Page 46 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK

Science Stories impressive light
In pursuit of an

ELECTRICITY show, Hauksbee
generated static
electricity
1706

Francis

Hauksbee

produces

electric light

few years ago, a PhD student invited heard that shaking a barometer could cause introduced still more dramatic electri-
A me to travel back with him into the a mysterious glimmer to appear in the tube cal displays. In his efforts to explore how
early 18th century. Sitting in a dark above the mercury, Hauksbee decided to charge could be transmitted from one
unheated room, we huddled around investigate further. place to another, Gray became increas-
an experimental apparatus that he had Hauksbee soon devised a stunning ingly ambitious, outgrowing his room
made himself using only tools that were display for impressing the Fellows. By to drape long wires around the country
available in that era. My task was to turn adapting the rotating wheel of a knife- estates of accommodating Fellows. Keen
a handle as fast as I could, but it was not grinder, he made an empty globe spin round to find out what sort of objects might be
until I slowed down from exhaustion – but not too fast, as I once discovered for affected at a distance, he tried out soap
that we saw what the original experi- myself. The student’s inherited instructions bubbles, a red-hot poker, a sirloin of beef,
menter had promised: purple and green had also neglected to point out that the a map, an umbrella and eventually, a
lights flickering eerily inside a glass wheel-turner is an assistant scarcely worth small boy from a charity school.
sphere. Thrilled, we imagined how mentioning, often a servant or a Like Hauksbee, Gray converted his
amazing this effect must have been in a wife. Instead, the experimenter who gains exploratory experiments into theatrical
pre-electrical age, when artificial lighting the glory is the man (inevitably at the time) performances. Using two strong clothes
meant candles and oil lamps. who places his hands against the glass so lines, he suspended a child from the ceil-
The first person to demonstrate this that the gas inside lights up. Although he ing to hang horizontally in a room that
gaseous glow was Francis Hauksbee did not realise it immediately, Hauksbee was darkened to heighten the mystique.
(c1666–1713), a former draper who had invented the first machine to generate After the victim had been charged up
had somehow gained favour with static electricity. with an electrified glass tube, sparks flew
Isaac Newton to be put in charge of the A second refugee from the cloth trade, and crackled whenever he was touched,
experimental programme at London’s a Canterbury dyer called Stephen Gray, and small feathers or brass filings leapt
Royal Society. Far from being active up through the air towards his out-
scientists, most Fellows were wealthy stretched hand.
gentlemen who demanded spectacular Francis Hauksbee Within a few years, performers all over
displays to justify their subscription – Europe were entertaining lecture audi-
and it was Hauksbee’s responsibility to was put in charge of ences and dinner party guests with this
provide weekly entertainment. apparently magical trick. Wielding his
His own research focused on air pumps, the experimental tube like a conjurer’s wand, an electrical
machines that sucked out gas to create a programme experimenter could claim to control the
near vacuum, and for one meeting he re- powers of nature. It was, enthused one
vealed how a small piece of luminescent at the Royal Society commentator, “an entertainment for
phosphorus would continue to glow even angels, rather than for men”.
ALAMY
in an apparently empty space. When he Words: Patricia Fara

46 The Story of Science & Technology