Here is some information on the
book, Electrical History
by Tom Henry. This book was written in appreciation of the
more than 15 million men and women that work in the electrical
industry to keep the lights burning every second, every minute,
24 hours a day, everyday.
Did Edison
invent the light bulb, Marconi the radio, Bell
the telephone, Morse the telegraph? The answers are no.
They didn't invent the wheel. They were instrumental in making
it better and, in some cases, obtaining the patent.
Electrical history goes back before Christ and brings us to the
computer age. Along this journey you will discover it took several
people, along the way, to make the light bulb glow.
The journey won't end with this book, as we are constantly discovering
new inventions that will someday even take us to the stars.
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Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
His kite experiment demonstrated
that lightning is electricity. He was the first to use the terms
positive and negative charge.
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Franklin was one of seventeen
children. He quit school at age ten to become a printer. His
life is the classic story of a self-made man achieving wealth
and fame through determination and intelligence.
James Watt (1736-1819) was
born in Scotland. Although he conducted no electrical experiments,
he must not be overlooked. He was an instrument maker by trade
and set up a repair shop in Glasgow in 1757. Watt thought that
the steam engine would replace animal power, where the number
of horses replaced seemed an obvious way to measure the charge
for performance. Interestingly, Watt measured the rate of work
exerted by a horse drawing rubbish up an old mine shaft and found
it amounted to about 22,000 ft-lbs per minute. He added a margin
of 50% arriving at 33,000 ft-lbs.
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
(1824-1907) was best known in his invention of a new
temperature scale based on the concept of an absolute zero of
temperature at -273°C (-460°F). To the end of his life,
Thomson maintained fierce opposition to the idea that energy
emitted by radioactivity came from within the atom. One of the
greatest scientific discoveries of the 19th century, Thomson
died opposing one of the most vital innovations in the history
of science.
Thomas Seebeck (1770-1831) a German physicist was the
discover of the "Seebeck effect".
He twisted two wires made of
different metals and heated a junction where the two wires met.
He produced a small current. The current is the result of a flow
of heat from the hot to the cold junction. This is called thermoelectricity.
Thermo is a Greek word meaning heat.
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) an
Englishman, made one of the most significant discoveries in the
history of electricity: Electromagnetic induction. His pioneering
work dealt with how electric currents work. Many inventions would
come from his experiments, but they would come fifty to one hundred
years later.
Failures never discouraged Faraday.
He would say; "the failures are just as important as the
successes." He felt failures also teach. The farad, the
unit of capacitance is named in the honor of Michael Faraday.
James Maxwell (1831-1879) a Scottish mathematician translated
Faraday's theories into mathematical expressions. Maxwell was
one of the finest mathematicians in history. A maxwell is the
electromagnetic unit of magnetic flux, named in his honor.
Today he is widely regarded as secondary only to Isaac Newton
and Albert Einstein in the world of science.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) was one of the most well
known inventors of all time with 1093 patents. Self-educated,
Edison was interested in chemistry and electronics.During the
whole of his life, Edison received only three months of formal
schooling, and was dismissed from school as being retarded, though
in fact a childhood attack of scarlet fever had left him partially
deaf.
Nikola Tesla was born of Serbian
parents July 10, 1856 and died a broke and lonely man in New
York City January 7, 1943. He envisioned a world without poles
and power lines. Referred to as the greatest inventive genius
of all time. Tesla's system triumphed to make possible the first
large-scale harnessing of Niagara Falls with the first hydroelectric
plant in the United States in 1886.
October 1893 George Westinghouse (1846-1914)was awarded
the contract to build the first generators at Niagara Falls.
He used his money to buy up patents in the electric field. One
of the inventions he bought was the transformer from William
Stanley. Westinghouse invented the air brake system to stop trains,
the first of more than one hundred patents he would receive in
this area alone. He soon founded the Westinghouse Air Brake Company
in 1869.
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) born in Scotland, was
raised in a family that was interested and involved in the science
of sound. Bell's father and grandfather both taught speech to
the deaf. A unit of sound level is called a bel in his honor.
Sound levels are measured in tenths of a bel, or decibels. The
abbreviation for decibel is dB.
Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) a German physicist, laid the
ground work for the vacuum tube. He laid the foundation for the
future development of radio, telephone, telegraph, and even television.
He was one of the first people to demonstrate the existence of
electric waves. Hertz was convinced that there were electromagnetic
waves in space.
Otto Hahn (1879-1968), a German chemist and physicist,
made the vital discovery which led to the first nuclear reactor.
He uncovered the process of nuclear fission by which nuclei of
atoms of heavy elements can break into smaller nuclei, in the
process releasing large quantities of energy. Hahn was awarded
the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1944.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Einstein's formula proved
that one gram of mass can be converted into a torrential amount
of energy. To do this, the activity of the atoms has to occur
in the nucleus. E = energy, M = mass, and C = the speed of light
which is 186,000 miles per second. When you square 186,000 you
can see it would only take a small amount of mass to produce
a huge amount of energy.
Learn more in the Electrical
History book by Tom Henry.