John Ambrose Fleming’s early measurement of the skin effect in round wires

Abstract

Abstract The electromagnetic skin effect was a subject of interest to prominent physicists during the second half of the nineteenth century. By the end of the century, the theoretical analysis for this phenomenon was well developed, but accurate quantitative experimental results lagged behind. The subject of this paper is one of the early experiments performed to confirm the theory, specifically, measurements of the increase in the electrical resistance of a round wire with increasing frequency due to the skin effect. This elegant experiment was performed by John Ambrose Fleming, a student of James Clerk Maxwell and a pioneer in early wireless communication. The presentation in this paper is intended to complement theoretical treatments of the skin effect that are often part of instruction on electromagnetic theory and also to provide historical perspective for such treatments.