Lecture 8: Empires of Physics

1. Introduction: Histories of Science Intellectual history Social history

2. Background: Early Electricity Leyden Jars and atmospheric electricity Galvani, Volta, and biological electricity Coulomb and magnetic charge Ampere and magnetic current

3. Intellectual History: Electrodynamics, Electric Fields, and the Ether Faraday and magnetic induction Lines of force Thomson, magnetic plenum, and the ether Maxwell’s training Dielectrics, electric displacement, and the ether Unification of electromagnetism and light Mathematical and physical models Helmholtz and quantized electricity

4. Social History: Empires of Physics The British Empire Egypt and international scientific prestige Priority disputes

5. The Telegraph Wheatstone, Morse, and Morse Code Telegraph as tool of empire Submarine Cables Thomsom, Siemens, and the Ohm Metrology and standardization

6. Electric Life Bell and the telephone Edison, phonographs, and lightbulbs

Further Reading: Crosbie Smith, The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Physics in Victorian Britain, 1998. P.M. Harman, Energy, Force, and Matter: The Conceptual Development of Nineteenth Century Physics, 1982.

Names and Dates: Leyden jar Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692-1761) Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) Allessandro Volta (1745-1827) Charles Augustine de Coulomb (1738-1806), Coulomb’s Law (1777) Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851), magnetic deflection (1820) André-Marie Ampère (1775-1836), Ampere’s Law Michael Faraday (1791-1867), induction (1831), lines of force Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873) Telegraph, 1837 Submarine Cables Werner von Siemens (1816-1892) Alexander Graham Bell 1876 (1847-1922), telephone (1876) Thomas Edison (1847-1931), phonograph (1877), incandescent bulb (1880)