The History Of Electricity

The History Of Electricity

Michael Faraday

1. James Watt (1736-1819)
James Watt was a Scottish inventor who made improvements to the steam engine during the late 1700s. Soon, factories and mining companies began to use Watt’s new-and-improved steam engine for their machinery. This helped jumpstart the Industrial Revolution, a period in the early 1800s that saw many new machines invented and an increase in the number of factories. After his death, Watt’s name was used to describe the electrical unit of power.

2. Alessandro Volta (1745-1827)
Using zinc, copper and cardboard, this Italian professor invented the first battery. Volta’s battery produced a reliable, steady current of electricity. The unit of voltage is now named after Volta.

3. André-Marie Ampère (1775-1836)
André-Marie Ampère, a French physicist and science teacher, played a big role in discovering electromagnetism. He also helped describe a way to measure the flow of electricity. The ampere, which is the unit for measuring electric current, was named in honour of him.

4. Georg Ohm (1787-1854)
German physicist and teacher Georg Ohm researched the relationship between voltage, current and resistance. In 1827, he proved that the amount of electrical current that can flow through a substance depends on its resistance to electrical flow. This is known as Ohm’s Law.

5. Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
Michael Faraday, a British physicist and chemist, was the first person to discover that moving a magnet near a coil of copper wire produced an electric current in the wire.

6. Henry Woodward  
(exact birth and death unknown)
Henry Woodward, a Canadian medical student, played a major role in developing the electric light bulb. In 1874, Woodward and a colleague named Mathew Evans placed a thin metal rod inside a glass bulb. They forced the air out of the bulb and replaced it with a gas called nitrogen. The rod glowed when an electric current passed through it, creating the first electric lamp. Unfortunately, Woodward and Evans couldn’t afford to develop their idea further. So in 1889, they sold their patent to Thomas Edison.

7. Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
American inventor Thomas Edison purchased Henry Woodward’s patent and began to work on improving the idea. He attached wires to a thin strand of paper, or filament, inside a glass globe. The filament began to glow, which generated some light. This became the first incandescent light bulb . A thin, iron wire later replaced the paper filament.

8. Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)
A Serbian inventor named Nikola Tesla invented the first electric motor by reversing the flow of electricity on Thomas Edison’s generator. In 1885, he sold his patent rights to an American businessman who was the head of the Westinghouse Electric Company. In 1893, the company used Tesla’s ideas to light the Chicago World’s Fair with a quarter of a million lights.

9. Sir Adam Beck  (1857-1925)
In the early 1900s, manufacturer and politician Sir Adam Beck pointed out that private power companies were charging customers too much for electricity. He believed that all citizens had the right to cheap electric light and power. So he worked to get the Ontario government to create the Hydro-Electric Power Commission in 1910. He headed up this commission, which provided inexpensive electricity to many Ontario towns and cities. To do this, the commission built huge generating stations and set up transmission lines that carried power from Niagara Falls to places across Ontario. Because of his efforts, he earned the nickname The Hydro Knight.