Electricity and Magnetism - Their History

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A Brief History of Electricity 2700 BC Egyptians observed the electrical properties of electri

eels.

600 BC Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus discoveredstatic electricity.

1600 CE English scientist William Gilbert was the first personto use the word electricity. He believed electricitywas caused by a moving fluid called humor.

1733 French scientist Charles du Fay found that therewere two different kinds of static electric charge.

1752 American printer, journalist, scientist and statesman

Benjamin Franklin carried out further experimentsand named the two kinds of electric charge positiveand negative.

1780 Italian biologist Luigi Galvani touched two pieces ofmetal to a dead frogs leg and made it jump.


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1785 French scientist Charles Augustin de Coulombexplored the mysteries of electric field: the electricareas around electric charges.

1800 - an Italian physics professor named Alessandro Volta

realized animal electricity was made by the metalsGalvani had used. He found out how to make electricityby joining different metals together and inventedbatteries.

1820 Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted put a compassnear an electric cable and discovered that electricity can

make magnetism.

1821 Michael Faraday, an English chemist and physicistdeveloped the first primitive electric motor.

1821 A French physicist Andre-Marie Ampere put two electriccables near to one another, wired them up to a power

source and watched them push one another part. Thisshowed electricity and magnetism can work together tomake a force.

1827 German physicist Georg Ohm found some materialscarry electricity better than others and developed theidea of resistance.


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1830 American physicist Joseph Henry and British inventor

William Sturgeon independently made the first

practical electromagnets.

1831 Building on his earlier discoveries, Michael Faradayinvented the electric generator.

1840 Scotish physicist James Prescott Joule proved that

electricity is a kind of energy.

1870s Belgian engineer Zenobe Gramme made the first

large-scale electric generators. 1881The worlds first experimental electric power plant

opened in Godalming, England.

1882 Thomas Edison built the first large-scale electric

power plants in the USA.

1890sEdisons former employee Nikola Tesla promotedalternating current electricity, a rival to the direct

current system promoted by Edison.


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A Brief History of MagnetismAncient World Magnetism is known to the ancient Greeks,

Romans, and Chinese. The Chinese usegeomagnetic compasses in Feng Shui.Magnet gain their name from Manisa inTurkey, a place one named Magnesia,where magnetic lodestone was found in theground.

13th Century Frenchman Petrus Perigimus makes the firstproper studies of magnetism.

17th Century English physician and scientist WilliamGilbert proposed that Earth is a giantmagnet.


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18th Century Englishman John Michell and Frenchman

Charles Augustin de Coulomb study the forces magnets

exert.

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Century Danish Hans Christian Oersted, FrenchmanAndre-Marie Ampere, Dominique Arago and Englishman

Michael Faraday explored the close connections between

electricity and magnetism. James Clerk Maxwell publishes a

relatively complete explanation of electricity and magnetism.

Pierre Curie demonstrates that materials have lose theirmagnetism above a certain temperature. Wilhelm Weber

develops practical methods for detecting and measuring the

strength of a magnetic field.

20th Century Paul Langevin elaborates on Curies work with

a theory explaining how magnetism is affected by heat.

French physicist Pierre Weiss proposes that there are

particles called magnetrons, equivalent to electrons. Two

American scientist, Samuel Abraham and George Eugene

Uhlenbeck show that magnetic properties of materials result

from the spinning motion of electrons inside them.


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Electricity and Magnetism - Their History