Atlas Foundation Repair Fort Worth Texas

♦ December 12, 2012 ♦ Leave Your Comment

The phenomenon of electricity has excited and taxed the minds of scientists and scholars since ancient times. Nearly five thousand years ago the Ancient Egyptians wrote of the shocks given off by electric fish, referring to them as the “Protectors of the Nile”, and centuries later Arabic, Roman and Greek physicians spoke similarly of their amazing properties. Pliny and Scribonius Largus noted that electric currents generated by torpedo rays and some species of catfish could travel through certain elements with which they came into contact.

Although man's limited experience of electric phenomena continued to be a source of interest for thousands of years, it was not until 1600, when William Gilbert coined the Latin term electricus, that a connection was made with the notion of magnetism, and the attraction of certain objects to a magnetic source after being rubbed.

Some time later still, in the eighteenth century, further work was conducted by du Fay, Gray, Boyle and von Guericke. In 1752 Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have attached a metal key to the foot of a kite string which was damp before flying the kite in a storm, generating sparks which reached his hand. By this means he was able to establish that lightning was an electrical force and that the power it generated was conducted through additional objects in the same manner as had been established by Pliny so many centuries before.

It was in the early nineteenth century that research into the subject really became mainstream, and before long electricity had passed beyond the stage of being a curiosity and designers and inventors began to see its potential usage as an industrial tool. It became an essential component of the Second Industrial Revolution, driving production and manufacturing.

Electricity in the home today

The breakthrough in electrical science came when it became possible to store electricity. The idea of “catching” electric power at the instance of its generation had been far too hit and miss to turn the new discovery into something practical and useful, but with the voltaic pile (the forerunner of the modern battery) power storage for sustained use became possible.

Energy can of course be produced from almost any form of action, and the burning of fossil fuels to create energy has now been complimented by the introduction of other sources such as sun, wind, water and even waste to revolutionise the way we think about fuel generation.

In the home we use electricity for a variety of purposes, including for cooking, heating, television, computers, radio, refrigeration and home lighting.

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