- Am I really gonna light a fire with just my bare hands?
Of course I am,
but I'm not just gonna do it because it's cool.
But also because I am copying an electric wizard
named Mattias Bose,
who came up with this trick over 280 years ago.
How did that transform our world?
Well, I'll tell you,
and along the way, I'll talk about electric parties,
shocking kisses, deadly fame, and really, really bad poetry.
Ready, let's go.
♪ Electricity ♪
We start with one of the most flamboyant self aggrandized
and generally kooky scientists of all time, Mattias Bose.
Bose was born in 1710 in Leipzig, Germany,
and was basically a child prodigy.
Giving lectures in physics, chemistry, and mathematics
by the time he was 17.
When he was 26, Bose read a report
that a Dutch man had made glass
ornaments move around in a body of water by waving a charged
rod above it.
Bose has said that it quote,
"Almost drove me mad with delight to find the cause of the
antics of the swimming glass balls."
Bose was hooked.
He read and repeated all the experiments he could find.
In September, he read the experiments by a Frenchman named
Cisternay du Fay,
who had experimented with charging glass tubes
by rubbing them.
And it made the first rules of electricity.
And he also read the work of an Englishman named Hauksbee
who had found that if you had a glass tube on a spindle,
you could spin it and create quite
a lot of static electricity.
In a stroke of brilliance,
Bose combined Hauksbee's electricity machine
with Cisternay du Fay's electrical experiments.
Bose made his machine even better by adding what he
called a prime conductor to the machine.
The prime conductor was a large metal object, an iron bar,
a canon barrel, or a sword
suspended by silk cords that had one end touching
the rotating sphere.
And this way the prime conductor would store more charge,
or as he would say it more electrical fire
that could be used for any experiment.
Bose did not contribute much to physics theory.
He was interested mostly in show.
And in that he was unparalleled,
labeling himself a modern wizard.
He created a series of quirky demonstrations for the
nobility in Germany, England, France, and even Turkey.
And for the Pope,
the last one got him in a bit of trouble with the strict
Lutherans in Germany.
For example, he would invite guests to an elegant dinner
and then wire forks at a dining table
to his machine hidden in another
room so that the sparks would fly off of them
when guests sat down,
Bose created his own special secret crown,
which was a glass cylinder that was sealed and evacuated
made into a vacuum with metal embellishments.
The King would then sit on a chair under a metal plate that
would be connected to the prime conductor and the candles
would be blown out.
When an assistant spun the electrical machine,
the sphere would charge up the prime conductor,
which would charge up the plate above the King's head.
Sparks would then fly between his crown and the plate above.
The crown would also glow.
Bose called this beatification,
the term for when a Saint has a glowing halo.
Another favorite was to ask an attractive woman to stand on
an insulating stool and touch the prime conductor.
The electric machine was then run to give
the lady a strong charge.
So that when she kissed a brave volunteer,
they both got a pretty strong shock.
He called it Venus Electric (speaking foreign language)
or Venus, The Goddess of Love Electrified.
Matthias had some pretty bad
poetry on that subject.
Quote, "I kiss Venus standing on wax
and it pained me to the quick.
My lips trembled, my mouth quivered.
My teeth almost broke."
He also added that quote,
"Anyone scandalized by the experiment is advised to throw
himself into the ocean."
Bose's demonstrations ignited an
electricity craze in Germany, that boarded on fanaticism.
Also note that for the first time women were involved with
the experiments and not just the ones with kisses.
This was the age of enlightenment where all of upper-class
Europe was debating the rights of man and studying science.
Women ran the salons where science was demonstrated and are
in almost every picture of electricity from the time.
Although they were appreciated as attractive assistants
and noble patronesses of the sciences,
their opinion on how electricity works was suppressed.
Bose's most influential experiment was to create fire
out of electricity.
See, he'd read that Cisternay had made
sparks go to a bowl of water.
Bose wondered if he could electrify himself and get sparks,
go from him into container of alcohol
and set the alcohol on fire.
This is a very important experiment.
So let me go over it in detail.
First, he had an assistant spin a wheel
to cause a glass tube to spin quickly.
Another assistant rubbed the sphere
with his bare hand to charge up the sphere.
Bose then held a large metal tube
against the glass sphere.
He was standing on an insulating stand until he collected
quite a lot of charge.
Then once he was all charged up,
he would point a container of alcohol
with his finger or a small sword,
and the spark would leap to the alcohol
and light it on fire.
Let's watch that again in slow motion.
- All good. - Yay, wahoo!
- Bose has said he wants to die by electric shock
so that the account of his death could be reported
to the memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences.
Ironically Bose did die due
to his experiments with electricity,
but he did not die from an electric shock,
but instead because electricity made him famous.
See in 1760,
he was kidnapped as a strategic asset and died in captivity.
In a cruel twist of fate Bose was famous enough
to be kidnapped,
but is not recognized for his contributions today.
Why is Bose a not more famous?
Well, I think for three reasons,
the first is that he was a showman who was very nervous
about people stealing his thunder, so to speak,
for that reason,
he tended to hide the details of his experiments so that
often others were credited with his discovery.
The second reason is that he really,
really disliked Newton's theories and English physics,
which made him decidedly unpopular in England.
And with anyone who liked Newton,
which is basically anyone in physics.
The third reason is we have this image of scientists as
being dignified and logical,
real science that is messy and fashionable
with electric kisses and very bad poetry violates that idea.
The most important consequence of Bose's experiments
happened on October 11th, 1745.
On that date,
an amateur scientist named Ewald von Kleist
who was a fan of Bose,
tried to light alcohol on fire by connecting a jar of
alcohol straight to the static electricity machine.
It didn't light on fire,
instead of gave him a shock that threw him across the room.
It was accidentally found it was just as powerful
if it was filled with water instead of alcohol.
This simple device,
which is really just the glass container with water
and the nail in it,
shocked hundreds of people at a time
and was the impetus to understanding how electricity flows,
how circuits work and led to the invention
of the lightening rod and the battery.
These jars were also used to help create the first radio
waves in 1888 and a wireless telegraphs
for the next 40 years after that.
A version of this jar, called a capacitor, is still
used today in television, radio computers and cell phones.
So what is it and why is it so powerful?
It's called a Laden jar and its story is next time on the
Secret History of Electricity.