Inventing the 20th Century: 100 Inventions that Shaped the World, Stephen van Dulken, The British Library, 2000, Hbk, 246 pages, Price 16.95, IBSN 0-7123-0866-0
2001; Elsevier BV; Volume: 23; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/s0172-2190(00)00104-6
ISSN1874-690X
Autores ResumoIn our modern world, we are all surrounded by technology, innovation, and science. Among them, electricity is one of the greatest technological innovations of humankind that has brightened dark corners of the world and changed everything entirely. Today it has become the most widely used energy source that presents an affordable, reliable, and economic way of harnessing the energy in many different application fields. For instance, transportation and communication systems, large factories/facilities, residential end-users, modern equipment, and digital devices are strongly dependent on electricity; it is not possible to think of a world without it. However, most of us have not questioned what its history is and where it comes from.Electricity is a natural phenomenon that is always around us. Documents such as those reported by the ancient Greeks showed that human beings have been aware of electricity and magnetism since antiquity, based on their observations. These findings provided an important opportunity to advance the understanding of electricity’s nature and paved the way for establishing a systematic and scientific research method. Subsequently, a large and growing body of experiments has been extensively carried out to control/harness the energy in a usable form for our daily life. Notable scientists have made spectacular contributions to extend our knowledge of this phenomenon in the fields of both theory and practice by opening a new scientific horizon. We thus present here the magnificent story of electricity.
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