Electricity powers our transport, heating, lighting, communications, computation and a
host of essential services that we take for granted.
However, electricity has much more important aspects because it is a fundamental feature
of all matter.
Electrical phenomena has been studied since antiquity, though advances in the science
were not made until the 17th and 18th centuries.
Practical applications for electricity however remained few, and it would not be until the
late 19th century that engineers were able to put it to industrial and residential use.
The history of electricity begins with William Gilbert.
Before William Gilbert, all that was known about electricity and magnetism was that the
lodestone possessed magnetic properties, and that rubbing amber and jet would attract
bits of stuff to start sticking.
In 1600, William Gilbert published his treatise to magnet, printed in scholarly Latin, the
book explained years of Gilbert's research and experiments on electricity and magnetism.
Gilbert raised the interest in the new science greatly.
It was Gilbert who coined the expression "electrica" in his famous book.
In 1733, Charles Francois du Fé discovered that electricity comes in two forms, which
he called negative and positive.
The laden jar was the original capacitor, a device that stores and releases an electrical
charge.
At that time, electricity was considered the mysterious fluid or force.
In 1745, the laden jar was invented in Holland and Germany almost simultaneously.
Gilbert's Dutch physicist Peter Van Wushenbrooke and German clergyman and scientist Ewald Christian
von Kliced invented a laden jar.
When von Kliced first touched his laden jar, he received a powerful shock that knocked him
to the floor.
The laden jar was named after Wushenbrooke's hometown and university laden by Abby Knollitt,
a French scientist who first coined the term laden jar.
The jar was once called the Kliceden jar after von Kliced but his name did not stick.
Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706.
He was the 15th child out of a total of 17 brothers and sisters.
Franklin worked numerous jobs during his lifetime, including as a printer for the Philadelphia
Gazette.
Franklin's most famous discovery was that electricity and lightning were one and the same.
Ben Franklin's lightning rod was the first practical application of electricity.
Henry Cavendish of England, Colombe of France and Luigi Galvani of Italy made scientific
contributions towards finding practical uses for electricity.
In 1747 Cavendish started measuring the conductivity, the ability to carry an electrical current
of different materials and published his results.
In 1786 Luigi Galvani, an Italian physician, demonstrated what we now understand to be
the electrical basis of nerve impulses.
Galvani made frog muscles twitch by jolting them with a spark from an electrostatic machine.
Following the work of Cavendish and Galvani came a group of important scientists and
inventors, including Alessandro Volto of Italy, Hans Orsted of Denmark, Andre Ampere of France,
George Aum of Germany, Michael Faraday of England and Joseph Henry of America.
Joseph Henry was a researcher in the field of electricity whose work inspired inventors.
Hans Christian Orsted was a Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric currents
create magnetic fields, an important aspect of electromagnetism.
During a lecture, Orsted noticed a compass needle deflected from magnetic north when
an electric current from a battery was switched on and off, confirming a direct relationship
between electricity and magnetism.
Orsted's findings stirred much research into electrodynamics throughout the scientific
community, and his work also represented a major step toward a unified concept of energy.
Andre Ampere, a French physicist and mathematician is generally regarded as one of the main discoveries
of electromagnetism.
As a high school teacher, George Aum began his research with the new electrochemical cell,
invented by Italian scientist Alessandro Volto. Using equipment of his own creation, Aum found
that there is a direct proportionality between the potential difference applied across a
conductor and the resultant electric current, this relationship is known as Aum's law.
Michael Faraday was a British scientist, chemist, physicist and philosopher who greatly contributed
to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
His main discoveries included the magnetic field, electro-magnetic induction, diamagnetism
and electrolysis.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, he was
one of the most influential scientists in history.
Historians of science refer to him as having been the best experimentalist in the history
of science.
She was Faraday's research on the magnetic field around a conductor, carrying a DC electric
current, that he established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic fields
in physics.
Faraday also established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an
underlying relationship between the two phenomena.
One of Faraday's 1831 experiments, demonstrating induction, shows the liquid battery sending
an electric current through the small coil.
When it is moved in or out of the large coil, its magnetic field induces a momentary voltage
in the coil, which is detected by the galvanometer.
His inventions of the electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric
motor technology and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable
for use in technology.
In 1839, he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature
of electricity.
Faraday used static batteries and animal electricity to produce the phenomena of electrostatic
attraction, electrolysis and magnetism among others.
He concluded that contrary to the scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between
the various kinds of electricity were illusory.
Faraday instead proposed that only a single electricity exists and the changing values
of current and voltage would produce different groups of phenomena.
In 1824, Joseph Henry was employed as an assistant engineer on a survey team for a
state road between the Hudson River and Lake Eyre.
The experience changed the course of his career, he decided to study civil and mechanical engineering
instead of medicine, thus beginning his work with magnets.
Joseph Henry's first discovery was that the power of a magnet could be immensely strengthened
by winding it with insulated wire.
He was the first person to make a magnet that could lift 3500 pounds of weight.
Henry showed the difference between quantity magnets composed of short lengths of wire
connected in parallel and excited by a few large cells.
And intensity magnets wound with a single long wire and excited by a battery composed
of cells in a series.
This was an original discovery, greatly increasing both the immediate usefulness of the magnet
and its possibilities for future experiments.
Using his newly developed electromagnetic principle, Henry created one of the first
machines to use electromagnetism for motion.
This was the earliest ancestor of the modern DC Moshe and allowed Henry to recognize the
property of self-inductance.
Henry died on the 13th of May 1878 and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in the Georgetown
section of northwest Washington DC.
William Sturgeon was an English physicist and inventor who made the first electromagnets
and invented the first practical English electric motor.
It was his invention of the electromagnet that encouraged researchers to experiment with
it, resulting in attempts to send signals by electricity, however it was Joseph Henry
who discovered the essential mechanics behind the electric telegraph.
Arklight is the general term for a class of lamps that produce light by an electric arc.
The Arklight as a practical illuminating device was invented in 1878 by Charles Brush.
Other inventors improved the Arklight, but there were drawbacks.
For outdoor lighting and large halls, Arklight worked well, but Arklight could not be used
in small rooms.
The problem of indoor lighting was to be solved by one of America's most famous inventors.
Thomas Edison is a fourth most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his
name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and in particular
telecommunications.
He's included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car,
electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures.
His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator.
Edison originated the concept and implementation of electric power generation and distribution
to homes, businesses and factories, a crucial development in the modern industrialized world.
His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York.
Building on the contributions of other developers over the previous three quarters of a century,
Edison made improvements to the idea of incandescent light and entered the public consciousness
as the inventor of the light bulb and a prime mover in developing the necessary infrastructure
for electric power.
After many experiments with platinum and other metal filaments, Edison returned to carbon filament.
The first successful test was on October 22, 1879.
It lasted 13 and a half hours.
Edison continued to improve his design and by November 4, 1879, filed for a US patent
for an electric lamp.
Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament, including
cotton and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways, it was not until several
months after the painting was granted that Edison and his team discovered a carbonized
bamboo filament that could last over 1200 hours.
Edison's true success, like that of his friend Henry Ford, was in his ability to maximise
profits through establishment of mass production systems and intellectual property rights.
In 1887, there were 121 Edison power stations in the United States, delivering DC electricity
to customers.
When the limitations of DC were discussed by the public, Edison launched a propaganda
campaign to convince people that AC was far too dangerous to use.
The war against AC led him to become involved in the development and promotion of the electric
chair, using AC as an attempt to portray AC to have greater lethal potential than DC.
Edison went on to carry out a brief but intense campaign to ban the use of AC or to limit the
allowable voltage for safety purposes.
Edison patented a system for electricity distribution in 1880, which was essential to capitalise
on the invention of the electric lamp.
On December 17, 1880, Edison founded the Edison Illuminating Company.
The company established the first investor owned electric utility in 1882 on Pearl Street
Station, New York City.
It was on September 4, 1882 that Edison switched on his Pearl Street Generating Station's electrical
power distribution system, which provided 110 volts direct current to 59 customers in
Lower Manhattan.
Earlier in the year, in January 1882, he had switched on the first steam generating power
station at Holburn Viaduct in London.
The DC supply system provided electricity supplies to street lamps and several private
dwellings within a short distance of the station.
The key to Edison's fortunes was telegraphy.
With knowledge gained from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the basics
of electricity.
This allowed him to make his early fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based
broadcast system.
Edison painted the sound recording and the reproducing phonograph in 1878.
"How does it feel to be 84 years old?"
"Well, it feels really fine, 84 years of age, if you don't have anything to matter with
you."
"Well, I have a little trouble now, then, but that's because I'm getting old.
But I've got a lot of ginger, yeah."
"What do you think of the Einstein theory, Mr. Edison?"
"I don't think anything of Einstein theory because I can't understand it."
Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in Croatia, the son of a Serbian Orthodox clergyman.
Tesla studied engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic School.
He worked as an electrical engineer in Budapest and later emigrated to the United States
in 1884 to work at the Edison machine works.
During his lifetime, Tesla invented fluorescent lighting.
The Tesla induction motor, the Tesla coil, and developed the alternating current electrical
supply system that included a motor and transformer and three-phase electricity.
Tesla's patents and theoretical work also formed the basis of wireless communication
and the radio.
Now, Tesla coil is an electrical resonant transformer circuit that is used to produce
high voltage, low current, high frequency alternating current electricity.
Tesla uses coils to conduct innovative experiments in electrical lighting, phosphorescence, x-ray
generation, high frequency alternating current phenomena, electrotherapy, and the transmission
of electrical energy without wires.
In 1885, George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse Electric Company, bought the
patent's rights to Tesla's system of dynamos, transformers, and motors.
Westinghouse used Tesla's alternating current system to light the world's Columbian Exposition
of 1893 in Chicago.
In the late 1880s, Tesla and American inventor Thomas Edison became adversaries, in part
because of Edison's promotion of direct current for electric power distribution, over the
more efficient alternating current advocated by Tesla and Westinghouse.
The problem with DC was that the power plants could economically deliver DC electricity
only to customers within about one and a half miles from the generating station, so that
it was suitable only for central business districts when George Westinghouse suggested
using high-voltage AC instead, as it could carry electricity hundreds of miles with
marginal loss of power, Edison waged a war of currents to prevent AC from being adopted.
As a result of the war of currents, Edison and Westinghouse went nearly bankrupt.
In 1897, Tesla released Westinghouse from contract, providing Westinghouse a break from
Tesla's patent royalties.
In 1897, at age 41, Tesla filed the first radio patent.
A year later, he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat to the US military, believing that the
military would want things, such as radio-controlled torpedoes.
Remote radio control remained a novelty until World War I, and afterward, when a number
of countries used it in military programs.
In 1898, Tesla designed the Wardencliff Tower, an early wireless telecommunications tower intended
for commercial transatlantic wireless telephony, broadcasting and to demonstrate the transmission
of power without interconnecting wires.
In his Colorado Springs lamp, Tesla researched ways to transmit power and energy wirelessly
over long distances and discovered that the resonant frequency of the earth was approximately
8 hertz.
At his peak, he was intimate with poets and scientists, industrialists and financiers,
yet Tesla died destitute, having lost both his fortune and scientific reputation.
During his fall from notoriety to obscurity, Tesla created a legacy of genuine invention
and prophecy that still fascinates today.
The use of electricity gives a very convenient way to transfer energy, and because of this,
it has been adapted to a huge and growing number of uses.
Electric cars were popular in the late 19th century and early 20th century, until advances
in internal combustion engine technology and mass production of cheaper gasoline vehicles
led to a decline in the use of the electric drive vehicle.
The global economic recession in the late 2000s led to increase calls for auto makers
to abandon fuel and inefficient SUVs in favor of small cars, hybrid cars and electric cars.
California electric car maker Tesla Motors began development in 2004 on the Tesla Roadster,
which was first delivered to customers in 2008.
The Roadster was the first highway capable all-electric vehicle in serial production available
in the United States.
Electrical vehicle company Victrix developed the first commercially available high-performance
Maxi-sized electric scooter as another alternative to petrol powered vehicles.
Man is a fortunate species.
Over thousands of years our intelligence has given us tools in technology, art and science,
society and civilization.
We now possess a treasure house of man's great achievements.
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