The year 2020 was undoubtedly a challenging one. Most of us had to adapt to a new reality of social distancing and working from home to prevent the spreading of the new COVID‐19 virus. As we all tried to master this emergency situation to the best of our abilities, one could foresee an adverse impact of laboratory closures and conference cancellations on the scientific output of the research community

Presenting the devices invented by Toepler, Holtz, Wimshurst, and Wommelsdorf, the history of the influence machines, the progress made, and the remaining deficits are discussed. The theoretical considerations published in the literature lack generalizable statements on the efficiency. Based on R. W. Pohl's model (1927), an elementary analysis is made, with the result that the upper limit of the theoretically

Petr N. Skirdkov, Konstantin A. Zvezdin Ann. Phys. 2020, 532, 1900460 https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.201900460 There is a mistake in the author information of this manuscript. The correct byline and affiliations are below. Petr N. Skirdkov and Konstantin A. Zvezdin* P. N. Skirdkov, Dr. K. A. Zvezdin Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vavilova 38, Moscow 119991, Russia

The ever‐increasing concerns on energy crisis and sustainable resources have spurred a worldwide action in developing alternative energy conversion technologies. Thermoelectric materials, which provide a promising solution for the conversion of heat into electricity and vice versa, have attracted increasing attention in the fields of solid‐state physics, chemistry and materials science. From the perspective