George Henry Bachhoffner
British scientist

George Henry Bachhoffner (13 April 1810 – 22 July 1879), was a British scientist, one of the founders of the London Polytechnic Institution, and a lecturer on scientific subjects.
Bachhoffner was a native of London. He married Caroline Derby on 23 July 1834 at St Pancras Old Church.
It was in 1837 that he, in conjunction with a few others, established the Polytechnic, which was intended for a place of popular instruction. Here, he held the position of principal of the department of natural and experimental philosophy until 1855. Afterwards, he became lessee and manager of the Coliseum in the Regent's Park, and there gave lectures similar to the courses he had established at the Polytechnic.
In the later part of his life, he held a post as registrar of births and deaths in Marylebone. Bachhoffner was an inventor and took out several patents for inventions connected with the electric telegraph, gas stoves and oil lamps. He was a member of the London Electrical Society.
In experiments with an early induction coil in 1837, he found that replacing the solid iron core with a core made of a bundle of parallel iron wires greatly increased the output voltage.
“George Henry Bachhoffner” enters the record as british scientist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what George, Henry and Bachhoffner can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5540420. VIAF identifies the subject as 73602001. The Library of Congress control number is no2006023139. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1810, 1879, 1834 and 1837.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Henry Bachhoffner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.