Exploring Ultra-cold Phenomena (to 1908)
James Dewar initiated research into electrical resistance at low temperatures. Zygmunt Florenty Wroblewski conducted research into electrical properties at low temperatures, though his research ended early due to his accidental death. Around 1864, Karol Olszewski and Wroblewski predicted the electrical phenomena of dropping resistance levels at ultra-cold temperatures. Olszewski and Wroblewski documented evidence of this in the 1880s.
Dewar and John Ambrose Fleming predicted that at absolute zero, pure metals would become perfect electromagnetic conductors (though, later, Dewar altered his opinion on the disappearance of resistance, believing that there would always be some resistance). Walther Hermann Nernst developed the third law of thermodynamics and stated that absolute zero was unattainable. Carl von Linde and William Hampson, both commercial researchers, nearly at the same time filed for patents on the Joule-Thomson effect for the liquefaction of gases. Linde's patent was the climax of 20 years of systematic investigation of established facts, using a regenerative counterflow method. Hampson's designs was also of a regenerative method. The combined process became known as the Hampson-Linde liquefaction process.
Onnes purchased a Linde machine for his research. On March 21, 1900, Nikola Tesla was granted a US patent for the means for increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations by lowering the temperature, which was caused by lowered resistance, a phenomenon previously observed by Olszewski and Wroblewski. Within this patent it describes the increased intensity and duration of electric oscillations of a low temperature resonating circuit. It is believed that Tesla had intended that Linde's machine would be used to attain the cooling agents.
A milestone was achieved on July 10, 1908 when Heike Kamerlingh Onnes at Leiden University in the Netherlands produced, for the first time, liquified helium, which has a boiling point of 4.2 kelvin at atmospheric pressure.
Read more about this topic: History Of Superconductivity
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