Faraday's Namesake Measurement

In the history of electricity, the invention of the capacitor, a device that can store a charge, began in the 18th century with German Ewald Georg von Kleist. A year later Dutch physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek invented a similar storage mechanism and named it the Leyden jar after the University of Leyden where he worked.

Daniel Gralath combined several Leyden jars in parallel, a "battery" that increased the charge storage capacity. Even Ben Franklin worked with a Leyden jar. He disproved the theory that the charge was stored in water when in fact it was stored on the glass itself. He's responsible for the term battery.

Storage media grew smaller and smaller and came to be known as condensers. Sometimes that word is still used instead of capacitor.

Since the capacitor is capable of storing an electrical charge, it therefore stores electrical energy in the resulting field. The measurement of a device's capacitance is called farad in honor of Michael Faraday. The symbol F is used to represent 1 farad, and that's the capacitance that develops a potential difference of one volt when it stores a charge of one coulomb.

Bringing Meaning to Madness

Aren't you glad you don't have to know all this in order to use electricity. Flip a switch, and the lights come on.

Go Fly A Kite

Everyone knows about Benjamin Franklin's experiment with the kite. In June 1752, he allegedly tied a key to a wet kite string, went out in a storm, and flew his kite.

Sparks jumped from the key, down the wet string, and to his hand. That proved to our founding father, who had studied electricity in depth, that lightning was electrical in nature.

Later in 1791, Luigi Galvani published his discovery in Bioelectricity. He showed that electricity was the medium nerve cells used to "pass" signals to muscles.

A few years later, Alessandro Volta made a battery by alternating layers of zinc and copper. This voltaic pile gave scientists a more reliable source of electrical energy than the electrostatic machines that had been used in the past.

You can thank Hans Christian Orsted and Andre-Marie Ampere for recognizing the unity of electric and magnetic phenomena called electromagnetism. That was in 1819-1820. Then a year later Michael Faraday invented the electric motor, and Georg Ohm figured out the electrical a few years later.

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From all of these, we get the words most people recognize as having to do with electricity: galvanized, volt, amp, and ohm.

The English & Electricity

In the last years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, English doctor William Gilbert studied electricity and magnetism. He made a distinction between the lodestone effect (magnetism) and the static electricity created by rubbing amber. (I talked about the static electricity created from rubbing amber rods last week.)

Gilbert is the one who coined the word electricus (New Latin) meaning of amber or like amber to describe the characteristic of attracting small objects after being rubbed, what we know as static electricity. Eventually, from this, the English words electric and electricity were born. These two words were first seen in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646.

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As in most scientific advances, it took the combined work of many people in many countries to add to the wealth of knowledge that led to breakthroughs and discoveries.

The Ancients & Electric Fish

As delightful as this picture of an electric fish, the kind of electric fish I'm talking about is the kind that swims in water and can give you a jolting shock if you touch it.

Ancient Egyptians

It's hard to believe that electricity has been known of for nearly 4,000 years. Of course, they didn't precisely know about it the way we know of it. There are texts from ancient Egypt that refer to fish known as Thunderer of the Nile. Of course these were probably electric eels or something similar, but the Egyptians thought that they protected the other fish.

Greeks and Romans

Then about a thousand years later, these electric fish were written about by the Romans, Greeks, and Arabs. In fact, Pliny the Elder wrote about how the shocks delivered by some of these electric fish had a numbing effect on the hapless person who got stung. They also knew that these shocks could be conducted by some of the objects that came into contact with it.

Take One Electric Fish

Ancient physicians and naturalists seemed most interested in these electric fish. They tried to get shocks delivered to people who suffered from debilitating ailments like gout. Even those with headaches were told to touch electric fish. The powerful shock was thought to have curative powers.

Arabs

The Arabs were credited with the discovery of electricity as in lightning. Before the 1400s, they had a word for lightning, raad, and they used it in conjunction with the electric ray.

Amber & Cat Fur

The ancients also knew that amber rods could be rubbed with cat's fur and the resulting static charge would attract lightweight objects like feathers. Most of the Mediterranean cultures knew about this. In 600 BC, Thales of Miletos set forth his observations on static electricity. Of course, he misinterpreted the results and concluded that friction made amber magnetic, unlike the magnetic minerals like magnetite which didn't need rubbing.

Though he was wrong about the attraction being a result of magnetism, science did later prove a link between electricity and magnetism.

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All our science is built upon thousands of years of experimentation and knowledge.

English Doctor & Electricity

Most of the terms used in electricity come from the scientists who worked with the phenomena. They either invented, created, discovered, or otherwise "found" what was subsequently named after them.

William Gilbert's Contribution

In 1600, English physician William Gilbert studied electricity and magnetism. He separated the lodestone effect from static electricity produced by rubbing amber, and he is the one who invented the word electricity from the New Latin word electricus, meaning from amber or amber-like. He used the word to refer to the property of attracting small objects after being rubbed, what we know as static electricity. In 1646, this derivation of the English words electric and electricity was published in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica.

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History isn't dry dates and names. History is the story of the contribution of individual men and women to our world.

Electricity, A History Lesson

The word electricity comes from New Latin e-lectricus, meaning like amber. Electricity is all about the presence and flow of an electric charge. We see it in nature, in lightning. We see it in every day life when someone rubs a wool garment and gets a spark of static electricity. More scientific aspects of this flow of an electric charge are seen in an electromagnetic field and electromagnetic induction.

In everyday life, the word electricity is understood, but in the world of the scientist, it's considered too vague so more exact and definitive words are preferred. Some of these precise terms used in the lab are: Electric Potential, Electric Current, Electromagnetism, etc.

History

Man has studied electrical phenomena since ancient days. Finally, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the mysteries began to be solved. Still, little practical applications for this phenomena existed until late in the 19th century when engineers began to use it in homes and industries.

Thus, the Industrial Age blossomed. Society and industry alike changed, and the change continues today with new applications continuing unabated.

Bringing Meaning to Madness

Electricity is one of the foundations of modern society. Our infrastructure is built upon it. If you think that's overstating the case, just try existing when the power goes out for days as it sometimes does here in hurricane country.