Preview

Jhjj

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
375 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Jhjj
Who Discovered Electricity ? From the writings of Thales of Miletus it appears that Westerners knew as long ago as 600 B.C. that amber becomes charged by rubbing. But other than that, there was little real progress until the English scientist William Gilbert in 1600 described the electrification of many substances and coined the term "electricity" from the Greek word for amber.
As a result, Gilbert is called the father of modern electric power. In 1660, Otto von Guericke invented a crude machine for producing static electricity. It was a ball of sulfur, rotated by a crank with one hand and rubbed with the other. Successors, such as Francis Hauksbee, made improvements that provided experimenters with a ready source of static electricity. Today's highly developed descendant of these early machines is the Van de Graaf generator, which is sometimes used as a particle accelerator. Robert Boyle realized that attraction and repulsion were mutual and that electric force was transmitted through a vacuum. Stephen Gray distinguished between conductors and nonconductors. C. F. Du Fay recognized two kinds of power, which Benjamin Franklin and Ebenezer Kinnersley of Philadelphia later named positive and negative.
Progress quickened after the Leyden jar was invented in 1745 by Pieter van Musschenbroek. The Leyden jar stored static electricity, which could be discharged all at once. In 1747 William Watson discharged a Leyden jar through a circuit, and comprehension of the current and circuit started a new field of experimentation. Henry Cavendish, by measuring the conductivity of materials (he compared the simultaneous shocks he received by discharging Leyden jars through the materials), and Charles A. Coulomb, by expressing mathematically the attraction of electrified bodies, began the quantitative study of electric power.
Depite what you have learned, Benjamin Franklin did not "discover" electric power. In fact, electric power did not begin when Benjamin Franklin at when he

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Reprocudtive Health Bill

    • 1286 Words
    • 6 Pages

    You might think that batteries are a modern invention, but batteries were one of the first ways of making electricity. Alessandro Volta discovered the first electric battery in 1800. He made a giant stack of alternating layers of zinc, blotting paper soaked in salt water, and silver. This early design for a battery became known as the voltaic pile.…

    • 1286 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Early 1800 Benjamin Franklin suggested using electricity to help cure mental issues, this was the beginning of Electricshock Therapy.…

    • 133 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    It showed the Franklin’s exploring spirit. Consequently, Franklin was the first man to label electricity as positive and negative and the first discovered conservation of charge principle. (Franklin 214 ) This experiment inspired the invention of lighting rod. Franklin’s inventions were also include in social innovations such as but not limited to population studies, Atlantic Ocean currents study, wave theory of light, meteorology, concept of cooling, oceanography findings.…

    • 1038 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Researchers could create friction based electricity utilizing turning machines, yet it was not until the point when Benjamin Franklin's well known kite test in 1752 that they demonstrated that lightning was of a similar…

    • 1779 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    His most significant discoveries, however, were in the field of electricity. His famous kite experiment proved that lightning is an electrical phenomenon. In 1774 he invented a cast-iron open heater, which projected out from the chimney and radiated heat from the back and from the sides as well as the front (126).…

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Benjamin franklin

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Before Franklin started his scientific experimentation, it was thought that electricity consisted of two opposing forces. Franklin showed that electricity consisted of a "common element" which he named "electric fire." Further, electricity was "fluid" like a liquid. It passed from one body to another — however it was never destroyed. In a letter to Peter Collinson, Franklin wrote that the "fire only circulates. Hence have arisen some new items among us. We say B (and other Bodies alike circumstanced) are electricised positively; A negatively; Or rather B is electricised plus and A minus ... These terms we may use till philosophers give us better."…

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    With Franklin's experiments it all showed that electricity consisted of a common element which he called electric fire. Further he discovered that electricity was fluid like a liquid. It passed…

    • 1031 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of Franklin’s most used inventions is the lightning rod. Franklin studied electricity in a small laboratory. He assumed lightning was electricity he but wanted to prove it. “On a stormy night in 1752, he conducted a life threatening experiment to demonstrate that lightning is the result of electrical buildup. He constructed a kite that carried a metal spike and flew it into the thunderstorm” (Bhunoo 201). Franklin reeled his kite back in to study it. He was trying to get the lightning to strike the key and see if his theory was correct. “Franklin noticed that it sparked as he brought his knuckles close to it” (Bhunoo 201). As the lightning sparked he understood that it was electricity. Even though some people credit Franklin with the invention of electricity, electricity was in existence long before he was born.…

    • 1196 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Science of the Spud

    • 1074 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Fast-forward to 1729 when, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, another scientifically-minded Englishman, Stephen Gray, discovered that electricity could flow. Before he decided to moisten corks in glass…

    • 1074 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    How did the idea of electricity come up? That is a question a lot of people wonder. Benjamin Franklin was around the age of 46 when he began his electricity experimentation. One experiment included his kite and key experiment which took place in June of 1752. Benjamin let a kite fly while there was lighting outside.…

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The first use of electricity by the human race was recorded back to 600 BC when Thales of Miletus wrote about the charging of amber on rubbing it, that is what we know as static electricity. But the most important contribution to electricity was from Nikola Tesla, a mechanical and electrical engineer and inventor he developed commercial electricity. Think of the countless luxuries that are afforded to us by energy workers that we take for granted. Imagine if they were all gone we would all be forced to resort to old methods of getting things done, and stop doing some things all together. Almost all Americans use electricity, and if we did not have it we would be anywhere close to where we are today. Not just America either, economies around the world are completely reliant on electricity.…

    • 931 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Electricity was one of the greatest inventions to benefit American society. It started in 1876 when Thomas Edison created the light bulb. The light bulb helped create central power plants which lit homes, factories, streets, and even large cities. It extended the number of hours in the day when Americans can work and play. Electricity also led to several new inventions. Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1896 that sent messages over wire. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876.…

    • 394 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    150 years ago, approximately around 1886, electricity was becoming a very exciting thing as AC plants started to appear all over the world. This meant great change for not only our establishments but also, for families that were near it and could afford it. It was the dawn of aluminum, cars and now a better way of life with electricity, life was about to get more exciting as well as easier for many families.…

    • 1313 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    ● It made sure that goods were not brought to a place on a foreign ship and that…

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Photoelectric Effect

    • 614 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The photoelectric effect was not just an immediate discovery with a definite drawn conclusion. It involved many years of research, experimentation and debating. In 1887, Heinrich Hertz first discovered the concept of the photoelectric effect when he was investigating the production and reception of electromagnetic waves. From this experiment, after several years it was determined that when light shines on a metal surface, the surface emits electrons, for example, it can start a current in a circuit just by shining a light on a metal plate. In 1899, Joseph John Thompson investigated ultraviolet light in cathode ray tubes and deduced that cathode rays existed of negatively charged particles, which he called corpuscles (later called electrons). In 1901, Nikola Tesla received the patent US68597 (Apparatus for the Utilisation of Radiant Energy) that describes radiation charging and discharging conductors (metal plates) by "radiant energy". Tesla used this effect to charge a capacitator with energy by means of a conductive plate. These devices were referred to as "photoelectric alternating stepping motors". In 1905, Einstein published the theory that…

    • 614 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics