History of electricity

The history of electricity seen by the human ones goes back to mists of time, because the electricity always present often appeared, for example in a very spectacular way in the form of flash S. This article tries to recall the attempts of the men to control this vector of energy.

Electricity and the Magnétisme are two phenomena Physique S known since of the thousands of years. The theorization and the comprehension of the electric phenomenon are relatively recent, in comparison with very the long period of empirical applications, which it remains very often ignored.

High Antiquity with the Rebirth

The term “electricity” derives directly from the Greek word “ elektron ” (ελεκτρον) which indicates the yellow amber, a fossil resin having of the properties electrostatic S. In the same way, the “electromagnetic” term refers to the Pierre of magnesia, a natural magnet used as of High Antiquity (Magnésie in the beginning a Greek city, now located at the west of Turkey is).

These two roots indicate that the effects of electricity and magnetism were early discovered in the history of humanity. The lightning, natural magnetization, the static electricity of wool, are as many phenomena as the Men learned how to know and use.

Electricity and magnetism in Greece

At Hellènes, towards 600 av. J. - C., Thalès de Milet is seen allotting the paternity of the reflection on electricity and magnetism. However, only to the texts apocryphal book S testify to its interest for these phenomena (it is Diogène Laërce, at the 3rd century, which brings back the remarks of Hérodote and Hypias on the Greek scientist). According to these texts, Thalès seemed to grant “a heart to the things which one believed inanimate”. The Triboélectricité was already known, but could not be explained differently than by a vision animist of the matter, his properties Physique S being then inaccessible.

The use of magnetism in China

In China, the magnetic properties are used by the soothsayers from 2nd and I er, to manufacture tables of magic divinations . From there drift the first Compass, indicating the south and sophisticated after of our era. The Boussole will be gradually used for construction and navigation. Moreover, one discovers under the Dynastie Tang (618 - 907) the discordance between magnetic and geographical NORTH-SOUTH poles. Recovered by the Arabs, the compass arrives to Occident at the 11th century, and starts again the study of magnetism.

The use of the electricity produced by living beings

The electricity produced by living beings, in particular of the electric fish, is also known since Antiquity. One finds for example low-reliefs of the ancient Egypt representing electric catfishes. A mosaic of Pompéi in addition represents a common torpedo. Scribonius Largus, under the reign of the emperor Claude Ier (41-54 after J. - C.) described a treatment against the Migraine or the drop which uses the electric shocks produced by a torpedo.

17th and 18th centuries: an historical turning point

To the 16th century, William Gilbert, doctor of the Queen of England, gives the name of electricity to the phenomenon.

In 1752, Benjamin Franklin shows that the Foudre is a phenomenon due to electricity and invents the lightning conductor to be protected some.

In 1785, Charles of Coulomb presents a second memory to the Academy of Science, in which it exposes the law according to which the electrically charged bodies interact.

Static electricity: first discovered

The first research concerning electricity, before the advent of electromagnetism, will be focused on the electrostatic phenomena. With the electrical production by machines with friction can begin the first concrete experiments. Ramsden or Wimshurst which manufactures the first electrostatic generators, the discovery of the condensing , knowledge concerning the chemical properties , calorific and luminous of the electric current specifies.

19th century and electromagnetism

Developments of electromagnetism

In 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted discovers the relation between electricity and magnetism, whose laws will be described by Andre-Marie Ampère, Michael Faraday, Jean-Baptiste Biot and Felix Savart, to be finally formatted by James Clerk Maxwell.

1831 Michael Faraday (1791-1867) discovers electromagnetic induction: the creation of a current in a driver starting from a magnetic field.

1832 Hippolyte Pixii, manufacturer of instruments of physics in Paris, produces the first electric machine with induction including/understanding a Aimant turning opposite the poles of a fixed electromagnet. It is a generator of Alternative course which makes it possible to obtain D.C. current thanks to the switch of Mr. Ampère (two half-rings fixed at the axis allowing the inversion of the polarity). It is already the starter of a commutator. Joseph Henry observes the spark occurring with the opening of a Electrical circuit and names this phenomenon extracurrent of rupture. It is the discovery of the Auto-induction.

1833 Heinrich Lenz (1804-1865), Russian physicist of German origin, establishes the law which gives the direction of the induced current.

1865 James Clerk Maxwell publishes his treaty of electricity and magnetism, true base of the modern electromagnetism. Famous “the Maxwell's equations” is launched.

1885 Galileo Ferraris, Italian engineer, introduced the principle of the spinning field pattern into the construction of the electrical motors.

First machines

In 1799, Alessandro Volta invents the Battery by alternatively piling up different metal discs (Cuivre, Zinc) separated by discs from felt soaked with Acide.

1822 Peter Barlow (1776-1862) built what can be regarded as the first Electrical motor of the history: the “Wheel of Barlow” which is a simple metal disc cut out out of star and whose ends plunge in a cup containing of the mercury which ensures the arrival of the current.

1834 the Russian professor Hermann von Jacobi builds an engine of a power of a Cheval-vapeur which will propel a boat to Paddle wheel on the Neva, with Saint-Pétersbourg. The inductor and the armature are electromagnets in Horseshoe carried by a mobile crown and a fixed crown in glance one of the other. The switch called “gyrotrope” opposite with the suitable positions the energization of the mobile electromagnets. But this engine is cumbersome and, finally, it is American Thomas Davenport who will be the true inventor of this kind of machine. One owes in Jacobi the concept of “counter electromotive force”.

1835 Charles Grafton Page tries out an auto-transformer. Thomas Davenport, blacksmith with Brandon in the Vermont in the USA, built one of the first electric vehicles. The electrical motor was probably an engine of the kind “piston simple effect of engine”.

1837 Nicholas Joseph Callan carries out the first Transformateur composed of a primary education and a secondary.

1838 Charles Grafton Page builds an induction coil which can be regarded as the ancestor of the reel of Ruhmkorff. Construction of an electrical motor similar to the piston simple effect of the steam engines, vapor being replaced by two electromagnets out of U.

1840 Electrical motor of Bourbouze. The pistons of a steam engine are replaced by alternatively excited electromagnets thanks to contacts ordered by a drawer “distributer”.

1845 Gustave Wheat (1815-1865) built the first machine with variable reluctance. It is about a rotary engine comprising a crown of fixed electromagnets which attract iron bars carried by a wheel.

1856 Heinrich Ruhmkorff develops the reel which bears its name while being based on work as of its predecessors and in fact a powerful scientific instrument that it markets.

1859 Gaston Planté (1834-1889) invents the accumulator or “crushes reversible”. The same year Antonio Pacinotti (1841-1912) develops an electric machine made up of a steel ring surrounded by a copper wire, “ the ring of Pacinotti ”. It is the base of the electrical motor and the Dynamo.

1865 Antonio Pacinotti publishes, in the n°19 review Nuovo Cimento , a communication on a ring turning in a magnetic field, which precedes the armature of the electric machines, of which it considers the use as well out of generators as out of engines. Not having been able to exceed the experimental stage, its achievements remain without continuation. James Clerk Maxwell publishes his treaty of electricity and magnetism, true base of modern electromagnetism. Famous the Maxwell's equations is launched.

1868 the Wilde English produces the first dynamoelectric machine or dynamo. It replaces, following work of Werner von Siemens, the permanent magnet by an electromagnet supplied with an auxiliary machine.

1869 the Belgian inventor Zénobe Gram (1826-1901), born in Jehay-Bodegnée (province of Liege), makes possible the realization of the generators to D.C. current by imagining the collector. It improves the first antiquated versions of alternators (1867) and becomes famous by finding the principle of ring armature of Pacinotti. In 1871, it will present to the Academy of Science of Paris the first industrial generator of D.C. current, which one called machine of Gram and which was in fact a magneto.

Diffusion of electricity

In 1878, Thomas Alva Edison, inventive American, founds Edison Electric Light Co. with New York. In 1879, it presents its first flashlight with incandescence (with carbon filaments) which remains lit 45 hours.

In 1879, a hydro-electric power station of 7 kw is built with Saint-Moritz.

In 1881, the France organizes, between and the November 15th, an International exhibition of electricity which devotes the birth of the electrotechnical , underlined by an international Congress of the electricians which sits at Paris of the September 15th to the October 19th. The great innovation is the industrial employment of the Gram dynamo.

In 1882, Edison inaugurates the first “electric factories” (production of continuous tensions) built with London (Holborn Viaduct) and New York (Pearl Street: 110 V, 30 kw). First line of transport of electrical energy in Germany in D.C. current: 2.400 V, 59 km.

In 1884, Lucien Gaulard (1850-1888), young French electrician, chemist of formation, introduces to the French company electricians a “generator secondary”, called since transformer. In front of the skepticism of its compatriots, he addresses himself to the Gibbs English and shows in London the cogency of his invention. In 1883, Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs succeed in transmitting for the first time, on a distance from 40 km, alternative course under a tension of 2.000 volts using transformers with a core bar-shaped.

In 1884, Lucien Gaulard brings into service a buckled connection of demonstration (133 Hz) supplied with alternative course under 2.000 volts and making the return ticket of Turin at Lanzo (80 km). One ends then up admitting the advantage of the transformer, which makes it possible to raise the tension delivered by an alternator and thus facilitates the transport of electrical energy by lines with high voltage. The recognition of Gaulard will intervene too tardily.

Meanwhile, of the patents were also taken by others. The first patent of Gaulard in 1882 was not even delivered in its time, under pretext which the inventor claimed to be able to do “something of nothing”! Gaulard tackles, loses its lawsuits, is ruined, and finishes its days in a lunatic asylum. The transformer of Gaulard of 1886 does not have great a deal to envy the current transformers, its closed magnetic circuit (the prototype of 1884 comprised an open magnetic circuit, from where a quite poor output) consists of an iron wire multitude announcing the laminated circuit with isolated sheets.

Thus, in 1885, the Hungarians Károly Zipernowsky, Miksá Déry and Otto Titus Bláthy develop a transformer with an annular core marketed in the whole world by the Ganz firm in Budapest. In the United States of America, W. Stanley develops transformers.

In 1885, Galileo Ferraris, Italian engineer, introduced the principle of the spinning field pattern into the construction of the electrical motors.

Production and distribution: the time of the engineers

Work of a great number of scientists between 1860 and 1890 led to the appearance of machines able to produce electrical energy in great quantity, like with the possibility of transferring it onto long distance.

The international conflicts of this time explain why it is difficult to allot to such or such person the paternity of an invention: scientists like Nikola Tesla or Lucien Gaulard which one is sure that they respectively invented the machines with alternative course and the Transformateur (essential components of the production and electric transport) died in misery, dispossessed of their Brevet S by other financial much better engineers.

One can consider that the invention of the Machine to D.C. current, patented by the Belgian Zénobe Gram must much with work of Italian Antonio Pacinotti and the German Ernst Werner von Siemens. Improved and marketed with the the United States by Thomas Edison, his employment was defended in Europe by many engineers (of which Marcel Deprez) and the financial ones which had interest there. Vis-a-vis holding of the production and transport in alternative course, this powerful lobby made its possible to impose the D.C. current. Edison, for example, formally disadvised of it the use downtown because of a “risk of electrocution by induction” for the users of the telephone.

It is Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs which, in 1883, succeeds in the first transporting electrical energy on a distance of 40 km thanks to an alternative course generated under a tension of 2.000 volts. The transformer, invented by Gaulard, makes it possible to strongly increase the tension with the detriment of the intensity of the current and thus to decrease enormously the losses by Joule effect during transport at long distances.

In 1886 George Westinghouse (1846-1914), inventor and American industrialist born in Central Bridge (State of New York), is interested in industrial electricity and founds Westinghouse Electric Corporation. After having obtained in 1887 a patent for a transformer, it carries out in Buffalo a first network with alternative course for lighting. In the United States, it obtains vis-a-vis Edison the contract of installation of all the electric infrastructure. Thus in the whole world the alternative course for the distribution of electricity is essential. This invention will make it possible to distribute energy in all the territory of the developed countries and to cause one second Industrial revolution. Today its group became the number two American of the sector of the production of electrical material and electronics, behind General Electric. It also manufactures domestic apparatuses and television stations, and developed its activities in the nuclear power: the group held process PWR (Pressured Water Reactor) of production of nuclear energy, which is the ancestor of the process implemented in France by EDF.

In 1886, the town of Bourganeuf in Creuse is the first in France, even in Europe, to inaugurate an electric lighting of the whole of the streets of the locality.

In 1887 Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), Yugoslav electronics engineer born with Smiljan, in Croatia, founds a company for the construction of the alternators. Thanks to its work, the alternative course will gain the battle of remote transport and the use of the alternative course. Tesla recommends initially the use of the polyphase currents (1882) and succeeds in creating a turning magnetic field which makes it possible to rotate a revolving mobile reinforcement. In 1891, the first experiment for the transport of energy to large scales is made in Germany. It is the realization of a 175 kilometers long line enters Lauffen-on-the-Neckar and Francfort-sur-le-Main. And the output reached is already of 75%! He imagines in 1890 the first assembly producing a high frequency current. Tesla continues research tasks. One owes him the famous Tesla assembly in the field of radioelectricity but that does not prevent, in spite of other inventions, which it does not finish to him also its days in misery. One gave his name to the magnetic unit of induction in the system IF, the Tesla (symbol T).

The examination of the state of the art as published in the Dictionary of electricity of R. Lefèvre (1895) watch very great creativity of this time concerning the uses of electricity, with many applications now disappeared like:

light electrolysis of the contents of the basins of Hunting of water to give to water disinfecting properties;
Clothing S electric;
light-candles electric;
“Théâtrophone” in the streets;
…

1889 Michail Ossipowitsch Doliwo-Dobrowolski, Russian electrician, invents the first asynchronous motor with three-phase current with squirrel-cage (built industrially as from 1891). In fact the asynchronous motor was “in the air”. Who was really his inventor? Tesla, Ferraris or Doliwo-Doborwolski? First line of transport in alternative course in the USA: Oregon city - Portland cement, 21 km, under 4 Kv.

1890 Brought into service of the first electric engine of subway in London.

1891 Germany: first installation of transmission of three-phase current (15 Kv, 40 Hz) between a hydraulic power station located at Lauffen-on-the-Neckar and Frankfurt on a distance of 175 km (losses of transport of 25%).

1894 Electrification of the trams inhabitant of Zurich.

1899 First railroad of Europe entirely electrified of the Railroads Berthoud-Thoune (40 km; 750 V; 40 Hz).

Progress of the 20th century

1897, Joseph John Thomson shows the existence and the role of the electron.

The fairy electricity enters the hearths

In 1887 François Borel, Swiss engineer manufacturer, designs the first meter with induction with three-phase current.

1888 Friedrich Wilhelm Schindler-Jenny residing in Austria designs the first Domestic iron electric.

1893 Friedrich Wilhelm Schindler-Jenny presents the first electric cooker to the world exposure of Chicago. First line of three-phase transport in the USA in California, 12 km, under 2,3 Kv.

1896 the electric companies install the first meters with single tariff among their customers.

1903 the firm Landis & Gyr manufactures the first meter with double tariff.

1906 the electric first Aspirateur is marketed under the name of “pump with de-dusting”.

1920 the Washing machines are been driven by an electrical motor.

Development of the network

1923 an air line to 220 Kv is brought into service for the first time at the United States.

1924 Beginning of the construction of a North-South air line to 110 Kv connecting the German power stations with coal located close to the Rhine to the alpine hydraulic power stations. The first section of Neuenahr with Rheinau is equipped with pylons to 380 Kv - a later increase in the power being thus guaranteed (brought into service partial in 1929 with 110 Kv and 1930 with 220 Kv).

1937 the first turboalternator cooled with hydrogen is brought into service at the United States (power of 100 MW).

1965 “Blackout”: November 9th, New York remained 13 hours without electricity after the lightning had fallen on a line to 345 Kv.

1966 Brought into service of the first air line (380 Kv) towards the Germany, of Beznau with Tiengen.

1967 Connection with the network of the first tidal power station of the world (240 MW) located on the estuary of the Rancid (France).

1967 the networks with very high voltage (380 Kv) of France, of the Federal Republic of Germany and Switzerland are inter-connected for the first time at Laufenbourg.

1983 Brought into service of the first large wind installation at Growian close Brunsbüttel (Germany) (rotor 100 m in diameter; stop in 1986 following material problems).

2003 August 14th: Black out in the USA, approximately 50 million people remained without electricity during two days.

2003 September 28th: in Italy, 57 million people without electricity during two hours.

2006 November 4th: Approximately 10% of the French population were plunged in the black during nearly one hour. In Germany several hundreds of thousands of inhabitants in Rhineland-Westphalia were touched, in the same way in Belgium and Italy of north.

The nuclear one

1955 In England, put in commercial exploitation of the first nuclear plant (9 MW) at Calder Hall.

1978 an serious incident occurs in the nuclear plant of Three Mile Island close to Harrisburg (the USA) (without consequences for the environment).

1986 a serious accident occurs in the nuclear plant of Tchernobyl (Republic of Ukraine).

Random links: