Technology from Silicon Valley and Beyond - Silicon Valley Historical Association

Messner Effect - Expulsion of a magnet from a supercomputer

This photo was taken at the Argonne National Laboratory. The Messner Effect is the expulsion of a magnetic field from a supercomputer during its transition to the superconducting state. Walther Messner and Robert Ochdenfeld discovered the phenomenon in 1933 by measuring the magnetic field distribution outside superconducting tin and lad samples.

magnetfromsupercomputerWalter MessnerMessner Effectsuperconducting