- How did shaking a barometer lead to an electric light?
And how in the world did they get an electric light
way back in 1705?
That's almost a hundred years
before the invention of the battery.
Well, I'll tell you,
and along the way,
I'll talk about an unfortunate king, his slutty son,
a mean and cheap boss, an abused assistant,
the first static electricity machine
and a very influential experiment.
Ready? Let's go.
♪ Electricity, electricity ♪
This story begins in 1649. (gentle pensive music)
In that year the King of England, Charles I,
was beheaded (ax thuds)
by radical Protestants, (crowd cheers)
who were Puritans who were upset with him
for trying to dissolve Parliament.
His son, also named Charles,
ran off to France for sanctuary.
Eleven years later in 1660, (bright orchestral music)
the Puritans were defeated and Charles II returned
and was instated as the King of England.
Charles was invested in undoing the strict
and restricted rules of the Puritans.
He supported the arts, science
and every attractive, loose woman in London.
He was infamous for his many mistresses.
Anyway, one of Charles II's first act
was starting a science club called the Royal Society.
In 1687, the Royal Society co-produced
Isaac Newton's, "Principia Mathematica"
which made him a scientific superstar.
Twenty-five years later,
Isaac Newton was elected President of the Royal Society,
and he decided to hire an assistant
to run weekly demonstrations.
Unfortunately, Newton had a small problem.
He was famous,
but he was also notoriously prickly, cheap and mean.
Luckily for him,
he found the talented experimentalist willing
to put up with him.
Francis Hauksbee was from a lower class family
that made their money selling cloth.
No one knows how Hauksbee began doing demonstrations
or how he caught Newton's eye,
but we do know,
that one, he was very good at doing demonstrations
and two, he constantly reminded everyone
that he was undeserving, unworthy and uneducated.
This combination of scientific skill
and obsequious behavior inspired Newton
to hire him as his assistant.
However, he never paid him enough to live on
with a salary that depended
on how good his demonstrations were
or as Newton put,
as a salary,
as he deserved.
Not surprisingly, Hauksbee was pretty desperate
to find some inspiring demonstrations
which he mostly did with vacuums.
Then in 1703,
he heard an intriguing story from France.
Twenty-five years earlier,
a French astronomer, named Jean Picard,
had moved a mercury barometer.
A mercury tube used to measure air pressure in the dark
and the vacuum at the top produced a faint glow.
When Picard carefully shook it up and down,
it glowed even more.
Hauksbee did everything to kick it up a notch.
He correctly deduced that it was the mercury vapor
and the top of the barometer that was glowing.
So he then added a splash of mercury to a glass tube
and evacuated out all the extra air.
And when he shook it,
it glowed.
He then put that glass tube on a spindle
and spun it, sort of like a rotisserie,
and then it glowed even more.
It glowed even brighter
when he put his hand on it
while he spun it with a curious purple light.
He quickly deduced that by putting his hand on it,
when he spun it,
he was creating static electric charge
and thus, he created the first electric lamp.
It took over 230 years
to make a commercially viable, fluorescent light bulb.
But if you look at it,
is strikingly similar to Hauksbee's original sphere.
Like Hauksbee's original,
fluorescent lamps use a splash of mercury
inside an evacuated glass tube.
There are two major differences
between a fluorescent lamp and Hauksbee's globe.
The first, is of course,
fluorescent lamps tend to use electricity from the wall
or from the battery,
and Hauksbee's used static electricity.
However, you can get a fluorescent bulb to flicker dimly
without plugging it in,
just with static electricity,
just like Hauksbee did by rubbing it with cotton
or balloon or rubber or fur.
My favorite way to do this,
is to use Saran Wrap.
See Saran Wrap gets charged up when you unwrap it
which is why it clings to the surface of things.
If you then wrap the end of a fluorescent bulb
with Saran Wrap and squeeze it,
the fluorescent bulb will flicker like this.
Cool, huh?
The other big difference
between fluorescent lamps and Hauksbee's tubes
is that fluorescent glow white
and Hauksbee's glowed purple
that is because mercury mostly glows
in the ultraviolet range which is invisible.
We see the visible end of the light produced
which is purple.
Fluorescent bulbs are, therefore,
coated in phosphors or fluorescence,
the glow white when hit with ultraviolet light.
That's where the fluorescent bulbs get their names.
While making the first electric lamp,
Hauksbee simultaneously made
the first static electric machine
as rubbing a spinning globe
can create a lot of static electricity.
Forty years later,
a theatrical self-proclaimed wizard used Hauksbee's device
for a series of dramatic electric demonstrations,
like using sparks to light alcohol on fire,
electrifying silverware at dinner parties,
and even charging up pretty girls
and giving them electric kisses.
Hauksbee tried to use his machine far less dramatically
to study static electricity
with little metal strips wrapped around it,
but it just confused him
and he moved on to other studies.
Eight years later,
Hauksbee died from unknown causes
and Newton went on to cheat his widow
out of any money owed to her.
Hauksbee's globe might never have been used
to give electric kisses to pretty girls,
(lively jazzy music)
if it weren't for the motion of a single feather.
In fact, all of the advances in electricity after Hauksbee
from the lightning rod to the battery, radio, telephone,
television, lasers and on and on and on.
All of them were triggered by a single event
on May 1st, 1729,
where a single feather moved in an odd way
and a man named Stephen Gray noticed it.
And that story is next time
on "The Secret History of Electricity".
♪ Electricity, electricity ♪
Hi, thanks for watching.
Remember give me a thumbs up,
if you liked it
and if you didn't like it,
accidentally give me a thumbs up.
Have a good day.
(lively jazzy music continues)