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This is a rather disappointing page given how much waffle and crap there is written about political and subjective topics. This is such an important topic for the amount which current society relies on electricity.
I know that I'm just being a whinger and should write something myself, but I don't have the time.
Can someone else please do it? DrBob127 03:47, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I got quite a bit of info from this page dog.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.242.42 ( talk • contribs) 23:58 25 October 2006
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 09:54, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
What would a medievil person do when they were shocked by static electricity? 69.220.2.188 ( talk) 06:40, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
At the end of the section: Middle Ages and the Renaissance there's the assertion:
Since this is a history of electromagnetism, not just electricity (or mainly electricity) I've felt the need to assert Athanasius Kircher's priority on the word "electromagnetism" itself.
Some people feel that Kircher's coining of the word, in his book Magnes (The Magnet), was a pure accident, since the chapter in which it occurs deals mainly with the attractive force of amber, so he was using it to mean "electrostatic attraction". I've tried to make it clear though that Kircher seriously goes into the idea of unifying magnetic and electrostatic force, chewing over Gilbert's ideas on the topic.
I was also tempted to point out that Kircher proposed a workable (?) scheme for generating electromagnetic waves. But I didn't want to get in an argument over whether this was "original research". The Findlen refs show it isn't my idea. But to try to defend the workability of the scheme would almost certainly embroil me in the charge of "original research", which I gather can be a euphemism for "baloney". So not without a twinge of regret I've omitted a defence of Kircher's proposal, except an implied one that the reason it wouldn't have worked boils down to the physical magnitudes being too small (of Planck's Constant, as it happens), not yet-another bizarre misconception by Kircher. In other words his machina magnetica would only have generated a signal too weak to detect at a useful distance, not that it couldn't possibly have worked. Had the figures been in Kircher's favour, wireless communication might have emerged 250 years earlier than it did, with profound impact on the course of world history.
But to say something like that falls into Kircher's "error". The trouble with Fr Kircher was that he couldn't resist embellishing a perfectly sound and far-reaching idea with all the high-baroque speculation that occurred to him. The emerging class of physicists, then called natural philosophers (especially Descartes) quickly realised that sort of thing got you a bad reputation, and learned to be more cautious in their conjectures, not to say their claims.
Quacksalber ( talk) 18:43, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
The practical application of electricity will go on apace. It is an every day saying of laymen that electricity is as yet in its infancy. This remark causes technical men to smile, for "electricity" is already a most prodigious infant. But in the sense that we may only be on the threshold of the possible utilizations of this most wonderful of nature's agents, the remark is perhaps true. Predictions that were with diffidence made in the closing decade of last century to the effect that within 100 years of that time people would probably speak to one another without artificial means of communication; that wires would be laid along every street and knocked into every house as gas pipes were then, for lighting and power purposes, have been for a decade facts accomplished. What the next 120 years shall bring forth with regard to the applications of electricity none can tell. One hundred and twenty years ago it would have been difficult to find one steam railroad engineer willing to admit that application of electric traction to steam railroads was a possibility even though it was.
Other means, now unknown, of developing electricity may be wrested from nature's storehouse. Indeed in view of the past progress of electricity, and especially in view of its marvelous progress in the last two centuries, theoretically and practically, it required no great exercise of the imagination to conceive that the time was not too distant when the universal artificial source of the world's heat, light and power, is electricity, and that what is now only surmise as to the sameness of electricity and matter has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. Not only has wireless been more perfected and "seeing by electricity" to a distance been perfected, but many other accomplishments can be practically accomplished. Indeed, it is not even beyond the possibilities that the transference of thought directly from brain to brain with the space-time as the medium — the suggestion of which is now regarded as the vagrant of a disordered imagination — may then also be realized. In short our successors of 125 or 130 years hence may wonder at our obtuseness in not perceiving the obviousness of things which to them may then be self-evident, virtually as we now marvel at the simplicity of our cleverest ancestors in so long failing to recognize the identity of frictional, animal, and voltaic electricity, or the more simple fact that the wind, by them regarded as a phenomenon, is merely air in motion.
Updated from the The Encyclopedia Americana; a library of universal knowledge. (1918). New York: Encyclopedia Americana Corp.
J. D. Redding 02:28, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Although there are no copyright issues, quite a bit of this (including footnotes 12 and 13) are directly copied from very old books, specifically Park Benjamin's 1898 A History of Electricity with no indication that they are actually quotations. Additionally, I think using speculation from a book over a century old is inappropriate in a 21st century encyclopedia article, and that the book does not qualify as a RS for the article (but would be for an article on 19th century thought). Doug Weller ( talk) 13:50, 26 August 2008 (UTC) I Public Domain text. J. D. Redding 15:09, 26 August 2008 (UTC) (PS., this is a history article ... it is appropriate in a encyclopedia history article)
At the moment this reads:
According to Thales of Miletus, writing at around 600 BC, noted that a form of electricity was known to the Ancient Greeks would cause a particular attraction between the two. Rubbing fur on various substances, such as amber, would cause a particular attraction between the two, although he never understood why.[16] Thales wrote on various substances, such as amber, would cause effects now known as static electricity. The Greeks noted that the amber buttons could attract light objects such as hair and that if they rubbed the amber for long enough they could even get a spark to jump. During this time in alchemy and natural philosophy, the existence of a medium of the æther, a space-filling substance or field, thought to exist.
Because in this form it makes no sense -- the first sentence mentions 'attraction between the two' and we don't know what 'two' is, the 3rd sentence makes no sense either, I went back to an earlier version, dropping the 'aether' bit which seemed irrelevant. My version(which also had a reference) was:
Thales of Miletus in the 6th century BC wrote that The Greeks noted that the amber buttons could attract light objects such as hair and that if they rubbed the amber for long enough they could even get a spark to jump.
This edit (and my removal of the unattributed 19th century speculation), although they had detailed edit summaries explaining why I made them, were reverted by Reddi with only the comment 'restored some information', ie no explanation. I'm not the only editor Reddi has reverted with no explanation. Doug Weller ( talk) 14:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Hmm. Tried to work that in. J. D. Redding 15:13, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
According to Thales of Miletus "...the oral stories about his life were open to amplification and historical fabrication, even before they were written down generations later." and "Aristotle, judging from his surviving books, does not seem to have access to any works by Thales..." Bottom line: We can say that Thales was said to have known about the properties of amber and lodestone, but we can't say that he wrote anything. Regarding electricity and magnetism, the role of Thales seems to have been documented only by a few words in Aristotle's Physics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.183.90.237 ( talk) 15:44, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Tesla had his own section in this article. That's a bit novel and weird. We don't give Volta, Gauss, Coulomb, Ampere, Henry, Faraday, Weber, Lenz, Lorentz, Einstein, etc. their own sections but we give Tesla his own section? What's the possible rationale? Answer: none. I merged the section with the next section. ScienceApologist ( talk) 18:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Heaviside The really weird thing is that Oliver Heaviside seems to be completely missing. Ivor Catt —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.114.58.30 ( talk) 17:44, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
All those people do need their own sections. This article is terribly hard to navigate. -- Balrore ( talk) 10:18, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
To describe the works of Lorentz and Poincaré and others before the rise of Albert Einstein's special relativity, I've included a new section on that topic in "20th century". Also some references to Miller, Pais, Darrigol, Katzir, Janssen, Galison are included in "References". -- D.H ( talk) 12:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
The evidence that Romagnosi actually was the first one to realize a relationship between electricity and magnetism (nearly 20 years before Oersted)is nowadays consolidated and historically confirmed. The fact that the article not only assign a full bodied paragraph to the italian scientist as he should deserve but it even never mention his name it's quite unfair and questionable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Magnagr ( talk • contribs) 16:22, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
From the article, Feb. 5, 2010, section on the "Leyden jar":
This whole paragraph is sourced to an unidentified place in the Encyclopedia Americana of 1918. This Ellicott in all likelihood was John Ellicott, F.R.S. However, I cannot find any confirmation of him having made such a proposal. I can only find a letter from an anonymous addressed to John Ellicott, in which the unknown author proposed such a method in 1746. See " A Letter from - to Mr. John Ellicot, F. R. S. of Weighing the Strength of Electrical Effluvia", in Phil. Trans. 1746 44:96-99.
BTW, all the Americana references should be improved, giving the precise entry, if possible with a link to the containing volume at archive.org, from which the fact was taken. Lupo 08:35, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
This source ( Bibliographical History of Electricity and Magnetism By Paul Fleury Mottelay) identifies the person who suggested the counter weight means of strength testing as John Ellicott of Chester, but it says that this was done in 1746 not 1741. Sxoa ( talk) 11:42, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi, folks! A while back, I copied some text from this article over to 1800-1809. This isn't a field that I have expertise in, so further editing of the work in context from other editors here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! -- RobLa ( talk) 02:00, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
What exactly does this mean? Was Henry the first to build a transformer or does this just refer to the concept of self-inductance?
In the 'End of the Century' Section, the number of electrons given for hydrogen and oxygen are 700 and 11200, respectively. This seems absurd, but perhaps I am missing something.
I will correct the numbers to 1 and 8, with apologies to anyone whose chemistry is better than mine.
-- Cladist ( talk) 11:05, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
Also, what does "one of a day" mean? -- Cladist ( talk) 11:11, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
Also, also, why is the sentence about 'protyles' written as if it were a modern theory? This whole paragraph is weird. -- Cladist ( talk) 11:15, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
An image used in this article,
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Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests October 2011
Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so.
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Awful lot of material referenced to 100 year old sources, some are simply primary sourced. I have removed most of the more blatant and cited others, and cleaned up Tesla name dropping, needs more cleanup. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 16:05, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
The sources are tertiary and public domain. Please don't edit with a point [eg., "cleaned up Tesla"] -- J. D. Redding 15:04, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
As noted above and in the template added to reference, large parts of this article are a direct copy and paste from The Encyclopedia Americana; a library of universal knowledge, a 1918 source. So the historical view in this historical article is way off, the source was written when some of these subjects were still alive and formulating their theories. I have tried to cleanup the more glaring problems (we are not referring to a series of "professors", some of which are still doing research and, no..., wireless telegraphy.... systems ... are NOT now in successful use on shipboard, lighthouses and shore and inland stations [2]) but the tone and factual accuracy of this article is way off. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 15:08, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
These tags need to removed. Fountains of Bryn Mawr has been a problem for some time. The 1918 source is reliable and acceptable; unless there has been policy changes. Wireless telegraphy systems have been used and were successful BM, along with modern radio. J. D. Redding 16:38, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
Fountain's anti-Teslaic editing is apparent here https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=History_of_electromagnetic_theory&diff=582762281&oldid=582672070
This should be corrected. -- J. D. Redding 16:43, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
The problem is non-existent. If you, BM, have a problem with a sentence, provide the item in bulleted list. I removed the tags. -- J. D. Redding 17:35, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
This section is not neutral and refers only to a recent commercial name. The section should be rewritten using a reference to the Wireless power Transfer page and to all technologies in the field, starting with Tesla work a century ago and many others. Henri BONDAR ( talk)
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I've changed the attribution of the two-fluid theory to Robert Symmer alone. This is also consistent with what is written in the linked article. If one person should be singled out, it should rather be du Fay. Phidus ( talk) 11:37, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
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The "circle of monks" claim doesn't lead anywhere other than one author making a claim with no citation. He cites himself a few times then stops citing the claim. Curiously, he invents the claim in his third paper - the original paper doesn't mention anything about the speed of light being finite.
The original claim can be traced here: "His research drew the attention of Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700–1770), ... In 1746, he arranged some 200 monks in a circle 1.6 km in circumference, connected them with iron wires, and then discharged Leyden jars (early capacitors) through this circuit. He observed that the monks reacted simultaneously to the electric shock, clearly showing that electricity is transmitted at a very high speed."
This paper was published in IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, so I'm guessing it's fine by Wikipedia standards, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The claim mutates across 3 papers into something that makes no sense. Instant reaction would imply an infinite or an unknowably-high speed of light / conduction.
See also:
Electricity in the Age of Enlightenment Massimo Guarnieri
Birth of Amplification Before Vacuum Tubes Massimo Guarnieri
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260625875_Birth_of_Amplification_Before_Vacuum_Tubes — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anonymous-232 ( talk • contribs) 23:39, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
This article purports to be a history of electromagnetic theory, but includes a huge amount of information that wouldn't normally be considered part of electromagnetic theory, such as the history of semiconductors or nuclear fusion, & more besides. These are worthy topics but don't really belong here. 88.98.240.146 ( talk) 15:45, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
I don't see any reference to the date or year of Ben Franklin's electricity experiment with a kite. I hope someone knowledgeable about this historic experiment can add this information. 2601:200:C000:1A0:750D:52AA:4ECF:4C9A ( talk) 01:09, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
This
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This is a rather disappointing page given how much waffle and crap there is written about political and subjective topics. This is such an important topic for the amount which current society relies on electricity.
I know that I'm just being a whinger and should write something myself, but I don't have the time.
Can someone else please do it? DrBob127 03:47, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I got quite a bit of info from this page dog.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.242.42 ( talk • contribs) 23:58 25 October 2006
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 09:54, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
What would a medievil person do when they were shocked by static electricity? 69.220.2.188 ( talk) 06:40, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
At the end of the section: Middle Ages and the Renaissance there's the assertion:
Since this is a history of electromagnetism, not just electricity (or mainly electricity) I've felt the need to assert Athanasius Kircher's priority on the word "electromagnetism" itself.
Some people feel that Kircher's coining of the word, in his book Magnes (The Magnet), was a pure accident, since the chapter in which it occurs deals mainly with the attractive force of amber, so he was using it to mean "electrostatic attraction". I've tried to make it clear though that Kircher seriously goes into the idea of unifying magnetic and electrostatic force, chewing over Gilbert's ideas on the topic.
I was also tempted to point out that Kircher proposed a workable (?) scheme for generating electromagnetic waves. But I didn't want to get in an argument over whether this was "original research". The Findlen refs show it isn't my idea. But to try to defend the workability of the scheme would almost certainly embroil me in the charge of "original research", which I gather can be a euphemism for "baloney". So not without a twinge of regret I've omitted a defence of Kircher's proposal, except an implied one that the reason it wouldn't have worked boils down to the physical magnitudes being too small (of Planck's Constant, as it happens), not yet-another bizarre misconception by Kircher. In other words his machina magnetica would only have generated a signal too weak to detect at a useful distance, not that it couldn't possibly have worked. Had the figures been in Kircher's favour, wireless communication might have emerged 250 years earlier than it did, with profound impact on the course of world history.
But to say something like that falls into Kircher's "error". The trouble with Fr Kircher was that he couldn't resist embellishing a perfectly sound and far-reaching idea with all the high-baroque speculation that occurred to him. The emerging class of physicists, then called natural philosophers (especially Descartes) quickly realised that sort of thing got you a bad reputation, and learned to be more cautious in their conjectures, not to say their claims.
Quacksalber ( talk) 18:43, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
The practical application of electricity will go on apace. It is an every day saying of laymen that electricity is as yet in its infancy. This remark causes technical men to smile, for "electricity" is already a most prodigious infant. But in the sense that we may only be on the threshold of the possible utilizations of this most wonderful of nature's agents, the remark is perhaps true. Predictions that were with diffidence made in the closing decade of last century to the effect that within 100 years of that time people would probably speak to one another without artificial means of communication; that wires would be laid along every street and knocked into every house as gas pipes were then, for lighting and power purposes, have been for a decade facts accomplished. What the next 120 years shall bring forth with regard to the applications of electricity none can tell. One hundred and twenty years ago it would have been difficult to find one steam railroad engineer willing to admit that application of electric traction to steam railroads was a possibility even though it was.
Other means, now unknown, of developing electricity may be wrested from nature's storehouse. Indeed in view of the past progress of electricity, and especially in view of its marvelous progress in the last two centuries, theoretically and practically, it required no great exercise of the imagination to conceive that the time was not too distant when the universal artificial source of the world's heat, light and power, is electricity, and that what is now only surmise as to the sameness of electricity and matter has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. Not only has wireless been more perfected and "seeing by electricity" to a distance been perfected, but many other accomplishments can be practically accomplished. Indeed, it is not even beyond the possibilities that the transference of thought directly from brain to brain with the space-time as the medium — the suggestion of which is now regarded as the vagrant of a disordered imagination — may then also be realized. In short our successors of 125 or 130 years hence may wonder at our obtuseness in not perceiving the obviousness of things which to them may then be self-evident, virtually as we now marvel at the simplicity of our cleverest ancestors in so long failing to recognize the identity of frictional, animal, and voltaic electricity, or the more simple fact that the wind, by them regarded as a phenomenon, is merely air in motion.
Updated from the The Encyclopedia Americana; a library of universal knowledge. (1918). New York: Encyclopedia Americana Corp.
J. D. Redding 02:28, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Although there are no copyright issues, quite a bit of this (including footnotes 12 and 13) are directly copied from very old books, specifically Park Benjamin's 1898 A History of Electricity with no indication that they are actually quotations. Additionally, I think using speculation from a book over a century old is inappropriate in a 21st century encyclopedia article, and that the book does not qualify as a RS for the article (but would be for an article on 19th century thought). Doug Weller ( talk) 13:50, 26 August 2008 (UTC) I Public Domain text. J. D. Redding 15:09, 26 August 2008 (UTC) (PS., this is a history article ... it is appropriate in a encyclopedia history article)
At the moment this reads:
According to Thales of Miletus, writing at around 600 BC, noted that a form of electricity was known to the Ancient Greeks would cause a particular attraction between the two. Rubbing fur on various substances, such as amber, would cause a particular attraction between the two, although he never understood why.[16] Thales wrote on various substances, such as amber, would cause effects now known as static electricity. The Greeks noted that the amber buttons could attract light objects such as hair and that if they rubbed the amber for long enough they could even get a spark to jump. During this time in alchemy and natural philosophy, the existence of a medium of the æther, a space-filling substance or field, thought to exist.
Because in this form it makes no sense -- the first sentence mentions 'attraction between the two' and we don't know what 'two' is, the 3rd sentence makes no sense either, I went back to an earlier version, dropping the 'aether' bit which seemed irrelevant. My version(which also had a reference) was:
Thales of Miletus in the 6th century BC wrote that The Greeks noted that the amber buttons could attract light objects such as hair and that if they rubbed the amber for long enough they could even get a spark to jump.
This edit (and my removal of the unattributed 19th century speculation), although they had detailed edit summaries explaining why I made them, were reverted by Reddi with only the comment 'restored some information', ie no explanation. I'm not the only editor Reddi has reverted with no explanation. Doug Weller ( talk) 14:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Hmm. Tried to work that in. J. D. Redding 15:13, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
According to Thales of Miletus "...the oral stories about his life were open to amplification and historical fabrication, even before they were written down generations later." and "Aristotle, judging from his surviving books, does not seem to have access to any works by Thales..." Bottom line: We can say that Thales was said to have known about the properties of amber and lodestone, but we can't say that he wrote anything. Regarding electricity and magnetism, the role of Thales seems to have been documented only by a few words in Aristotle's Physics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.183.90.237 ( talk) 15:44, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Tesla had his own section in this article. That's a bit novel and weird. We don't give Volta, Gauss, Coulomb, Ampere, Henry, Faraday, Weber, Lenz, Lorentz, Einstein, etc. their own sections but we give Tesla his own section? What's the possible rationale? Answer: none. I merged the section with the next section. ScienceApologist ( talk) 18:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Heaviside The really weird thing is that Oliver Heaviside seems to be completely missing. Ivor Catt —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.114.58.30 ( talk) 17:44, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
All those people do need their own sections. This article is terribly hard to navigate. -- Balrore ( talk) 10:18, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
To describe the works of Lorentz and Poincaré and others before the rise of Albert Einstein's special relativity, I've included a new section on that topic in "20th century". Also some references to Miller, Pais, Darrigol, Katzir, Janssen, Galison are included in "References". -- D.H ( talk) 12:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
The evidence that Romagnosi actually was the first one to realize a relationship between electricity and magnetism (nearly 20 years before Oersted)is nowadays consolidated and historically confirmed. The fact that the article not only assign a full bodied paragraph to the italian scientist as he should deserve but it even never mention his name it's quite unfair and questionable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Magnagr ( talk • contribs) 16:22, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
From the article, Feb. 5, 2010, section on the "Leyden jar":
This whole paragraph is sourced to an unidentified place in the Encyclopedia Americana of 1918. This Ellicott in all likelihood was John Ellicott, F.R.S. However, I cannot find any confirmation of him having made such a proposal. I can only find a letter from an anonymous addressed to John Ellicott, in which the unknown author proposed such a method in 1746. See " A Letter from - to Mr. John Ellicot, F. R. S. of Weighing the Strength of Electrical Effluvia", in Phil. Trans. 1746 44:96-99.
BTW, all the Americana references should be improved, giving the precise entry, if possible with a link to the containing volume at archive.org, from which the fact was taken. Lupo 08:35, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
This source ( Bibliographical History of Electricity and Magnetism By Paul Fleury Mottelay) identifies the person who suggested the counter weight means of strength testing as John Ellicott of Chester, but it says that this was done in 1746 not 1741. Sxoa ( talk) 11:42, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi, folks! A while back, I copied some text from this article over to 1800-1809. This isn't a field that I have expertise in, so further editing of the work in context from other editors here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! -- RobLa ( talk) 02:00, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
What exactly does this mean? Was Henry the first to build a transformer or does this just refer to the concept of self-inductance?
In the 'End of the Century' Section, the number of electrons given for hydrogen and oxygen are 700 and 11200, respectively. This seems absurd, but perhaps I am missing something.
I will correct the numbers to 1 and 8, with apologies to anyone whose chemistry is better than mine.
-- Cladist ( talk) 11:05, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
Also, what does "one of a day" mean? -- Cladist ( talk) 11:11, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
Also, also, why is the sentence about 'protyles' written as if it were a modern theory? This whole paragraph is weird. -- Cladist ( talk) 11:15, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
An image used in this article,
File:Shen Kua.JPG, has been nominated for deletion at
Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests October 2011
Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so.
This notification is provided by a Bot -- CommonsNotificationBot ( talk) 01:00, 11 October 2011 (UTC) |
Awful lot of material referenced to 100 year old sources, some are simply primary sourced. I have removed most of the more blatant and cited others, and cleaned up Tesla name dropping, needs more cleanup. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 16:05, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
The sources are tertiary and public domain. Please don't edit with a point [eg., "cleaned up Tesla"] -- J. D. Redding 15:04, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
As noted above and in the template added to reference, large parts of this article are a direct copy and paste from The Encyclopedia Americana; a library of universal knowledge, a 1918 source. So the historical view in this historical article is way off, the source was written when some of these subjects were still alive and formulating their theories. I have tried to cleanup the more glaring problems (we are not referring to a series of "professors", some of which are still doing research and, no..., wireless telegraphy.... systems ... are NOT now in successful use on shipboard, lighthouses and shore and inland stations [2]) but the tone and factual accuracy of this article is way off. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 15:08, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
These tags need to removed. Fountains of Bryn Mawr has been a problem for some time. The 1918 source is reliable and acceptable; unless there has been policy changes. Wireless telegraphy systems have been used and were successful BM, along with modern radio. J. D. Redding 16:38, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
Fountain's anti-Teslaic editing is apparent here https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=History_of_electromagnetic_theory&diff=582762281&oldid=582672070
This should be corrected. -- J. D. Redding 16:43, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
The problem is non-existent. If you, BM, have a problem with a sentence, provide the item in bulleted list. I removed the tags. -- J. D. Redding 17:35, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
This section is not neutral and refers only to a recent commercial name. The section should be rewritten using a reference to the Wireless power Transfer page and to all technologies in the field, starting with Tesla work a century ago and many others. Henri BONDAR ( talk)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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I've changed the attribution of the two-fluid theory to Robert Symmer alone. This is also consistent with what is written in the linked article. If one person should be singled out, it should rather be du Fay. Phidus ( talk) 11:37, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
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The "circle of monks" claim doesn't lead anywhere other than one author making a claim with no citation. He cites himself a few times then stops citing the claim. Curiously, he invents the claim in his third paper - the original paper doesn't mention anything about the speed of light being finite.
The original claim can be traced here: "His research drew the attention of Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700–1770), ... In 1746, he arranged some 200 monks in a circle 1.6 km in circumference, connected them with iron wires, and then discharged Leyden jars (early capacitors) through this circuit. He observed that the monks reacted simultaneously to the electric shock, clearly showing that electricity is transmitted at a very high speed."
This paper was published in IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, so I'm guessing it's fine by Wikipedia standards, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The claim mutates across 3 papers into something that makes no sense. Instant reaction would imply an infinite or an unknowably-high speed of light / conduction.
See also:
Electricity in the Age of Enlightenment Massimo Guarnieri
Birth of Amplification Before Vacuum Tubes Massimo Guarnieri
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260625875_Birth_of_Amplification_Before_Vacuum_Tubes — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anonymous-232 ( talk • contribs) 23:39, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
This article purports to be a history of electromagnetic theory, but includes a huge amount of information that wouldn't normally be considered part of electromagnetic theory, such as the history of semiconductors or nuclear fusion, & more besides. These are worthy topics but don't really belong here. 88.98.240.146 ( talk) 15:45, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
I don't see any reference to the date or year of Ben Franklin's electricity experiment with a kite. I hope someone knowledgeable about this historic experiment can add this information. 2601:200:C000:1A0:750D:52AA:4ECF:4C9A ( talk) 01:09, 27 January 2021 (UTC)