Part 2
Otto Von Guericke was mayor of the city of Magdeburg as well as a philosopher. About 1650 he made a machine consisting of a ball of sulphur mounted on a shaft which could be rotated. Electricity was generated when the hand was pressed against the globe as it rotated. He also discovered that electricity could be conducted away from the globe by a chain and would appear at the other end of the chain. Von Guericke also invented the vacuum air pump. In 1709, Francis Hawksbee, an Englishman, made a similar machine, using a hollow glass globe which could be exhausted. The exhausted globe when rotated at high speed and rubbed by hand would produce a glowing light. This “electric light” as it was called, created great excitement when it was shown before the Royal Society, a gathering of scientists, in London.
Stephen Gray, twenty years later, showed the Royal Society that electricity could be conducted about a thousand feet by a hemp thread, supported by silk threads. If metal supports were used, this could not be done. Charles du Fay, a Frenchman, repeated Gray’s experiments, and showed in 1733 that the substances which were insulators, and which Gilbert had discovered, would become electrified if rubbed. Those substances which Gilbert could not electrify were conductors of electricity.
THE LEYDEN JAR
The thought came to Von Kleist, Bishop of Pomerania, Germany, about 1745, that electricity could be stored. The frictional machines generated so small an amount of electricity (though, as is now known, at a very high pressure--several thousand volts) that he thought he could increase the quantity by storing it. Knowing that glass was an insulator and water a conductor, he filled a glass bottle partly full of water with a nail in the cork to connect the machine with the water. Holding the bottle in one hand and turning the machine with the other for a few minutes, he then disconnected the bottle from the machine. When he touched the nail with his other hand he received a shock which nearly stunned him. This was called the Leyden jar, the forerunner of the present condenser. It received its name from the fact that its discovery was also made a short time after by experimenters in the University of Leyden. Further experiments showed that the hand holding the bottle was as essential as the water inside, so these were substituted by tin foil coatings inside and outside the bottle.
Benjamin Franklin, American statesman, scientist and printer, made numerous experiments with the Leyden jar. He connected several jars in parallel, as he called it, which gave a discharge strong enough to kill a turkey. He also connected the jars in series, or “in cascade” as he called it, thus establishing the principle of parallel and series connections. Noticing the similarity between the electric spark and lightning, Franklin in 1752, performed his famous kite experiment. Flying a kite in a thunderstorm, he drew electricity from the clouds to charge Leyden jars, which were later discharged, proving that lightning and electricity were the same. This led him to invent the lightning rod.
ELECTRICITY GENERATED BY CHEMICAL MEANS
Luigi Galvani was an Italian scientist. About 1785, so the story goes, his wife was in delicate health, and some frog legs were being skinned to make her a nourishing soup. An assistant holding the legs with a metal clamp and cutting the skin with a scalpel, happened to let the clamp and scalpel touch each other. To his amazement the frog legs twitched. Galvani repeated the experiment many times by touching the nerve with a metal rod and the muscle with a different metal rod and allowing the rods to touch, and propounded the theory of animal electricity in a paper he published in 1791.
Allesandro Volta, a professor of physics in the University of Pavia, Italy, read about Galvani’s work and repeated his experiments. He found that the extent of the movement of the frog legs depended on the metals used for the rods, and thus believed that the electric charge was produced by the contact of dissimilar metals with the moisture in the muscles. To prove his point he made a pile of silver and zinc discs with cloths, wet with salt water, between them. This was in 1799, and he described his pile in March, 1800, in a letter to the Royal Society in London.
This was an epoch-making discovery as it was the forerunner of the present-day primary battery. Volta soon found that the generation of electricity became weaker as the cloths became dry, so to overcome this he made his “crown of cups.” This consisted of a series of cups containing salt water in which strips of silver and zinc were dipped. Each strip of silver in one cup was connected to the zinc strip in the next cup, the end strips of silver and zinc being terminals of the battery. This was the first time that a continuous supply of electricity in reasonable quantities was made available, so the VOLT, the unit of electrical pressure was named in his honor. It was later shown that the chemical affinity of one of the metals in the liquid was converted into electric energy. The chemical action of Volta’s battery is that the salt water attacks the zinc when the circuit is closed forming zinc chloride, caustic soda and hydrogen gas. The chemical equation is:
Zn + 2NaCl + 2H_{2}O = ZnCl_{2} + 2NaOH + H_{2}
IMPROVEMENT OF VOLTA’S BATTERY
It was early suggested that sheets of silver and zinc be soldered together back to back and that a trough be divided into cells by these bimetal sheets being put into grooves cut in the sides and bottom of the trough. This is the reason why one unit of a battery is called a “cell.” It was soon found that a more powerful cell could be made if copper, zinc and dilute sulphuric acid were used. The zinc is dissolved by the acid forming zinc sulphate and hydrogen gas, thus:
Zn + H_{2}SO_{4} = ZnSO_{4} + H_{2}
The hydrogen gas appears as bubbles on the copper and reduces the open circuit voltage (about 0.8 volt per cell) as current is taken from the battery. This is called “polarization.” Owing to minute impurities in the zinc, it is attacked by the acid even when no current is taken from the battery, the impurities forming with the zinc a short circuited local cell. This is called “local action,” and this difficulty was at first overcome by removing the zinc from the acid when the battery was not in use.
DAVY’S DISCOVERIES
Sir Humphry Davy was a well-known English chemist, and with the aid of powerful batteries constructed for the Royal Institution in London, he made numerous experiments on the chemical effects of electricity. He decomposed a number of substances and discovered the elements boron, potassium and sodium. He heated strips of various metals to incandescence by passing current through them, and showed that platinum would stay incandescent for some time without oxidizing. This was about 1802.
In the early frictional machines, the presence of electricity was shown by the fact that sparks could be obtained. Similarly the breaking of the circuit of a battery would give a spark. Davy, about 1809, demonstrated that this spark could be maintained for a long time with the large battery of 2000 cells he had had constructed. Using two sticks of charcoal connected by wires to the terminals of this very powerful battery, he demonstrated before the Royal Society the light produced by touching the sticks together and then holding them apart horizontally about three inches. The brilliant flame obtained he called an “arc” because of its arch shape, the heated gases, rising, assuming this form. Davy was given the degree of LL. D. for his distinguished research work, and was knighted on the eve of his marriage, April 11, 1812.
RESEARCHES OF OERSTED, AMPÈRE, SCHWEIGGER AND STURGEON
Hans Christian Oersted was a professor of physics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. One day in 1819, while addressing his students, he happened to hold a wire, through which current was flowing, over a large compass. To his surprise he saw the compass was deflected from its true position. He promptly made a number of experiments and discovered that by reversing the current the compass was deflected in the opposite direction. Oersted announced his discovery in 1820.
André Marie Ampère was a professor of mathematics in the Ecole Polytechnic in Paris. Hearing of Oersted’s discovery, he immediately made some experiments and made the further discovery in 1820 that if the wire is coiled and current passed through it, the coil had all the properties of a magnet.
These two discoveries led to the invention of Schweigger in 1820, of the galvanometer (or “multiplier” as it was then called), a very sensitive instrument for measuring electric currents. It consisted of a delicate compass needle suspended in a coil of many turns of wire. Current in the coil deflected the needle, the direction and amount of deflection indicating the direction and strength of the current. Ampère further made the discovery that currents in opposite directions repel and in the same directions attract each other. He also gave a rule for determining the direction of the current by the deflection of the compass needle. He developed the theory that magnetism is caused by electricity flowing around the circumference of the body magnetised. The AMPERE, the unit of flow of electric current, was named in honor of his discoveries.
In 1825 it was shown by Sturgeon that if a bar of iron were placed in the coil, its magnetic strength would be very greatly increased, which he called an electro-magnet.
OHM’S LAW
Georg Simon Ohm was born in Bavaria, the oldest son of a poor blacksmith. With the aid of friends he went to college and became a teacher. It had been shown that the rate of transfer of heat from one end to the other of a metal bar is proportional to the difference of temperature between the ends. About 1825, Ohm, by analogy and experiment, found that the current in a conductor is proportional to the difference of electric pressure (voltage) between its ends. He further showed that with a given difference of voltage, the current in different conductors is inversely proportional to the resistance of the conductor. Ohm therefore propounded the law that the current flowing in a circuit is equal to the voltage on that circuit divided by the resistance of the circuit. In honor of this discovery, the unit of electrical resistance is called the OHM. This law is usually expressed as:
C = E/R
“C” meaning current (in amperes), “E” meaning electromotive force or voltage (in volts) and “R” meaning resistance (in ohms).
This is one of the fundamental laws of electricity and if thoroughly understood, will solve many electrical problems. Thus, if any two of the above units are known, the third can be determined. Examples: An incandescent lamp on a 120-volt circuit consumes 0.4 ampere, hence its resistance under such conditions is 300 ohms. Several trolley cars at the end of a line take 100 amperes to run them and the resistance of the overhead wire from the power house to the trolley cars is half an ohm; the drop in voltage on the line between the power house and trolley cars is therefore 50 volts, so that if the voltage at the power house were 600, it would be 550 volts at the end of the line.
Critics derided Ohm’s law so that he was forced out of his position as teacher in the High School in Cologne. Finally after ten years Ohm began to find supporters and in 1841 his law was publicly recognized by the Royal Society of London which presented him with the Copley medal.
INVENTION OF THE DYNAMO
Michael Faraday was an English scientist. Born of parents in poor circumstances, he became a bookbinder and studied books on electricity and chemistry. He finally obtained a position as laboratory assistant to Sir Humphry Davy helping him with his lectures and experiments. He also made a number of experiments himself and succeeded in liquifying chlorine gas for which he was elected to a Fellowship in the Royal Institution in 1824. Following up Oersted’s and Ampère’s work, he endeavored to find the relation between electricity and magnetism. Finally on Oct. 17, 1831, he made the experiment of moving a permanent bar magnet in and out of a coil of wire connected to a galvanometer. This generated electricity in the coil which deflected the galvanometer needle. A few days after, Oct. 28, 1831, he mounted a copper disk on a shaft so that the disk could be rotated between the poles of a permanent horseshoe magnet. The shaft and edge of the disk were connected by brushes and wires to a galvanometer, the needle of which was deflected as the disk was rotated. A paper on his invention was read before the Royal Society on November 24, 1831, which appeared in printed form in January, 1832.
Faraday did not develop his invention any further, being satisfied, as in all his work, in pure research. His was a notable invention but it remained for others to make it practicable. Hippolyte Pixii, a Frenchman, made a dynamo in 1832 consisting of a permanent horseshoe magnet which could be rotated between two wire bobbins mounted on a soft iron core. The wires from the bobbins were connected to a pair of brushes touching a commutator mounted on the shaft holding the magnet, and other brushes carried the current from the commutator so that the alternating current generated was rectified into direct current.
E. M. Clarke, an Englishman made, in 1834, another dynamo in which the bobbins rotated alongside of the poles of a permanent horseshoe magnet. He also made a commutator so that the machine produced direct current. None of these machines gave more than feeble current at low pressure. The large primary batteries that had been made were much more powerful, although expensive to operate. It has been estimated that the cost of current from the 2000-cell battery to operate the demonstration of the arc light by Davy, was six dollars a minute. At present retail rates for electricity sold by lighting companies, six dollars would operate Davy’s arc light about 500 hours or 30,000 times as long.
DANIELL’S BATTERY
It was soon discovered that if the zinc electrode were rubbed with mercury (amalgamated), the local action would practically cease, and if the hydrogen bubbles were removed, the operating voltage of the cell would be increased. John Frederic Daniell, an English chemist, invented a cell in 1836 to overcome these difficulties. His cell consisted of a glass jar containing a saturated solution of copper sulphate (CuSO_{4}). A copper cylinder, open at both ends and perforated with holes, was put into this solution. On the outside of the copper cylinder there was a copper ring, located below the surface of the solution, acting as a shelf to support crystals of copper sulphate. Inside the cylinder there was a porous earthenware jar containing dilute sulphuric acid and an amalgamated zinc rod. The two liquids were therefore kept apart but in contact with each other through the pores of the jar. The hydrogen gas given off by the action of the sulphuric acid on the zinc, combined with the dissolved copper sulphate, formed sulphuric acid and metallic copper. The latter was deposited on the copper cylinder which acted as the other electrode. Thus the copper sulphate acted as a depolarizer.
The chemical reactions in this cell are,
In inner porous jar: Zn + H_{2}SO_{4} = ZnSO_{4} + H_{2} In outer glass jar: H_{2} + CuSO_{4} = H_{2}SO_{4} + Cu
This cell had an open circuit voltage of a little over one volt. Later the porous cup was dispensed with, the two liquids being kept apart by the difference of their specific gravities. This was known as the Gravity cell, and for years was used in telegraphy.
GROVE’S BATTERY
Sir William Robert Grove, an English Judge and scientist, invented a cell in 1838 consisting of a platinum electrode in strong nitric acid in a porous earthenware jar. This jar was put in dilute sulphuric acid in a glass jar in which there was an amalgamated zinc plate for the other electrode. This had an open circuit voltage of about 1.9 volts. The porous jar was used to prevent the nitric acid from attacking the zinc. The nitric acid was used for the purpose of combining with the hydrogen gas set free by the action of the sulphuric acid on the zinc, and hence was the depolarizing agent. Hydrogen combining with nitric acid forms nitrous peroxide and water. Part of the nitrous peroxide is dissolved in the water, and the rest escapes as fumes which, however, are very suffocating.
The chemical equations of this cell are as follows:
In outer glass jar: Zn + H_{2}SO_{4} = ZnSO_{4} + H_{2} In inner porous jar: H_{2} + 2HNO_{3} = N_{2}O_{4} + 2H_{2}O
An interesting thing about Grove’s cell is that it was planned in accordance with a theory. Grove knew that the electrical energy of the zinc-sulphuric acid cell came from the chemical affinity of the two reagents, and if the hydrogen gas set free could be combined with oxygen (to form water--H_{2}O), such chemical affinity should increase the strength of the cell. As the hydrogen gas appears at the other electrode, the oxidizing agent should surround that electrode. Nitric acid was known at that time as one of the most powerful oxidizing liquids, but as it attacks copper, he used platinum for the other electrode. Thus he not only overcame the difficulty of polarization by the hydrogen gas, but also increased the voltage of the cell by the added chemical action of the combination of hydrogen and oxygen.
GROVE’S DEMONSTRATION OF INCANDESCENT LIGHTING
In 1840 Grove made an experimental lamp by attaching the ends of a coil of platinum wire to copper wires, the lower parts of which were well varnished for insulation. The platinum wire was covered by a glass tumbler, the open end set in a glass dish partly filled with water. This prevented draughts of air from cooling the incandescent platinum, and the small amount of oxygen of the air in the tumbler reduced the amount of oxidization of the platinum that would otherwise occur. With current supplied by a large number of cells of his battery, he lighted the auditorium of the Royal Institution with these lamps during one of the lectures he gave. This lamp gave only a feeble light as there was danger of melting the platinum and platinum gives but little light unless operated close to its melting temperature. It also required a lot of current to operate it as the air tended to cool the incandescent platinum. The demonstration was only of scientific interest, the cost of current being much too great (estimated at several hundred dollars a kilowatt hour) to make it commercial.
GRENET BATTERY
It was discovered that chromic anhydride gives up oxygen easier than nitric acid and consequently if used would give a higher voltage than Grove’s nitric acid battery. It also has the advantage of a lesser tendency to attack zinc directly if it happens to come in contact with it. Grenet developed a cell having a liquid consisting of a mixture of potassium bichromate (K_{2}Cr_{2}O_{7}) and sulphuric acid. A porous cell was therefore not used to keep the two liquids apart. This had the advantage of reducing the internal resistance. The chemical reaction was:
K_{2}Cr_{2}O_{7} (potassium bichromate) + 7H_{2}SO_{4} (sulphuric acid) + 3Zn (zinc) = 3ZnSO_{4} (zinc sulphate) + K_{2}SO_{4} (potassium sulphate) + Cr_{2} (SO_{4})_{3} (chromium sulphate) + 7H_{2}O (water).
In order to prevent the useless consumption of zinc on open circuit, the zinc was attached to a sliding rod and could be drawn up into the neck of the bottle-shaped jar containing the liquid.
DE MOLEYNS’ INCANDESCENT LAMP
Frederick De Moleyns, an Englishman, has the honor of having obtained the first patent on an incandescent lamp. This was in 1841 and his lamp was quite novel. It consisted of a spherical glass globe, in the upper part of which was a tube containing powdered charcoal. This tube was open at the bottom inside the globe and through it ran a platinum wire, the end below the tube being coiled. Another platinum wire coiled at its upper end came up through the lower part of the globe but did not quite touch the other platinum coil. The powdered charcoal filled the two coils of platinum wire and bridged the gap between. Current passing through this charcoal bridge heated it to incandescence. The air in the globe having been removed as far as was possible with the hand air pumps then available, the charcoal did not immediately burn up, the small amount consumed being replaced by the supply in the tube. The idea was ingenious but the lamp was impractical as the globe rapidly blackened from the evaporation of the incandescent charcoal.
EARLY DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ARC LAMP
It had been found that most of the light of the arc came from the tip of the positive electrode, and that the charcoal electrodes were rapidly consumed, the positive electrode about twice as fast as the negative. Mechanisms were designed to take care of this, together with devices to start the arc by allowing the electrodes to touch each other and then pulling them apart the proper distance. This distance varied from one-eighth to three-quarters of an inch.
In 1840 Bunsen, the German chemist who invented the bunsen burner, devised a process for making hard dense carbon pencils which lasted much longer than the charcoal previously used. The dense carbon from the inside of the retorts of gas making plants was ground up and mixed with molasses, moulded into shape and baked at a high temperature. Bunsen also, in 1843, cheapened Grove’s battery by substituting a hard carbon plate in place of the platinum electrode.