Abstract

Although most potted histories of superconductivity focus heavily on their discovery in 1911 as being a key date from an engineering point of view it was not until the early 1960s that any engineering materials were developed. In the heady days of the late 1980s, when high temperature superconductors were discovered, this was forgotten and the protracted and difficult development period that followed was viewed as evidence of failure – a common cycle with discoveries in basic physics that we may be seeing unfolding at present in the case of graphene. However, twenty five years on a wide range of practical high temperature superconducting materials are now available.

In this talk, aimed at a general engineering audience, I will outline a brief history of the development of superconductors for engineering applications, describe the challenging development of ceramic superconducting materials into usable products and outline the current work taking place in the bulk superconductivity group.