1902年，美國人查爾斯·S·布拉德利（Charles S. Bradley）與迪米特·R·洛夫喬伊（Dimmitt R. Lovejoy）發明了一種具有多組小電極的圓形旋轉火花隙反應器，他們申請了專利，成立大氣產品公司（Atmospheric Products Co.），在紐約州尼亞加拉瀑布附近建立了一家小型化工廠。兩人希望用廉價的水電資源支持生產，然而公司在商業上並不成功，僅兩年後就停止運作[1][14]，主要原因是產能低。在挪威，剛創刊不久的《電化學工業》發表了兩人的研究成果。伯克蘭看到這篇文章後，認為自己的單一碟形大電弧方案要優於多個小電弧。[7]
Lucy Jago. The Northern Lights. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 2007. 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.
Eyde, Sam. The Manufacture of Nitrates from the Atmosphere by the Electric Arc—Birkeland-Eyde Process. Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 1909, 57 (2949): 568–576. JSTOR 41338647. 使用|accessdate=需要含有|url= (幫助)
Trevor Illtyd Williams; Thomas Kingston Derry. A short history of twentieth-century technology c. 1900-c. 1950. Oxford University Press. 1982: 134–135. ISBN 0-19-858159-9.
Lucy Jago. The Northern Lights. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 2007. 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.
Plücker. Ueber die Einwirkung des Magnets auf die elektrische Entladung [On the effect of the magnet on the electric discharge]. Annalen der Physik und Chemie. 1861, 113: 249–280 [2024-03-03]. （原始內容存檔於2024-03-03） （German）. 引文格式1維護：未識別語文類型 (link) From p. 255: " … die Curven, welche dieselbe durchziehen, soweit die Schätzung des Auges reicht, genau die Form von Kreisbogen an[nehmen], die sämmtlich auf der die beiden Spitzen des Entladers verbindenden geraden Linie, als gemeinschaftlicher, senkrecht stehen." ( … the curves which [the luminous discharges] traverse, assume — as far as the eye can judge — exactly the form of circular arcs, all of which stand perpendicular to the same straight line that joins the two points of the electrodes.)
Lucy Jago. The Northern Lights. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 2007. 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.
