Part 9

Allesandro Volta, a professor of physics in the University of Pavia, Italy, read about Galvani’s work and repeated his experiments. He found that the extent of the movement of the frog legs depended on the metals used for the rods, and thus believed that the electric charge was produced by the contact of dissimilar metals with the moisture in the muscles. To prove his point he made a pile of silver and zinc discs with cloths, wet with salt water, between them. This was in 1799, and he described his pile in March, 1800, in a letter to the Royal Society in London.

Volta discovered that electricity could be generated by chemical means and made a pile of silver and zinc discs with cloths, wet with salt water, between them. This was the forerunner of the present-day dry battery. Photograph courtesy Prof. Chas. F. Chandler Museum, Columbia University, New York.]

This was an epoch-making discovery as it was the forerunner of the present-day primary battery. Volta soon found that the generation of electricity became weaker as the cloths became dry, so to overcome this he made his “crown of cups.” This consisted of a series of cups containing salt water in which strips of silver and zinc were dipped. Each strip of silver in one cup was connected to the zinc strip in the next cup, the end strips of silver and zinc being terminals of the battery. This was the first time that a continuous supply of electricity in reasonable quantities was made available, so the VOLT, the unit of electrical pressure was named in his honor. It was later shown that the chemical affinity of one of the metals in the liquid was converted into electric energy. The chemical action of Volta’s battery is that the salt water attacks the zinc when the circuit is closed forming zinc chloride, caustic soda and hydrogen gas. The chemical equation is:

Zn + 2NaCl + 2H{2}O = ZnCl{2} + 2NaOH + H_{2}

IMPROVEMENT OF VOLTA’S BATTERY

It was early suggested that sheets of silver and zinc be soldered together back to back and that a trough be divided into cells by these bimetal sheets being put into grooves cut in the sides and bottom of the trough. This is the reason why one unit of a battery is called a “cell.” It was soon found that a more powerful cell could be made if copper, zinc and dilute sulphuric acid were used. The zinc is dissolved by the acid forming zinc sulphate and hydrogen gas, thus:

Zn + H{2}SO{4} = ZnSO{4} + H{2}

The hydrogen gas appears as bubbles on the copper and reduces the open circuit voltage (about 0.8 volt per cell) as current is taken from the battery. This is called “polarization.” Owing to minute impurities in the zinc, it is attacked by the acid even when no current is taken from the battery, the impurities forming with the zinc a short circuited local cell. This is called “local action,” and this difficulty was at first overcome by removing the zinc from the acid when the battery was not in use.

DAVY’S DISCOVERIES

Sir Humphry Davy was a well-known English chemist, and with the aid of powerful batteries constructed for the Royal Institution in London, he made numerous experiments on the chemical effects of electricity. He decomposed a number of substances and discovered the elements boron, potassium and sodium. He heated strips of various metals to incandescence by passing current through them, and showed that platinum would stay incandescent for some time without oxidizing. This was about 1802.

In the early frictional machines, the presence of electricity was shown by the fact that sparks could be obtained. Similarly the breaking of the circuit of a battery would give a spark. Davy, about 1809, demonstrated that this spark could be maintained for a long time with the large battery of 2000 cells he had had constructed. Using two sticks of charcoal connected by wires to the terminals of this very powerful battery, he demonstrated before the Royal Society the light produced by touching the sticks together and then holding them apart horizontally about three inches. The brilliant flame obtained he called an “arc” because of its arch shape, the heated gases, rising, assuming this form. Davy was given the degree of LL. D. for his distinguished research work, and was knighted on the eve of his marriage, April 11, 1812.

RESEARCHES OF OERSTED, AMPÈRE, SCHWEIGGER AND STURGEON

Hans Christian Oersted was a professor of physics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. One day in 1819, while addressing his students, he happened to hold a wire, through which current was flowing, over a large compass. To his surprise he saw the compass was deflected from its true position. He promptly made a number of experiments and discovered that by reversing the current the compass was deflected in the opposite direction. Oersted announced his discovery in 1820.

André Marie Ampère was a professor of mathematics in the Ecole Polytechnic in Paris. Hearing of Oersted’s discovery, he immediately made some experiments and made the further discovery in 1820 that if the wire is coiled and current passed through it, the coil had all the properties of a magnet.

These two discoveries led to the invention of Schweigger in 1820, of the galvanometer (or “multiplier” as it was then called), a very sensitive instrument for measuring electric currents. It consisted of a delicate compass needle suspended in a coil of many turns of wire. Current in the coil deflected the needle, the direction and amount of deflection indicating the direction and strength of the current. Ampère further made the discovery that currents in opposite directions repel and in the same directions attract each other. He also gave a rule for determining the direction of the current by the deflection of the compass needle. He developed the theory that magnetism is caused by electricity flowing around the circumference of the body magnetised. The AMPERE, the unit of flow of electric current, was named in honor of his discoveries.

In 1825 it was shown by Sturgeon that if a bar of iron were placed in the coil, its magnetic strength would be very greatly increased, which he called an electro-magnet.

OHM’S LAW

Georg Simon Ohm was born in Bavaria, the oldest son of a poor blacksmith. With the aid of friends he went to college and became a teacher. It had been shown that the rate of transfer of heat from one end to the other of a metal bar is proportional to the difference of temperature between the ends. About 1825, Ohm, by analogy and experiment, found that the current in a conductor is proportional to the difference of electric pressure (voltage) between its ends. He further showed that with a given difference of voltage, the current in different conductors is inversely proportional to the resistance of the conductor. Ohm therefore propounded the law that the current flowing in a circuit is equal to the voltage on that circuit divided by the resistance of the circuit. In honor of this discovery, the unit of electrical resistance is called the OHM. This law is usually expressed as:

C = E/R

“C” meaning current (in amperes), “E” meaning electromotive force or voltage (in volts) and “R” meaning resistance (in ohms).

This is one of the fundamental laws of electricity and if thoroughly understood, will solve many electrical problems. Thus, if any two of the above units are known, the third can be determined. Examples: An incandescent lamp on a 120-volt circuit consumes 0.4 ampere, hence its resistance under such conditions is 300 ohms. Several trolley cars at the end of a line take 100 amperes to run them and the resistance of the overhead wire from the power house to the trolley cars is half an ohm; the drop in voltage on the line between the power house and trolley cars is therefore 50 volts, so that if the voltage at the power house were 600, it would be 550 volts at the end of the line.

Critics derided Ohm’s law so that he was forced out of his position as teacher in the High School in Cologne. Finally after ten years Ohm began to find supporters and in 1841 his law was publicly recognized by the Royal Society of London which presented him with the Copley medal.

INVENTION OF THE DYNAMO

Michael Faraday was an English scientist. Born of parents in poor circumstances, he became a bookbinder and studied books on electricity and chemistry. He finally obtained a position as laboratory assistant to Sir Humphry Davy helping him with his lectures and experiments. He also made a number of experiments himself and succeeded in liquifying chlorine gas for which he was elected to a Fellowship in the Royal Institution in 1824. Following up Oersted’s and Ampère’s work, he endeavored to find the relation between electricity and magnetism. Finally on Oct. 17, 1831, he made the experiment of moving a permanent bar magnet in and out of a coil of wire connected to a galvanometer. This generated electricity in the coil which deflected the galvanometer needle. A few days after, Oct. 28, 1831, he mounted a copper disk on a shaft so that the disk could be rotated between the poles of a permanent horseshoe magnet. The shaft and edge of the disk were connected by brushes and wires to a galvanometer, the needle of which was deflected as the disk was rotated. A paper on his invention was read before the Royal Society on November 24, 1831, which appeared in printed form in January, 1832.

Faraday discovered that electricity could be generated by means of a permanent magnet. This principle is used in all dynamos.]

Faraday did not develop his invention any further, being satisfied, as in all his work, in pure research. His was a notable invention but it remained for others to make it practicable. Hippolyte Pixii, a Frenchman, made a dynamo in 1832 consisting of a permanent horseshoe magnet which could be rotated between two wire bobbins mounted on a soft iron core. The wires from the bobbins were connected to a pair of brushes touching a commutator mounted on the shaft holding the magnet, and other brushes carried the current from the commutator so that the alternating current generated was rectified into direct current.

Pixii made an improvement by rotating a permanent magnet in the neighborhood of coils of wire mounted on a soft iron core. A commutator rectified the alternating current generated into direct current. This dynamo is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.]

E. M. Clarke, an Englishman made, in 1834, another dynamo in which the bobbins rotated alongside of the poles of a permanent horseshoe magnet. He also made a commutator so that the machine produced direct current. None of these machines gave more than feeble current at low pressure. The large primary batteries that had been made were much more powerful, although expensive to operate. It has been estimated that the cost of current from the 2000-cell battery to operate the demonstration of the arc light by Davy, was six dollars a minute. At present retail rates for electricity sold by lighting companies, six dollars would operate Davy’s arc light about 500 hours or 30,000 times as long.