Today we’re going to take a look at energy. Specifically we'll explore how we invented electricity, where we’re really going with solar energy, and of course, how electricity impacts the environment. Last but not least I’ll be spilling the conspirac-TEA… can you actually get free energy and live off the grid?
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We also know from ancient texts that Egyptians knew that some species of electric fish could trigger shocks in the body. In fact, the ancient Egyptians likely used the electric Nile Catfish to treat headaches and nerve pain — a practice known as ichthyoelectroanalgesia that remained in medical use until the late 1600s.
The vase contains a hollow cylinder made of a sheet of copper of high purity. The lower end of the cylinder was covered with a piece of sheet copper while the inner bottom of the cylinder was covered with a layer of asphalt, only 3 millimeters thick. The upper end of the cylinder was plugged by a heavy and thick layer of asphalt. The center of the plug featured a solid piece of iron.
At the time of the discovery, Koening recognized that the jar and its odd metal structure were in a configuration that suggested it could have functioned as a wet-cell battery. In fact, it seems to have served no other purpose than that of generating a weak electric current.
Experiments conducted with replicas of the jar employing various acids found that a mixture of acetic acid (distilled vinegar) and grapefruit juice generated 0.5 volts for several days.
More such artifacts have been discovered along the years around sites in modern-day Iraq, which were made by Parthians and Sassanids. However, what purpose could these ancient batteries have served considering that no motors, lights, or any similar electric device have been found?
One possible application of the Baghdad battery is for medical therapy, as the Greeks and Romans of the time routinely employed the common electric ray to deliver electric shocks to patients for treating pain.
During the mid-18th century, well before he embarked on his famous experiment, Franklin was toying with electricity tubes that were given to him by his friend Peter Collinson. It is following these experiences that Franklin hypothesized that lighting was a ‘massive electric spark’ and proposed an experiment with an elevated rod to “draw down the electric fire” from the cloud. Well aware of the dangers involved, Franklin also mentioned in one of his letters to Collinson that any people involved in such an experiment would have to observe the phenomenon in the protection of an enclosure similar to a soldier’s sentry box.
Word of Franklin’s theories reached Europe where Frenchman Thomas Francois D’Alimbard used a 50-foot long vertical rod to attract the “electric fluid” (lightning). He was successful on May 10, 1752 in Paris. In July, an Englishman, John Canton, successfully replicated the experiment. Later, Russian chemist Mikhail Lomonosov also reached the same conclusion after his own experiment.
Franklin, apparently unaware of these developments across the pond, undertook his own version of the experiment during a thunderstorm on June 1752, in Philadelphia. He stood outside under a shelter while he held on to a silk kite with a key tied to it. When lightning struck, the electricity traveled down the key and its charge was collected in a Leyden jar — an antique electrical component which stores a high-voltage electric charge and can release it at a later date.
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