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Electricity Pioneers |
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Benjamin Franklin |
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Benjamin Franklin
proved that lightning and the "spark" from amber was one and the same thing.
His experiment of flying a kite in a thunderstorm is a famous, yet very
dangerous one. In 1792, Franklin fastened an iron spike to a silken kite,
holding the end of the kite string by an iron key. Lightning flashed and a
tiny spark jumped from the key to his wrist. The experiment proved
Franklin's theory, but he could have easily killed himself. |
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Aloisio Galvani |
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In 1790, an Italian
professor of medicine, Aloisio Galvani, found when the leg of a dead
frog was touched by a metal knife which had been laying next to an
electrical machine, the leg of the frog twitched violently. Galvani
thought that the frogs' muscles must have contained electricity, but
another Italian scientist, Alessandro Volta, solved the mystery of the
jerking leg. |
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Alessandro Volta |
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Volta realised the two
main factors of Galvani's discovery were the two different metals involved -
the steel of the knife and the tin plate upon which the frog was lying. He
showed that when moisture comes between two different metals, electricity is
created. This led him to invent the first electric battery, which he made
from thin sheets of copper and zinc, separated by paper soaked in acid. |
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In this way, a new kind
of battery was discovered, electricity that flowed steadily like water,
instead of discharging in a single spark. Volta showed that electricity
could be made to travel from one place to another by wire, thereby making an
important contribution to the science of electricity.
The unit of electric potential, the Volt is
named after Volta. |
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Michael Faraday |
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The credit for
producing or generating current electricity on a practical scale goes to
English scientist Michael Faraday. Faraday was greatly interested in the
invention of the electromagnet, but his brilliant mind took earlier
experiments a step further. If
electricity could produce magnetism, why couldn't magnetism produce
electricity? |
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In 1831, Faraday found
the solution. Electricity could be produced through magnetism in motion.
Faraday discovered that when a magnet is moved
inside a coil of copper wire, a tiny electric current run through the wire.
Of course, Faraday's electric dynamo or generator was small and crude, and
provided only a small electrical current by today's standards, but he
discovered the first method of generating electricity by means of motion in
a magnetic field. |
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Thomas Edison |
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Nearly 40 years went by
before Thomas Alva Edison in America built a really practical generator.
Edison used it to produce electric current to light his laboratory and later
to supply the necessary current for the first New York street to be lit by
electric lamp in 1882. Edison made
many inventions including the phonograph, an improved printing telegraph and
the first commercially usable incandescent lamp in 1879. Commercial
production of the lamps followed the next year. Before he died in 1931.
Thomas Alva Edison had patented 1300 inventions. |
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James Watt |
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James Watt, Scottish
inventor of the steam-condensing engine, was born 1736. His improvements to
steam engines were patented over a period of 15 years starting in 1769.
Thermal power stations continue to use the
principles of the steam engine developed by Watt and his immortality is
assured by his name being used for the electric unit of power. |
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James Maxwell |
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James Clerk Maxwell,
Scottish physicist, was born with an inquiring mind. Dissatisfied with the
toys he was given, the youngster made his own scientific toys at the age of
eight! In 1846, when Maxwell was 15, he delivered his first scientific
paper. His best known work is a
treatise on electricity and magnetism published in 1873. He made the
discovery that founded the electromagnet theory of light. It is to Maxwell's
electrical research that the advent of radio is due. |
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Andre Marie Ampere |
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Andre Marie Ampere
(1775 - 1836) was the first to explain the electro-dynamic theory. He was a
French mathematician who devoted himself to the study of electricity and
magnetism. A permanent memorial to
Ampere is the use of his name for the unit of electric current. |
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George Ohm |
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George Simon Ohm,
German mathematician and physicist, was born in Bavaria in 1787. He was a
college teacher in Cologne when in 1827 he published, "The Galvanic Circuit
Investigated Mathematically". German scientists coldly received his
theories. Ohm's research was recognised in England and he was awarded the
Copley Medal in 1841. His name has been given to the unit of electrical
resistance. |
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