Henri Owen Tudor (30 September 1859 – 31 May 1928) was a Luxembourgish engineer, inventor and industrialist. He developed the first commercially usable lead-acid battery.
Life Henri Tudor was the son of John Thomas Tudor from Llanarth (United Kingdom) and Marie Loser from Rosport. He attended the primary and secondary school as a boarder at the municipal College of Chimay (Belgium), and was a student from 1879 to 1883 at the École Polytechnique, which was part of Brussels University. In 1885, the young engineer specialised at an electrical engineering institution in Paris, where he attended the lectures given by Marcel Deprez. Henri Tudor was interested in electricity and especially in its storage. He developed an electric lighting system in his father's residence, the Irminenhof in Rosport, even before he had completed his engineering studies. During his vacations, he connected a Gramme type generator to the water-wheel of the Bannmillen, a mill located on the lower part of the property. Wires carried the electric energy from the mill to the house, which was illuminated with Edison light bulbs. The power supplied by the generator was obviously irregular. Furthermore, it was not used during off-peak hours. Henri Tudor had the idea of using lead acid accumulators as a buffer – to equalise the voltage and to store the unused energy. The chemical reactions occurring in a lead-acid battery or accumulator were first observed by Wilhelm Josef Sinsteden in 1854. The accumulator as a rechargeable battery was invented in 1859 by Gaston Planté and improved in 1880 by Camille Faure. In its practical applications, it proved however to be unreliable: short circuits occurred and the plates fell apart during service. Thomas Edison described the lead-acid accumulator as a "a catch-penny, ... a mechanism for swindling the public" and "commercially ... a failure." Henri Tudor sought a permanent solution to these problems and manufactured himself a mould for casting large surface plates with which he built a lead-acid accumulator of his own design. Doing so, he could rely on the help of his brother Hubert, and of his cousin, Nikolaus Schalkenbach of Trier. With the combined equipment – generator and buffer battery – he was able to run continuously and constantly the power supply of the Irminenhof, which thus became the first private home in Luxembourg to have electric lighting. The Tudor electrode stood out because of its unequalled reliability. We know from a reliable source that a Tudor accumulator was put into service in October 1882 and that it ran without any interruption until December 1887. Accumulator plates having been in regular service during 16 years are exhibited in the Tudor Museum in Rosport. On 5 May 1891, Henri Tudor married Marie-Madeleine Pescatore of Bofferdange. They had three children and the young family moved in September 1892 into their newly built monumental Manor House in Rosport.
In 1914, Henri Tudor began to suffer from a serious lead poisoning, which caused his death on 31 May 1928, aged 68.
Patents of Henri Tudor
1886 Patent On 17 July 1886, Henri Tudor filed, in Luxembourg, patent No 711 "Further improvements to the electrodes of electric accumulators". This patent was also filed in Belgium and France. The improvements consist of the following: The plates (electrodes) are thick enough to be rigid and to provide a high level of conductivity; they are grooved so as to offer a large surface, the grooves being slightly tapered. The plates undergo a formation in accordance with the method developed by Planté but of much shorter duration, the grooves are then filled with a lead oxide paste according to the Faure process (smearing). The plates are then treated with a weak intensity current until the paste is transformed into lead peroxide on the positive plates and into reduced lead on the negative plates. The Planté layer provides a good adhesion of the active paste and the tapered shape of the grooves allows the paste particles to slip during the successive charging and discharging cycles of the battery without causing distortions of the plate. Disintegrated oxide particles fall into cavities deliberately left below the plates. The Planté layer is strengthened during the charging and discharging cycles: the final formation of the Tudor plate happens during the actual use of the accumulator. The Tudor electrode combines the advantages of the Planté and Faure methods while avoiding their respective disadvantages.
1896 Patent In order to avoid the smearing operation, which was laborious and hazardous, Henri Tudor was looking for ways to create a Planté layer by means of an accelerated electrochemical process. On 18 May 1896, he filed, in the United Kingdom, his Patent No 10718 on the electrode coated with a thin layer of oxide. This layer was obtained by reverse electrolysis in very dilute acid in order to promote the formation of "lead oxide containing sulphate", which actually consisted of basic lead sulphates described by the general formula x PbO • y PbSO4 • z H2O. This invention led to a weight reduction in the electrodes while increasing their capacity, and resulted in a reduction in the sale price of up to 15 per cent.
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