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Pioneers of Electricity

Fantastic, the wind’s excellent. Look at that kite fly. I don’t like the look of those clouds though. I think it might be going to rain. Just a few minutes more and I’ll have to pull the kite in and find some shelter. It’s dangerous to fly a kite during a storm. Lightning might strike the kite and the electricity would come down the string and through me as the quickest route to the ground, just like it would if you flew a kite too close to a power line. One of the people who first discovered electricity did so by flying a kite in a storm. He was very lucky not to be hurt. Julie knows quite a bit about the people who discovered electricity.

Ask Julie

Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790

Benjamin Franklin loved learning. He read and studied as much as he could. He was very interested in the phenomenon of electricity and in 1749; he gave up editing and devoted himself to the study of science.

His spectacular, but very dangerous, experiment of flying a kite in a thunderstorm with a metal key attached to the string proved that lightning had an electrical discharge. From these experiments, he developed the first lightning conductor, which won him fame and recognition from scientists around the world. Franklin introduced several electrical terms that are still in use today including words such as battery, conductor, positive and negative charge, electric shock and electrician.

James Watt 1736-1819

James Watt is an important figure in the history of electricity because he invented the modern steam engine. The engineering principles that Watt perfected in his steam engine were very important to the development of modern power stations which still use these principles in modern steam turbines.

James Watt was such an important person in the history of electricity that his name was given to the units measuring electric power.

Luigi Galvani 1737-1798

Galvani is famous for using electricity to make a dead frogs leg jump. Galvani came up with this amazing idea for an experiment after watching frogs legs which had been hung around an iron balcony at home. Galvani observed these legs moving (even though they weren’t attached to a live frog) and realised that this happened even when there wasn’t an electric storm. He concluded that an electrical charge was generated by the combination of the copper hooks holding the frogs legs and the iron balcony railing (which only goes to show what a dull night life there must have been in Bologna during the 18th century).

Gavani went on to recreate this effect by creating an arc of electricity from a Leyden jar (a rotating static electricity generator) to a frog’s leg and making it jump.

These gruesome discoveries of Galvani’s led to the invention of the first battery by Volta. Galvani also experimented on himself, connecting two pieces of metal to create a bimetallic arc. By touching one end of the arc in his mouth, and the other end in the corner of his eye he saw a bright spark. (Do not try this at home!)

Count Alessandro Volta 1745-1827

Count Alessandro Guiseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta is most famous for his work on electric current. His friend Galvani sent him copies of his papers on frogs legs and Volta queried Galvani’s conclusion that the electric current he generated came from his living tissue rather than the two metals. In 1794 Volta tested this theory using metals alone. An electric current was produced which obviously could not have come from living tissue. This discovery upset the friendship and Galvani was still cross about Voltas experiments when he died.

In 1800 Volta constructed a device that would produce a large flow of electricity. Volta’s device was the voltaic pile. The voltaic pile involved bowls of salt solution connected by strips (arc’s), of metal dipping from one bowl to the next – one end of the arc was copper and the other tin or zinc.

In further experiments, he managed to reduce the size of the battery by using small round discs of copper and zinc sandwiched by discs of cardboard moistened with a salt solution. This was the first electric battery.

Volta played such an important part in the harnessing of electricity that his name was used as the unit of electro motive force, ‘the Volt’.

André-Marie Ampère 1775-1836

André-Marie Ampère (January 22, 1775 - June 10, 1836) unravelled many of the mathematical principles of electromagnetism. The ampere unit measuring electric current was named in his honour.

Born in France Ampère started out being fascinated by mathematics. It was only in later life that he became interested in first chemistry and the mathematics associated with physics and the new field of electricity. In 1820 H.C Orsted published his discovery that a magnetic needle is attracted or repelled by an electric current. Ampere was inspired and went on to develop a mathematical theory to explain this phenomena and accurately predicted many more.

Michael Faraday 1791-1867

Michael Faraday is one of the most famous people associated with the discovery and harnessing of electromagnetic force.

In 1831 Faraday demonstrated electro magnetic force to the Royal Institution in London. He showed that an electro-motive force is set up in a wire when it is moved at right angles to a magnetic field. If the wire is part of a closed circuit, an electric current is ‘induced’ inside it.

Faraday also worked out some of the ‘laws’ governing the production of electric current and magnetic fields. He also invented a ‘magneto-electric machine’, a spinning disk between the poles of the magnet, which was in fact, a primitive dynamo.

Faraday was the first to establish a method for generating a constant current of electricity and paved the way for future power stations.

Faradays discovery of induced currents made possible the invention of the telephone, the development of the telegraph, of electric lighting and the production of electricity for a thousand and one uses of modern life.

Thomas Edison 1847-1931

Thomas Alva Edison was a prolific and successful inventor.

In 1889 he produced the ‘kinetograph’ which was the first motion picture camera, preceded by the ‘kinetoscope’ the forerunner of the cinema. In 1912 he invented the kinetophone, which linked the invention of the film camera with that of the phonograph and made a talking picture possible.

By 1910 Edison had applied for over 1,300 patents mainly to do with electrical or mechanical development. He persevered with his researches and patiently used his genius to become one of the most successful inventors the world has known.

Sir Charles Parsons 1854-1931

Charles Parson is famous for designing the first turbine engines. These engines were the prototypes for the current turbine engines used to generate electricity.

After college Charles Parsons took an apprenticeship in engineering at Elswick Works of W.G. Armstrong in Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1884 Charles was made a junior partner and head of the electrical section of Clarke, Chapman & Company, manufacturers of equipment for ships. He took out a patent for his new turbine engine in 1884 and immediately utilised the engine to drive an electrical generator, which he also designed.

The Royal Navy used Parson’s turbine design on HMS Viper and HMS Cobra. And before long the Admiralty designers recommended that all new Royal Navy vessels should have turbine power. In 1906 HMS Dreadnought was launched at Portsmouth, the first Royal Naval turbine powered battleship.

Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti 1864-1930

Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, credited with building the first large scale electricity generation and supply network, was born in Liverpool of Italian descent.

In 1886 Ferranti was appointed Engineer in Chief of the Grosvenor Gallery station. One of the problems he had inherited was that the transformers on consumers premises were connected to the mains ‘in series’ – a lighting system that had worked well on railways. He replaced them with others which he had designed to work ‘in parallel’ a system so successful that it is now used universally.

Ferranti improved the generation and supply of electricity so much that soon the station was supplying premises in 100 miles of streets, from Regents Park to the Thames and from Knightsbridge to the Law Courts at the boundary of the City of London. At a time when most stations were giving direct current supplies within a relatively small area.

What followed is a tribute not just to the engineering genius of Ferranti, but to the financial courage and enterprise of those who were prepared to back his vision. On 26 August 1887 the London Electric Supply Corporation – LESCo – was formed with an authorised capitol of £1 million. With the money Ferranti built the first great power station, the prototype of the power stations that supply us with electricity today.

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