Early Electric Experiments and Birth of The Term
In 1749 Benjamin Franklin, the U.S. polymath and founding father, first used the term "battery" to describe a set of linked capacitors he used for his experiments with electricity. These capacitors were panels of glass coated with metal on each surface. These capacitors were charged with a static generator and discharged by touching metal to their electrode. Linking them together in a "battery" gave a stronger discharge.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Battery
Famous quotes containing the words early, electric, experiments, birth and/or term:
“I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow, outvalues all the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.”
—James Conant (1893–1978)
“Spirit enters flesh
And for all it’s worth
Charges into earth
In birth after birth
Ever fresh and fresh.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Dead drunk
is the term I think of,
insensible,
neither cool nor warm,
without a head or a foot.
To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)