AlwaysLearning
Junior Member level 1
In my opinion, the best way to learn anything is to study the history ...rather than studying what's already refined. Putting together a timeline (video
). Fast forward to the questions at the bottom if you don't want to read what's below.
Here we go:
...
More than 2000 years later, William Gilbert, Queen Elizabeth's 1st physician, noted that glass rubbed with silk became "amberized" - electrified (1st to use this term), & that other materials, could also be enlivened this way. Gilbert studied amber, as the Greeks did. He named it's attractive power "vis electricia," Latin for electricity.
For centuries it had been thought that the secret to amber's attractive powers resided in the way it grew arm when rubbed. Drawing on his experiments, Gilbert surmised that when amber was rubbed, there was a transfer of "effluvium" to the smooth surface & that it was this unseen substance that attracted other materials.
A French chemist, Charles Francois De Cisternay Dufay, went on to discover that rubbed amber repelled objects that rubbed glass attracted. Electricity he concluded, must come in two forms: "resinous" & "vitreous."
Otto Von Guericke built what he believed was a scale model of the earth. Coating the inside of the glass sphere with sulfur & minerals, he heated it & then broke the glass, leaving a perfectly round sphere. He placed it in a machine that turned it against a pair of leather pads in an effort to simulate planetary powers. Apparently, he had accepted Gilberts theory that electricity & gravity were linked, but he unwisely rejected the idea of the earth as a giant magnet. despite his poor assumptions, what he had done was give the follow sulfur ball an electrostatic charge. Once charged, the sphere attracted light objects -just as the amber in ancient times -such as feathers & bits of cloth & rejecting other substances.
Hauskbee & Christian Hausen soon improved on Guericke's machine, replacing the sulfur sphere with one of glass.
1706, Francis Hauskbee offered up another tool for electrical experimentation. A simple glass tube some 30" long. When rubbed with a piece of cloth, it also held an electrical charge. Unlike Guericke's electrostatic machine, the glass tube was not only a reliable way of storing a charge, albeit very briefly, but was also simple to charge & inexpensive to manufacture. Virtually anyone with an interest could acquire one of the tubes, opening the doors of experimentation to an even greater number of amateur scientists.
...
I'll stop there. I'm ending right before Stephen Gray adopted the glass tube & ran his famous "charter house" experiment with the boy on the swing (Gray split the world into what he called "conductors" & "insulators"). 1745, Ewald Von Kleist had the idea of storing electricity might be a good idea to further his experiments. Beginning with Dufay's findings that water had a natural affinity for electricity, he set to work. -Had to add that last part in there. Leyden jar:razz:
Questions:
2000 years is a HUGE time frame. Is there anyone else to make note of or should Gilbert receive all (or most of) the credit?
When was Gilbert's theory on effluvium disproved? Was it the discovery of triboelectricity?
Much of the above is from the book "The Battery." In this book, the author jumps straight from the Greeks to Guericke. He never mentioned Gilbert (shocker!). What was Guericke's intention? ...planetary powers? Really (sarcasm)?
NOTE: I have not included Farday, Oersted (Farday gets too much credit, hehe), Maxwell, Franklin, Nollet, Cavendish, Galvani, Volta, Henry, etc...
These gentlemen, the few I included, did not come until AFTER what is listed above. Trying to keep my questions within the period of the Greeks to Gray.
If anyone has any other books I can read, please make note!
Sources: The Battery, BBC Light Fantastic & BBC Shock & Awe Of Electricity, ... ???
). Fast forward to the questions at the bottom if you don't want to read what's below.Here we go:
...
More than 2000 years later, William Gilbert, Queen Elizabeth's 1st physician, noted that glass rubbed with silk became "amberized" - electrified (1st to use this term), & that other materials, could also be enlivened this way. Gilbert studied amber, as the Greeks did. He named it's attractive power "vis electricia," Latin for electricity.
For centuries it had been thought that the secret to amber's attractive powers resided in the way it grew arm when rubbed. Drawing on his experiments, Gilbert surmised that when amber was rubbed, there was a transfer of "effluvium" to the smooth surface & that it was this unseen substance that attracted other materials.
A French chemist, Charles Francois De Cisternay Dufay, went on to discover that rubbed amber repelled objects that rubbed glass attracted. Electricity he concluded, must come in two forms: "resinous" & "vitreous."
Otto Von Guericke built what he believed was a scale model of the earth. Coating the inside of the glass sphere with sulfur & minerals, he heated it & then broke the glass, leaving a perfectly round sphere. He placed it in a machine that turned it against a pair of leather pads in an effort to simulate planetary powers. Apparently, he had accepted Gilberts theory that electricity & gravity were linked, but he unwisely rejected the idea of the earth as a giant magnet. despite his poor assumptions, what he had done was give the follow sulfur ball an electrostatic charge. Once charged, the sphere attracted light objects -just as the amber in ancient times -such as feathers & bits of cloth & rejecting other substances.
Hauskbee & Christian Hausen soon improved on Guericke's machine, replacing the sulfur sphere with one of glass.
1706, Francis Hauskbee offered up another tool for electrical experimentation. A simple glass tube some 30" long. When rubbed with a piece of cloth, it also held an electrical charge. Unlike Guericke's electrostatic machine, the glass tube was not only a reliable way of storing a charge, albeit very briefly, but was also simple to charge & inexpensive to manufacture. Virtually anyone with an interest could acquire one of the tubes, opening the doors of experimentation to an even greater number of amateur scientists.
...
I'll stop there. I'm ending right before Stephen Gray adopted the glass tube & ran his famous "charter house" experiment with the boy on the swing (Gray split the world into what he called "conductors" & "insulators"). 1745, Ewald Von Kleist had the idea of storing electricity might be a good idea to further his experiments. Beginning with Dufay's findings that water had a natural affinity for electricity, he set to work. -Had to add that last part in there. Leyden jar:razz:
Questions:
2000 years is a HUGE time frame. Is there anyone else to make note of or should Gilbert receive all (or most of) the credit?
When was Gilbert's theory on effluvium disproved? Was it the discovery of triboelectricity?
Much of the above is from the book "The Battery." In this book, the author jumps straight from the Greeks to Guericke. He never mentioned Gilbert (shocker!). What was Guericke's intention? ...planetary powers? Really (sarcasm)?
NOTE: I have not included Farday, Oersted (Farday gets too much credit, hehe), Maxwell, Franklin, Nollet, Cavendish, Galvani, Volta, Henry, etc...
These gentlemen, the few I included, did not come until AFTER what is listed above. Trying to keep my questions within the period of the Greeks to Gray.
If anyone has any other books I can read, please make note!
Sources: The Battery, BBC Light Fantastic & BBC Shock & Awe Of Electricity, ... ???
