When it comes to your outdoor lighting there is one thing that needs to be present for it to work and that is electricity. In today’s modern society we take electricity for granted and it is one of the most important forms of energy on this planet. Without it society would crumble in a matter of hours. Have you ever wondered just how the electricity that your outdoor lighting system from Resort Lighting was discovered? Today we will explore that.
Electricity Is Not Modern
Electricity is not a modern invention or discovery. The Ancient Greeks discovered static electricity around 600 BCE after rubbing fur and amber together. What they did with that discovery is unknown but they probably used to to shock unsuspecting people just mischievous people do today. It was probably viewed as a gift from Zeus but may have been the coolest thing to hit the Mediterranean world.
Was The Discoverer Roman?
Being able to harness electricity as well is not a modern concept either. Archaeologists discovered ancient Roman pots that had sheets of copper inside of them with an iron rod that they surmise were used to produce power for light. Artificial light may be older than we think!
Or it could have been used for other things as well. The Romans were able to produce sulphuric and hydrochloric acids since its use even predates the Romans and had medicinal uses. These substances could have turned these into wet-cell batteries that could produce 4-5 volts of electricity and supports their use for electroshock therapy.
Was The Discoverer Egyptian?
At least the concept of electricity has been long known to humans. Ancient Egyptian texts refer to fish called Thunderer of the Nile or what we would know as a Torpedo Fish or an Electric Ray that shocked people. Touching one was not necessarily a bad thing as patients with gout or a headache were told to touch one hoping that the jolt would cure their ailment. Later 15th Century Arabs would apply their word for lightning (ra’ad) to electric rays.
Was The Discoverer Parthian?
Other similar devices were found in Iran and Iraq that were believed to be used as batteries. The most famous has been dubbed the Baghdad Battery, which was found in 1936 outside of Baghdad and dated to the Parthian civilization in the 200s BCE.
There is no concrete proof that devices like the Baghdad Battery were used as an electric source but it has been theorized that it was used for some sort of electroplating or for electrotherapy. It could have also been used for ritual magic by a Parthian priest. Following World War 2 though it was proven that it could produce electricity when a replica was created and filled with grape juice creating .87 volts of charge. Others have addressed this as well in modern times, perhaps most famously on the TV show Mythbusters that a series of these could produce enough electricity to electroplate a token or provide an electric shock. We may never know as well as the artifact was looted from the Iraqi National Museum following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Was The Discoverer More Modern?
Electricity was really no more than a curiosity until the 1600’s when English scientist William Gilbert began to study magnetism and published his famous work De Magnete in 1600. To describe the energy produced when rubbing amber he called it electricus, or the Latin phrase for like amber after creating static electricity. The word was eventually anglicized and the term electricity first appeared in print in 1646.
Of course the most famous electrical experiments involved Benjamin Franklin and his kite in 1752 when he attached a metal key to the bottom of his kite and flew it during a thunderstorm. When lightning struck the kite sparks flew back from the key proving that lightning is electrical in nature. Franklin is credited as being the inventor of electricity but it is hard to invent a natural phenomenon.
When it comes to more modern times the answer as to who “discovered” electricity may be Michael Faraday. Building on the work done by Franklin and several others he discovered that he could induce electric current by moving magnets inside of coils of copper wiring, or what is known as electromagnetic induction. This is the basic form of electric production and is used even today to create energy, though on a much larger scale in our power plants. Did he discover electricity? No, but he did manage to harness it to make it possible for mass generation. But in a way his work was very similar to what the Ancient Roman pots were able to do but obviously on a much bigger scale.
We Will Never Know
So, to answer the question of who exactly discovered electricity we will never know. Their name has probably been long lost to history. Was it an Ancient Egyptian, Greek or Roman? It turns out that our ancestors were a lot smarter and inventive than we give them credit for. Of course our ancestors probably didn’t know what exactly they had and may very well have believed that it was a gift from the gods but they may have inadvertently found one of the greatest forms of energy known to mankind.
Just think, the electricity that you use to power your landscape lighting is something that has existed in one form or another for thousands of years. It may not be older than the wheel but it is close. It is just hard to discover a natural phenomenon.