Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "伯克兰-艾德法" in Chinese language version.
Birkeland was deeply unhappy about having to share credit with Eyde, who had no part in the technical development of the idea, but he was forced to collaborate because only Eyde had access to the huge amounts of electric power that would be needed to run the furnaces.
More recently, two Americans, Bradley and Lovejoy, had built a small factory beside Niagara Falls to produce saltpeter at the end of 1902, but their attempt had proved too inefficient to form the basis of a new industry. A description of their furnace had been included in the first edition of a Norwegian scientific publication, Electrochem Indus-tri, launched only the previous month; Birkeland studied the drawings in the new magazine to check that his idea was different, and therefore potentially more rewarding, than theirs. He saw that they had made a myriad of tiny arcs in their furnace, while Birkeland was planning one large arc, repeated at a high rate and swept sideways by the magnetic field to make contact with as much air as possible. It would look like a circle with the shape and heat of the sun. The following Monday Eyde and Birkeland spent the morning together at the university, inspecting the strange-looking furnace and weighing each other up as potential business collaborators. The first prototype, cobbled together in a few hours, beautifully demonstrated Birkeland’s idea of using magnetism to make large electric arcs and the tremendous noise and smell it produced were persuasive testimony to its potential.
When the ladies retired to the drawing room and the gentlemen stood around the fire, drinking whisky and smoking cigars, Birkeland approached Eyde and said, “I have the solution.” He explained that his cannon, of which Eyde was already aware through Knudsen, produced high-energy electric arcs if it short-circuited during testing—arcs exactly like bolts of lightning. Birkeland believed this faulty element of his gun design could be combined with electromagnetic furnace technology to ionize air and produce nitric acid.
