Everything about History Of Electricity totally explained
The
history of electricity, that's the human understanding thereof, dates back to the ancient
Greeks, over two thousand years ago.
Ancient history
Thales of Miletus wrote in the
6th century BC that rubbing
fur on various substances, such as
amber, would cause a particular
attraction between the two, which is now known as
static electricity. The Greeks noted that the amber buttons could attract light objects such as
hair and that if they rubbed the amber for long enough they could even get a
spark to jump.
A number of objects found in
Iraq in
1938 dated to the early centuries AD (
Sassanid Mesopotamia), called the
Baghdad Battery, resembles a
galvanic cell and is believed by some to have been used for
electroplating, although there's no real consensus and proof on what the purpose of these devices was and if they were indeed electrical in nature, and is therefore speculative in nature.
Renaissance
Italian physician
Girolamo Cardano wrote about electricity in
De Subtilitate (
1550) distinguishing, perhaps for the first time, between electrical and magnetic forces. In
1600 the English scientist
William Gilbert, in
De Magnete, expanded on Cardano's work and coined the
New Latin word
electricus from
ἤλεκτρον (
elektron), the Greek word for "amber". The first usage of the word
electricity is ascribed to
Sir Thomas Browne in his 1646 work,
Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
Gilbert was followed in
1660 by
Otto von Guericke, who invented an early
electrostatic generator. Other pioneers were
Robert Boyle, who in
1675 stated that electric attraction and repulsion can act across a vacuum;
Stephen Gray, who in
1729 classified materials as
conductors and
insulators; and
C. F. du Fay who first identified the two types of electricity that would later be called
positive and
negative.
18th Century
The
Leyden jar, a type of
capacitor for electrical energy in large quantities, was invented at
Leiden University by
Pieter van Musschenbroek in
1745.
William Watson, when experimenting with the Leyden jar, discovered in
1747 that a discharge of static electricity was equivalent to an
electric current.
In
1752,
Benjamin Franklin promoted his investigations of electricity and theories through the famous, though extremely dangerous,
experiment of flying a
kite through a storm-threatened sky. A key attached to the kite string sparked and charged a Leyden jar, thus establishing the link between
lightning and electricity. Following these experiments he invented a
lightning rod. It is either Franklin (more frequently) or
Ebenezer Kinnersley of
Philadelphia (less frequently) who is considered as the establisher of the convention of positive and negative electricity.
Franklin's observations aided later scientists such as
Michael Faraday,
Luigi Galvani,
Alessandro Volta,
André-Marie Ampère, and
Georg Simon Ohm whose work provided the basis for modern electrical technology. The work of Faraday, Volta, Ampere, and Ohm is honored by society, in that fundamental units of electrical measurement are named after them.
Volta discovered that
chemical reactions could be used to create positively charged
anodes and negatively charged
cathodes. When a conductor was attached between these, the
difference in the electrical potential (also known as voltage) drove a
current between them through the conductor. The
potential difference between two points is measured in units of
volts in recognition of Volta's work.
19th Century
In 1800 Volta constructed the first device to produce a large electric current, later known as the
electric battery.
Napoleon, informed of his works, summoned him in 1801 for a command performance of his experiments. He received many medals and decorations, including the
Légion d'honneur.
By the end of the 19th century
electrical engineers had become a distinct profession, separate from physicists and inventors. They created companies that investigated, developed and perfected the techniques of electricity transmission, and gained support from governments all over the world for starting the first worldwide electrical telecommunication network, the
telegraph network. Pioneers in this field included
Werner von Siemens, founder of Siemens AG in
1847, and
John Pender, founder of
Cable & Wireless.
The late 19th and early 20th century produced such giants of electrical engineering as
Nikola Tesla, inventor of the polyphase
induction motor;
Samuel Morse, inventor of a long-range telegraph;
Thomas Edison, inventor of the first commercial electrical energy distribution network;
George Westinghouse, inventor of the electric
locomotive;
Charles Steinmetz, theoretician of alternating current;
Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone and founder of a successful telephone business.
Cultural impact
Marshall McLuhan analyzed the social and cultural impact of the
electric age. While the previous age of
mechanization had spread the idea of splitting every process into a sequence, this was ended by the introduction of the instant speed of electricity that brought simultaneity. This imposed the cultural shift from the approach of focusing on "specialized segments of attention" (adopting one particular perspective), to the idea of "instant sensory awareness of the whole", an attention to the "total field", a "sense of the whole pattern". It made evident and prevalent the sense of "form and function as a unity", an "integral idea of structure and configuration". This had major impact in the disciplines of painting (with
cubism), physics, poetry, communication and
educational theory.
Commerce
The rapid advance of electrical technology in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries led to commercial rivalries, such as the so-called
War of the Currents between Edison's direct-current system and Tesla's alternating-current method. Often, concurrent research in widely scattered locations led to multiple claims to the invention of a device or system.
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