Electricity
is one of the most awesome phenomenon’s of nature and the most powerful
manifestations of it which we have ever seen is – LIGHTNING.
It’s a 300
year long tale of dazzling experiments by various scientists and engineers which
paved the way for the development of this sparkling force of nature.
It was in
the beginning of the 18th century when people began to notice the
astonishing effects of static electricity with which they could attract
feathers with a silk rod or even lightning a candle with the help of static
electricity. Initially these tricks were used by magicians to amaze people. But
this was not all! Meanwhile there was the invention of Holksby machine which
could produce static electricity. The machine was named after the scientists
name only. This Holksby machine laid the foundation for the future development
of electricity. The machine could produce electricity but the only problem was
that there was no way we could store it.
But then
around the mid of the 18th century, scientists came up with a new
revolutionary invention of lightning jar which could store electricity. This
lightning jar was accidently invented by a scientist. The jar took up a little
charge and then was capable of giving a heavy shock. This behavior of the jar
astonished the scientists. The lightning jar invented at that time closely
resembles a modern capacitor. Anyhow, the scientists had found a way to store
charge but yet the phenomenon occurring in the jar was unexplained. This was
explained by a businessman rational thinker, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Franklin is
regarded as a scientist but he was a rational thinker who could think on
possibly any logical subject. He was the one who explained the phenomenon
occurring in the jar and he also proved that the lightning that appears in the
sky was electricity and that electricity was also a force of nature.
With all
these new ideas and inventions coming up, the whole Europe went electricity
crazy!!
The
electrical quantity ‘Voltage’ is named after an Italian scientist, ALESSANDRO
VOLTA. This is because of the significant contribution he made to the
“Enlightment Movement” (name given to the movement for advancement in
electricity field). Volta discovered the “VOLTA PILE” which was just a setup of
metal discs which could produce some continuous electricity. HE got this idea
from the works of another scientist who had worked on the torpedo fish so as to
study how the fish produced electricity, but was not able to derive a
conclusion. Volta made the same arrangement he saw in the back of the torpedo
fish using metal disc and was able to produce continuous electricity, though
very small. He had unknowingly created the first battery and this work of Volta
was greatly regarded by everyone as this opened the gates for the future
inventions.
In 1808, a
scientist named Sir Humphrey Davy arranged 800 Volta piles together and
connected them with each other. He then drew two terminals out of it. Actually,
he had created a battery of the size of a room. This demonstration was set
before everyone and as the candles were blown off and Davy touched the two
terminals together, a very bright and continuous spark glow out of it which
enlightened the whole place and this marked the beginning of a new era. The era
in which Humankind was about to harness a mighty force of nature, the
Electricity.
Now as the
humans had found a way to produce continuous electric current, but there was no
way that this discovery could be made use of. And everyone knew, the person who
could make something to use this energy was going to be very rich in the near
future. And the person to do this was “Thomas Elva Edison” who could see the
vast capital generating possibility, if he could develop something of the kind.
He gathered a group of talented and young engineers from across the country and
established his own research base. His base became the first research base in
the world. All of them worked hard day in day out. Due to these continuous
efforts Edison was close to developing an electric bulb, but the problem
aroused in the selection of the material to be used as filament. He tried
everything from platinum to even the beard hairs of his workmen as filament.
But the result was not up to the mark. Then, he got an idea from the works of
another scientist who was working on the same thing. And that idea was to
create a vacuum in the bulb which delayed the burning or damaging of filament
and thus he succeeded in making the electric bulb. Edison was now all set up
and he decided to make power stations to provide the people with electricity.
While Edison was setting up DC power stations all across New York, there was
another person, Nikola Tesla, who was not satisfied with Edison’s idea of using
DC current. He believed that AC and not DC, was the future. Using the
experimental results of Faraday and Fleming, Tesla demonstrated that rotating
effect can be produced using AC alone. He used his famous Tesla egg experiment
to prove this.
As Tesla was
in favor of using AC, Edison favored DC. This led to a rivalry between the two.
Edison’s supporters drew new ways to show that AC was a harmful form of
electricity and it was life threatening to all the mammals including humans.
This was a major setback for Tesla who was working for AC development. At that
time, Tesla was financed by businessman George Westinghouse and using his
wealth Tesla created an experiment in which he allowed a very high frequency AC
current to pass through his body, while he rested on an insulator and the
current passed through his body without any pain and it was because of the high
frequency, that Tesla was undamaged.
This
experiment of Tesla, made a great impact on the people in driving out the fear
out of them. Thus, the war of DC and AC came to an end. When Tesla was in his
last years, he saw a world which he wanted to build. He saw the world lit up by
his work. Tesla died in the year 1943.
Furthermore,
in the beginning of the 20th century, there was a mathematician
James Clarke Maxwell, who made four equations describing the inter-relationship
between electric and magnetic fields. At that time, there were only few people
who could understand mathematics at such a level and one of those few was
Heinrich Hertz, who took on the task of experimentally proving Maxell’s equations.
And he was successful in it!
Then came
the discovery of wireless transmission for which the credit was given to
Marconi. Though, Marconi received a Nobel Prize for wireless transmission,
actually, he was not the one who developed it. It was developed by another
scientist named Oliver. Oliver had done both the things that Marconi and Hertz
were credited for. But his name just remains a footnote in history, because of
his bad luck, I should say.
Following
these advancements was the discovery of crystals (semiconductors) which was
done by an Indian scientist Jagdish Chander Bose. And these crystals found an
enormous use in the future which we witness today. But, nobody knew the
potential of these crystals at that time.
With the
introduction of the semiconductor materials in electrical and electronic
instruments both efficiency and reliability has increased. We now live in a
world full of electronics. We can’t even imagine this world without
electricity. The understanding of proper and efficient use of electricity took
hundreds of years of hard work of handful of great minds and now we are the one
who witness this miracle and live in the world which those great pioneers must
have imagined at that time.
All the
credit goes to them and we should salute them for their mind boggling works.
