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§2 Invention by Prof. Nishizawa is “the Key Contribution” to the Completion of the Second Industrial Revolution：

Though there are various theories that it was between 1.5 million years to 1.7 million years ago, mankind is said to have begun the usage of fire from about 400,000 years ago. It is the Energy Revolution (The first Energy Revolution) using heat energy of "fire". And since then, the Agricultural Revolution occurred about 10,000 years ago, with the Egyptian civilization, Mesopotamia civilization, Indian civilization and the Chinese civilization to follow.

 

These farming civilization developments caused an increase in food production and population, and in order to store food and to maintain the order of and mass, alphabets and numerals were invented, which lead to the first Information Revolution.

 

In the latter half of the fourth millennium, referring to the fourth millennium BC, the Late Neolithic Age or Bronze Age, Sumerian is said to have been invented as the first writing system. However, Chinese characters could be traced back to 6,000 BC. The Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mesopotamian cuneiform (wedge-shaped characters) and the Indus script etc, developed from 6,000 BC and these are also said to have lead to the first Information Revolution.

 

In the ruins of Mesopotamian civilization, numerals appear in the Mesopotamian words, so it could be said that numerals were invented at about the same time as the appearance of words.

 

[Fig. 5] The first Industrial Revolution corresponds to the second Energy Revolution

And, about 250 years ago, from about 1760 to 1840, the Industrial Revolution (the first Industrial Revolution) had occurred. The term "Industrial Revolution" is a communist term which appears in the books of Friedrich Engels and Karl Heinrich Marx.

 

Afterwards, redefined by Arnold Toynbee, the uncle of the universal historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee, "Industrial Revolution" became an academic term (A. Toynbee, together with a short memoir by B. Jowett, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century in England, London, 1884, 1887 ed.).

 

In 1733, John Kay invented the flying shuttle which enabled the weft to pass quickly through the warp threads (British Patent No. 542), and in 1764, James Hargreaves invented the Jenny spinning machine and achieved a patent in 1770 (British Patent No. 962).

 

And in 1765, James Watt improved the invention of the steam engine, and in 1769, achieved the British Patent No. 913 for the steam engine. Also, Richard Arkwright invented a hydraulic spinning machine in 1768, and achieved the British Patent No. 931 in 1769. From the aspect of energy, these inventions such as the spinning machine and steam engines are inventions which result from the occurrence of kinetic energy, and this is the "second Energy Revolution".

 

The first Industrial Revolution in England had started from around 1780 but with localization, and as shown in FIG. 6, the starting periods differ per country:

 

[Fig. 6]

When it comes around 1860, the "second Industrial Revolution" occurs. During this period except for England shown in Fig. 6, situations show the rise of industrial power of France, Germany, USA, Russia, and Japan. With a relative positioning of England as shown in Fig. 6, the term "second Industrial Revolution" is sometimes used.to emphasize the innovation in these countries.

 

During the era of the second Industrial Revolution, in the field of iron and steel, other than the electricity field, Henry Bessemer achieved the US Patent. No. 16,082 for Bessemer converter in 1856, and in 1879, William Siemens achieved the British Patent No. 2210 on the open-hearth furnace. Moreover, although innovation progress was being made in the chemistry field such as the production of plastics from petroleum, classified from the Energy Revolution aspect, the second Industrial Revolution which is about generating electrical energy and power distribution, is the “third Energy Revolution”.

 

The theme of the 5th World Exposition which was held in Paris in 1900, was "light and energy". Electric energy as the power was the theme and attractions using electric energy were exhibited, but the light source is also an electrical energy.

 

In USA, generation of electric energy and transmission technology were developed by Thomas Alva Edison, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse Junior. Edison filed a patent application on the power transmission system of the DC transmission during 1880~1881 and achieved the patent in 1882 (US Patent. No. 263,142, No. 264,642, No.266,793). And on September 4, 1882, Edison started to supply electricity of DC 110 V to the 59 users around his Institute in Pearl Street.

 

Nikola Tesla, an employee of the Edison Manufacturing Company, who was declined the proposal of the AC transmission, resigned the Edison Manufacturing Company and established his own company (Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing). He achieved the AC motor patent (US Patent No. 381,968) in 1888, and moved to the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, achieving the AC transmission patent in 1888 (US Patent No. 382,280), and the AC power supply patents (US Patent No. 390,414, No. 390721).

 

Nikola Tesla invented a high-voltage transformer which could output up to 1 million volts in 1891. Nikola Tesla has achieved the total of 111 patents. In 1891, Westinghouse Corporation constructed the world's first commercial AC power generation system, and Edison lost on disputes over AC transmission system using high-voltage transmission lines.

 

On the other hand, Antonio Meucci had completed the telephone prototype at around 1854, and filed a patent application with the invention title called "Sound Telegraph" on December 28, 1871, which became a provisional patent (patent caveat) which did not require claims (Provisional US Patent No 3335: Patent caveat system existed in USA from 1836 till 1909.). Further, on February 14, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell also filed a patent application for the telephone patent and achieved the patent (US Patent No. 174,465). Afterwards, Marconi succeeded in wireless telegraphy in 1895, and achieved the patent (British Patent No. 12,039, US Patent No. 586,193).

 

Two hours later than Bell, Elisha Gray also filed a patent application on the same day as February 14, 1876, but this was not a formal filing of a patent application, but a provisional patent (patent caveat).

 

Under such circumstances, from the Information Revolution aspects, the second Industrial Revolution could be positioned as the "second Information Revolution" which enabled immediate transmission of analog information to the remote location of the information. Marconi achieved a large number of wireless communication patents after US Patent No. 586,193, but the US Patent No. 645,576 registered in 1900 which was filed by Tesla in 1897 was a patent related to power transmission with transmitter and receiver. The court made a decision that some of the patents of Marconi’s patent group was invalid, as it was recognizable to use the inventions by Tesla as wireless communication.

 

In Italy, Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci achieved a patent registration in London, 1854, on the internal combustion engine (British Provisional Patent No. 1,072).

 

In Germany, when Nikolaus August Otto achieved the German Patent No. 532 in 1877, by inventing the internal combustion engine which ran on petroleum gas, Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler developed this invention. By attaching the engine to motorcycles and carriages, running experiments were carried out. In 1883, Daimler achieved the German Patent No. 28,022.

 

In 1885, Karl Friedrich Benz of Germany, created a three-wheeled motor vehicle developing the engine independently from Daimler and in 1886, achieved the German Patent No. 37,435.

 

In the USA, US Patent No. 549,160 of an automobile was allowed in 1895, after 16 years of intentional delaying of examination by George Baldwin Selden himself, he has filed the patent application in 1879. Then, Selden achieved the patent term of 17 years from the registration of 1895.

 

Founded in 1903, the Ford Motor Company raised a lawsuit against Selden in this year. In this lawsuit, the US court indecisively delayed the judgement, and after eight years on 1911, the judgement was that Selden’s patent was effective. However, Selden’s patent was applied only to the two-stroke engine. This meant that it was not applicable to the four-stroke engine, and Ford substantially won the case. In the following year of 1912, the patent duration of the US Patent No. 549,160 expired.

 

[Fig. 7]

 

As mentioned above, while troubled with the patent troll of the Selden patent, the Ford Motor Company has produced Model T automobiles from 1908 to 1927, and the mass production era begins. The Model T automobiles have been manufactured more than 15 million as a single car model.

 

In the era of the Second Industrial Revolution, consumer goods are in mass produced, and the mechanization of fabrication processes of food, beverage and clothing proceed. Particularly, through the mass production of the Ford Model T, the transportation means has been innovated, developing the transportation technology of people and goods.

 

However, the second Industrial Revolution is still not yet completed. Suppose using the AC power transmission system, it is possible to step up or step down the voltage with the transformer. However using the DC power transmission system, the voltage of the AC power had to be increased to a higher voltage by a transformer at the power station, and the high voltage AC power had to be converted to the DC power and transmitted by the DC power transmission system.

 

At the place of destination, the high voltage DC power had to be converted to the high voltage AC power and decreased to a lower voltage AC power by a transformer in order to have it supplied to the factories and houses.

 

In the case of AC power transmission architecture, not only resistive loss but also induction loss exists in the wire. Therefore, comparing the conversion loss from the AC electric power to DC electric power , and the loss of the transmission line, ignoring the conversion loss from DC electric power to AC electric power, the DC power transmission architecture has an advantage of supplying power far more long distance, with a smaller loss of electricity, than the AC power transmission architecture.

 

The reason why Edison lost “the War of the Currents” was due to the level of technology from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, as high efficiency converters from AC electric power to DC electric power and high efficiency converters from DC electric power to AC electric power did not exist

 

Prof. Nishizawa invented the pin diode which could convert AC electric power to DC electric power with high efficiency of more than 99% in 1950 (JP 221218B and others), and also when it became in 1976, he invented the static induction thyristor (SI thyristor) which could convert DC electric power to AC electric power with high efficiency of more than 99% (US patent No.4086611, JP 1089074B and others).

 

Mankind has only three energy conversion devices having the efficiency of more than 99% and they are the transformer, the pin diode and the SI thyristor, and two of the inventions were invented in the middle of the 20th century in Japan.

 

More than a century has passed since the defeat of Edison, however, inventions of the pin diode and the SI thyristor with the improvement of the level of energy conversion technology have overcome the DC transmission stigma and will complete the second Industrial Revolution. The chance is coming around to solve, with the most solid solutions, the energy problems that mankind is facing.

 

Because SI thyristors can block DC electric power, SI thyristor are extremely important as large power, high speed switching devices. The conventional electrical instruments can be miniaturized and weight reduced by high-frequency drive with SI thyristor. Due to this reason, in addition to the DC power transmission technology, it has attracted the worldwide attention as a power electronics element with the possible applications to the railway vehicles (US patent No.4171995, 4772926, 4816891, 4866500, 4872044, 4935798, 4914043, 4975755, 4984049, 5001535, 5323028, 5426314, JP 1089074B, and others).

 

It should be noted that GE Company of USA has developed and announced to name the SI thyristor as field controlled thyristor (FCT). In comparison to the buried gate SI thyristor, the surface gate SI thyristor has a low gate resistance, and operates at frequencies over 1MHz as the stray capacitance of the gate is small (JP 1115656B, JP 1410925B, JP 1421311B, JP 1465659B).

 

With extremely small tail current in turn-off operation, the tail current is unique to the operation of conventional thyristor, the double gate thyristor is capable of sub-microsecond switching (US patent No.4086611, 4171995, JP 1089074B, JP 1115656B, JP 1369103B, JP 1456781B). In the case of DC power transmission, photo-thyristors are convenient for serial-parallel connection of multi thyristors (US Patent No.4719551, 4866500, 4914043, JP 1349418B, JP 1534149B). There are the varieties of thyristor patents achieved by Prof. Nishizawa.

 

In June 19, 2006, the High-tech Industry Innovation Agency having Prof. Jun-ichi Nishizawa as the Chairman at the time, proposed about this DC power transmission architecture to Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister of Japan. The architect Buckminster Fuller and the economist (civilization critic) such as Jeremy Rifkin propose a global smart grid network ("Global Energy Grid"), which could function more effectively with Prof Nishizawa’s pin diodes and SI thyristors.

 

One of the five pillars of Rifkin's proposal is "using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy-sharing intergrid that acts just like the Internet (when millions of buildings are generating a small amount of energy locally, on-site, they can sell surplus back to the grid and share electricity with their continental neighbors) ", and the pin diode and SI thyristor are the artillery.

 

For example, when few billion watts power transmission is made by power transmission lines of about 1600km, there is power loss of 12% to 25% by AC power transmission architecture, but technology level has achieved to reduce the loss by 6% to 8% by the DC power transmission architecture.

 

ABB Inc., a multinational company with headquarters in Switzerland, has developed a transmission line of 940 km of DC transmission from the Three Gorges Dam towards the Guangdong Province in China, and has been operating since 2004. The ABB is also supplying power of 6,400MW with an ultra-high voltage of 800kV, further to the distance of more than 2,000km between Koie dam and Shanghai. The technology using the 1,100kV converter transformer developed by ABB in 2012 is said to make it possible to transmit power of more than 10,000 MW to 3,000km.

 

Currently, it is said that about 5% of the total electric power generation in Japan is wastefully lost in the AC transmission system. According to the 2000 fiscal year estimate by the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, about 45.807 billion kWh are wasted and lost which corresponds to the amount of electric power generation of six power plants of “billion-watts-class nuclear power plants" per year.

 

In the Mainichi Newspapers dated August 26, 2013, conversations of Mr. Koizumi, the ex-Prime Minister of Japan are mentioned as "It’s the opposite. Opposite. It will be difficult to abolish nuclear power plants in the future if we don’t start the abolition policy just now. The opposition parties are in favor of abolition of nuclear plants. If the Prime Minister decides, we can do it. After that, the intelligent people can give us the wisdom", “People say that necessity is the mother of invention. “The defeat in world war II”, “oil shock” and “the Great East Japan Earthquake”. Tough times bring opportunity. Japan should make the recycling society with natural resources”.

 

"Intelligent people" mentioned by Mr. Koizumi, the ex-Prime Minister of Japan probably means the scientists and engineers. It probably means that the inventions by the scientists and engineers would make the abolition of the nuclear plants possible. Prof. Nishizawa has already provided the wisdom on the possibility of abolition of the nuclear plants.

 

Chronologically, static induction transistor (SIT) had been invented before the SI thyristor. The SIT has already been filed in 1950, which has been registered as JP 205068B. Along with the other patents as basic SIT patents, such as JP 968336B and JP 968337B have already been registered.

 

Other patents such as US patent No.3828230, 4115793, 4199771, 398606, 4216038, 4259681, 4266238, 4270059, 4284997, 4297718, 4317127, 4326209, 4337473, 4338618, 4340827, 4364072, 4450468, 4470059, 4482910, 4504847, JP 761934B, etc. are also SIT patents.

 

SIT is an epoch-making invention by Prof. Nishizawa who made corrections on the mistakes of the theory of the field effect transistor (FET) by William Bradford Shockley who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. Not only did it combine the advantages of the conventional bipolar junction transistor (BJT) and FET, but also frequency characteristics, noise characteristics, high output characteristics and efficiency etc. and all of these characteristics better than that of BJT and FET. SITs are semiconductor devices which encompass discrete devices, integrated circuits, image sensors, forming a family device group, which will be utilized in numerous fields.

 

Taking advantage of the characteristics of low distortion, high power and low noise, SIT was first in practical use as an audio transistor, and in 1974, audio amplifier was released from Yamaha Corporation. It is said that Threshold, Inc. of USA and Nelson Pass, the founder of Pass Laboratories have custom ordered the SIT audio amplifier as an ideal amplifier.

 

Established in 2007, having Mochida Yasunori (ex-Managing Director of Yamaha Corporation) as Chairman, Digital Do Main Inc. also sold the SIT audio amplifier. Also, the SIT is used in the medium wave transmitter of several broadcasting stations of NHK in Sendai and Osaka, etc.

 

The bipolar mode SIT (B-SIT) which operates with the gate junction in forward bias was in practical use in electric cars (US patent No.4326209, JP 1489010B, JP 151601614B, JP 1516017B).

 

In 2003, Hitachi, Ltd. developed a silicon carbide (SiC) - SIT using a single crystal SiC substrate, and in comparison to the conventional silicon (Si)-SIT, the specific ON-resistance was less than 1/60, showing an extremely small loss. From around 2005, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and University of Yamanashi have also announced research results of SiC-SITs using the SiC substrates.

 

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