Story Of Electricity-(III)

AGE OF INVENTIONS

Till Now we got to know about the discovery of Electricity from a spark. The previous article was all about the events in the 18^thcentury. After the discovery and scientific acceptance of this phenomenon. New research began about the effects of electricity on other materials and the relation between electricity and eldest scientific effect “Magnetism”.On 29^th February1812, a 20-year-old self-educated bookbinder Michael Faraday attended the last lecture of Sir Humphry Davy, who was the inventor of Arclight. Faraday became assistant at Royal Institution, London under Humphry and began working in the field of electricity. Meanwhile, Hans Cristian Orstead discovered a relation between electric current and magnetism. Today, we call this phenomenon “Electromagnetism”.

This new finding became a new field of research and experiments. Faraday also started experiments to relate electricity with magnetism and its effects. And in 1821, Faraday was able to determine the relation among electricity, magnetism, and motion. The outcome was shown through an arrangement which is called “Faraday Mercury Bath”. This was the first device which converts electric current into a circular motion, the first ever Electric Motor. After working of another combination of this own discovery, on 17^th October 1831 Faraday was able to generate an electric current from magnetism and motion.  

Faraday's Mercury Bath
Image Source: nationalmaglab.org

Michael Faraday
Image Source: aaas.org

The Telegraph was invented during this time which gave the ability to control a magnet at a distance. In the middle of 1840s, Samuel Morse Code for transmitting messages was invented which revolutionized the communication method in that era. However, in 1858, an influential project of connecting Britain and America for telegraph through inter-oceanic cable. This cable was laid in the Atlantic Ocean and the original message of 98 words long took 16 hours to transmit. The received message was blurred and distorted. So in order to send good quality of the signal, the applied voltage to the cable was increased which eventually damaged the cable forever. The reason behind this big blunder was revealed to be the misconception about the mechanism of flow of current in the cable.                                                                                                                                                                                        

The Telegraph Machine
Image Source: cjow.com

Samuel Morse
Image Courtesy of
The Library of Congress
via notablebiographies.com

At the beginning of the 19^th century, the source of light was simply burning things. In the middle of 19^th century, gas-lit lamps were used in London for indoors and electric arc lamps for outdoors. This was an era after which electricity saw the most famous professional rivalry of the electric world which is popularly known as “The War of Currents”. It was a start of the process for commercialization of Electricity.   Thomas Elva Edison and Nikola Tesla, the greatest minds of Electric World were the key players in this war. Foreseeing the scope of electricity, Edition assembled most brilliant engineers of that time in Menlo Park, New Jersey, which was the first R&D facility of that time. Edition along with Swan invented Incandescent Light Bulb. Edison and his team also invented electric sockets and cables in order to introduce in the market and distributing electricity. Edison was a visionary and was determined to commercialize electricity and make it a huge business.  Edison wanted to electrify New York through his bulb and through his political connections he succeeded in building America’s First Power Station at JP Morgan Building, WallStreet, New York on 4^th September 1882. Edison is the inventor of Direct Current, eldest technology of electricity.     

Direct current had the biggest flaw of electric losses. Also, from a DC generating station only the nearby area could be electrified and setting more number of DC generating stations was economically and practically not possible. This flaw was solved by a Serbian inventor, Nikola Tesla invented a new type of current called Alternating Current (AC). Alternating current has fewer losses than DC. Tesla demonstrated the rotary moments generated from AC Current though his equipment called “Tesla Egg”. He gave the concept of Revolving Magnetic Field (RMF) and challenged Edison’s DC as AC generating stations can be situated at far distances from the point of consumption. Tesla’s Invention opened the gate for AC transmission of AC over a large distance. Thus, Edison’s monopoly over the electrification industry faced threat due to this AC technology. This initiated the War of Currents.

Nikola Tesla                                      Thomas Edison
Image Source: i.ytimg.com

AC voltage was very high and it was very dangerous to touch it. This flaw was used for bad publicity of AC by Edison The professional rivalry in proving the superiority between AC and DC went so such a height that one of the team members of Edison named Jason Brown demonstrated the deadly power of AC by electrocuting stray animals with AC & DC to show that AC kills animals more quickly. Nikola Tesla was financially backed by George Westinghouse. In order to defame Westinghouse, this cruel and brutal method of killing by electrocution was later used for criminals and was called “Westinghouse Method”. This was regarded as the most negative publicity of AC.

Nikola took the shortcomings in his method as a challenge and on May 21,1821 he demonstrated that if handled carefully and at high frequency, AC can be passed through his body without hurting. In 1896, a Power station at Niagara Falls using AC system was established nearby Buffalo. After this, AC became more popular than DC in the transmission of electricity. And the war of currents was won by Nikola Tesla. However, this win was short-lived Westinghouse had a huge loss in the stock market and could not support Tesla in his research. Tesla then, gave all his patents to Westinghouse to help him cope with the economic losses. In later years, Tesla was emotionally troubled and spent his last years in Room no.3327 in New Yorker Hotel. He was found dead in his hotel room on 7^th January 1943 under mysterious circumstances whereas Edison became one of the most powerful and known names in electrical manufacturing as an entrepreneur and later as an industrialist. Nikola gave us the most important and ground-breaking technology on which our life depends today.