Károly Zipernowsky

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Károly Zipernowsky (1853 Vienna - 1942 Budapest), was a Hungarian electrical engineer of Slovak origin. He was the co-inventor of the transformer and other AC technologies.

Zipernowsky, with Bláthy and Déri were researching ways of increasing efficiency of electrical power tranmission. They experimented with power supplies and current transformation, which led to the invention of the ZBD alternating current transformer in 1885. The ZBD system is based on a closed-iron ring core with an arbitrary diameter and a coil around the core, which conducts AC current. Their system converted higher voltage suitable for energy transmission to lower "service"-level voltage (step-down transformer). Nikola Tesla then proposed the use of step-up transformers, which would output higher voltage current than they received. This principle is widely used for power transmission over long distances all over the world.