ELECTRICITY AND ITS HISTORY

People knew about electricity for a long time. Ancient Greeks noticed that if they rubbed a piece of amber, feathers would stick to it.

Experiments using friction to generate static electricity led to machines that could produce large amounts of static electricity on demand. In 1660 German Otto von Guericke made the first electrostatic generator with a ball of sulfur and some cloth. It worked, and now scientists could study electric shocks and sparks whenever they wanted. As scientists continued to study electricity, they began thinking of it as an invisible fluid and tried to capture and store it.

In 1746 Pieter van Musschenbroek of Leyden wrapped a water-filled jar with metal foil and discovered that this simple device could store the energy produced by an electrostatic generator. This device became known as the Leyden jar. Alessandro Volta made a so-called voltaic pile which produced an electric current without needing to be charged like a Leyden jar. This invention is still around today, but we call it the battery.

André-Marie Ampère described the relationship between electricity and magnetism. He was one of the first to develop measuring techniques for electricity.

Michael Faraday conducted groundbreaking experiments in electromagnetism. He constructed the induction ring. In later years, engineers would use the principle of the induction ring to build electrical transformers, which are used today in thousands of electrical and electronic devices. Faraday also created a tiny electric motor—too small to do the work of a steam engine but still quite promising.

For thousands of years electricity and magnetism were subjects of interest only to experimenters and scientists. Nobody thought of a practical way of using electricity before the 1800s and it was of little interest to most people. But by Faraday’s time inventors and engineers were gearing up to transform scientific concepts into practical machines.

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