raffertyesque

Benjamin Franklin always gets all the credit for electricity. For (allegedly) flying a kite in a thunderstorm. Whoopdee doo. Great job, guy. Here’s a sticker.

The real hero though, the real pioneer of electricity, is Egyptian Fred. We don’t even know his last name. That’s how badly history has screwed Fred.

Fred discovered electricity back in 2750 BC. How, you ask? Dude got electrocuted by an eel. Sucks to be Fred. Again.

Anyway, Fred wrote down what happened, probably in hieroglyphics (stick figure touching a fish, then a frowny emoticon) (little known fact: Fred also invented emoticons), and then Fred proceeded to die.

The next big step in the evolution of electricity took place a couple thousand years later near modern day Bagdad, where some folks (you know, folks) were experimenting with a very rudimentary type of battery. We modern folks have since dubbed this the “Bagdad battery.” (Because even recently-discovered artifacts need marketable names these days.)

To make a Bagdad battery, basically you take a pot, put an iron rod surrounded by a copper sheet inside, and fill it with some type of acidic liquid (kids, ask your parents for help!). Modern recreations of the Bagdad battery have gotten about half of a 9V battery worth of juice out of them. So, uh, yeah. The scientific community is still uncertain as to what these batteries were actually used for. Me? I’m leaning towards WMDs.

Flash forward another couple thousand years when some other, whiter dudes picked up where Fred and Bagdad Bob left off. First up: William Gilbert, who came up with the word “electricity” in 1600. The Greek word for “amber” is “elektron” and back before shag carpeting and balloons, you would build up static electricity to zap your friends by… rubbing amber? Who knew. I, for one, did not.

At this point, most people will jump ahead to Benny boy and his (alleged) kite flight in 1752, but I’d like to take a detour, if you’ll indulge me. Yes? Excellent. To France!

France. 1746. Our good friend Jean-Antoine Nollet, scientist, clergyman, professor, and Scorpio (ladies), is trying to invent the telegraph. Or, well, he probably doesn’t realize he’s trying to invent the telegraph, but he’s definitely helping to put the pieces in place. Those pieces? About two hundred of his fellow monks… all lined up in a circle… a mile in diameter? Holding an iron cable? Uh oh, I don’t like where this is going.

Nollet wants to know how fast electrical current travels. And what better way to find out than to get 200 of your closest friends in a circle holding a metal wire and electrocuting them? I can only assume they were paid in beer and pizza.

As it turns out, electricity moves pretty fast. All the monks yelled “sacrebleu!” simultaneously. Nailed it. Score one for electricity.

Okay, back to the United States. 1752. Benjamin Franklin writes up a paper proposing flying a kite during a rainstorm with the hope that it will be struck by lightning and the electrical charge from the lightning will travel down the string to a key to charge a battery (of the non-Bagdad variety). Sounds just crazy enough to work, right? Well, sorry to rain on your rainstorm, but Mr. $100 bill may have never flown said kite. Bummer, I know. Allegedly he did, but he published the results in the third person, so it’s hard to say one way or another. Allegedly. But some other people definitely followed through with the experiment and those some other people definitely got electrocuted. So, hey, progress.

(If you haven’t already noticed, most “progress” in the history of electricity comes in the form of dudes getting electrocuted.)

Our next stop: 1800. The 1800s are huge, folks. This is the good stuff.

In 1800 in Italy, Alessandro Volta invented the modern battery. Obviously. I mean, with a name like “Volta” clearly he was going to be involved with electricity.

What’s that?

Right. “Volt” is named after him. Got it. Seems obvious now.

Anyway. Alessandro came up with the “voltic pile” battery after experimenting with frog’s legs. Uh, right. Frog’s legs. Basically his buddy Luigi (actual name) noticed that frog’s legs would occasionally twitch when poked with a scalpel after death. It should be noted that the frog in question happened to be hanging on a brass hook. And the scalpel just happened to be made of iron. I smell battery!

Alessandro switched from brass and iron to zinc and copper, but the basic idea was the same. Two metals and a salty wet thing— a frog, or in the case of the voltic pile, some brine-soaked cloth— and you’ve got a battery! Bagdad Bob would be proud.

Next up, Denmark, April 21, 1820. Our good friend and physicist Hans Christian Ørsted (who incidentally was friends with Hans Christian Andersen, no joke) was preparing for a lecture when he noticed that his compass needle went crazy when he switched the battery he had with him on and off. Huh. Turns out, Hans just stumbled upon electromagnetism! Holy crap, folks, this is huge. This is like, up there with gravity. Hold onto your butts.

In the following months, Hans followed up on his discovery (probably went through a lot of salty wet things in the process), and determined that any sort of electrical current produces a magnetic field as it flows through a wire. Also known as: electromagnetism. This had far-reaching consequences. All the way to to England, to Michael Faraday’s house!

Michael Faraday was awesome. Big fan. So Faraday pops Ørsted’s findings into Google Translate and he’s like “this Danish dude is onto something.” Faraday builds upon Ørsted’s theories, most notably in 1831, when Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction. Which is the basis for all of our electricity generation to this day. Boo to the ya.

By the late 1800s, everything was coming together. Batteries, electromagnetism, induction, frog’s legs, lightning bolts, WMDs. All of it. Power plants started popping up all over. Edison invented the lightbulb. Sure, we hadn’t decided on AC or DC power yet, but we were close. After thousands of years and an international effort from Egypt to Bagdad to France to the United States to Italy to Denmark to England to everywhere, human beings had finally tamed electricity.

And it only took a dude getting zapped by an eel to make it all happen.

Thanks, Fred.