Inventions in the centuryDoolittle, William H. (William Henry)
History
Inventions in the century
Doolittle, William H. (William Henry)
Inventions
Franklin records among several other experiments with frictional
electricity accumulated by the Leyden jar battery the following results,
produced chiefly by himself: The existence of an attractive and a
repulsive action of electricity; the restoration of the equilibrium of
electrical force between electrified and non-electrified bodies, or
between bodies differently supplied with the force; the electroscope, a
body charged with electricity and used to indicate the presence and
condition of electricity in another body; the production of work, as the
turning of wheels, by which it was proposed a spit for roasting meat
might be formed, and the ringing of chimes by a wheel, which was done;
the firing of gunpowder, the firing of wood, resin and spirits; the
drawing off a charge from electrified bodies at a near distance by
pointed rods; the heating and melting of metals; the production of
light; the magnetising of needles and of bars of iron, giving rise to
the analogy of magnetism and electricity.
Franklin, who had gone thus far, and who also had drawn the lightning
from the clouds, identified it as electricity, and taught the mode of
its subjection, felt chagrined that more had not been done with this
subtle agent in the service of man. He believed, however, that the
day-spring of science was opening, and he seemed to have caught some
reflection of its coming light. Observing the return to life and
activity of some flies long imprisoned in a bottle of Madeira wine and
which he restored by exposure to the sun and air, he wrote that he
should like to be immersed at death with a few friends in a cask of
Madeira, to be recalled to life a hundred years thence to observe the
state of his country. It would not have been necessary for him to have
been embalmed that length of time to have witnessed some great
developments of his favorite science. He died in 1790, and it has been
said that there was more real progress in this science in the first
decade of the nineteenth century than in all previous centuries put
together.
Before opening the door of the 19th century, let us glance at one more
experiment in the 18th:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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