Major Discoveries in Electrical Communication in the 1800’s Essay

The nineteenth century was a very prolific era of discovery in electrical knowledge and technologies that laid the foundation for modern electrical communication. During this period of time the foundations of modern electrically based technologies were discovered. The nineteenth century began with a debate between Luigi Galvani, and Alessandro Volta regarding the source of electricity in Galvani’s famous frog experiment. These debates lead to the invention of the battery by Volta, and the invention of Volta’s. Volta’s discoveries would lead the way for Ohm’s law several years later. However, before that discovery was made Hans Christian Ørstead discovered electromagnetism, which was then used by Andrà © Marie Amperà ¨ to show that magnetism is electricity. Following the publication of Ohm’s law, Faraday would publish his findings on induction in the 1830’s. That same decade the DC generator, and transformer were invented, and followed in the 1840’s by the invention of AC generator. Communications technologies advanced at an incredible pace. Sà ¶mmering would design the first multi-line telegraph, and Morse would perfect this into a practical single wire design. The work of Charles Wheatstone in telegraphy and Heinrich Hertz in wave theory, paved the way for modern communications. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. Èdouard Branly would make the contribution of a detector that allowed for the invention of the radio. Guglielmo Marconi and Alexander Stepanovich Popov would develop the first radios. From the invention of the battery to the first intercontinental telegram transmission, the advances in electrical technologies in the 19th century made possible the technological boom of the 20th and 21st centuries in comm... ...ambridge University Press on behalf of The British Society for the History of Science, The British Journal for the History of Science , Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jun., 1962), pp. 31-48, [Online] Available: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4025073 [9] Joost Mertens, Shocks and Sparks: The Voltaic Pile as a Demonstration Device, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society, Isis Vol. 89, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), pp. 304 [Online] Available: http://www.jstor.org/stable/237757. [10] Herbert W. Meyer, A History of Electricity and Magnetism, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1971, pp. 39, 73, 100, 201. [11] Richard Wolfson, University Physics Second Edition, Pearson, 2012, pp. 453, 454. [12] Dan M. Worrall, David Edward Hughes: Concertinist and Inventor, Papers of the International Concertina Association, Allan Atlas, ed., vol. 4. 2007, pp. 4.