Page 285 - Encyclopedia Of World History

electricity 635

A close up of a turbine generator in the
Ruacana Power Station in Namibia.

ries of electricity, and a strong debate started in the sci-
entific community. Nollet devoted himself to the study of
electricity, and his theory, presented in his book Essai sur
l’electricite des corps (Essay on the electricity of the bod-
ies) (1746), can be summarized by the proposition that
electrical matter is a combination of elementary fire and
denser matter.
According to Benjamin Franklin’s biographers he first
became engaged with electricity following his astonish-
The Eighteenth ment at some spectacular electrical demonstrations per-
Century formed by Dr. Archibald Spencer in Boston in 1743.
A more systematic investigation of electrical phenomena Today Franklin is mostly known for his experiment with
took place during the course of the eighteenth century, kites, intended to demonstrate that lightning is a form of
following the scientific revolution. static electricity. But his work on the nature of electric
Stephen Gray (1667–1736) in England and Charles matter is much more fundamental from a scientific point
Francois de Cisternay DuFay (1698–1739) in France of view. He was the first to propose, in contrast to pre-
worked seriously on electricity. Gray in 1732 demon- vious theories, that electricity was a single common ele-
strated electrical conductivity.A decade later, in 1745, the ment, or fluid, passing through all matter (the
Dutch physicist Peter van Musschenbroek (1692–1761), “single-fluid” theory), and that it had no weight. Differ-
the most important popularizer of Newtonian physics, ences in electrical charge were caused by an excess (+) or
invented the first kind of electrical condenser, the Leyden deficiency (–) of this fluid.
jar. (Some argue, however, that the real inventor of the As Franklin’s theory gradually came to prevail during
Leyden jar was Ewald Jurgen von Kleist, in Kammin, the last quarter of the eighteenth century two new
Pomerania.) thinkers contributed to the development of the theoreti-
The years to come were very productive with regard to cal and experimental concept of electricity. In 1785,
electricity. Electrical experiments, especially those using Charles August Coulomb (1736–1806) used the torsion
electrostatic machines, became very popular. Scientists balance to find the inverse square law governing the elec-
performed experimental demonstrations using static elec- trical force between two charges. In 1791 the Italian Luigi
trical charges in the salons of the French and Italian Galvani (1737–1798) conducted a well-known experi-
nobility and the courts of the European kings.The audi- ment with a frog’s leg to prove that there was a relation-
ence sometimes participated actively in these experi- ship between living beings and electricity. Galvani’s
ments, and their fascination with the impressive results conclusions were proved wrong some years later by his
can be seen in engravings of the period. One example is rival in the scientific field,AlessandroVolta (1745–1827).
the experiment performed by the French physicist Le
Monnier in the court of the king in order to prove the The Nineteenth
strength of an electric shock caused by a Leyden jar—a Century
test in which 140 people participated. During the nineteenth century there was dramatic
Around 1750 there were two leading figures investi- progress in the study of electrical phenomena. In 1800
gating electricity: Abbe Nollet (1700–1750) in France Volta, a professor at the University of Pavia in Italy, cre-
and Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) on the other side ated the so-called voltaic pile, the first battery, opening
of the Atlantic Ocean.They proposed two different theo- new horizons to electrical applications. For the first time