We have come such a long way from the birth of electricity, it is hard to imagine days when folk did not understand it. Yet those days did exist, when brave scientists were attempting to comprehend the most basic rules of electricity. First principles that would allow them to create the original batteries of capacitors, increasing available power.
Terrifying Moments in the History of Capacitor Batteries
Ewald Georg Jürgen von Kleist of Kammin, Prussia, and Pieter van Musschenbroek of Leiden, Holland both worked on early capacitors. Either may have invented the first one. We previously shared the evidence, but we do not want to take sides.
We don’t suppose either of them stumbled over the idea of creating batteries of capacitors in series though. After all, they were still in the process of understanding what their gadgets did. Delving into how they did so would take longer.
Terrifying Moments as the First Capacitors Emerge
Pieter van Musschenbroek sketched his experience of a trial gone wrong in a letter he wrote to describe his new innovation. “I would like to tell you about a new but terrible experiment,” he begins. “Which I advise you never to try yourself, nor would I do it again, for all the kingdom of France.
“I had engaged in displaying the powers of electricity. As I tried to draw the snapping sparks that jump from the iron tube to my left hand. Such force struck my right hand that my whole body quivered, as if from a lightning strike. I was so terribly affected I cannot describe it. I thought I was done.
“I have found out so much about electricity that I have reached the point where I understand nothing, and can explain nothing.” His words stun us to silence. We pause before we continue with the emerging history of batteries of capacitors.
More Information
Abbé Nollet Shocks Humans with Capacitors
Was van Musschenbroek Capacitor the First?
Preview Image: Experiment with the Leiden Jar
Article in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
