We think of electricity in terms of power stations, lightbulbs and all of our electrical appliances, but electricity is an age old force with electrons flowing all around us creating lightning bolts and static electricity too. Many people have contributed over the years to the way in which we use electricity today. This article looks at some of those early contributors who we have to thank for giving us the ability to light our homes and cook our meals.



Franklin's spark - The ancient Greeks had discovered static electricity, and Franklin set out to prove that static electricity was the same force that caused lightning bolts. Franklin's now famed kite experiment was a revelation in its day. By flying a kite during a thunder and lightning storm, his kite transmitted static electricity to his wrist as iron had been attached to both ends of his kite. Static electricity and the electrical energy found in bolts of lighting could now be said to be the same force.

In 1768 an Italian medical professor named Luigi Galvani found that when he touched the leg of a dead frog with his knife, the frog's leg jumped and twitched which led him to believe that electricity was contained within the frog's muscles. Another Italian scientist named Alessandro Volta showed that electricity was actually being passed from the steel of the scientist's knife to the tin plate that the frog was lying on through the layer of moisture inbetween.

With this breakthrough experiment, a whole new kind of electricity was discovered. Whereas previously electricity had only been seen to operate in sparks or shocks, here was a type of electricity that flowed like water.

Faraday's dynamo - The brilliant mind of British scientist Michael Faraday took all previous electrical research and turned it on its head. Electricity had been proven to produce magnetism, so why couldn't magnetism be used to produce electricity? Faraday essentially invented the first dynamo or electric generator when he moved a magnet in a copper wire coil to produce an electrical current in the wire. Although this dynamo shrinks into comparison with the power of modern dynamos, Faraday's was the first.

Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan - Thomas Edison is known the world over thanks to his achievements with electricity. His first breakthrough was his direct current generator, which was the first really practical generator of its kind. In 1879, Edison then designed what he thought to be the first incandescent filament lamp. But he had been beaten to it, by almost a year, by the English scientist Joseph Swan.