WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: History of Electricity Part Two 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.360 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.920 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jovan Strickland. 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:18.840 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:19.400 tech are You. 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:21.400 So it is Friday. 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.120 It's time for a classic episode, which means we dive 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:27.120 into the tech Stuff archive and pull out an episode 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:30.760 from our past to listen to. This one, originally published 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:34.400 on June thirty, twenty seventeen, is called The History of 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:39.280 Electricity Part two. Let's have a listen. Today, we're going 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:43.559 to continue our series about the history of electricity. We're 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:46.600 going to conclude it today, although we're concluding it right 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:50.520 when electric power grids were starting to become a real thing. 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.680 But since that point, a lot of the changes are 0:00:55.000 --> 0:01:00.120 more in electricity generation and less in electricity transmission. And 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:01.840 I really wanted to get to the point where we 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:03.760 talked about transmitting electricity. 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:06.480 Maybe in a future episode. 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:09.320 I will continue this and revisit the topic and give 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:13.680 more context from the early power grids up to modern day, 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:17.240 and also talk about some of the other various projects 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:22.440 that haven't really materialized, stuff like Tesla's suggestion of broadcasting 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:25.959 power over the air, as opposed to over transmission lines 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:28.200 and what would that take and would it be a 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:29.520 good idea, But. 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:31.120 That's for another episode. 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:37.160 In our last episode, we explored how scientists, philosophers, inventors, 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:40.920 and crazy people began to suss out the basics of electricity, 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:45.600 largely through a lot of experimentation and a few happy accidents. Now, 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:48.200 this story is one of those that really reinforces the 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:52.600 fact that discoveries are rarely attributable to a single person. 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:54.040 We like those stories. 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:58.800 We like to say this one person was responsible for X, 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:02.320 and this other person and was responsible for why. But 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:07.120 the truth is way more complicated than that. Usually people 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:10.280 are building upon the work of others that came before them, 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:13.400 and they might be refining things and innovating in that space. 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:17.760 But if it weren't for those who were earlier working 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:20.160 on the same sort of stuff, you might not have 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:25.079 ever seen those innovations happen. So, you know, we talk 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:29.320 about stuff like Edison invented the light bulb, or Alexander 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:33.800 Graham Bell invented the telephone, but we really would have 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:36.440 to acknowledge some of the other people whose work made 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:38.680 all of that possible. First of all, Edison didn't invent 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:43.080 the light bulb, but he did improve it greatly. But 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:45.360 we would need to talk about all that stuff. And 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:48.840 this is not to take away from those inventors and 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:53.040 engineers who really did make incredible contributions to technology and 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:57.240 to our way of life. They are remarkable human beings 0:02:57.440 --> 0:02:59.919 and so I don't want to take anything away from them. 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:02.440 But at the same time, I don't. 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:07.600 Want to ignore those who also made other contributions that 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:10.440 made all of this possible. It's a disservice to them 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:15.959 to gloss over it. So it would be also very 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.880 difficult to make an hour long podcast if in fact 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:26.400 most inventions were due to a single person's moment of ingenuity, Right, 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:28.600 if the story were as simple as Thomas s and 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:30.760 invented the light bulb. I don't know that I can 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:33.960 make an hour out of that. Probably about forty minutes, 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:35.480 but I don't know if I could stretch it to 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:38.560 a full hour. Now. By the end of the last episode, 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:42.720 I talked about an early alternating current generator and how 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:46.720 by using what was called a split ring commutator, early 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:51.160 inventors could change that alternating current that was being created 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:55.200 in the generator into direct current. Just so you remember 0:03:55.640 --> 0:04:00.880 alternating current, the direction of current revers it is multiple 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.960 times per second. There're cycles, and we describe them in frequencies. So, 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:06.840 for example, here in the United States, we have a 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:10.600 sixty hertz frequency for our electricity for our alternating current. 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:14.400 That means sixty times per second that direction of current changes. 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:18.479 So if you're looking at a wire stretching from left 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:20.599 to right, that means that current would be flowing left 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:23.000 to right and then right to left, and it would 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:27.080 keep changing sixty times every second, whereas in Europe it 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:29.520 would be fifty times. They're on a fifty system and 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:31.200 not a sixty hert system. More on that and a 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:35.600 little bit. Direct current, however, goes in a single direction. 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:38.280 It does not change. So it goes from left to 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.479 right or right to left, but it doesn't change throughout 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:44.200 the It doesn't have cycles. It just continues until you 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:46.200 shut the power off, in which case the current ceases 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:49.960 to flow. Now, I want to continue the timeline we 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.400 talked about in that last episode, talk more about how 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:56.200 electricity moved out of the laboratory and into the real world. 0:04:56.480 --> 0:04:57.560 But in order to do that, I. 0:04:57.520 --> 0:04:59.960 Also have to backtrack just a bit from the end 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:03.279 of the last episode where I was talking about generators, 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:07.440 because there are some people who were working in electricity 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:10.360 that I didn't really mention too much in the last episode, 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:13.000 and I kind of need to in order to understand 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:15.520 more about building upon those ideas. 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:16.719 So one of those. 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:19.479 People was Humphrey Davy. I mentioned him briefly in the 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:23.560 last episode. He was one of the first people to 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:27.360 make a practical use of electricity outside of direct experimentation. 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:32.640 So remember in the early eighteenth century, well not early 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:36.520 the late eighteenth century, early nineteenth century, you had inventors 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:40.080 and engineers who were experimenting with electricity, but they didn't 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:42.480 really have any practical use for it. Humphrey Davy was 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:45.320 the first person to create something that could be practically 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:49.080 used with electricity. He created the first arc lamp and 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:54.159 the first incandescent lamp way back in the first decade 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:59.120 of the eighteen hundreds. The Davy lamp became a famous invention. Now, 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:03.160 neither of those were meant for commercial use or manufacturing. 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:06.240 They weren't made to light people's homes. It was more 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:10.039 of a use case to prove that electricity could have 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:16.200 some practical application beyond just understanding a fundamental element of 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:20.360 the universe or fundamental element of life on Earth at least, 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:25.200 so it would be many more decades before anyone could 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:30.839 make a commercially viable light bulb or lamp, but Davy's 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:34.520 works showed that it was in fact possible. Also in 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:38.480 that last episode, I mentioned Ampier, whose last name is 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:44.480 used as a unit of measurement within the electrical engineering world. Anyway, 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:47.000 I mentioned that Ampier was studying the nature of electricity 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:49.600 and magnets, but he was building on the work of others. 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:53.280 One of those others was Hans Christian Rsted, who was 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.320 a Danish philosopher and scientist and discovered something that I 0:06:56.400 --> 0:07:00.960 mentioned in the previous episode, which was electromagnetism. Airstead heard 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:05.360 of Alessandro Volta's experiments with batteries, so Volta made the 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:11.120 voltaic pile, the predecessor to the modern battery, and Airstead 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:14.160 had heard about it, and by eighteen oh one Airstead 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:17.440 started doing his own experiments, making his own batteries, and 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:20.400 Airstid proposed that there might be a way of measuring 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:24.239 the amount of current passing through a wire by putting 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:28.960 the wire into water and allowing the electricity to separate 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:32.600 the molecular bonds of hydrogen and oxygen, in otherwise, to 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:36.160 create electrolysis. And that if you measured the amount of 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:39.480 gas given off by the water, then you could use 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:43.440 that to infer how much current was passing through the wire. 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:46.720 It was kind of an indirect way of establishing how 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:50.800 much current was passing through the wire at any given moment. Now, 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:53.600 in eighteen twenty one, Airstead performed an experiment in which 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.400 he passed an electric current through a wire and then 0:07:56.480 --> 0:07:59.880 brought the wire near a magnetized compass needle, and this 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:02.680 caused the compass needle to swing out of alignment. It 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:05.760 was no longer lined up with the Earth's magnetic poles. 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:08.160 And you know this will happen when you bring a 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:14.280 magnet close to a compass. The Earth's magnetic field is powerful, 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:17.240 but if you bring a small, less powerful magnet in 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.880 close proximity to the compass needle, you will overpower the 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.040 Earth's magnetic field. The compass needle will move toward the magnet, 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:28.440 because again the strength of a magnetic field is somewhat 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:36.119 dependent upon its distance to a magnetic material. Well, he said, 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:38.800 this shows that an electric current passing through a wire 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:44.400 creates its own magnetic field. It's obviously affecting these compass needles. 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:47.200 So he continue to experiment to better understand the nature 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:49.840 of electricity and magnetism, and he came to realize that 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:54.000 an electric current creates a circular magnetic field around it. 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:58.719 So if you're looking at a straight copper wire and 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:01.040 you turn it so that you're looking at it from 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:05.280 the end on, so you're looking down the length of 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:08.439 an electric copper wire, and you're able to run current 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:10.960 through that copper wire, and if you were able to 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:14.280 visualize the magnetic field, you would see the magnetic field 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:17.880 appear as a circle, and the copper wire would essentially 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:20.800 be the center of the circle, or at least circulure. 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:24.320 It wouldn't be necessarily a perfect circle, but it would 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:28.840 be a circular field around the core, which would be 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:33.760 the wire itself. Also, although this was not understood by 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:36.680 Erstad at the time, if you ran an alternating current 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:40.720 through that wire, you would see the direction of that 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:45.240 magnetic field reverse. So when the current flows in one direction, 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:48.160 you would see it flowing in a clockwise direction, and 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:50.120 if you reverse the current, you would see it flow 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:51.559 in a counterclockwise direction. 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:53.359 This would become really important. 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:56.439 Later on when we talk about alternating currents and transformers. 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:01.280 Transformers being the type of of gadget that you use 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.920 to step up or step down electric voltage, not robots 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:07.360 that are more than meets the eye. It's a different 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:10.960 type of transformer. We're going to take a quick break 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:13.720 from this episode about the history of electricity and thank 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:29.120 our sponsors. So Airston makes this observation about copper wire 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:34.840 with a current flowing through it becoming a magnetic force 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:39.840 for emitting a magnetic force, and Ampere made a similar 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:43.760 discovery with electric wires attracting one another whenever electricity would 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:46.760 flow through them. So this was the earliest observations of 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:51.840 electromagnetism that are recorded. In eighteen twenty four, William Sturgeon 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:57.559 experimented with electromagnetism by wrapping a bare wire of copper 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:01.640 around an iron core. You got like a just an 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:05.040 iron nail, and you've got some bare copper wire and 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:09.600 you bend the copper wire so it coils around this 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:12.560 iron core. Several times. He found that if he passed 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:15.360 a current through the wire, it would turn the whole 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:19.120 thing into a magnet briefly, but then the effect would disappear. 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:22.720 So why was the effect disappearing, Well, the current was 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:25.800 moving from the copper wire into the iron core of 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:29.719 the structure. It wasn't maintaining a current through entirely. It 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:35.600 was shorting out essentially. And William Sturgeon also couldn't do 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:39.520 a multi layer wrap of the wire because the copper 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:43.040 wire is conductive. If it made contact with itself, then 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:46.120 current is flowing in the most efficient pathway. It's not 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:49.319 going down the length of the copper wire necessarily, it 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:51.920 could pass through as coils touched each other. 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:52.600 So. 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:56.360 He wasn't able to make a very strong magnetic effect 0:11:56.440 --> 0:12:01.640 this way. You increase the magnetic effect by making more coils. 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:05.240 So if you're able to coil a conductive wire more 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:09.480 times around a core like in this case, an iron core, 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:13.320 you create a more powerful magnetic field as you passed 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:17.320 a current through that conductor. In eighteen twenty seven, a 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:20.720 man named Joseph Henry found a solution to this problem. 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:24.520 He wrapped his copper wires in silk, which insulated them, 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.560 so now he could have the copper wires laying against 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:32.080 an iron core and laying against itself without the current 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:37.080 bleeding through because the wires were insulated, and that allowed 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:39.480 him to wrap the wires around the iron core several 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.080 more times than Sturgeon was able to, and that meant 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:46.120 the charge could not disappear into the iron and the 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:50.480 electromagnetic effect would remain as long as a current was passing. 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:51.160 Through the wire. 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:57.120 So this discovering electromagnetism would become incredibly important for future 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:02.280 applications of electricity. Meanwhile, Michael Faraday had been working with 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:06.800 moving copper near a stationary magnet, which would induce current 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:07.959 to flow through the copper. 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:10.679 This is the basis of generators. 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:16.200 Whether you are moving a conductor through the magnetic fields 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:20.160 of some stationary magnets, or you're moving the magnets around 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.400 a conductor so that the magnetic field is fluctuating around 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:28.120 the conductor. Whenever you introduce a conductor through a fluctuating 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:32.079 magnetic field, you're going to induce current to flow through 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:36.760 that metal conductor, or really I should just say conductor doesn't. 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:39.000 That's the important part, not whether or not it's metal. 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:42.479 Also important is that it has to be that fluctuating 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:45.280 magnetic field, otherwise you will induce current to flow, but 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.679 as soon as the magnetic field stops to fluctuate, current 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.640 will no longer flow. So you would typically do this 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:56.280 by putting two permanent magnets end to end with the 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:59.160 north pole facing the south pole of another one, and 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.480 in between them. You would have your conductor on a 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:07.680 rotatable system. So imagine that you've got a square of 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:11.240 copper wire. You formed it to be an empty square, 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:15.480 and it's rotatable between these two permanent magnets. As you 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:19.200 rotate the square, it passes through the magnetic fields. This 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:22.920 is similar to having magnetic flux introduced to the copper 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:26.080 wire that induces current to flow, and that's where you 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:33.640 get alternating current generators. So he also discovered something interesting. 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:38.160 Henry's work involved moving current through a wire, which would 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:42.840 create a magnetic field. Faraday's work involved moving a current 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:45.600 a copper wire through a magnetic field in order to 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:51.600 generate a current. So with Henry's work, they discovered that 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.520 the magnetic field generated by one electromagnet could induce current 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:58.520 to flow in a second electromagnet that wasn't hooked up 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:02.000 to the first circuit. This became the basis for an 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:06.240 important innovation, that being the AC transformer. I mentioned earlier 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:10.880 that steps up or steps down voltage. Now remember voltage 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:13.640 is akin to pressure. If you were looking at a 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:17.160 water based system, voltage would be the water pressure. It's 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:21.000 the push behind a current. And while this early work 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:23.280 created the foundation for the transformer, it would take half 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:27.040 a century for someone to build a practical, commercially reliable transformer. 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:30.280 That person was William Stanley, and we'll talk more about 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:32.720 him in just a little bit, But first we have 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:36.760 to talk about another invention that relied on electricity and 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:39.800 was very important for the adoption of electricity, and that 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:43.520 is the telegraph. The telegraph was a means of communication 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:47.240 that took advantage of electromagnetism. So once people figured out 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:50.640 the nature between electricity and magnetism, they started coming up 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.240 with some practical applications of this. The telegraph was one 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:57.640 of those early ones, and it was incredible. It transformed communication, 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:00.560 particularly here in the United States, all over the world 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:03.960 as well. So lots of people were exploring the scientific 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:07.040 and practical applications of electricity and magnetism, but two groups 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:10.360 were specifically looking at it in terms of communication systems. 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:13.520 So over in jolly Old England, you had Sir William 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:18.560 Cook and Sir Charles Wheatstone who were exploring this possibility. 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.480 And here in the United States you had Samuel Morse, 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:25.840 Alfred Vail, and Leonard Gale working on this. Now, both 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:29.520 sets of researchers realized that using electricity to manipulate magnetized 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:33.160 pieces of metal could allow for a communication system. The 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:36.480 Cook and Wheatstone system was an experiment that began in 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:39.960 the eighteen thirties. With magnetic needles. There were positions so 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:43.680 they could point at various letters and numbers. So imagine 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:48.680 that you've got a needle on a that can rotate horizontally. 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:51.320 It's on a horizontal plane, it can rotate around and 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:56.040 around on a balance, and you've got letters that are 0:16:56.160 --> 0:16:59.360 arranged around the needle. And by running an electric current 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:03.280 through a circuit, you can create a magnetic field that 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:06.080 attracts the needle, so it looks like it's pointing at 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:09.120 a specific letter. It's actually pointing in the direction of 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:12.440 whatever the magnetic field is, but it looks like it's 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:16.199 pointing specifically at the letter. So using several of these needles, 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:18.560 I think they had five set up in a panel 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:21.159 with a bunch of letters and numbers. They could communicate. 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:26.280 You could just choose which circuit you're activating to magnetize 0:17:26.280 --> 0:17:29.560 a specific point around those needles. The needles would start 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:32.400 to point in those directions and you could spell out 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:36.280 various messages. These ended up being used in the British 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:40.119 railroad signaling service. Now over in the United States, Morse, 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:43.720 Veil and Gale began work on a single circuit telegraph system, 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:46.679 and it involved a sending station where you had an 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:50.679 operating key, and this would complete an electric circuit whenever 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:52.520 you pressed it. So an operator key it looks like 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.040 a little almost looks like a stapler. When you press 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:58.960 it down, it would create a closed circuit and allow 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:01.240 a signal to pass through to the other end. When 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:04.800 you would lift it back up or remove pressure from it, 0:18:04.800 --> 0:18:07.920 it would break that circuit and electric current would cease 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:11.720 to flow. So you had a battery that was providing power. 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:14.720 Every time you would push down it would complete this 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:18.679 circuit and a signal would be sent to the receiving station. 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:22.719 The original station had an apparatus that would make marks 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.240 on paper, and so Morse ended up developing the famous 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:29.800 Morse code Morse code is a way of encoding letters 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:33.280 in a series of dots and dashes. You represent this 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:35.600 on an operator key by the length of time you 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:38.960 spend pressing the key downward. So for a dot you 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:41.520 do a quick press, it's just a quick jolt of 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:44.720 electricity through the circuit. For a dash, the press is 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:48.359 a little bit longer so that it comes across. And 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:50.680 on the other end, you had a system that would 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:53.480 essentially make marks on paper, so you could see dots 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:56.000 or dashes. Morse was very clever in this way. He 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:59.560 also made sure that the most commonly used letters had 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:05.400 the list of encodings, so a very common letter might 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:10.760 have a single dot or a single dash. More rare 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:14.040 letters like a que might have more complicated encoding because 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:15.679 you don't have to use it as frequently, so you 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:20.680 save all the very simple encoding for your most common letters. Now, 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.159 they noticed something really interesting, which is that as operators 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:27.800 began to get used to this system, they were able 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:31.200 to start understanding messages without having to read the dots 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:34.359 and dashes, because they would just hear what was coming out. 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:38.399 They would hear the receiving station tapping out either the 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:41.240 dots or dashes to market on the paper, and once 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:43.560 they started getting used to this and understanding what those 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:46.719 taps were meaning, like the long taps versus the short taps, 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:49.240 it became clear that you didn't need to have. 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:50.000 The paper at all. 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:53.040 You could have a receiving station that would beep either 0:19:53.280 --> 0:19:56.280 short or longer beaps to let you know whether it 0:19:56.320 --> 0:19:58.720 was a dot or a dash, and operators were able 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:02.440 to just pick it up up by hearing it because 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:06.520 they became so used to it. And so future telegraph 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:08.679 stations would get rid of the paper and just become 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:15.080 the beeping receiver, so that an operator would transcribe whatever 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.199 the message was and then deliver it to whomever was 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:21.720 supposed to get it. In eighteen forty three, Morse and 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:24.920 Vail were able to secure funding for a telegraph system 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:28.600 that was between Washington, d c. And Baltimore, Maryland. That's 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:31.480 not terribly far in the grand scheme of things, but 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.200 it was a big deal at the time. The first 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:37.360 message sent on the new system went out on May 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:42.440 twenty fourth, eighteen forty four. It was sent from Samuel 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:46.560 Morse to Vail, and it read what hath God wrought? 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:50.800 It's a little bit of drama in the first message, 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:54.639 just like social media today. Really, Over the following decades, 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:58.360 telegraph systems began to connect more cities together, even as 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:02.040 inventors were trying to find other practical applications of electricity. 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:05.000 So other people would make improvements to the telegraph and 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:09.359 make it more user friendly and more useful. Some of 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.960 those people included Ezra Cornell, who created a means to 0:21:13.080 --> 0:21:16.480 insulate telegraph wires and make them more efficient. Cornell would 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:19.040 go on to co found a college it's called Cornell. 0:21:20.119 --> 0:21:25.640 And Thomas Edison, famous inventor and irascible gentleman, also made 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.520 some improvements to the telegraph, including creating a system called 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:32.399 the quadruplex, which, as the name might suggest, would allow 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:36.120 up to four messages to transmit over the same wire simultaneously, 0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:39.040 two going in one direction and two coming from the 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:44.880 other direction. Now, one of Stanley's inspirations was another inventor 0:21:45.480 --> 0:21:49.560 named Charles Brush. Brush, in turn had been inspired by 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:53.560 Humphrey Davy. So we see that there's a chain forming here. 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:56.640 So Davy was the one who created that early ArcLight. Well, 0:21:56.680 --> 0:21:58.920 Brush thought the arc lights were super cool, and as 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:03.399 a teenager he started to really tinker with stuff. He 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:06.080 would start to neglect his chores in the family farm 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:09.000 just so he could work on various projects in a workshop, 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:13.600 and he built his first static electricity machine when he 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:18.320 was just twelve years old. In high school, he built 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:21.320 an arc light of his very own, so by high 0:22:21.320 --> 0:22:24.280 school age he was building stuff that Humphrey Davy had 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:28.080 pioneered a few decades earlier. In college, he pursued a 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:31.960 degree in mining engineering at the University of Michigan because 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:34.520 there was no such thing as an electrical engineering degree 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:37.080 at that time. And after working in the iron ore 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:39.800 industry for a while, he began a big project to 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:44.840 build a dynamo. Now, a dynamo is a direct current generator. 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:47.280 It's like what I described at the end of the 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:50.960 last episode. It's essentially an alternating current generator that has 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:55.480 a commutator to convert alternating current to direct current. Brush 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:58.760 also convinced the city of Cleveland to allow him to 0:22:58.800 --> 0:23:02.080 fit out Cleveland's public square, which at that time was 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:05.960 called Monumental Park, with electrical arc lights, and up to 0:23:06.000 --> 0:23:08.680 that point, the lights in the square had been gas lamps. 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:12.920 So on April twenty ninth, eighteen seventy nine, the city 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:16.240 switched on the new arc lights. The public reaction was 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:19.119 mostly positive. There were only a few people who were 0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:21.240 saying stuff like it's not as bry as the sun, 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:24.119 which tells us that some people were impossible to please 0:23:24.200 --> 0:23:28.000 even before they had Twitter to post public messages about it. Now, 0:23:28.040 --> 0:23:31.840 Brush's work advanced our understanding of the electromotive force, which 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:34.320 is the force that causes electrons to push in a 0:23:34.359 --> 0:23:37.960 direction within a conductor, generating a current, and it was 0:23:38.040 --> 0:23:42.760 that understanding that William Stanley started to build upon. Stanley 0:23:42.800 --> 0:23:45.720 wanted to work with alternating current, which at that time 0:23:45.960 --> 0:23:50.440 was mostly seen as interesting but not practical. Everyone was 0:23:50.480 --> 0:23:53.400 thinking direct current was probably the way to go, and 0:23:53.920 --> 0:23:55.639 Stanley wasn't entirely convinced. 0:23:55.680 --> 0:23:59.200 He thought alternating current might have its uses. In fact, 0:23:59.240 --> 0:23:59.480 at the. 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:03.760