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| Author | Joseph Priestly |
|---|---|
Publication date | 1769 |
The History and Present State of Electricity (1767), by eighteenth-century British polymath Joseph Priestley, is a survey of the study of electricity up until 1766 as well as a description of experiments by Priestley himself. [1]
Priestley became interested in electricity while he was teaching at Warrington Academy. Friends introduced him to the major British experimenters in the field: John Canton, William Watson, and Benjamin Franklin. These men encouraged Priestley to perform the experiments he was writing about in his history; they believed that he could better describe the experiments if he had performed them himself. In the process of replicating others' experiments, however, Priestley became intrigued by the still unanswered questions regarding electricity and was prompted to design and undertake his own experiments. [2]
Priestley possessed an electrical machine designed by Edward Nairne. With his brother Timothy he designed and constructed his own machines (see Timothy Priestley#Scientific apparatus). [3]
The first half of the 700-page book is a history of the study of electricity. It is parted into ten periods, starting with early experiments "prior to those of Mr. Hawkesbee", finishing with variable experiments and discoveries made after Franklin's own experiments. The book takes Franklin's work into focus, which was criticised by contemporary scholars, especially in France and Germany. [4] The second and more influential half contents a description of contemporary theories about electricity and suggestions for future research. Priestley also wrote about the construction and use of electrical machines, basic electrical experiments and "practical maxims for the usw of young elecricians". In the second edition, Priestley added some of his own discoveries, such as the conductivity of charcoal. [5] This discovery overturned what he termed "one of the earliest and universally received maxims of electricity," that only water and metals could conduct electricity. Such experiments demonstrate that Priestley was interested in the relationship between chemistry and electricity from the beginning of his scientific career. [6] In one of his more speculative moments, he "provided a mathematical quasi-demonstration of the inverse-square force law for electrical charges. It was the first respectable claim for that law, out of which came the development of a mathematical theory of static electricity." [7]
The book contains an account of the kite experiment of Benjamin Franklin, that has been taken as authoritative. Some details not found elsewhere are presumed to have been communicated by Franklin. [8] The status of this account matters for the priority dispute over the experiment in which Franklin became involved. [9]
The focus on Franklin's experiments influenced the reception of his work in Europe. Priestley's famous text supported the distribution of Franklin's research, which helped it becoming one of the most important works on electricity in the late 18th century. [4]
Priestley's strength as a natural philosopher was qualitative rather than quantitative and his observation of "a current of real air" between two electrified points would later interest Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell as they investigated electromagnetism. Priestley's text became the standard history of electricity for over a century; Alessandro Volta (who would go on to invent the battery), William Herschel (who discovered infrared radiation), and Henry Cavendish (who discovered hydrogen) all relied upon it. Priestley wrote a popular version of the History of Electricity for the general public titled A Familiar Introduction to the Study of Electricity (1768). [10]
Benjamin Franklin was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, forger and political philosopher. Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a drafter and signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, and the first United States Postmaster General.
The Lunar Society of Birmingham was a British dinner club and informal learned society of prominent figures in the Midlands Enlightenment, including industrialists, natural philosophers and intellectuals, who met regularly between 1765 and 1813 in Birmingham. At first called the Lunar Circle, "Lunar Society" became the formal name by 1775. The name arose because the society would meet during the full moon, as the extra light made the journey home easier and safer in the absence of street lighting. The members cheerfully referred to themselves as "lunaticks", a pun on lunatics. Venues included Erasmus Darwin's home in Lichfield, Matthew Boulton's home, Soho House, Bowbridge House in Derbyshire, and Great Barr Hall.
A Leyden jar is an electrical component that stores a high-voltage electric charge between electrical conductors on the inside and outside of a glass jar. It typically consists of a glass jar with metal foil cemented to the inside and the outside surfaces, and a metal terminal projecting vertically through the jar lid to make contact with the inner foil. It was the original form of the capacitor.
Joseph Priestley was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted experiments in electricity and other areas of science. He was a close friend of, and worked in close association with Benjamin Franklin involving electricity experiments.
Jan Ingenhousz or Ingen-Housz FRS was a Dutch-born British physiologist, biologist and chemist.
Ebenezer Kinnersley was an English scientist, inventor and lecturer, specializing in the investigation of electricity.
Joseph Priestley was a British natural philosopher, Dissenting clergyman, political theorist, and theologian. While his achievements in all of these areas are renowned, he was also dedicated to improving education in Britain; he did this on an individual level and through his support of the Dissenting academies. His grammar textbook was innovative and highly influential. More importantly, though, Priestley introduced a liberal arts curriculum at Warrington Academy, arguing that a practical education would be more useful to students than a classical one. He was also the first to advocate the study and teaching of modern history, an interest driven by his belief that humanity was improving and could bring about Christ's Millennium.
Joseph Priestley was a British natural philosopher, political theorist, clergyman, theologian, and educator. He was one of the most influential Dissenters of the late 18th-century.
The Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion, written by 18th-century English Dissenting minister and polymath Joseph Priestley, is a three-volume work designed for religious education published by Joseph Johnson between 1772 and 1774. Its central argument is that revelation and natural law must coincide.
Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life (1765) is an educational treatise by the 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley.
In 1769, 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley published A New Chart of History and its prose explanation as a supplement to his Lectures on History and General Policy. Together with his Chart of Biography (1765), which he dedicated to his friend Benjamin Franklin, Priestley believed these charts would allow students to "trace out distinctly the dependence of events to distribute them into such periods and divisions as shall lay the whole claim of past transactions in a just and orderly manner."
Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768) is an early work of modern liberal political theory by 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley.
The Theological Repository was a periodical founded and edited from 1769 to 1771 by the eighteenth-century British polymath Joseph Priestley. Although ostensibly committed to the open and rational inquiry of theological questions, the journal became a mouthpiece for Dissenting, particularly Unitarian and Arian, doctrines.
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity, published by Joseph Johnson in 1782, was the fourth part of 18th-century Dissenting minister Joseph Priestley's Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion (1772–74).
Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1774–86) is a six-volume work published by 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley which reports a series of his experiments on "airs" or gases, most notably his discovery of the oxygen gas.
The kite experiment is a scientific experiment in which a kite with a pointed, conductive wire attached to its apex is flown near thunder clouds to collect electricity from the air and conduct it down the wet kite string to the ground. It was proposed and may have been conducted by Benjamin Franklin with the assistance of his son William Franklin. The experiment's purpose was to uncover the unknown facts about the nature of lightning and electricity, and with further experiments on the ground, to demonstrate that lightning and electricity were the result of the same phenomenon.
Timothy Priestley was an English Independent minister. The younger brother of Joseph Priestley, he was a collaborator in making electrical apparatus.
Franklin's electrostatic machine is a high-voltage static electricity-generating device used by Benjamin Franklin in the mid-18th century for research into electrical phenomena. Its key components are a glass globe which turned on an axis via a crank, a cloth pad in contact with the spinning globe, a set of metal needles to conduct away the charge developed on the globe by its friction with the pad, and a Leyden jar – a high-voltage capacitor – to accumulate the charge. Franklin's experiments with the machine eventually led to new theories about electricity and inventing the lightning rod.
The Bibliography of Benjamin Franklin is a comprehensive list of primary and secondary works by or about Benjamin Franklin, one of the principal Founding Fathers of the United States. Works about Franklin have been consistently published during and after Franklin's life, spanning four centuries, and continue to appear in present-day publications. Scholarly works that are not necessarily subject-specific to Franklin, yet cover his life and efforts in significant measure, may also be included here, while the numerous encyclopedia articles and short essays about Franklin are not included in this bibliography.
