Essay On The History of Electricity
Uploaded by
ScribdTranslationsEssay On The History of Electricity
Uploaded by
ScribdTranslationsESSAY ON THE HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY
Jairo Quintero Vides
Jaime Penalosa
SIGN
COMPUTER EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE, DESIGN AND INSTALLATION OF
STRUCTURED CABLING
SANTANDER
BARRANCABERMEJA
2019
The history of electricity refers to the creation, study and use of
electricity, discovering its laws as a phenomenon and the invention of
devices for its practical use. At that time, these phenomena were
considered the work of God or the Almighty due to their lack of
explanation.
Since the first scientists began to reveal the potential of electrical
energy because they wanted to see electricity as a source of energy
and not as a source of entertainment. The events of the 18th century
stimulated the ability of scientists of the time to implement fundamental
inventions and ideas for electrical development due to social events;
that, due to the pace of technological development, electricity took
leaps of faith in which was reflected what it is today, what would have
become of us without them.
It all started with a spark. At the beginning of the 18th century, Leyden
presented two carbon rods that, when joined together, unleashed a
light that spectators had never seen before; which caused humans to
begin to imagine how to control this elemental force. Hoxbury
introduced the rotating glass sphere, inside the sphere a light appeared
when touched by his hand, it was a glow that seemed to come to life,
thus giving way to the electrical revolution.
The most curious scientists asked themselves whether they could use
this electric light for something more than just entertaining those who
admired it.
Steven Gray created an ingenious experiment using silk and wood
ropes in the shape of a swing and with a device like Hoxbury's he
invited a child to get on a swing hung from silk threads generating
electricity and he put in some pieces of gold, when the child passed his
hand near the pieces of gold they jumped towards his fingers, the
people in the audience claimed to have seen sparks come out of the
child's fingers and that was when Steven Gray discovered insulators
like silk and conductors that allowed electricity to flow like metals.
Steven Gray's only problem was being able to store this energy. A
problem that Bushamberg solved through human error discovers how
to store electricity. In a glass jar he poured water and, inserting a
conducting wire connected to a generator while holding it in his hands,
he realized that the energy was stored for up to several days, so he
called his experiment a Leyden jar.
In May 1752 Franklin chose a metal tube resting on an empty wine
bottle waiting for a thunderstorm they wanted to catch lightning in the
bottle, when the lightning struck the metal tube one of them brought his
finger close to the bottle and a spark came out revealing that lightning
was something similar to electricity created by men. Franklin said that
all bodies contain energy and that nature is balanced between positive
and negative energy. With this, Franklin discovered how the Leyden jar
worked, thus solving some of the riddles of this experiment. The
current equivalent of the Leyden jar is known as the capacitor; it is thus
one of the most common and used electronic components today. The
function of a capacitor is to help regulate power surges, thereby
protecting sensitive components.
Henry Cavendish came from a very wealthy family, but he decided to
leave all that behind and go to London to study electricity. In order to
find out if a living being produced electricity, he produced his own fish.
After all these experiments, it was concluded that electricity can be
continuous. Later in history, Alejandro Volta and Galvani appear, who
lived for and by electricity. Galvani was attracted by the application of
electricity in medicine; he was struck by how paralyzed muscles
reacted to electricity.
Galvani did an experiment with a frog keeping only the nerves and
using Hoxbury's electric generator he connected it to the nerve in the
frog's leg, the frog's limb jerked as if it made contact and he called this
phenomenon animal electricity, believing that the electricity flowed from
the frog itself, but Volta said that the frog's limbs responded to
electricity produced by metals. Volta discovered the battery by stacking
copper and celluloid several times. What Volta's batteries
demonstrated was that animal electricity did not exist; the biggest
surprise for Volta was that the energy generated by his battery was
continuous. In metals, atoms move from one atom to another, this
movement is known as electric current. The unit of measurement was
called volt in honor of Volta.
David created the largest battery in the world, it had more than 800
voltaic cells linked together. In an old candlelit room, David joined the
ends of the battery together, producing a brilliant, blinding spark, and
where there was darkness, light was made. The beginning of electricity
is symbolized by David's lamp.
Electricity is one of the great forces of nature. By the mid-20th century,
our mastery of electricity allowed us to power our world, but it had to be
the eccentric ingenuity of one man that showed us the potential of
electrical energy. Nikola Tesla looked out over the Manhattan skyline
for the last time in the winter of 1943. Tesla was born into a world
powered by steam and lit by gas. But in his eyes he saw a world
powered by electricity, a world that only Tesla could see.
Early scientists discovered that electricity could be more than just a
static charge and could flow in a steady current and that electricity
could be related to magnetism.
A young man named Michael Faraday arrived at the Royal Institution in
Great Britain and was about to listen to one of the most fabulous minds
of the time. Faraday was fascinated by science and wanted to
understand why things were the way they were.
Faraday worked all day binding books and at night he read books
about science. A year later he was appointed assistant at the Royal
Institution in London, where he studied chemistry in all its forms.
Christian Oersted made an excellent discovery by applying electric
current to a copper coil on a compass needle causing it to rotate. He
demonstrated for the first time that an electric current creates a
magnetic force, which we know today as electromagnetism.
Faraday created a circuit using a battery, a pair of wires and a bath of
mercury, the circuit had copper posts and a cable that hung touching
the mercury, thanks to the conductive capacity of mercury the circuit
was completed when the current passed through the circuit generating
a circular magnetic force around the cable, this interacted with the
force of the magnet that was in the middle of the mercury, this made
the cable move, Faraday had proven that this force existed, this was
the first electric motor in history. When he placed a magnet inside a
coil of metal wire and detected the electric current produced by moving
the magnet back and forth inside the coil, Faraday discovered that he
had generated electrical energy from mechanical energy.
The key to understanding how the telegraph works lies in a special
magnet, the electromagnet, which is a magnet with an electric current.
The first electromagnets were created by William Sturgeon in Great
Britain and Joseph Henry in America. They discovered that there was a
greater magnetic field if they put more turns of wire in it.
The telegraph was the first invention that brought electricity out of
laboratories. Samuel Bass developed a message sending system
based on the time that an electrical circuit remained on or off, a long
pulse was equivalent to a dash and a short one to a period, this
allowed messages to be sent through a code. The innovative creation
of the telegraph was so rapid that Europe and the United States began
to cross endless land telegraph cables from one side to the other.
The world's most competitive inventor accepted the challenge,
American Thomas Alva Edison and Swan joined forces and
commercialized the invention of the light bulb. Nikola Tesla became the
shadow of Thomas Alva Edison.
George Westinghouse believed that alternating currents were the
future.
George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla went head to head with
Thomas Alva Edison when the lucrative New York City lighting deals
came up, two different systems battling for the ultimate prize, the
chance to light up America and the rest of the world, a battle known as
the War of the Currents. Brown was about to take the fight against
alternating current to a new dimension. He put on a show where he
used animals to shock them with alternating and direct current, thus
proving that alternating current killed faster than direct current.
Nikola Tesla demonstrated an invention to generate high frequency
alternating current in a magical demonstration hundreds of thousands
of volts crossed his body from the Tesla coil to a lamp, thus
demonstrating that alternating current was safe. Thus making Tesla
one of the greatest pioneers of electricity
