Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti
Sebastian Pietro Innocenzo Adhemar Ziani de Ferranti (9 April 1864 – 13 January 1930) was a British electrical engineer and inventor. Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti was born in Liverpool, England. His Italian father, Cesare, was a photographer (son of composer Marco Aurelio Zani de Ferranti) and his mother Juliana de Ferranti (née Scott) was a concert pianist. He was educated at Hampstead School, London; St. Augustine's College, Westgate-on-Sea; and University College London. He married Gertrude Ruth Ince on 24 April 1888 and they had seven children together. Ferranti died on 13 January 1930 in Zurich, Switzerland. He was buried in the same grave as his parents and his daughter Yolanda at Hampstead Cemetery, London. His grandson, Basil de Ferranti, was a Conservative politician who represented Morecambe and Lonsdale in the late fifties and early sixties. His granddaughter Valerie Hunter Gordon invented what is considered the world's first disposable nappy and an early sanitary towel system. Ferranti showed a remarkable talent for electrical engineering from his childhood. His first invention, at the age of 13, was an arc light for street lighting. Reportedly, around the age of 16, he built an electrical generator (that had a "Zig-zag armature") with the help of William Thomson (the future Lord Kelvin) and later patented the device (called the "Ferranti Dynamo"). He worked for Siemens Brothers at Charlton, London, and in 1882 he set up shop in London designing various electrical devices as the firm Ferranti, Thompson and Ince. In the late 1880s, there was a debate within the American industry about the transmission of electrical power, known as the war of the currents. Thomas Edison supported a direct current (DC) based system, largely due to his holding many key patents and having set up some power plants supplying DC power. The rival Westinghouse Electric Corporation supported an alternating current (AC) system. Ferranti bet on AC early on, and was one of the few experts in this system in the UK.
