The Linear Motor & Maglev

Professor Dr Eric Laithwaite (1921-97) from Lancashire was a naturally gifted lecturer and was attached firstly to Manchester University, then Imperial College, London. He was well-known for his radio and television appearances and has been called the UK’s first ‘media engineer’. Another accolade assigned to Laithwaite is ‘the father of Maglev‘, even though he insisted that he did not invent it, but re-discovered it.

In fact, it was Laithwaite who took the neglected theory of magnetic levitation (Maglev) and, from 1947, devised many practical applications of it, most notably in low-speed trains. One such was in commercial use in 1984-95 as a 26mph shuttle from Birmingham’s airport to its international railway station, a distance of 2,000ft.. However, government funds were withdrawn and this futuristic technology went to Japan and Germany.

Maglev is the principle used in the linear motor designed by Laithwaite, which needs no gearbox or wheels and is therefore friction-free. Instead of torque providing propulsion, an electro-magnetic set-up forms a ‘travelling magnetic field’ or ‘magnetic river’ along which an object literally floats. It can be low- or high-acceleration, the latter being intended for space vehicles potentially. Laithwaite also believed he had found amazing gyroscopic properties but struggled to convince his peers.

(Top image: Dan Meerbeek at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)