An entertainment for angels : electricity in the Enlightenment
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
An entertainment for angels : electricity in the Enlightenment
（Revolutions in science / series editor, Jon Turney）
Columbia University Press, c2002
Available at / 1 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Includes bibliographical references
Description and Table of Contents
Description
An Entertainment for Angels, rather than for Men, one observer called electricity, and it proved to be the most significant scientific discovery of the Enlightenment. Lecturers attracted huge audiences who marveled at sparkling fountains, flaming drinks, pirouetting dancers, and electrified boys. Flamboyant experimenters made chains of soldiers leap into the air, while wealthy women titillated their admirers with a sensational electric kiss. Optimists predicted that this strange power of nature would cure illnesses, improve crop production, even bring the dead back to life. An Entertainment for Angels tells the story of how electricity charged the eighteenth-century imagination. With contemporary illustrations and engaging prose, Patricia Fara vividly portrays the struggles to understand the unusual and exciting effects that electrical experiments were producing. One of the heroes of the story is Benjamin Franklin, renowned on both sides of the Atlantic as an expert on electricity, who introduced lightning rods to protect tall buildings, pioneered techniques to treat paralyzed patients, and developed one of the most successful explanations of this mysterious phenomenon.
Others include Luigi Galvani, whose electrical research on frogs and animals makes for grisly reading but led to the discovery of direct current electricity; and Alessandro Volta, who-with Napoleon's enthusiastic support-became one of Europe's leading scientific practitioners and invented the world's first battery.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations Introduction Illuminations: The Light of Reason Interpretations Electricity and Enlightenment Shocking Inventions: Instruments Robert Boyle and the Air-pump Francis Hauksbee and the Electrical Machine Stephen Gray and the Charity Boy Pieter van Musschenbroek and the Leyden Jar Lightning Cures: Applications Benjamin Franklin Knobs or Points? The Business of Medicine Therapeutic Shocks Sparks of Imagination: Theories Problems Fluids and Atmospheres Theological Aethers Measurement and Mathematics The Flow of Life: Current Electricity Henry Cavendish and the Torpedo Luigi Galvani and his Frogs Alessandro Volta and his Pile Resuscitation Further Reading Notes
by "Nielsen BookData"
