Electricity – Video 2 – Second Timers Quiz

HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY: Electricity was originally called electricus by the English physicist, William Gilbert in the 1600’s. It’s from the Latin word, electrum, meaning “amber”. Amber is fossilized tree sap.  Why use amber to name electricity? Because static electricity was first generated by throwing amber into fires.

HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY: In 1752, Benjamin Franklin did the kite experiment where he put a key on the string of a kite and flew it in a storm.  The plan was that lightning would strike the key and transmit electricity down the string to his Leyden jar.

HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY:  It’s believed that Ben Franklin didn’t die in his unwise kite-in-the-storm experiment because lighting never struck the key on his kite string.  Instead, the charge building in the cloud is believed to have moved down the string.  A few years later, another man doing the same experiment dIed when lighting did strike his kite string.

HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY:  From his key-string discovery, Franklin became convinced that a metal rod on top of a building would draw lighting to itself. He thought that if a wire was attached to the rod and run to another rod which was pounded into the ground, that this would transfer the power of the lightning bolt to the ground and dissipate it.

HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY ANIMATION: Pliny the Elder in Rome wrote of electric catfish and electric torpedo rays and of electric charges traveling down rubber rods. A nifty way of dealing with headaches for the Romans was to put torpedo rays on their heads! 

HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY ANIMATION:  Luigi Galvani, the Italian physician, demonstrated that neurons use electricity to pass signals to muscles by making dead ostrich legs twitch with electric shocks.

HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY ANIMATION:  In the 1800’s, Alessandro Volta made the battery-like voltaic pile. It used a stack of alternating layers of lead and wooden discs.  This gave a reliable source for electricity rather than the electronic machines in use at that time.

HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY ANIMATION:  Michael Faraday invented the beginnings of the electric motor in 1821.

HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY ANIMATION:  Edison had over 2000 patents including the electric lightbulb and phonograph and the CD player. Tesla followed with his Tesla coil and its huge 125-foot sparks and the Westinghouse-funded the New York City Niagara Power Station–and a truckload more.

HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY ANIMATION:  Alexander Graham Bell’s phone and a  other electrical inventions– including radio, electric motors and TV–greatly increased the use of electricity.  So much so that electricity became the force of the First Industrial Revolution, the single greatest biological change agent in history.