WEBVTT - History of Electricity Part Two 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.680 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:18.439 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm a senior writer with 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:21.520 how stuff works dot com, and of course this is 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:26.000 the podcast where we talk about all things technological and 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:28.880 technical in nature and how they affect us and how 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:30.920 they've changed over time and kind of give you some 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:34.920 context and understanding of this technology stuff. And today we're 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:39.240 going to continue our series about the history of electricity. 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:42.000 We're going to conclude it today, although we're concluding it 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:45.760 right when electric power grids were starting to become a 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:49.479 real thing. But since that point, a lot of the 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:55.440 changes are more in electricity generation and less in electricity transmission. 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:57.600 And I really wanted to get to the point where 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.680 we talked about transmitting electricity. Maybe in a future episode 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:05.200 I will continue this and revisit the topic and give 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:09.560 more context from the early power grids up to modern day, 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:13.080 and also talk about some of the other various projects 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:17.480 that haven't really materialized, stuff like test Lea's suggestion of 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.800 broadcasting power over the air as opposed to over transmission lines, 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:24.039 and what would that take and would it be a 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:29.000 good idea, but that's for another episode. In our last episode, 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:34.560 we explored how scientists, philosophers, inventors, and crazy people began 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:38.120 to suss out the basics of electricity, largely through a 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:41.640 lot of experimentation and a few happy accidents. Now, the 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:44.399 story is one of those that really reinforces the fact 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:48.840 that discoveries are rarely attributable to a single person. We 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:52.639 like those stories. We like to say this one person 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:56.720 was responsible for X, and this other person was responsible 0:01:56.720 --> 0:02:01.800 for why. But the truth is way more complicated than that. 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:05.320 Usually people are building upon the work of others that 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:07.760 came before them, and they might be refining things and 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:10.880 innovating in that space. But if it weren't for those 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:14.760 who were earlier working on the same sort of stuff, 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.520 you might not have ever seen those those innovations happen. So, 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:24.440 you know, we talk about stuff like Edison invent the lightbulb, 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:29.320 or Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, but we really 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.720 would have to acknowledge some of the other people whose 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:34.000 work made all of that possible. First of all, Edison 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:38.840 didn't invent the light bulb, but he did improve it greatly. Um, 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:41.160 but we would need to talk about all that stuff. 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:44.560 And this is not to take away from those inventors 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:48.760 and engineers who really did make incredible contributions to technology 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:52.720 and too our way of life. They are remarkable human 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:55.440 beings and so I don't want to take anything away 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:58.320 from them. But at the same time, I don't want 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:03.799 to ignore those who also made other contributions that made 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:06.519 all of this possible. It's a disservice to them to 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:12.400 gloss over it. So it would be also very difficult 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:16.680 to make an hour long podcast if in fact most 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:22.200 inventions were due to a single person's moment of ingenuity, right, 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:25.040 if the story were as simple as thomass and invented 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:26.960 the lightbulb. I don't know that I can make an 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.040 hour out of that, probably about forty minutes, but I 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:32.960 don't know if I could stretch it to a full hour. Now. 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:35.320 By the end of the last episode, I talked about 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:39.720 an early alternating current generator and how by using what 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:44.440 was called a split ring commutator, early inventors could change 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:47.840 that alternating current that was being created in the generator 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:52.480 into direct current. Not just so you remember alternating current, 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:58.600 the direction of current reverses multiple times per second. Their cycles, 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:01.560 and we describe them in freak and sees. So, for example, 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:03.560 here in the United States, we have a sixty hurts 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:06.840 frequency for our electricity, for our alternating current. That means 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:10.960 sixty times per second that direction of current changes. So 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:14.720 if you're looking at a wire stretching from left to right, 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:16.880 that means that current would be flowing left or right 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:19.800 and then right to left, and it would keep changing 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:23.320 sixty times every second, whereas in Europe it would be 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:26.440 fifty times. They're on a fifty hurts system sixty hurt system. 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:30.360 More on that in a little bit. Direct current, however, 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:32.760 goes in a single direction. It does not change. So 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:35.560 it goes from left to right or right to left, 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:38.760 but it doesn't change throughout the It doesn't have cycles. 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:40.960 It just continues until you shut the power off, in 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:44.240 which case current ceases to flow. Now, I want to 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:48.520 continue the timeline we talked about UH in that last episode, 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:51.040 talk more about how electricity moved out of the laboratory 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:53.240 and into the real world. But in order to do that, 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:55.560 I also have to backtrack just a bit from the 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:59.160 end of the last episode where I was talking about generators, 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:02.640 because as there are some people who were working in 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:05.480 electricity that I didn't really mentioned too much in the 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:08.160 last episode, and I kind of need to in order 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:12.160 to understand more about building upon those ideas. So one 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:15.160 of those people was Humphrey Davy. I mentioned him briefly 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.760 in the last episode. He was one of the first 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:22.040 people to make a practical use of electricity outside of 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:28.040 direct experimentation. So remember in the early eighteenth century, well 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.400 not early the late eighteenth century, early nineteenth century, you 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.560 had inventors and engineers who were experimenting with electricity, but 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:37.920 they didn't really have any practical use for it. Humphrey 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:40.159 Davy was the first person to create something that could 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:44.160 be practically used with electricity. He created the first arc 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:49.360 lamp and the first incandescent lamp way back in the 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:52.719 first decade of the eighteen hundreds. Uh the Davy lamp 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:56.160 became a famous invention. Now, neither of those were meant 0:05:56.160 --> 0:06:00.680 for commercial use or manufacturing. They weren't made to light 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:04.320 people's homes. It was more of a use case to 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:08.160 prove that electricity could have some practical application beyond just 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:14.719 understanding a fundamental element of the universe or fundamental element 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:18.719 of of life on Earth. At least so uh it 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:21.760 would be many more decades before anyone could make a 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:27.560 commercially viable lightbulb or lamp, but Davy's work showed that 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:31.279 it was in fact possible. Also in that last episode, 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:35.359 I mentioned Ampierre, whose last name is used as a 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:40.440 unit of measurement within the electrical engineering world. Anyway, I 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:43.560 mentioned that Empire was studying the nature of electricity and magnets, 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:45.960 but he was building on the work of others. One 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.200 of those others was Hans Christian Airstead, who was a 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:52.600 Danish philosopher and scientist and discovered something that I mentioned 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:55.640 in the previous episode, What what which was electro magnetism. 0:06:55.920 --> 0:07:00.800 Airstead heard of Alessandro Volta's experiments with batteries, so Volta 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:05.279 made the voltaic pile, the predecessor to the modern battery, 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:09.039 and air Stead had heard about it, and by eight 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:11.960 o one Airstead started doing his own experiments, making his 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:15.200 own batteries, and air Stead proposed that there might be 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:18.080 a way of measuring the amount of current passing through 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:22.960 a wire by putting the wire into water and allowing 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.720 the electricity to separate the molecular bonds of hydrogen and 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:30.840 oxygen in order otherwise to create electrolysis. Uh. And that 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:33.680 if you measured the amount of gas given off by 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:37.200 the water, then you could use that to infer how 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:39.680 much current was passing through the wire. It was kind 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:43.240 of an indirect way of establishing how much current was 0:07:43.240 --> 0:07:47.760 passing through the wire at any given moment. Now in air, 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:50.360 Stead performed an experiment in which he passed an electric 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:53.240 current through a wire and then brought the wire near 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:57.119 a magnetized compass needle, and this caused the compass needle 0:07:57.160 --> 0:07:59.480 to swing out of alignment. It was no longer lined 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:02.600 up with the Earth's magnetic polls. And you know this 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.880 will happen when you bring a magnet close to a compass. 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:11.040 The Earth's magnetic field is powerful, but if you bring 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:14.520 a small, less powerful magnet in close proximity to the 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:18.120 compass needle, you will overpower the Earth's magnetic field. The 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:21.880 compass needle will move towards the magnet um because again, 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:25.040 the strength of a magnetic field is somewhat dependent upon 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:32.199 its distance to a magnetic material. Well, he said, the 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:35.120 shows that an electric current passing through a wire creates 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:40.280 its own magnetic field. It's obviously affecting these compass needles. 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.080 So he continue to experiment to better understand the nature 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:45.720 of electricity and magnetism, and he came to realize that 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:49.839 an electric current creates a circular magnetic field around it. 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:54.560 So if you're looking at a straight copper wire and 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:56.920 you turn it so that you're looking at it from 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:01.160 the end on, so you're looking down the length of 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.320 an electric copper wire, and you're able to run current 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:06.800 through that copper wire, and if you were able to 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:10.160 visualize the magnetic field, you would see the magnetic field 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:13.760 appear as a circle, and the copper wire would essentially 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:16.800 be the center of the circle, or at least circulure. 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:20.200 It wouldn't be necessarily a perfect circle, but it would 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:24.680 be a circular field around the core, which would be 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:29.520 the the wire itself. Also, although this was not understood 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:32.199 by Rstad at the time, if you ran an alternating 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:36.240 current through that that wire, you would see the direction 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:40.440 of that magnetic field reverse. So when the current flows 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:42.560 in one direction, you would see it flowing in a 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:45.440 clockwise direction, and if you reverse the current, you would 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:48.080 see it flow in a counterclockwise direction. This would become 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:51.360 really important later on when we talk about alternating currents 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:56.760 and transformers, transformers being the type of of gadget that 0:09:56.840 --> 0:09:59.280 you use to step up or step down electric voltage, 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:02.760 not robots that are more than meets the eye. That's 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:09.560 a different type of transformer. So air Stond makes this 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:15.000 observation about copper wire with a current flowing through it 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:20.560 becoming a magnetic uh force for emitting a magnetic force, 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:25.719 and Empire made a similar discovery with electric wires attracting 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:28.280 one another whenever electricity would flow through them. So this 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:32.360 was the earliest observations of electro magnetism that are recorded. 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:38.199 In four William Sturgeon experimented with electromagnetism by rap wrapping 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:43.280 a bear wire of copper around an iron core. So 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:46.120 imagine you've got like a just an iron nail, and 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:50.680 you've got some bear copper wire, and you bend the 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:54.720 copper wire so it coils around this iron core several times. 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:57.200 He found that if he passed a current through the wire, 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:00.960 it would turn the whole thing into a agnet briefly, 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:03.719 but then the effect wouldn't disappear. So why was the 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:07.680 effect disappearing, Well, the current was moving from the copper 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:10.480 wire into the iron core of the structure. It wasn't 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:14.760 maintaining a current through entirely. It was it was shorting 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:19.199 out essentially. And uh William Sturgeon also couldn't do a 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:23.320 multi layer wrap of the wire because the copper wire 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:27.120 is conductive. If it made contact with itself, then current 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:29.960 is flowing in the most efficient pathway. It's not going 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:33.040 down the length of the copper wire necessarily, it could 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:37.720 pass through as coils touched each other. So uh, he 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.040 wasn't able to make a very strong magnetic effect. This 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:43.959 way you you create you increase the magnetic effect by 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:46.920 making more coils. So if you're able to coil a 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:52.080 conductive wire more times around a core, like in this case, 0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:56.000 an iron core, you create a more powerful magnetic field 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:59.840 as you passed the current through that conductor. In eight 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.360 twenty seven, a man named Joseph Henry found a solution 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.520 to this problem. He wrapped his copper wires in silk, 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:10.040 which insulated them, so now he could have the copper 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:14.280 wires laying against an iron core and laying against itself 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:19.520 without the current bleeding through because the wires were insulated, 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:22.079 and that allowed him to wrap the wires around the 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:25.080 iron core several more times than Sturgeon was able to, 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.720 and that meant the charge could not disappear into the 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:32.400 iron and the electromagnetic effect would remain as long as 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:36.880 a current was passing through the wire. So this discovering 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:44.160 electromagnetism would become incredibly important for future applications of electricity. Meanwhile, 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:47.600 Michael Faraday had been working with moving copper near a 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:51.440 stationary magnet, which would induce current to flow through the copper. 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:56.240 This is the basis of generators. Whether you are moving 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:01.640 a conductor through the magnetic fields of some stationary magnets, 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:04.640 or you're moving the magnets around a conductor so that 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:08.679 the magnetic field is fluctuating around the conductor. Whenever you 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:12.800 introduce a conductor through a fluctuating magnetic field, you're going 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:17.800 to induce current to flow through that metal conductor or 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:21.520 really I should just say conductor doesn't. That's the important part, 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:24.840 not whether or not it's metal. Also important is that 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:27.320 it has to be that fluctuating magnetic field, otherwise you 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:29.439 will induce current to flow. But as soon as the 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:33.120 magnetic field stops to fluctuate, current will no longer flow. 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:37.440 So you would typically do this by putting two permanent 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:41.000 magnets end to end with the north pole facing the 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:43.839 south pole of another one, and in between them, you 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:49.000 would have your conductor on a rotatable system. So imagine 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:52.720 that you've got a square of copper wire. You formed 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:56.880 it to be an empty square, and it's rotatable between 0:13:56.920 --> 0:14:00.599 these two permanent magnets. As you rotate the squid air, 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:03.600 it passes through the magnetic fields. This is similar to 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:07.760 having magnetic flux introduced to the copper wire that induces 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:11.600 current to flow, and that's where you get alternating current generators. 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:19.040 So uh. He also discovered something interesting. Henry's work involved 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:22.880 moving current through a wire which would create a magnetic field. 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:27.840 Faraday's work involved moving a current a copper wire through 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:31.600 a magnetic field in order to generate a current. So 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:36.880 with Henry's work, they discovered that the magnetic field generated 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:39.640 by one electro magnet could induce current to flow in 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.560 a second electro magnet that wasn't hooked up to the 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:46.400 first circuit. This became the basis for an important innovation, 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:51.080 that being the A C transformer I mentioned earlier that 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.520 steps up or steps down voltage. Now, remember voltage is 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.520 akin to pressure. If you were looking at a water 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:00.800 based system, voltage would be the water pressure. It's the 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:04.840 push behind a current. And while this early work created 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:06.880 the foundation for the transformer, it would take half a 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:10.560 century for someone to build a practical, commercially reliable transformer. 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.760 That person was William Stanley, and we'll talk more about 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:16.240 him in just a little bit, But first we have 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:20.280 to talk about another invention that relied on electricity and 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.320 was very important for the adoption of electricity, and that 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:27.080 is the telegraph. The telegraph was a means of communication 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:30.600 that took advantage of electro magnetism. So once people figured 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:33.960 out the nature between electricity and magnetism, they started coming 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:36.640 up with some practical applications of this. The telegraph was 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.520 one of those early ones, and it was incredible. It 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:43.600 transformed communication, particularly here in the United States, but all 0:15:43.600 --> 0:15:46.600 over the world as well. So lots of people were 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.920 exploring the scientific and practical applications of electricity and magnetism, 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:52.600 but two groups were specifically looking at it in terms 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:56.120 of communication systems. So over in jolly old England you 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:59.480 had Sir William Cook and Sir Charles Charles Wheatstone who 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:03.560 were exploring this possibility, and here in the United States 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:07.920 you had Samuel Morse, Alfred Vale, and Leonard Gail working 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:11.040 on this. Now, both sets of researchers realized that using 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:14.640 electricity to manipulate magnetized pieces of metal could allow for 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:19.120 a communication system. The Cook and Wheatstone system was an 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:22.440 experiment that began in the eighteen thirties. With magnetic needles. 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:25.320 There were positions so they could point at various letters 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:29.080 and numbers. So imagine that you've got a needle on 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:33.840 a that can rotate horizontally. It's it's on a horizontal plane, 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:37.320 it can rotate around and around on a balance, and 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:41.480 you've got letters that are arranged around the needle. And 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:45.080 by running an electric current through a circuit, you can 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:48.240 create a magnetic field that attracts the needle, so it 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:51.040 looks like it's pointing at a specific letter. It's actually 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:54.240 pointing in the direction of whatever the magnetic field is, 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:57.400 but it looks like it's pointing specifically at the letter. 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.440 So using several of these needles, I think they had 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:02.640 five set up in a panel with a bunch of 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:06.720 letters and numbers, they could communicate. You could just choose 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:11.280 which circuit you're activating to magnetize a specific point around 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:14.240 those needles. The needles would start to point in those 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:18.160 directions and you could spell out various messages. These ended 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:22.200 up being used in the British railroad signaling service. Now 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:24.960 over in the United States, Morse, Veil and Gale began 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:28.240 work on a single circuit telegraph system and it involved 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:32.040 a sending station where you had an operating key and 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:34.720 this would complete an electric circuit whenever you pressed it. 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:36.680 So an operator key it looks like a little almost 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:39.639 looks like a stapler. When you press it down, it 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:43.080 would create a closed circuit and allow a signal to 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:45.400 pass through to the other end. When you would lift 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:48.640 it back up or remove pressure from it, it would 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:51.840 break that circuit and electric current would cease to flow. 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:56.399 So you had a battery that was providing power. Every 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:58.720 time you would push down, it would complete this circuit 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:02.280 and a signal would be sent to the receiving station. 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:05.800 Uh the original station had an apparatus that would make 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:09.199 marks on paper, and so Morse ended up developing the 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.800 famous Morse code. Morse code is a way of encoding 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:16.680 letters in a series of dots and dashes. You represent 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:18.879 this on an operator key by the length of time 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:22.280 you spend pressing the key downward. So for a dot 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:24.960 you do a quick press, it's just a quick jolt 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:28.119 of electricity through the circuit. For a dash, the press 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:31.520 is a little bit longer, so that it's it comes across. 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:33.879 And on the other end, you add a system that 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:36.680 would essentially make marks on paper, so you could see 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:39.440 dots or dashes. Morse was very clever in this way. 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:42.520 He also made sure that the most commonly used letters 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:48.320 had the simplest of encodings, so very a very common 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:52.240 letter might have a single dot or a single dash. 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:56.879 More rare letters like a Q might have more complicated 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:58.880 encoding because you don't have to use it as frequently, 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:01.960 so you save all the simple encoding for your most 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:06.639 common letters. Now, they noticed something really interesting, which is 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:10.560 that as operators began to get used to the system, 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:13.879 they were able to start understanding messages without having to 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:16.359 read the dots and dashes, because they would just hear 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:20.080 what was coming out. They would hear the receiving station 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:23.399 tapping out either the dots or dashes to market on 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:25.879 the paper. And once they started getting used to this 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:28.800 and understanding what those taps were meaning like the long 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:31.919 taps versus the short taps. It became clear that you 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:33.920 didn't need to have the paper at all. You could 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:37.399 have a receiving station that would beep either short or 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:39.879 longer beeps to let you know whether whether it was 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:42.320 a daughter or a dash, and operators were able to 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:46.480 just pick it up by hearing it because they became 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:50.600 so used to it. And so future telegraph stations would 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:55.200 get rid of the paper and just become the beeping receiver, 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:59.280 so that an operator would transcribe whatever the message was 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:02.480 and then deliver it to whomever was supposed to get it. 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:06.199 In eighteen forty three, Morse and Veil were able to 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:10.080 secure funding for a telegraph system that was between Washington, 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:13.760 d c. And Baltimore, Maryland. That's not terribly far in 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:15.600 the grand scheme of things, but it was a big 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.919 deal at the time. The first message sent on the 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:23.920 news system went out on May fourth, eighteen forty four. 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:27.760 It was sent from Samuel Morse to Veil and it 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.560 read what hath God wrought? It's a little bit of 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:36.200 drama in the first message. It's just like social media today. Really. 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:39.880 Over the following decades, telegraph systems began to connect more 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:43.720 cities together, even as inventors were trying to find other 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:47.600 practical applications of electricity. So other people would make improvements 0:20:47.600 --> 0:20:50.679 to the telegraph and make it more user friendly and 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:54.760 more useful. Uh some. Some of those people included Ezra Cornell, 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:58.359 who created a means to insulate telegraph wires and make 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:01.000 them more efficient. Cornell would go on to co found 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:06.320 a college it's called Cornell and Thomas Edison, famous inventor 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:10.520 and irascible gentleman, also made some improvements to the telegraph, 0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:14.119 including creating a system called the quadruplex, which, as the 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:17.240 name might suggest, would allow up to four messages to 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:20.560 transmit over the same wire simultaneously, to going in one 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:24.960 direction and to coming through from the other direction. Now, 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:31.680 one of Stanley's inspirations was another inventor named Charles Brush. Brush, 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:35.280 in turn had been inspired by Humphrey Davy. So we 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:37.760 see that there's a chain forming here. So Davy was 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:40.480 the one who created that early arc light. Well, Brush 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:42.560 thought the arc lights were super cool, and as a 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:47.200 teenager he started to really tinker with stuff. He would 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:50.000 start to neglect his chores in the family farm just 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:52.480 so he could work on various projects in a workshop, 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:57.119 and he built his first static electricity machine when he 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:01.840 was just twelve years old. In high school, he built 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:04.840 an arc light of his very own, so by high 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:07.840 school age he was building stuff that Humphrey Davy had 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:11.600 pioneered a few decades earlier. In college, he pursued a 0:22:11.640 --> 0:22:15.520 degree in mining engineering at the University of Michigan because 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:18.000 there was no such thing as an electrical engineering degree 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:20.600 at that time. And after working in the iron ore 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:23.320 industry for a while, he began a big project to 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:28.320 build a dynamo. Now, a dynamo is a direct current generator. 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:30.840 It's like what I described at the end of the 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:34.480 last episode. It's essentially an alternating current generator that has 0:22:34.480 --> 0:22:39.040 a commutator to convert alternating current to direct current. Brush 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:41.879 also convinced the city of Cleveland to allow him to 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:45.600 fit out Cleveland's public square, which at that time was 0:22:45.640 --> 0:22:49.480 called Monumental Park, with electrical arc lights, and up to 0:22:49.520 --> 0:22:52.200 that point the lights in the square had been gas lamps. 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:56.960 So on April twenty eight, seventy nine, the city switched 0:22:56.960 --> 0:22:59.960 on the new arc lights. The public reaction was most 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:02.679 sleep positive. There were only a few people who were 0:23:02.680 --> 0:23:04.680 saying stuff like it's not as brow as the sun, 0:23:05.240 --> 0:23:07.679 which tells us that some people were impossible to please 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:11.520 even before they had Twitter to post public messages about it. Now, 0:23:11.560 --> 0:23:15.400 Brush's work advanced our understanding of the electromotive force, which 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:17.800 is the force that causes electrons to push in a 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:21.520 direction within a conductor, generating a current, and it was 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:26.320 that understanding that William Stanley started to build upon. Stanley 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:29.320 wanted to work with alternating current, which at that time 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:33.960 was mostly seen as interesting but not practical. Everyone was 0:23:34.000 --> 0:23:37.040 thinking direct current was probably the way to go, and 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:40.639 Stanley wasn't entirely convinced. He thought alternating current might have 0:23:40.720 --> 0:23:44.119 its uses. In fact, at the time, Stanley wrote that 0:23:44.160 --> 0:23:48.520 the general thought on alternating current from his contemporaries was 0:23:48.560 --> 0:23:52.560 that it was a despised and rejected line of work. 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:56.239 But Stanley was convinced there was something more to it. 0:23:56.920 --> 0:24:01.520 Now obviously, when we start looking at way to distribute electricity, 0:24:01.600 --> 0:24:05.320 it became clear that alternating current, at least initially was 0:24:05.520 --> 0:24:09.920 superior to direct current, and in Stanley began to work 0:24:09.960 --> 0:24:15.720 with George Westinghouse's company called Westinghouse. Westinghouse himself heard of 0:24:15.720 --> 0:24:18.639 Stanley's contributions and promoted him to chief engineer of the 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:23.240 Westinghouse Pittsburgh facility. And Stanley then learned of Lucien Gallard 0:24:23.440 --> 0:24:27.960