonosov remained the largest center for the development of domestic instrument making. They produced navigation, astronomical and optical instruments, electrostatic machines, etc. The workshops had a number of departments - instrumental, optical, barometric, turning and carpentry. “Direct viewing” of the chambers was carried out by master P.D. Caesar's In addition, instrument makers such as Ivan Belyaev and others worked with Kulibin.
As the head of the workshops, Kulibin not only organized the work, but also himself invented various new mechanisms, devices and tools. His achievements are especially significant in the field of production of optical and other instruments, including original ones, manufactured in academic workshops for the first time.
In the field of development of domestic instrument making, Kulibin was a direct successor to the work of A.K. Nartov and M.V. Lomonosov. Kulibin developed the wonderful traditions of his predecessors: he updated the equipment of his workshops; replenished their staff with young masters who studied with him, experienced “artists” who worked under Lomonosov.
In academic workshops, the fruitful collaboration between designers and theoretical scientists continued, which began under Nartov and Lomonosov.
Outstanding scientists took part in the work of the workshops. So, for example, the first achromatic microscope according to calculations by L. Euler (this is the name of a microscope with a lens that allows you to avoid distortion of the object in question). The work was carried out under the leadership of Kulibin and his assistant I.G. Shersnevsky and master I.I. Belyaev. But apparently, for some reason the work was not completed.
Based on the research of scientists on electricity (after the works of M.V. Lomonosov and G.-V. Richman, the study of atmospheric and static electricity became a constant topic of study for a number of St. Petersburg academic physicists, including L. Euler. F.-U.-T Epinus, L.Yu. Kraft and others), Kulibin developed drawings of various electrical devices.
Let us recall that back in the 18th century, the first types of electrostatic machines appeared, i.e., devices used to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy of charged conductors based on electrification by friction.
Friction was carried out by rotating a glass ball. In 1744, it was proposed to use leather pads covered with amalgam, pressed against the glass by springs, to rub the ball. In most cases, Kulibin's drawings depict electrostatic machines of this type. Later, the ball was replaced by a glass cylinder (Kulibin built similar ones), and then by a glass disk. Electrostatic machines could only serve for experiments and demonstrations of electrical effects. In the 40s of the 18th century, the first type of electrical charge capacitor, called the “Leyden jar,” was invented in Western Europe. Kulibin's drawings of such “cans” along with electrostatic machines have been preserved (Kulibin built the first electrostatic machine while he was in Nizhny Novgorod), as well as his detailed instructions on “how to maintain electric machines at decent strength.”
Along with electrostatic machines of considerable size, Kulibin and his assistants produced miniature machines for demonstration purposes when delivering lectures on physics.
Kulibin built instruments that were new at that time for the work of academic physicists - electrophores. This was the name given to devices that operate on the basis of excitation of electric charges by electrostatic induction. In Russia, the idea of electrophores was first implemented by Academician Epinus (in foreign literature, priority in the invention of electrophores is usually unreasonably attributed to A. Volt). The electrophore consisted of a resin disk and a metal disk equipped with an insulating handle. The resin disk was rubbed with fur, and then a metal disk was placed on it, grounding the outer surface of the latter with the touch of the hand. An electric charge appeared on the metal disk by induction. Holding the disk by the handle, it was possible to transfer this charge to some conductor.
The Kulibin “Description of the action of electrophores”, dating back to the 70s of the 18th century, has been preserved.
In the summer of 1776, a small electrophore was brought from Vienna to St. Petersburg. Having studied it, Kulibin, by order of Empress Catherine II, then made his own copy, which was described in the works of the Academy of Sciences a year later. Academician I. Georgi pointed out that “the oval electrophore made ... by Mr. Kulibin is, perhaps, the largest of all those made so far.” D. Bernoulli also mentioned this device. It consisted of two metal plates in the form of ovals or rectangles with rounded corners. The dimensions of the bottom plate are 2.7 by 1.4 meters. To fill it (to obtain a dielectric) 74 kg of resin and 33 kg of sealing wax were used. The upper one, suspended on silk ropes, had to be raised and lowered using blocks. The electrophorus was installed in the Empress's palace in Tsarskoe Selo, and was subsequently transported to the physics office at the Academy of Sciences, where it remained until the beginning of the 19th century (further fate is unknown). How formidable this electrophorus was can be judged at least by the fact that it was possible to kill small animals with a discharge of much smaller electrophores.
The wonderful master continued to work on electrophores in the future. Thus, in the list of planned works dating back to the 80s, he decreed “an electrophore with 6 wax circles, on one axis.” Excellent Kulibin instruments helped St. Petersburg academicians in further research. Thus, physicist L.Yu. Kraft in the article “An Experience in the Theory of Electrophores” (1777) wrote: “My numerous experiments... came to the aid of another machine, huge in size and action, built... by the most skillful Russian master Mr. Kulibin, which gave me the desired opportunity to study nature and the causes of this special electrical force and the phenomena associated with it.”
Kulibin (like Nartov in his time) was involved in various technical examinations, participated in examination commissions, etc.
Academic workshops under the leadership of Kulibin produced electric machines, telescopes And telescopes, microscopes, thermometers, barometers, pyrometers, air pumps, precision scales, clocks of various systems.
At that time, the Academy of Sciences organized a number of scientific expeditions. These expeditions, working from 1768 to 1774, explored vast areas from Belarus, Moldova and Bessarabia to Eastern Siberia (the Baikal region) and from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to Transcaucasia, the border regions of Persia and the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. These expeditions contributed to familiarizing the whole world with Russia. They collected a lot of materials on ethnography, archeology, botany, zoology and geography.
For the expeditions it was necessary to produce a large number of scientific instruments. A significant part of these instruments, which worked well under difficult expedition conditions, were manufactured in academic workshops under the leadership of Kulibin.
The mechanic devoted a lot of time to training young instrument makers. And at the same time, immediately upon his arrival in St. Petersburg, they began to distract him in the most unceremonious manner from his intense design work at the academy to decorate various festivities at the court and in the houses of Catherine’s nobles.
Kulibin, of course, could not refuse. After all, the government considered Kulibin primarily as a builder funny slot machines And theater machines, organizer illuminations and lighting effects. But even in this matter, Kulibin showed his exceptional talent, resourcefulness and wit. In Kulibin's working notes and in the memoirs of contemporaries, only a small part of the data about these activities of Kulibin was preserved. But even these few pieces of information show how talented and inventive Kulibin was in all the matters he undertook.
For example, Kulibin found a way to illuminate a dark corridor more than 100 m long in the semi-basement floor of the Tsarskoye Selo Palace. Kulibin placed a mirror outside, from which daylight fell on a system of mirrors placed inside the building, and, reflecting repeatedly, illuminated the corridor.
Kulibin's workbooks contain descriptions of various inventions for the device fireworks and lighting effects. It mentions multi-colored lights, rockets in the form of peacock tails, rotating wheels, “spike”, “snake”, “drop” rockets, moving mirror reflections in the form of figures, luminous and flickering outlines of buildings, etc. Kulibinsky illuminations created the impression of a bright extravaganza and amazed with the vividness of imagination.
Kulibin acted as a real poet and artist, capturing fairy-tale images not with words or brushes, but with a combination of lighting effects and multi-colored lights.
When organizing these holidays, Kulibin had to visit the court and the houses of the highest St. Petersburg nobility.
It was not difficult for him to obtain a civil or academic rank, giving him the right to wear a uniform and formal access to the court. But Kulibin rejected repeated offers of any “class rank.” He did not want to exchange the caftan of a townsman for a uniform or suit of European cut, nor did he want to shave off his beard.
He had the peculiar sense of self-dignity of a hereditary townsman who did not want to acquire the appearance of an official or nobleman. Since he did not want to adapt to the demands of the “world,” he had to look for a way out. In the spring of 1778, Catherine ordered a large gold medal on a St. Andrew's ribbon to be made especially for Kulibin (it is clearly visible in the portrait of the inventor given in this article). The medal (and not the order) could also be awarded to representatives of the tax-paying, “lower” classes. St. Andrew's tape seemed to introduce Kulibin into the “high society.” At the same time, Catherine did not miss the opportunity to remind about her enlightenment. On the front side of the medal there was a portrait of Catherine, and on the reverse side there were symbolic images of Science and Art, crowning the name of Kulibin with a laurel wreath. The inscriptions on the medal read: “To the worthy one,” as well as “Academy of Sciences to mechanic Kulibin.”
At the beginning of 1787, Kulibin turned to the director of the Academy of Sciences E.R. Dashkova with a request to release him from managing the workshops. He wanted to concentrate all his efforts on inventive activities (as this was allowed by constant orders from the palace department).
One of the first important inventions made by a mechanic back when he was in charge of academic workshops was the famous "Kulibino lantern"- one of the first spotlights to receive practical application. The poet G. R. Derzhavin dedicated poems to the Kulibin lantern:
You see, on the pillars at night like sometimes
And a light stripe
In carriages, in the streets and in boats on the river
I shine in the distance.
I illuminate the whole palace with myself,
Like a full moon...
Kulibinsky lantern with mirror reflection
Kulibin was helped by his excellent knowledge of the laws of optics to invent such a spotlight, which successfully operated using very weak light sources that were common at that time. The “St. Petersburg Gazette” dated February 19, 1779 said about this invention: “The St. Petersburg Academy mechanic Ivan Petrovich Kulibin invented the art of making a mirror made up of many parts with some special concave line, which, when only one candle is placed in front of it, produces an amazing effect, multiplying the light 500 times against ordinary candle light and more, depending on the number of mirror particles...”
"Kulibino Lantern"
The Academy of Sciences highly appreciated Kulibin's invention. The mechanic himself used these lights on lighthouses, ships, public buildings, etc.
One of Kulibin’s biographers reports an interesting case of the use of a Kulibin lantern by the navigator G.I. Shelikhov during one of his voyages to the shores of Alaska:
The residents of Kyktaka Island were hostile to Shelikhov. Wanting to avoid bloodshed, he decided to trick them into “respecting him as an extraordinary person.” Knowing that the islanders worshiped the Sun, Shelikhov told them that he could summon the Sun at will.
After this, he ordered the residents of Kyktak to gather on the shore at night and wait, and in the meantime, having previously ordered at what time to light the lantern on the mast of the ship, which was located at a great distance from the shore, he began to call the Sun. When the islanders saw the strong light of the Kulibin lantern, they “fell to the ground with a cry and terrible excitement,” offering prayers to the Sun, which had so miraculously revealed its face at night at Shelikhov’s call. They recognized the latter as a great sorcerer and showed him all sorts of honors.
In the 80s, Kulibin improved the design of his lanterns and the methods of their manufacture. He produced lanterns with various reflectors of different sizes and luminous intensity for illuminating carriages, entrances of residential buildings, factories, palaces, streets, squares, etc.
Kulibin also made an outstanding contribution to the development of bridge construction. Kulibinsk has become widely known both in Russia and abroad. project(made in three versions) single-span arch bridge across the Neva about 300 m long with wooden lattice trusses. For that time it was an original and new bridge construction system.
The mechanic began working on the project of a single-span bridge back in 1769, i.e., from his arrival in the capital, when he became convinced of how great the need was for establishing a permanent connection across the Neva. The floating bridges that existed at that time on barges were raised during ice drift and when the Neva flooded.
Kulibin's confidence that he was on the right path in developing the bridge project was further strengthened after it was announced in the St. Petersburg Gazette for 1772 that the Royal Society of London (English Academy of Sciences) had announced a competition for the bridge project across the Thames, “which would consist of one arch or vault without piles, and would be established with its ends on the banks of the river.”
G.A. Potemkin received 1000 rubles from the Cabinet. for experiments related to the development of the Kulibin project. Using these funds, the mechanic began to build, according to his third version of the project, a model of the bridge one-tenth of its natural size. The model was tested at the end of 1776 by a special commission, which included Leonhard Euler and his son Johann Albrecht, S.Ya. Rumovsky, N.I. Fuss, L.Yu. Kraft, M.E. Golovin, S.K. Kotelnikov and others.
Some academicians did not believe that Kulibin’s model would pass the test, and made all sorts of jokes about this, such as that Kulibin would soon make us a stairway to heaven.
To test the strength of the model, three thousand pounds of cargo was first placed on it, which was considered the maximum load according to the calculations made, and then over 500 pounds were added. With this load, the model stood for 28 days without receiving damage, after which it was put on public display in the courtyard of the Academy (in 1777, the fiftieth anniversary of the Academy of Sciences was celebrated in St. Petersburg. In connection with the celebration of this date, the Kulibin model was also exhibited).
The tests not only confirmed the correctness of Kulibin's calculations, but also contributed to the theoretical research carried out by Euler and other academicians.
In a letter dated June 7, 1777, Daniel Bernoulli wrote to the secretary of the Academy N.I. Fuss about the deep respect he had for Kulibin and his knowledge, and asked Kulibin to express his opinion on some issues (about the resistance of wood as a building material) that Bernoulli had been studying for a long time.
On March 18, 1778, Bernoulli wrote to the same Fuss: “Euler carried out in-depth research on the strength of beams used in various ways, especially vertical pillars... Could you instruct Mr. Kulibin to confirm Euler’s theory with similar experiments, without which his theory will only remain true hypothetically."
However, the construction of the bridge never materialized. The model was moved to Potemkin’s garden and served decorative purposes. If it is possible to somehow explain the refusal to build a single-arch bridge (the service life of wood was limited, and Kulibin himself, as we will see later, came to the conclusion that it was preferable to build bridges from iron), then the dismissive attitude towards the model has no justification. After all, it was of great scientific interest.
Subsequently, the outstanding bridge builder engineer D.I. Zhuravsky wrote about the model of the Kulibinsky bridge: “It bears the stamp of genius; it is built according to a system recognized by modern science as the most rational; the bridge is supported by an arch, its bending is prevented by a bracing system, which is called American only due to the unknown of what is being done in Russia.”
Kulibin made a number of inventions in the field of land and water transport. This is very characteristic of the manufacturing period. At that time, numerous projects for ships “going against the current without sails” and “scooters” were put forward throughout Europe.
Since the 80s of the 18th century, Kulibin has been studying the issue of self-propelled ships, but not because he imitated anyone in his inventions, but was prompted to his quest by the conditions of Russian reality. From an early age, the Nizhny Novgorod mechanic saw pictures of the wasteful, cruel use of barge labor on the Volga.
Where the condition of the banks made conventional towline traction impossible, imported traction or “feed” traction was used. This ancient method of transportation was described back in the 16th century. An anchor with a rope tied to it was brought forward from the ship on a special boat. The anchor was thrown to the bottom and secured, while the barge haulers, standing on the deck of the ship, pulled out either a winch or, more often, simply a rope brought in with straps, pulling the ship to the anchor. When they approached the anchor, they were given the end of the rope from this anchor, brought forward during this time, and the first was removed. In this way, the ship moved forward at a speed of 5-10 km per day. Usually barge haulers also did no more than 10 km per day.
The idea has long been expressed that the muscular strength of people pulling up a rope brought forward can be replaced either by the strength of animals (horses, bulls), or by the force of the flow of the water itself. After all, if a horizontal shaft equipped with paddle wheels at the ends is drawn through the ship (across it), and the free end of the rope connected to the anchor brought forward is fixed on this shaft, then the current, rotating the paddle wheels, will itself wind the rope onto the shaft, which means and pull the ship towards the delivered anchor. Such vessels were called navigable.
In the 18th century in Russia, so-called “engine” ships were used, where the gate that pulled the ship to the anchor brought forward was rotated by bulls or horses. Kulibin was engaged in both the improvement of the latest type of vessels and the creation of navigable vessels. Just like the mechanic, he sought to ease the hard work of working people, in this case barge haulers, and at the same time he also cared about the benefit of the state.
Invented by Kulibin, it was held on November 8, 1782 on the river. Neva by an authoritative commission consisting of specialists in navigation issues. On the day appointed for this, many people gathered on the banks of the Neva. Everyone was curious to see how a ship without sails or oars would go against the current. Imagine the surprise of those present when, at the appointed hour, the ship, loaded with 4,000 pounds of ballast, easily began to move against the strong wind and high waves! The ship was captained by Kulibin himself.
The results of the trial were very favorable. But the government soon ceased to be interested in Kulibin’s experiments, and the Volga and other shipowners preferred to use the cheap power of barge haulers rather than invest in “engine-powered ships.”
In the 80s and 90s, Kulibin was engaged in the construction of “scooters” driven by the muscular power of the riders themselves. Similar experiments were carried out throughout Europe during the 15th-18th centuries.
Famous figures of the Renaissance - Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Durer and some of their contemporaries (for example, G. Fontana) drew designs for such carts. In some of them, servants in lush suits, seated in self-propelled carriages along with passengers, rotate manual drives, in others they move the drive wheels with their feet, in others they step on pedals located at the back of the carriages. At the end of the 17th century, a scooter of this kind was built in France by Richard. Richard's scooter was driven by a footman who stood on the back and pressed the pedals. In 1748, a scooter with a muscular engine was built in France by J. Vaucanson, and in 1769 in England by J. Vivers.
Mechanical cart projects also emerge early. Some designers (for example, the 17th-century German mechanic I. Hauch) proposed a clock mechanism as an engine (however, the cart actually built by Hauch in 1649 was driven by muscular force). The great English scientist Newton first put forward (in 1663) the idea of applying steam power to self-propelled carriages. According to his plan, a stream of steam escaping backwards from a boiler mounted on a four-wheeled cart was supposed to push the cart forward by recoil force.
This idea, anticipating later jet means of transport, was left without consequences - it was too ahead of the level of technology of the 18th century. But then, after the invention of steam engines, repeated attempts were made to build a carriage with a steam engine (Cugnot in France, Symington and Murdoch in England, etc.).
However, steam carriages, designed and partly built by designers of the 18th century, did not receive practical use. Therefore, work on creating muscle carts continued in various countries. The customers were usually rich and noble people, who expected their servants to operate such scooters.
And in Russia, Kulibin had predecessors in the field of creating scooters. Among them was, for example, the peasant of the Yaransky district Leonty Shamshurenkov, who invented a “self-running stroller” driven by the muscular power of two people. At that time he was sitting in a Nizhny Novgorod prison as a suspect in someone else’s case. Shamshurenkov, summoned to the capital in 1752, built a carriage, but was sent back to prison. His invention was not used.
Scooter According to the design, Kulibina was a three-wheeled stroller-bicycle. It had to be driven by a worker standing on his heels using foot pedals. The scooter was equipped with complex transmission devices that made it possible to change the speed of movement, steering, and a braking mechanism. These devices were further developed in mechanical carriages. The scooter could carry one or two passengers.
In addition to two versions of a three-wheeled scooter, Kulibin also developed projects for a four-wheeled cart of a similar device. However, the carts designed by Kulibin were also not used, like Shamshurenkov’s self-running stroller.
Kulibin paid great attention to the design of various engines. Like many of his predecessors, he was primarily concerned with improving water-powered installations.
So, in the 80-90s, Kulibin designed floating water-acting installations on barges (“mills without dams”). The construction of dams was very expensive; they often collapsed, especially during floods. Finally, being built on navigable rivers, they blocked the waterway.
Kulibin proposed building water-powered installations without dams, on barges, and the work of the wheels should be transferred to the shore and used for one or another production purpose.
In 1797-1801, he wrote a note on improving the design of water wheels at the Alexander Manufactory in St. Petersburg. But along with the improvement of previous types of engines, Kulibin also raised the question of using a steam engine in industry and transport.
In the 80-90s of the 18th century, when Kulibin was diligently studying the issue of choosing the best type of engine, the universal machine of the Englishman Watt was just beginning to be used (almost exclusively in England) in the field of industry. The use of steam power in transport has not yet left the stage of projects and unsuccessful experiments.
The Russian Academy of Sciences was interested in the issue of steam engines. In 1783, she set before scientists the task of “explaining the theory of machines driven by the force of fire or vapor.” However, speaking about the use of machines, the Academy still considered them mainly as steam pumps. “... These machines,” said the academic Izvestia, “are used with particular benefit to raise water, to pour it out of canals, to cleanse places flooded by river floods, from stagnant water in low places, also in mining pits and coal mines [for pumping water] and for other hydraulic and mechanical actions.” What kind of “mechanical actions” were meant was not specified here. In 1791, a steam engine, apparently of the Watt system, built at the Olonets factories, was installed at the Voitsky mine near the city of Kemi. Again, it was used only for pumping out water.
It can be suggested that his conversations with L.F. played a certain role in familiarizing Kulibin with the latest designs of steam engines at that time. Sabakin. A native of the Tver province, mechanic Lev Fedorovich Sabakin (1746-1813) was a versatile inventor. He worked extensively and successfully in instrument making, producing navigational and other precision instruments and instruments, and constructing complex clocks of his own design. He met Kulibin, apparently in connection with his work on watches.
In the mid-80s, Sabakin visited England and personally met Watt and the manufacturer Bolton, at whose Soho plant advanced steam engines were being built.
English factory owners were very reluctant to allow visitors to their enterprises - England at that time had a monopolist in the production of many types of machines.
Despite this, Sabakin understood the advantages of a double-acting steam engine and not only gave an image of such a machine in his “Lectures on Fire Engines” published in 1787, which was an appendix to Ferguson’s work on applied mechanics translated by Sabakin, but also proposed his own version of a steam engine engine.
Since Kulibin had long been concerned with the issue of finding the most advanced universal engine for factory and transport purposes, he was keenly interested in Watt’s inventions.
That is why in his papers we find an image of Watt's double-acting machine with a capacitor, a balancer and a planetary mechanism that transmits the movement of the connecting rod to a shaft with a flywheel.
In 1798 and 1801, Kulibin put forward the idea of using a steam engine on ships, in other words, he proposed building a steamship. And in this matter, Kulibin had a number of predecessors and contemporary like-minded people abroad.
The idea of the applicability of the steam engine in water transport was put forward by D. Papin at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. The first design of a ship with a steam engine was drawn up by the Englishman J. Halls in 1736.
Kulibin paid a lot of attention to the issue of creating a steam ship. He pondered the practical issues of organizing the production of steam engines and proposed introducing a new type of machines for boring the cylinders of such engines (in 1801). Later (in 1814), Kulibin raised the question of using a steam engine in mechanical engineering, as well as in the manufacture of bridge parts.
Kulibin (after 1793) was also seriously involved in improving communications. At that time, a new type of communication equipment arose - optical (or semaphore) telegraph. Such a telegraph was first proposed in revolutionary France by Claude Chappe in 1791 and was systematically used by the Jacobin Convention.
The essence of the invention was as follows. Between two points, stations were built at a certain distance in the form of houses with towers. Masts with wings (movable slats) were installed on the towers. The conventional positions of these wings (equipped with lanterns lit at night) were supposed to convey certain signs according to the conventional code. The first optical telegraph line was established between Paris and Lille in 1794. A detailed description of the optical telegraph in Russian appeared only in 1795.
Kulibin began designing an optical telegraph without knowing the details of Shapp's invention. In 1794-1795 he developed an original optical telegraph scheme and a convenient, simple telegraph code. In 1801, the Kulibin optical telegraph model was demonstrated to Paul I. However, the government left the Kulibin project without support, and it remained unfulfilled.
It is clear that optical (semaphore) telegraph retained its significance only until the advent of a more advanced electric telegraph. Meanwhile, in Russia (where the electric telegraph was invented in the early 30s of the 19th century), the first optical telegraph line was installed in 1835, and the government of Nicholas I paid the French designer Chateau (a student of Chappe) 120 thousand rubles for the “secret” of it optical telegraph - if there is a simpler circuit of Kulibin's optical telegraph in the archives of the Academy of Sciences.
The mechanic also owned many other inventions and improvements in various fields of technology.
Kulibin's manuscripts and drawings indicate that he, like the most outstanding Western inventors of the 18th century, was characterized by an encyclopedicism that is surprising to us now, a truly Lomonosov-like breadth of the range of issues that he dealt with. This, of course, was possible only in that era when technology was relatively elementary, while today the level of technology is so high that each branch of it requires special, professional specialization.
In the early 90s of the 18th century, a mechanic made important improvements for the production of large mirror glass. These innovations were practically applied at the St. Petersburg Glass Factory.
Kulibin was studying methods of launching ships from slipways. In May 1800 he proposed to the Admiralty his methods of launching and preventing accidents in the process, but these were ignored until the scandal of the launching of the Grace forced the Admiralty to turn to the mechanic for help.
It happened like this. At the beginning of August 1800, in the presence of Paul I, in the presence of a large crowd of people, the descent of the ship "Grace" began, first moving off, but then suddenly stopping. All measures were taken, but it was not possible to move the ship further.
Indignant, Pavel demonstratively left. Many were threatened with cruel reprisals from the tsar. Then they remembered Kulibin. The mechanic quickly made all the necessary calculations, and the next day the ship was launched under the leadership of Kulibin.
At this time, Kulibin’s activities in creating various watches continued very successfully. For example, they made "planetary" pocket watch, equipped with several dials and seven hands that showed the position of the constellations (“zodiac signs”) in the sky at a given moment, the time of year, the rising and setting of the Sun and Moon, the days of the week, hours, minutes and seconds.
It was made by him and pocket chronometer(in 1796-1801), which showed time with particular accuracy.
Kulibin’s work on the design of improved prostheses is known. Kulibin's interest in this type of invention is not accidental. The second half of the 18th century was a time of bloody wars waged by Russia for access to the shores of the Black Sea, for the reunification of Ukrainian and Belarusian lands, etc. Many soldiers and officers were left crippled. Distinguished by his humanity and responsiveness, Kulibin thought a lot about how to alleviate the lot of Russian soldiers who lost limbs in the war.
First prosthesis, made by Kulibin in 1791 for the officer Nepeitsin, who lost his leg in the heroic battle of Ochakov, was so perfect that Nepeitsin soon learned to walk freely without a cane.
Kulibin coped just as successfully with various complex assignments, with which the court, both under Catherine and under Paul, continued to constantly distract him from important work on invention.
Kulibin was instructed, for example, to correct " peacock clock", purchased in 1780 in England (now they are in the State Hermitage). The automatic watch was a very complex mechanism. Externally they looked like this:
A peacock stood on the cut top of an oak tree. A cage with an owl hung on one oak branch, and a rooster stood on the other. There was a large mushroom under the oak tree. Part of the mushroom cap was cut off and a clock dial was placed in it. At certain hours, the chimes played, the rooster crowed, the owl batted its eyes, the peacock spread its tail, and a dragonfly jumped on a mushroom. This machine was damaged and did not work for a long time. Kulibin corrected the clock, making many of the missing parts himself, some of which were lost and others became unusable.
Hermitage, “peacock clock”
Kulibin had to deal with another equally intricate machine gun that belonged to Naryshkin. This machine spoke and played checkers with visitors. It had to be moved to another place, and for this purpose it was disassembled, but they could not reassemble it. Only Kulibin managed to cope with this task.
Once, already under Paul I, Kulibin was urgently summoned because the spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress was allegedly bent during a storm. When this was reported to Pavel, he was very upset and ordered the spire to be immediately straightened. Kulibin, despite his advanced years, climbed the spire several times. The mechanic risked his life because he had to climb wire ladders and the internal structure of the cathedral tower without any equipment. The spire was carefully examined by Kulibin and plumbed. Not the slightest bend was detected.
Then the commandant of the fortress led Kulibin to one door and asked him to look at the spire in relation to the door frame. Kulibin looked and proved to the commandant that it was not the spire that was bent, but the door frame that was crooked. The commandant was mortally frightened. He could pay heavily for the false alarm he raised. He literally begged the mechanic to report to Pavel that the spire was indeed bent and was now fixed. Kulibin did just that, saving the overzealous campaigner from trouble.
After the assassination of Paul I in March 1801 and the accession of Alexander I to the throne, Kulibin turned to the new government with a request to help continue the interrupted work on the construction of a “machine” (navigable) vessel. The very name of the project attached to the mechanic’s petition is characteristic: “Proposals on how it is more convenient and without burdening the treasury to put into use on the Volga River ... engine-powered ships for the benefit of the state.”
To continue the experiments, Kulibin asked, firstly, to give him a subsidy of 6 thousand rubles to pay off debts, “which remained with him solely for the production of experiments for the benefit of the treasury and society in inventions,” and for new expenses, and secondly, to allow he should move to Nizhny Novgorod.
Kulibin was forced to ask for dismissal from the Academy of Sciences, where he worked for 32 years, because the situation in the capital was becoming unbearable for him or, in his own words, “circumstances were becoming increasingly cramped.”
In the last years of Catherine's reign and under Paul, the Academy was in crisis. The Academy was run by rude, poorly educated officials like P.P. Bakunin. Scientific work has declined. The struggle of Catherine and Paul with the French revolutionary “contagion” forcibly interrupted the international relations of the Academy, which had the most negative impact on the activities of scientists. Kulibin was distracted by all sorts of assignments that had nothing to do with science and technology. For Catherine, the outstanding inventor was just a court porthole, and for Paul, he was a commoner artisan, who would not be sorry to send to climb the tower of the cathedral - if the old man falls from there, the loss is small. It was said about Pavel that as a child he (and, of course, from the words of his elders, i.e. Catherine’s courtiers) brazenly declared regarding the death of Lomonosov: “Why feel sorry for a fool - he only ruined the treasury and did nothing.”
The accession to the throne of Alexander 1, who solemnly declared that “everything will be as under grandmother,” aroused enthusiasm in noble circles and encouraged some academicians who turned to Alexander with a petition for immediate reform of the Academy and fear of its collapse.
But the return of “grandmother’s” times did not bode well for Kulibin. The sixty-year-old mechanic could not combine inventive activity with continuous court assignments. His inventions were realized with the same difficulty as under Catherine and Paul.
The financial situation of Kulibin and his family was very difficult. That is why Kulibin decided to return to his homeland, so that there, in a calmer environment, he could devote himself entirely to inventive activity.
In the fall of 1801, Kulibin and his family moved to Nizhny Novgorod. In mechanics, despite his advanced age, there was so much ebullient energy that on the very first day of his arrival he went to measure the speed of the Volga flow, for which he used a device he had invented back in St. Petersburg.
So, from the end of 1801 and throughout the subsequent years 1802-1804, he was completely absorbed in the construction of a machine-powered ship on the Volga. Kulibin worked on such ships later. In any weather: cold, rain, summer heat, he went to the river to the place where his ship was built and tested. Even the death of his wife (shortly after moving) - a misfortune that he experienced painfully, so that everything seemed distasteful to him, could not distract him from what he loved,
After construction and testing "engine-powered vessel" Kulibin continued to improve it. But Kulibin failed to interest local merchants in his invention and ensure that they put these ships into use.
It should be noted that in the last, Nizhny Novgorod, period of his life, Kulibin continued to be interested in steamships. He copied messages from the St. Petersburg Gazette about the testing of a steamship on the Thames in 1801; clarified the design details of the ship. Like Juffour in France and Fich in America, Kulibin intended to use on the first ship a propulsion system not in the form of paddle wheels, but in the form of a comb of oars.
As noted above, the main reason that hindered the mechanization of Russian water transport and, therefore, standing in the way of the introduction of Kulibin’s “engine-powered vessel” into practice lay in the socio-economic conditions of life in Russia at that time.
The presence of cheap barge labor prevented not only the introduction of horse-drawn and navigable vessels, but also the first steamships.
In the end, Kulibin's navigable vessel, built according to the first of his new designs (Kulibin later developed two more improved designs), was sold for scrap at auction in November 1808 for 200 rubles.
Famous writer V.T. Korolenko, publishing materials from Kulibin’s biography, wrote: “Kulibin had to go through an episode that still remains unclear in its most important features. Here [in Nizhny Novgorod] in 1808, his self-propelled ship, which was handed over to the Nizhny Novgorod Duma in 1807, was sold for scrapping.”
Korolenko added that “this career could provide material for a tragedy, and then its culminating point should be this sale for firewood of one of his most serious creations. And this happened 12 years before his death in the same city where he lived at that time, which means, before his eyes... And the inventor did not have the 200 rubles that were paid at the auction... and which could have saved his creation.”
One could assume that Kulibin's navigable vessels were not successful due to the slowness of the “feeds”, when the ship was each time pulled up to the anchor brought forward.
However, a few years later, other designers were more fortunate, and their ships, although not navigable, but horse-drawn, in which the rope from the anchor brought forward was wound around the gate (installed on the ship) by the force of a horse, gained some popularity on the Volga.
Of course, horse guides remained a very imperfect and slow means of transportation. However, it is characteristic of the general state of Russian transport of that time that, along with the first steamships, the so-called capstan ships were used for a long time, working in “feeds” in the same way as navigable and horse-drawn ships, with the only difference that now there is a gate on the ship that pulls it up to the anchor brought forward, it was rotated not by the flow of water, not by animals, but by a steam engine.
Disappointments in the matter of navigable vessels did not break the will of the inventor.
Of particular importance is the development of several metal bridge projects. Kulibin was interested in the issue of metal bridges back in the St. Petersburg period of his life. By 1811-1812, he had already developed a number of striking designs for bridges across the Neva with iron lattice trusses. Of the options proposed by Kulibin, the main one was a three-span arch bridge with iron lattice trusses. The bridge was supposed to have two additional draw spans at the ends (near the banks).
Kulibin should be considered a pioneer in the development in Russia of projects and calculations of not only wooden, but also metal arched bridges with lattice trusses. The mechanic's insight was manifested primarily in the fact that he identified iron, and not cast iron, as a building material for his bridges.
In Russia there were no iron bridges at all; in Western Europe there were only a few of them.
When constructing metal bridges in the most developed countries of the West at the beginning of the 19th century (cast iron was also used as a material. For example, the Southor Bridge across the Thames by engineer Renia, the bridges of the Manchester-Liverpool Road). Iron became the predominant material for such bridges only from the second decade of the 19th century, i.e., after the death of Kulibin. These are the suspension bridge of Menea in North Wales by the engineer Telford of 1818-1826; Robert Stephenson's new girder bridge 1846-1850; Niagara Suspension Bridge of Father and Son Roebling 1851 - 1855. In the first half of the 19th century, bridges with wooden trusses were often built, especially in America (Gau system). Only since the 40s of the 19th century have bridges with iron through trusses of various systems become widespread.
Kulibin understood that given the still poorly developed Russian metalworking industry, it would be difficult to manufacture all the elements of iron arched lattice trusses. Therefore, he proposed building special metalworking machines driven by a steam engine.
“And the effect could be even better and stronger instead of horses [as a motive force] from water or from a steam engine, why should we completely cancel the opinion [intention] about a horse-drawn engine, and think about a steam engine,” he wrote in his workbook for 1814.
Basic iron bridge project across the Neva was completed by Kulibin in 1813. The mechanic turned to Alexander I, who had repeatedly stated in his manifestos and rescripts (messages) about his desire to “promote”, that is, to promote the development of science and technology, with a request to support his project. There was no answer.
Kulibin sent the project to the all-powerful temporary worker Arakcheev. He refused to help and returned the project to the inventor.
The mechanic sent his long-suffering project to the Minister of Public Education A.K. Razumovsky. The project was lost in the offices of the latter. For a long time, Kulibin and those who sought to assist him were looking for a project that was ahead of the bridge-building practice of both Russia and Western Europe. Finally, the lost materials were discovered, but fell into the hands of Razumovsky’s successor (since 1816), the famous bigot and reactionary A.N. Golitsyn, under whom the department he headed received the name “Ministry of Spiritual Affairs and Public Education.”
Golitsyn’s department rejected Kulibin’s project, putting forward the untenable argument that the bridge supports could not be installed due to strong currents. For the mechanic, this was a blow no less powerful than the collapse of his attempts to mechanize river transport.
Kulibin also continued to work on many other inventions.
So, he worked a lot on improving the mechanisms used in salt extraction. After carefully studying the Stroganov salt mines, he designed a new horse drive for pumping unit, raising the brine solution.
Russia's participation in the wars against Napoleonic France and the confidence of Russian society that even more bloody battles lay ahead with an enemy dreaming of world domination prompted Kulibin in 1808 to resume studies on improving prosthetics.
Models of prosthetics together with detailed drawings and descriptions were sent by a mechanic to the St. Petersburg Medical-Surgical Academy. But, despite the favorable review of Professor of Surgery I.F. Bush, and this invention was ignored. Meanwhile, some time later, an inventor in France came up with a similar invention. He was honored by Napoleon I and after the War of 1812 began mass production of prosthetics for wounded French officers.
Kulibin did not even receive reimbursement for the costs of making the models.
Despite his large pension of 3,000 rubles per annum, Kulibin found himself in debt. Up to twenty different persons were his creditors. The money was spent on new experiments, constructing models, etc.
Kulibin's financial situation became especially difficult after misfortune befell him in the fall of 1813 - two of his wooden houses, which made up all of Kulibin's property, burned down. After the fire, at first Kulibin lived with his old student and friend A. Pyaterikov, and then with his daughter in the village of Karpovka.
The mechanic was left homeless, and his debts were increasing, since he did not give up his inventive activities. By 1815, he had a debt of up to 7 thousand rubles. Kulibin had no money to build a home for himself. He had to turn to the “public charity” authorities, from where he received a loan of 600 rubles. With this money he bought himself a dilapidated house.
Since 1817, the health of the 82-year-old mechanic began to deteriorate rapidly and on June 30, 1818, he died. There was such poverty in the house that there was nothing even to bury the outstanding Russian inventor. I had to sell the only wall clock, and Pyaterikov got some money. A wooden monument was erected over the mechanic’s grave at the Peter and Paul Cemetery in Nizhny Novgorod.
We saw that Kulibin's creativity was aimed at solving advanced technical problems of his time: finding an improved engine for industry, attempting to mechanize water and land transport, creating powerful lighting devices, and building huge bridges.
In terms of the encyclopedic breadth of his interests, Kulibin was a typical representative of the Lomonosov galaxy. True, some of Kulibin’s research bore the “birthmarks” of the craft and manufacturing period. This applies primarily to his barren search for a “perpetual motion machine”.
It is indicative, however, why Kulibin needed a “perpetual motion machine.” In this, the mechanic was already a man of the emerging machine era. He was looking for a new universal engine capable of replacing the previous engines characteristic of the manufacturing period, and, moreover, better than the steam engines known to Kulibin. He was confident, as he himself wrote later, that “such a machine [the “perpetual motion machine”] in a large formation can serve on roads for transporting heavy loads with carts, climbing mountains with variable speed in motion, and with light, droshky-like carts, and it will be especially useful for navigation on large navigable rivers, like the Volga and similar ones; in stationary places they can act instead of river waterfalls, winds, horses, boiling water vapor - to the action of various mills and other machines.”
Even more characteristically, Kulibin believed in the possibility of finding such an engine because he was convinced of the limitlessness of the achievements of the human mind.
In one of his letters (circa 1815), touching on the issue of a “perpetual motion machine,” Kulibin emphasized that unknown spaces were opening up for technology: after all, inventions that “were revered in the world as impossible before their discovery, such as firearms gunpowder,” became reality. , Mongolian balloons with air travelers, amazing effects of electric forces...”
And what is important for us is not that in certain issues Kulibin paid tribute to the prejudices of the past. In general, the work of the remarkable mechanic was directed towards the future, and Kulibin acted not only as a designer who grasped new trends in technical development, but also as a true poet of future technical progress.
Before Kulibin’s mind’s eye the vast expanses of his native country opened up, across whose rivers huge iron bridges would be thrown; along the roads of which “scooter” carriages will race, throwing sheaves of light from their lanterns into the evening hour, “climbing the steepest mountains and descending from them without the slightest danger.” He foresaw the coming of air travel and the use of electricity in the service of man. And in this ability to see the distant future, the mechanic Kulibin was also a follower of Lomonosov.
An outstanding Russian mechanic, self-taught inventor.
Ivan Petrovich Kulibin was born on April 10 (April 21), 1735 in a settlement in Nizhny Novgorod district into the family of a flour merchant.
At a young age, I.P. Kulibin learned metalworking, turning and watchmaking. In 1764-1767, he created a microscope, an electric machine, a telescope and a telescope based on samples brought from him, and began work on a pocket watch, which was a complex mechanical device. During a visit in May 1767, the mechanic was introduced to the empress; his work made a great impression on her. I.P. Kulibin was invited to, where in 1769 he presented a unique pocket watch of his own design (now kept in the State Hermitage).
In 1770-1787, I.P. Kulibin headed the mechanical workshops of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Under his leadership, astronomical optical tubes, electrostatic devices, and navigation instruments were manufactured, in the design of which scientists from the Academy of Sciences participated.
Over the years of work at the Academy of Sciences, I.P. Kulibin became the author of many original projects. He created many clock mechanisms - “planetary” pocket watches that showed months, days of the week, seasons and phases of the moon, miniature “ring watches”, etc. In the 1770s, he designed a wooden single-arch bridge across the Neva with a span length unprecedented for that time - 298 meters. In 1779, I.P. Kulibin designed a lantern (spotlight), which produced powerful light from a weak source and was used to illuminate workshops, ships, lighthouses, etc.
In 1787-1801, I.P. Kulibin was engaged in invention, remaining a consultant at the mechanical workshops of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1791, he made a pedal scooter, in which he used a flywheel, brake, gearbox, and rolling bearings. He also developed the design of “mechanical legs” (prostheses). In 1793, I.P. Kulibin built an elevator that raised the cabin using screw mechanisms. In 1794, he created an optical telegraph for transmitting conventional signals over a distance.
In 1801, I.P. Kulibin graduated from his service at the Academy of Sciences and returned to, where he was mainly involved in projects for powered ships. In 1804 he built a “vodokhod” - a vessel that “went against the water, with the help of the same water, without any outside force.”
In 1813, a fire deprived I.P. Kulibin of almost all his property. The inventor lived the last years of his life in poverty. I.P. Kulibin died on July 30 (August 11), 1818.
In Russia, the name “Kulibin” has become a household name. This is the name given to self-taught craftsmen who have achieved great success in their craft, as well as, with a greater or lesser degree of irony, those who like to remake or improve something on their own in machines and mechanisms.
Ivan Petrovich Kulibin(1735-1818) - Russian self-taught mechanic. Invented many different mechanisms. Improved the grinding of glasses for optical instruments. He developed a project and built a model of a single-arch bridge across the Neva River with a span of 298 m. He created a “mirror lantern” (prototype of a spotlight), a semaphore telegraph and many other devices and mechanisms.
Natural talent
Ivan Kulibin was born April 21 (April 10, O.S.) 1735, in Nizhny Novgorod, in the family of a small Old Believer merchant in Nizhny Novgorod, which was then a large industrial and cultural center. From an early age, the boy showed exceptional ability to make complex mechanical devices, especially clock mechanisms.
Service in St. Petersburg
In 1764-1767, Kulibin made a clock of his own design in the shape of an egg - a highly complex automatic mechanism (now kept in the Moscow Polytechnic Museum). In 1769, he presented it to Empress Catherine II, who, admiring the miracle watch, appointed him head of the mechanical workshops of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He accepted the position on the condition that he retained the right to dismiss at his own request, and was in charge of the workshops until 1801.
Long life
Growing up during the time of Elizabeth, Ivan Petrovich Kulibin lived as a mature man at the court of Catherine, then Paul, and then Alexander I, traveled with Grigory Potemkin to Novorossiya, witnessed Napoleon’s invasion of Moscow, saw the splendor of the court and the misfortunes of the outskirts, knew the severity of royal favors and shame poverty, was friends with the greatest scientists of his time (Leonard Euler, Daniil Bernoulli) and was despised by his Nizhny Novgorod neighbors on the street, who considered him a sorcerer who could “put the evil eye on him.”
Kulibin's personality traits
A tireless innovator, Ivan Petrovich was conservative in his habits and home life. I never smoked tobacco or played cards. Wrote poetry. He loved parties, although he only joked and joked at them, since he was an absolute teetotaler. At court, among the embroidered uniforms of Western cut, Ivan Kulibin in a long caftan, high boots and a thick beard seemed to be a representative of another world. But at balls he responded to ridicule with inexhaustible wit, endearing him with his good-natured loquacity and innate dignity in appearance.
The only enemy
It is interesting that such a person had a personal enemy among high-ranking officials of Russia - Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and President of the Russian Academy, who did so much to “increase the sciences” in Russia! It remains a mystery to historians what “small service” Kulibin did not once render her, which she could not forget. She refused him an increase in salary when the Kulibin family increased to seven children, and Derzhavin, who had obtained an increase from the Empress over Dashkova’s head, created a scandal, literally going berserk and telling him (Derzhavin), according to her notes, “a lot of rude things, even about the Empress. .."
Fruitful activity of Ivan Petrovich
Kulibin's field of activity is vast. Particularly surprising is the abundance of drawings he left behind - about 2000 pieces, from drawings of optical and physical-chemical devices to grandiose designs for bridges, cars, ships and buildings.
Kulibinsky bridge projects
In the 1770s, Ivan Kulibin designed a wooden single-arch bridge across the Neva River with a span of 298 m (instead of 50-60 m, as was built at that time). In 1766 he built a 1/10 life-size model of this bridge. It was tested by a special academic commission. The project was highly appreciated by the mathematician L. Euler, who used Kulibin’s model to check the correctness of his theoretical formulas. However, the project was not implemented, although the bridge would have made life easier for St. Petersburg residents during floods. Since 1891, Kulibin had been working on options for a metal bridge, but the project, despite its full technical validity, was rejected by the government.
Spotlight, scooter
In 1779, Kulibin designed his famous lantern with a reflector, which gave powerful light from a weak source. In 1790, he made a pedal cart with a flywheel, brake, gearbox, rolling bearings, etc. In the same year, he developed the design of “mechanical legs” - prostheses (which were used by a French enterprise after the War of 1812).
Return to Nizhny Novgorod
In 1801, Kulibin resigned from the academy and returned to Nizhny Novgorod. Here he developed a method for moving ships upstream using the current itself and in 1804 he built a “water channel”. He invented many different other things: devices for boring the internal surfaces of cylinders, a machine for extracting salt, seeders, mill machines, a water wheel of a special design, a piano, etc. The inventor was interested in everything that was brewing in the plans of the technicians of that century.
The fate of Kulibinsky inventions
However, the vast majority of Kulibin’s inventions, the reality of which our time has confirmed, were not implemented then. He was born too early. Outlandish machines, funny toys, ingenious fireworks for the high-born crowd - only this impressed contemporaries. Technical progress was not needed by the serf owners of the 18th century, since labor was too cheap.
Family life
Kulibin was married three times, the third time he married as a 70-year-old man, and his third wife brought him three daughters. In total, he had 12 children of very different ages: both bearded men and young girls. He educated all his sons.
Last period of life
Kulibin spent the last ten years of his life in great need, and on the day of his death there was not a penny in the house. At one time, he could easily have gotten rich, for example, from the prosthesis he invented - each war increased the number of disabled people. But it turns out that Kulibin had been working “in secret” on a perpetual motion machine for a long time. This work took up most of his time and money and was his favorite. “For more than 40 years I was engaged in researching a self-propelled machine, I practiced experimenting with it in secret, because many scientists consider this invention to be impossible, they even laugh and curse at those who practice this research” (1817).
Ivan Petrovich Kulibin (1735-1818)
Russian self-taught mechanic, inventor
Ivan Petrovich was born in Nizhny Novgorod on April 21, 1735, in the family of a poor flour merchant.
Kulibin's father did not give his son a school education, he taught him to trade. He studied with a sexton, and in his free time he made weather vanes and gears. Everything related to technology excited him greatly; the young man was especially interested in mills and clock mechanisms.
Once Kulibin was sent to Moscow, this trip gave him the opportunity to become familiar with watchmaking and acquire tools. Upon returning from Moscow, he opened a watch workshop and began to succeed in watchmaking.
Kulibin decided to create a complex watch.
This watch was the size of a goose egg. They consisted of thousands of smallest parts, wound up once a day and chimed the allotted time, even half and quarter.
At the time of the invention of watches, Kulibin was not only a watchmaker, but at the same time a mechanic, toolmaker, metal and wood turner, in addition, a designer and technologist. He was even a composer - the clock played a melody he composed. The mechanic spent more than 2 years making this wonderful watch.
On May 20, 1767, Empress Catherine II arrived in Nizhny Novgorod. Kulibin presented the clock to the queen, as well as the electric machine he had created, a telescope, and a microscope. The queen praised the inventor's talent.
In 1769, Ivan Petrovich was summoned by the Empress to St. Petersburg and appointed head of the mechanical workshop of the Academy of Sciences with the title of mechanic. And his inventions ended up in the Kunstkamera - a kind of museum established by Peter the Great.
In St. Petersburg, he managed workshops with numerous departments (instrumental, lathe, carpentry, barometric, optical), but he also found time to develop his own inventions.
He designed a wooden single-arch bridge across the Neva.
The commission recognized that it was possible to build according to the Kulibin project. Catherine II ordered that Kulibin be awarded money and a gold medal. But no one was going to build a bridge.
Kulibin also invented an original lamp, which can be considered the prototype of a modern spotlight.
For this lamp he used a concave mirror, consisting of a huge number of individual pieces of mirror glass. A light source was placed at the focus of the mirror, the strength of which was increased by 500 times.He invented lanterns of different sizes and strengths: some were convenient for illuminating corridors, large workshops, ships, and were indispensable for sailors, while others, smaller ones, were suitable for carriages.
Another invention is a powered navigable vessel. For the built vessel, Kulibin was awarded five thousand rubles, but his vessel was never put into operation.
Kulibin spent his money on creating new inventions.
In 1791, Kulibin created a scooter - a three-wheeled carriage.
In the same year, Kulibin designed mechanical legs (prosthesis). Military surgeons recognized the prosthesis invented by Kulibin as the most advanced of all those that existed at that time.
Kulibin developed both a telegraph of an original design and a secret telegraph code. But this idea was not appreciated.
The inventor's last dream was a perpetual motion machine.
Kulibin died surrounded by drawings, working until his last breath. In order to bury him, they had to sell the wall clock. There was not a penny in the inventor's house. He lived and died a beggar.
