maker by trade, who neglected his family while poaching fish and rearing gamecocks, migrated from Dumfries to Whittington, where he married Betsy Adcock, the daughter of a small shopkeeper. Young Sturgeon was apprenticed to his father's trade at Old Hutton in 1796, under a master who starved and ill-used him. The dexterity which he acquired as a shoemaker proved of service to him in many ways; but in 1802, seeing no hope of advancement in his trade, he enlisted in the Westmoreland militia, and two years later, being then twenty-one, he enlisted as a private in the royal artillery. His attention is said to have been directed to electrical phenomena by a terrific thunderstorm which occurred when he was stationed at Newfoundland. He determined to study natural science; but, finding himself unable to understand what had been written on the subject, he set himself, amid all the disadvantages of barrack life, to acquire the rudiments of an education. A sergeant lent him books, which he studied at night with the connivance of the officers; he is said to have ingratiated himself with the mess by his skill as a cobbler. In this way he worked at mathematics, and learnt sufficient Latin and Greek to grapple with scientific terminology. While stationed at Woolwich his models and electrical experiments seem to have attracted considerable attention. The cadets of the Royal Military Academy ‘used to swarm on the barrack field to get shocks from his exploring kites,’ which were constructed after Franklin's pattern, but with some modifications and improvements of his own. Sturgeon left the army on 1 Oct. 1820, at the age of thirty-seven, his conduct, according to the testimony of his commanding officer, having been ‘altogether unimpeachable.’ In spite, however, of the remarkable talent that he had shown he never rose above the rank of gunner and driver, and his pension on discharge amounted to no more than one shilling a day. For a time he resumed his old trade of bootmaker, opening a shop in Artillery Place, Woolwich (No. 8). Here, during his leisure time, he taught himself turning and lithography, and devoted a good deal of attention to the construction of scientific apparatus. He supplemented his income by lecturing to schools and teaching officers' families. He also began to contribute to the scientific press, especially the ‘London Philosophical Magazine,’ and in 1822 took a prominent part in founding the Woolwich ‘Literary Society,’ among the original members being the chemist James Marsh [q. v.] His first original contribution to science seems to have been the production of a modified form of Ampère's rotating cylinders, described in the ‘Philosophical Magazine’ for 1823, and this was followed in 1824 by four able papers on thermo-electricity. His zeal, amounting to a perfect passion, for chemical and electrical experiments aroused the interest of such men as Olinthus Gilbert Gregory [q. v.], Samuel Hunter Christie [q. v.], and Peter Barlow [q. v.], through whose influence he was at the close of 1824 appointed lecturer in science and philosophy at the East India Company's Royal Military College of Addiscombe.
In 1825 Sturgeon presented to the Society of Arts the set of improved apparatus for electro-magnetic experiments, including his first soft-iron electro-magnet, for which he was awarded the silver medal of the society and a premium of thirty guineas. To him is undoubtedly due, says James Prescott Joule [q. v.], the credit of being the original discoverer, he having constructed electro-magnets in soft iron, both in the straight and horseshoe shape, as early as 1823. In 1826 Sturgeon was busied with the firing of gunpowder by electric discharges, and in 1830, in his fragment called ‘Experimental Researches,’ he describes for the first time the now well-known process of amalgamating the zinc plate of a battery with a film of mercury. Shortly afterwards he began to experiment on the phenomena of the magnetism of rotation discovered by Arago, and came to the conclusion that the effects were probably due to a disturbance of the electric fluid by magnetic action, a kind of reaction to that which takes place in electro-magnetism. The publication of Faraday's brilliant research on magneto-electric induction in 1831 forestalled the complete explanation of which he was in search. In 1832 he constructed an electro-magnetic rotary engine, the first contrivance, according to Joule, by means of which any considerable mechanical force was developed by the electric current.
In 1832 the Adelaide Gallery of Practical Science (upon the site of what is now Messrs. Gatti's restaurant, West Strand) was open for the exhibition of models and inventions to be illustrated by means of lectures, and Sturgeon was nominated upon the lecturing staff of this short-lived institution. A few years later, in 1836, he established a new monthly periodical, ‘The Annals of Electricity,’ which was the first journal exclusively devoted to electrical subjects in this country. He supported this with immense industry and great ability, and with some aid from Joule, down to 1843, when lack of support compelled its discontinuance, though its ten octavo volumes
