The electrical ´47´s

An interesting historical survey of electrical happenings in the 47th year of earlier centuries appears in the January 10, 1947, issue of the English magazine Electrical Review. Many events of interest to electrical engineers occurred in earlier ´47´s. In 1647, for example, Otto von Guericke constructed the first electric machine, which consisted of a globe of sulphur, cast in a glass sphere (which afterwards was broken to remove the sulphur globe). With this primitive machine, its inventor, in the words of Humboldt, “heard the first sound, and saw the first light, in artificially produced electricity.” A century later, Benjamin Franklin announced his theory of a single fluid, terming the vitreous electricity “positive” and the resinous “negative.” At a picnic in the following year he “killed a turkey by the electric spark, and roasted it by an electric jack before a fire kindled by the electric bottle.”