1902年，美国人查尔斯·S·布拉德利（Charles S. Bradley）与迪米特·R·洛夫乔伊（Dimmitt R. Lovejoy）发明了一种具有多组小电极的圆形旋转火花隙反应器，他们申请了专利，成立大气产品公司（Atmospheric Products Co.），在纽约州尼亚加拉瀑布附近建立了一家小型化工厂。两人希望用廉价的水电资源支持生产，然而公司在商业上并不成功，仅两年后就停止运作[1][14]，主要原因是产能低。在挪威，刚创刊不久的《电化学工业》发表了两人的研究成果。伯克兰看到这篇文章后，认为自己的单一碟形大电弧方案要优于多个小电弧。[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= (帮助)
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]. （原始内容存档于2024-03-03） （German）. 引文格式1维护：未识别语文类型 (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.
