Timeline of who invented electricity

I note there has to be an anode and a cathode to draw power from a battery. If that spark came in contact with a flammable Greek Fire? Actually, the early Byzantines made something very similar! Byzantine hand grenades with Greek fire in the 10th to 12th centuries are on display in the National Museum at Athens.

The use of Greek fire, or rather variants thereof, spread to Muslim armies in the Near East, from where it reached China by the 10th century. SciFi short story subject: In the not too distant future our sciences find a way to peer back into time.

Soon after we conquer time travel itself. The first traveler was accidentally transported into the ancient past, one Artie Mendez, a well known genius physicist working on the time travel project. He accidentally transported himself into far past by walking into two convergent monopole beams which had been less than accurately aligned by the ultra high frequency radio energy that was supposed to hold them in place. Several days later he gets spotted by a passing caravan and kidnapped for ransom… His captors can not pronounce his name and simply call him Archemedes….

Skip to content. A replica and diagram of one of the ancient electric cells batteries found near Bagdad. How to Save Electricity. Sources of Electricity. Types of Electricity. Electricity Pages. Product Info Centres. Electrical Transformers. Electrical Test Equipment. Electrical Safety Forum. Arc Flash Clothing. Renewable Energy. Alternative Energy. Other Options. Canadian Training Courses. About Electricity Forum. Site Map. This region becomes known as Magnesia.

Gilbert wrote about the electrification of many substances in his "De magnete, magneticisique corporibus". He also first used the terms electric force, magnetic pole, and electric attraction. He also discusses static electricity and invents an electric fluid which is liberated by rubbing.

He invents properties of this fluid that make it possible to calculate the reflection and refraction of light. He gets a very large answer. This vortex theory remains popular for a long time, enabling Leonhard Euler and two of the Bernoullis to share a prize of the French Academy as late as Fighting with the Cartesians begins.

This principle for reflected light had been anticipated anciently by Hero of Alexandria. These were actually first observed by Robert Boyle, which explains why they are now called Newton's rings.

In the same work he gives the matching-wave-front derivation of reflection and refraction that is still found in most introductory physics texts. These waves travel through the aether. He also develops a theory of color in which white light is a simple disturbance and colors are complex distortions of the basic simple white form. Newton argues against light being a vibration of the ether, preferring that it be something else that is capable of traveling through the aether.

He doesn't insist that this something else consist of particles, but allows that it may be some other kind of emanation or impulse. He uses his theory to discuss the double refraction of Iceland Spar. His is a theory of pulses, however, not of periodic waves.

All aether wave theories were sound-like, so Newton was right; longitudinal waves can't be polarized. He also shows that the charge on electrified objects resides on their surfaces. Dutch physicist, Pieter van Musschenbroek invented the "Leyden Jar" the first electrical capacitor. Leyden jars store static electricity. This educated guess ensures that undergraduates will always be confused about the direction of current flow.

He also discovers that electricity can act at a distance in situations where fluid flow makes no sense. His glass vessel is three feet long and three inches in diameter: the first fluorescent light bulb. He also discovers charging by induction.

It later becomes known as Gauss's law. See But being indifferent to fame he is content to wait for his work to be published by Lord Kelvin in Fighting breaks out between single and double fluid partisans.

He also discovers that the electric force near a conductor is proportional to its surface charge density and makes contributions to the two-fluid theory of magnetism. He explains the dark spot in the middle by proposing that there is a phase shift on reflection between a less dense and more dense medium, then uses essence of sassafras whose index of refraction is intermediate between those of crown and flint glass to get a light spot at the center. The wave theory begins its ascendance, but has one important difficulty: light is thought of as a longitudinal wave, which makes it difficult to explain double refraction effects in certain crystals.

He argues that chemical effects are electrical in nature. In he receives the prize and emboldens the proponents of the particle theory of light because no one sees how a wave theory can make waves of different polarizations.

This surface charge density calculation is carried out in detail for ellipsoids. He also shows that the potential within a distribution of electricity satisfies the equation. Davy interviews Faraday and finds that he has educated himself by reading the books he was supposed to be binding. He gets the job. It will later become known as Gauss's law. He also discovers that in addition of uniaxial cystals there are also biaxial ones. For uniaxial crystals there is the faint possibility of a wave theory of longitudinal-type, but this appears to be impossible for biaxial ones.

First energy utility in US founded. Reflecting later on this curious effect Young sees that it can be explained if light is transverse instead of longitudinal.

This idea is communicated to Fresnel in and he immediately sees how it clears up many of the remaining difficulties of the wave theory. Six years later the particle theory is dead. The Academy, hoping to destroy the wave theory once and for all, proposes diffraction as the prize subject for To the chagrin of the particle-theory partisans in the Academy the winning memoir in is that of Augustin Fresnel who explains diffraction as the mutual interference of the secondary waves emitted by the unblocked portions of the incident wave, in the style of Huygens.

One of the judges from the particle camp of the Academy is Poisson, who points out that if Fresnel's theory were to be indeed correct, then there should be a bright spot at the center of the shadow of a circular disc. This, he suggests to Fresnel, must be tested experimentally. This difference is helical in nature. First electric motor Faraday. He also discovers that resistance is increased as the temperature rises. He also finds the magnetic field inside a spherical cavity within magnetized material.

He also described an electric motor. Because this devise used a coil of wire, it produced spikes of electric current followed by no current. A unit of thermal energy, the Joule, was named after him. Maxwell created a new era of physics when he unified magnetism, electricity and light. His lightbulb burned out quickly. Charles Brush developed an arc lamp that could be powered by a generator.

US , in New York City. He bought a number of patents related to electric lighting and began experiments to develop a practical, long-lasting light bulb.

By his bulbs could be used for hours. California Electric Light Company, Inc. The company used two small Brush generators to power 21 Brush arc light lamps. The Pearl Street Station was a direct current DC power system, unlike the power systems that we use today which use alternating current AC. The first hydroelectric station opened in Wisconsin. Edward Johnson first put electric lights on a Christmas tree.