5 ms·
Shoulders of giants. Faraday was the first to demonstrate an actual physical process where electrical energy was converted to mechanical energy. It's turtles
by tomnipotent 5y ago
Shoulders of giants.
Faraday was the first to demonstrate an actual physical process where electrical energy was converted to mechanical energy.
It's turtles all the way down.
- tdeck 5y agoInterestingly electrostatic motors (albeit very weak ones) predate Faraday's invention by decades. Ben Franklin even designed one [1]. In the early days of electricity research, static electricity was more common than "current" electricity. There were early static-based telegraph experiments that predated Morse [2] and used a silk thread as a conductor. Before the electromagnet was invented, people didn't know how to build an indicator based on electric current - one concept was to use electrolysis and look for bubbles. [1]: https://hackaday.com/2017/10/03/ben-franklins-weak-motor-and-other-forgotten-locomotion/ https://hackaday.com/2017/10/03/ben-franklins-weak-motor-and... [2]: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.3079 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.307...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yann2 5y agoIt starts with Hans Christian Oersted deciding to place a compass next to a current carrying conductor. Its such a simple thing but no one had thought of a reason to do such a thing. What happened to the compass shocked the world and triggered Faradays many beautiful experiments.
- tomnipotent 5y agoAmpere, Volta, Galvani, Ohm - so much of the modern world unfolding in just a few decades of discovery, when people still worked by the light of candles and oil lamps and it could take years for information to travel.