Tens of thousands of years a man used to do only with mechanical sources of
power and that power was distributed among people in accordance with class hierarchy
So, thanks to the power of slaves, horses, water and wind, an ordinary Roman's
power inputs were about 1 kw whereas a patrician used to consume more than 10
kw. And only in the 13th century a dream of such a device that would be put
in motion not by the power of muscles or elements but by a power of a completely
different nature took possession of the minds of Europeans. During long six
hundred years the greatest intellectuals had been inventing such a motor that
would work perpetually resembling perpetual motion of heavenly bodies. But in
vain. In 1775 the Paris Academy of Sciences officially refused to consider any
more projects of Perpetuum mobile artificae. However the search had its effect.
It formed the basis of modem thermodynamics and power engineering.
In 1747 an American publisher Benjamin Franklin thought he had earned enough
to retire and devote himself to science. In five years of zealous study he began
to consider electricity to be some liquid substance that was in every matter.
Franklin's terminology clearly told of his book-keeping past. He designated
the surplus of electric liquid in bodies with plus and the lack of electric
liquid with minus. Besides Franklin introduced into practice such terms as charge,
conductor and battery. However it was lightning-rod that became his most famous
invention. One of the thunderstorm June days in 1752 he flew a kite on a silk
thread. The kite was struck by the lightning and Franklin touched its thread
with a metal key. Bright sparks that fell showed that such a grand and unexplained
phenomenon as the lightning was nothing more than a manifestationof electricity.
In January 17á9 James Watt, an English naturalist, obtained a patent
for his invention, a steam-engine. One of the engines was bought by a brewer
as a substitute for his old horse. The horse used to put a pump into motion.
In order to chose a machine suitable for that work the brewer made a simple
calculation. It showed that the horse used to lift 75 kg of water to a height
of 1 meter every second on the average. Watt took it for a unit of measure and
began to measure the capacity of his machines in horsepowers. In 1907 the horsepower
was accepted all over the world as a unit of measure. And only the proud British
refused to change their national metrics thinking probably that their horses
had been and were and would remain 1.1014 times as strong as any others. In
October I960 at the General Conference on measures the universal metric system
of measures was accepted. It immortalized the name of a British inventor. From
then on capacity has been measured in watts. One watt is equal to 0.10197 kgm/s
or 0.00138 a former horsepower.
At the beginning of the 19th century steam-engines became widely used in English
navy. It was then discovered that reserves of fuel on board a steamer should
take up a considerable part of its displacement. What is the reason why the
machines consume so much and produce so little? - thought shipbuilders. French
engineer Sadie Carnot gave the answer to the question. In his book Meditation
on the motive power of fire published in 1824 Carnot showed the impossibility
of total conversion of heat into work and hence the impossibility of perpetuum
mobile. 26 years later a physicist Rudolf Clausius deduced a formula for determination
of heat-engine efficiency Along with that he formulated a famous paradox of
thermal death of the universe. He said that the world was speeding towards the
ultimate state of thermal balance. He said that the world was burning like an
enormous oven and its energy was dispersing continuously Classical mechanics
considered a clock to be a symbol of nature as a perfect perpetuum mobile that
put into motion everything in the world. A heat-engine became a model of industrial
world where heat converts into motion at the price of irreversible waste of
energy.
By the middle of the 19th century science had become an enterprise for production
of useful inventions. It turned out that any scientific discovery can be planned
according to the needs and desires of consumers. It seems that one of the first
industrial investigation made to order was elucidation of the characteristics
of petroleum by Professor Benjamin Silliman from Yells University In 1840-s
petroleum stood in the way of salters who had to close oil-spoilt salt-wells.
Enterprising chemists tried to sell petroleum as a remedy However very soon
the output of petroleum exceeded all the possible medical needs. In 1855 some
sellers applied to Silliman in order to find a more profitable application for
medical petroleum. They promised him a reward in the amount ofS526.08. Silliman
found out that petroleum had excellent oil characteristics and could be used
as fuel for lamps. In the shortest time America was swept over by oil mesh.
Till the end of 1850-s only surface oil was within the reach. Oil-wells drilling
was considered to be just a crazy idea. It was believed that oil was such a
liquid that dripped out of coal bedded in the hills and that the only way to
get it was to dig trenches for it to accumulate. In 1859 colonel Edwin Drake
and his assistant blacksmith William Smith drilled a well and put a pump in
it. They happened to extract so much oil that all the vessels they prepared
were not enough and they had to use everything they could find near at hand:
whisky-tuns, wash-tubs and buckets. So the humanity parted with another myth
and enterprising Drake parted with his longstanding financial problems. Only
150 years ago oil was considered nothing else but sticky and greasy mud. Now
it is called blood of the Earth.
In 1802 Vasily V. Petrov, professor of St. Petersburg Medical Academy, discovered
electric arc. Two pieces of coal were joined to the ends of a galvanic cell.
When the pieces were drawn together a blaze was seen between them. More than
50 years later Pavel N. Yablochkov used this discovery in designing lamps that
gave regular light. In 1877 Yablochkov's candles were placed in one of the Parisian
streets. At that time electric light was called the Russian light. However in
the air pieces of coal were burnt down too fast and the intensity of light could
not be diminished. Besides such lamps could function in consecutive order only
That is they could be put on and off but all at the same time. Scientists went
on with their experiments. And soon another Russian, Alexander N. Lodygin, invented
another lamp. The air was pumped out from it and the piece of coal burnt down
not so fast. Lodygin supplemented his invention with such amazing innovations
as a socket and a plug.
In 1878 an American who had just returned from a Paris exhibition being greatly
impressed by electric light talked his friend Thomas Edison, an inventor, into
looking for a way of commercial use of lamps in America. On his advice Edison
decided to electrify all private apartments thus depriving gas companies of
90 per cent of the market. That required a new source of light for individual
use and a new circuit for each lamp to be switched on independently His work
was successful. In 1881 in London he installed the first city system of lighting
with filament lamps used. They were lamps of a different kind. Electricity was
used not for creating a flame but for maintaining white heat of a glow-lamp
filament. Thanks to that it became possible to make lamps of different power.
Electric light won an ultimate victory over gas-light when a tungsten filament
took place of a coal filament.
In March 1879 the British Parliament founded a special committee authorized
to subpoena anybody as a witness. An inquiry was hold as a trial. Electricity
was a defendant. The witnesses gave evidence of its characteristics. In place
of material evidences were various electrical appliances and various experiments
took place. The reasons given by witnesses for the prosecution were all alike.
Artists said that electric light was not expressive enough. As for the ladies
they found that it made faces look deathly pale and made it difficult to chose
the right clothes. Many complained of a pain in the eyes. Witnesses for the
defense explained them with patience that they should look not at the lamps
but at the illuminated objects and that faces looked deathly pale only when
gas-light and electric light were mixed. The committee decided that electric
light should come out of the sphere of experiments and get an opportunity to
compete with gas-light. Besides it was decided that electric light could not
be given to gas companies because of their incompetence in electro-technology.
The idea of centralized heat supply came up as a by-product of electrification.
First electric power stations were operated by thermal energy that came out
as a result of fuel combustion. Thermal energy used to heat the water and the
steam went to the turbine to set in motion the generator rotor. At first the
exhausted steam was wasted. To use it for heat supply was an unexpected and
brilliant though quite a simple idea. It helped to economize a deal of fuel.
The heat of the exhausted steam heated the water which was pumped into the pipes
of a heating system. In 1882 the first thermoelectric power station was opened
in New York and just a year later the second one started working in the capital
of Russia. In due course each and every big city became a complicated organism
pierced by many kilometers long vascular of its heating system.
Nichola Tesla's alternating current generator, the key element of all electric
power systems in the world, had become the greatest invention in the sphere
of electricity Tesla had invented a transformer for lowering voltage of the
current. In 1884 Tesla sold all the rights to his invention to George Westinghouse
for $70000 plus royalty payment of $2.5 per a horse-power of electricity generated.
Edison insisted on Tesla's generator to be put on New York electric chair and
on giving to such type of punishment the name of westinghousement. Then Tesla
showed how a wireless lamp was switched on by the power of alternating current
passing through his own body Tesla was not only the inventor of genius but a
real showman in electro-technology His laboratory in Manhattan was a sort of
technical circus where enormous transformers emitted huge sparks and electric
lamps switched on in the hands of the inventor. Tesla created prototypes of
a radio transmitter, luminescent lighting and a radio-controlled robot.
Creating of an ideal ventilator was as important a task for scientists as searching
of a philosophers' stone or inventing perpetuum mobile. At that time it was
believed that each and every thing was moving towards its natural place. However
thousands of years were not enough for things to settle down in their particular
places. It means that there is such a power that transforms the space to secure
perpetual rotation of elements and principles. The world is changeable. It moves
in the vortex of an enormous ventilator. In 1537 a famous alchemist Philip Theophrast
Bombast von Hohenheim known as Paracelsus made one of the most curious models
of ventilator. The model was put in motion by a chemical fuel. Its formula is
still unknown. Paracelsus was the first scientist who used a ventilator with
a practical aim. He used it to fan burning coal in a melting-pot. At the beginning
of the 18th century the idea of the great and terrific mechanism lost its original
content. And a hundred years later it became widely used in industry as well
and in private life in a new world from which the spell was removed.
