4.2.2 Fluid Theories of Electricity
From Franklin to Frankenstein
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Gray’s experiments demonstrated that electric effects could be transmitted significant distances particularly through metal wires [[i]]. In so doing, Gray invented the first electric circuit [[ii]]. His experiments showed that electricity was not just a local phenomenon – a cloud, atmosphere, or effluvia around a particular material. Instead, electricity could be conveyed great distances, as if it were a fluid and the conductor were like a pipe.
Gray was assisted by John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683–1744), one of Newton’s assistants, and a key figure in masonic history [[iii]]. Desaguliers was not only Gray’s patron, but also clarified the distinction between conductors and insulators based on Gray’s work [[iv]]. Notably, Gray also performed a dramatic experiment in which he suspended a boy by electrically insulated silk ropes and electrified him. The “electrified boy’s” fingers could attract foil and small objects from a distance of a foot or more.
French chemist and Superintendent of the Jardin du Roi (King’s Garden), Charles François de Cisternay du Fay (1698–1739), noted a subtle difference between “vitreous” electricity (obtain by rubbing silk on glass) and “resinous” electricity (obtained by rubbing fur on amber) [[v]]. Objects with the same charge (both resinous or both vitreous) repelled each other [[vi]]. Objects with different charge (one resinous the other vitreous) attracted each other [[vii]].
The study of electrical phenomena became the fashion at the French court. Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700–1770), preceptor in Natural Philosophy to the royal family, had a flair for dramatic experiments [[viii], [ix]].
In 1746, the Abbé performed a demonstration in the Hall of Mirrors at Versaille, first with 64 people and later with 140 people, forming a circuit and sharing an electric shock [[x]]. Later that year, he secured the cooperation of 200 monks holding 25-foot-long iron straps in each hand and arranged in a loop whose circumference was about a mile. Then he electrically shocked the monks, discovering that the electrical influence propagated the mile through the monks so rapidly that the time of propagation appeared to be instantaneous.
Thinking it might be possible to contain the supposed electric fluids in a kind of bottle, in 1746, the Dutch scientist, Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692–1761) devised a way to store and concentrate electricity [[xv]]. Working in the Dutch city of Leiden, his “Leyden Jar” was the first capacitor. A glass jar isolates metal foil inside and outside the jar, allowing the concentration and storage of large amounts of equal and opposite charge. By concentrating charge, Leyden Jars make electrical experimentation much easier.
The amount of electricity that could be stored in van Musschenbroek’s device was quite literally shocking. After one violent accidental discharge, van Musschenbroek stated he “would not take another shock for the whole kingdom of France” [[xix]]. A similar discovery was made (probably earlier) by Ewald Georg von Kleist (1700–1748) who failed to publish it, leaving the credit to van Musschenbroek [[xx]].
Electrical phenomena captured imaginations. Traveling performers demonstrated its effects from the courts of Europe to the remote colonial wilds across the Atlantic, delivering shocks, entertainment, and enlightenment.
The Abbé Nollet developed an elaborate two-fluid theory of electricity based upon du Fay’s concept of vitreous and resinous electricity. A few years after Nollet published his theory, he was astonished to discover a book packed with experimental observations and arguments refuting his ideas. Clearly the work of his enemies and rivals at the French court, the book purported to be a translation into French of work performed in the obscure colonial hamlet of “Philadelphia” in the colony of Pennsylvania by one “Benjamin Franklin” [[xxi], [xxii]].
Benjamin Franklin (1705–1790) rejected the two-fluid theory of du Fay and Nollet with its confusing requirement that an equal mixture of vitreous and resinous electricity annihilate each other. Franklin proposed a one-fluid theory [[xxiii]]. Franklin argued that “vitreous electricity” represented an excess of electrification or a “positive” charge, and “resinous electricity” represented a deficit of electricity or a “negative” charge. Franklin himself acknowledged that this identification was speculative, but the interested reader may pursue the reasons further in the references [[xxiv]].
Noting that he could “cascade” capacitors together to further enhance their effects, Franklin was among the first to study what we now call series and parallel combinations [[xxv]]. Multiple capacitors combined together he dubbed a “battery” in analogy to how combining cannon in a battery enhances the effectiveness of an artillery barrage. He also discovered that a current discharge could magnetize a needle [[xxvi]].
Franklin subjected the Leyden jar to rigorous study. He devised a separable Leyden jar like that of Figure 4.18, compared an air-gapped device to a glass jar, noted the glass enhanced the effects, and established that the glass held the electrical influence.
Simultaneously, a London apothecary working independently of Franklin, William Watson (1715–1787), developed and presented a similar theory in London. Watson, shown in Figure 4.18, shared Franklin’s letters and made Franklin’s work better known [[xxix]].
One line of investigation more than any captured the public imagination and made Franklin a scientific superstar. In the summer of 1752, Franklin installed a lightning rod at his Philadelphia home complete with a bell that rung itself, alerting its inventor to the presence of atmospheric electrification. The 1753 edition of his “Poor Richard’s Almanack had instructions on how to protect a home or building from lightning through use of a lightning rod [[xxx]].
That same summer of 1752, Franklin vividly demonstrated that lightning was an electrical phenomenon akin to the discharges from a Leyden jar through his famous kite experiment – shown with considerable artistic license in Figure 4.19 [[xxxi]]. The experiment is extremely dangerous and without careful precautions can easily kill the experimenter.
Learning of Franklin’s discoveries, the German physicist Georg Wilhelm Richmann (1711–1753), working in Saint Petersburg, set out to replicate them, even engaging the services of a skilled engraver to graphically capture the results of his experimentation for posterity.
As Richmann experimented, a ball of lightning appeared, striking Richmann in the forehead, singeing his clothes, and blowing open his shoes. The shock blew the door off its hinges. In an instant, Georg Richmann became the first scientist killed in an electrical experiment. The engraver who survived the tragedy, captured the fateful moment in Figure 4.20 [[xxxiv]]. “[I]t is not given to every electrician to die in so glorious a manner as the justly envied Richmann,” declared Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), discoverer of oxygen and an electrical investigator in his own right [[xxxv]].
Electrical research uncovered less deadly and more subtle aspects as well. Franklin noted that cork balls appeared unaffected by electricity when suspended within a charged metal cup. He wrote his friend, Priestley, asking him to confirm the observation. Priestley leapt to a remarkable conclusion:
May we not infer from this experiment, that the attraction of electricity is subject to the same laws with that of gravitation, and is therefore according to the squares of the distances ; since it is easily demonstrated, that were the earth in the form of a shell, a body in the inside of it would not be attracted to one side more than other [[xxxvi]].
A more exact measurement by Scottish physicist John Robison (1739–1805) in 1769 confirmed relations very close to the inverse square of the distance for the force law [[xxxvii]]. Sadly, Robison did not publish his results until 1801, so science would await Coloumb’s more precise and comprehensive measurements in 1788 for the force law to be considered firmly established. As previously mentioned, Henry Cavendish (1731–1810) similarly made remarkable breakthroughs in understanding electricity–breakthroughs for which he only received posthumous credit because of his failure to publish them [[xxxviii]].
Acceptance of the newly emerging electrical science and technology was not universal, however. In 1780, an elderly lawyer and student of natural philosophy, Charles Dominique de Vissery de Bois-Valé, installed a lightning rod to protect his house and neighbors in the village of St. Omer, near Calais in Northern France. His neighbor did not appreciate his efforts and insisted upon the removal of de Vissery’s contraption. The local Alderman, sided with the neighbor and local courts upheld his decision.
The story has been portrayed (including by some who should have known better) as an eighteenth-century “Inherit the Wind,” with the pitchfork-wielding superstitious peasants railing against the enlightened champions of reason and science [[xli], [xlii]]. In truth, however, lightning rod opponents did not so much contest the general concept, but rather the details of the practical implementation. Was the diameter of the ground wire adequate? Was the benefit worth the potential risk of attracting lightning? Was the installation qualitatively different from other lightning rods that had burned down their attached houses? The specific objections raised by the lightning rod opponents were quite reasonable questions to ask, given the immaturity of the technology.
de Vissery appealed to the provincial courts in Arras. There, in the summer of 1783, a brilliant young lawyer successfully argued that judges need not defer to scientific experts. Appealing to the “social contract” of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the lawyer argued that no scientific authority could speak for the facts just as no political authority could usurp the will of the people at large. Empirical facts are accessible to all without intermediaries, he claimed. The brilliant young lawyer disingenuously dismissed the lightning rod opponents’ objections as “mere theories,” while the arguments of de Vissery and other lightning rod proponents were “empirical facts.” He argued the judges should look to the proponent’s facts and ignore the opposition’s theories. This rather transparent sophistry carried the day. M. de Vissery’s lightning rod could stay, although M. de Vissery remained responsible for the costs of his appeal [[xliii]].
The brilliant young lawyer who defended the lightning rod? He would go on to a spectacular (if abruptly terminated) career in politics. His name was Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758–1794). Ten years later in 1793, the National Convention with Robespierre and the Jacobins at the helm would launch the unmediated will of the people upon the elites in the Terror of the French Revolution [[xlvi]]. One year after that, Monsieur de Robespierre would meet his fate at the hands of Madame la Guillotine. Another interesting footnote: electrical pioneer, John Robison (1739–1805), not only confirmed the inverse square law, but also shared an account of how Freemasonry served as the framework within which much of the French Revolution was planned and executed [[xlvii]].
The technical revolution of the eighteenth century spilled over into political revolution and social change. Emerging scientific discoveries persuaded activists that society could be similarly understood and regulated with the discovery of natural laws of politics that would govern the course of human events with the precision of Newtonian physics. The consequences were sometimes for the better–as in the establishment of the United States, sometimes for the worse as in the terror and violence of the French Revolution. Investigators held out the hope that emerging discoveries might explain the divine spark of creation from a completely materialistic perspective.
In Italy, the anatomist, Luigi Aloisio Galvani (1737–1798), observed a curious twitching of frog legs when probed with metallic scalpels, as in Figure 4.23. The crucial aspect was that the scalpels had to be made of two different metals [[l]]. Galvani experimented rigorously with his setup trying scalpels of different sizes and materials, even connecting a frog leg to a lightning rod to see (unsuccessfully) if atmospheric electricity might be able to trigger motion in the legs. Galvani speculated about a connection between electric phenomena and biology. Electrophysiology – the field he pioneered – remains a subject of much investigation, even today. Galvani remained convinced that his “animal electricity” was a somehow a separate or distinct form of electricity.
His countryman, Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (1745–1827), proved Galvani wrong and by so doing turned Galvani’s scientific speculations into technology. Realizing that it was the dissimilar metals and the electrolyte responsible for Galvani’s observations, Volta dispensed with the frog legs and constructed “Voltaic Piles” of alternating zinc and copper plates separated by brine-soaked paper [[li]]. Adapting Franklin’s terminology, the voltaic pile became the first battery [[lii]].
Volta’s invention of the battery in 1800 meant that the study of electricity was no longer limited to static situations or momentary spark discharges. Electricity could now be made to flow in a continuous “current” making possible the investigations of the magnetic field described in the previous chapter. The French Academy of Science invited Volta to Paris for a discussion of his discoveries. Napoleon himself sat in on the sessions, asking pertinent questions. Volta received a substantial prize and an annual stipend in recognition of his achievement [[lv]]. His name became the unit for electric potential or equivalently, electromotive force–the “volt” (V).
Galvani, on the other hand, had refused to swear allegiance to the French-influenced Cisalpine Republic, viewing it as a violation of his oath to the previous government. He lost his professorship at the University of Bologna as a result. After a long struggle, the university relented and offered him his position without requiring him to take the oath. Sadly, the stress and poverty had already taken its toll, and Galvani died soon thereafter [[lvi]]. Galvani’s name survives in such terms as the Galvanic cell, Galvani potential, galvanic corrosion, the galvanometer, galvanization, and Galvanic skin response.
The joint work of Galvani and Volta, and the connection of electrical science to physiology would help inspire one of the first works of science fiction. At age 16, young Mary Godwin (1797–1851), daughter of a radical political philosopher, eloped with the already married poet and philosopher, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). To do so, Percy Shelley abandoned his first wife, Harriet while she was pregnant with their second child. Harriet ultimately died by suicide a couple years later.
Mary Godwin spent the summer of 1816 in mansion near Lake Geneva with Shelley and George Gordon Byron (1788–1824), Lord Byron. Amid this amazing collection of talent, and “enlightened” free-love debauchery, the author who became Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wrote Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. Explaining modern science, Frankenstein’s professor declared:
“The ancient teachers of this science… promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they… have indeed performed miracles. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows” [[lviii]].
Inspired, the fictional Victor Frankenstein undertakes his studies. His university expels the young scientist for challenging God and seeking to create life, just as Percy Shelley was similarly expelled from Oxford for an essay on atheism. The monster’s victims include Frankenstein’s brother, “William,” also the name of Mary’s father, William Godwin, and ultimately the name Percy and Mary Shelley would chose for their first-born son who was to die at the age of four in Rome of gastroenteritis. Another of the monster’s victims is a woman named “Justine,” also the title of an infamous tract of moral and political pornography by the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814). Mary Shelley may have been only eighteen when she wrote Frankenstein, but she was perceptive enough to craft a story depicting the horrors of the Enlightenment – political, cultural, and scientific alike, run amok [[lx], [lxi]].
By the beginning of the nineteenth century the fluid model of electricity was quite mature. Electrical and magnetic understanding progressed from such vague notions of causes as “souls,” “atmospheres,” or “effluvia” to an understanding and model still used today. Electricity was viewed as a kind of fluid, “charge,” that flowed within conductors as “currents,” yet might be held in place by non-conductors, through which it could not pass.
Instead of a vague atmosphere or effluvia, electricity became understood as a well-defined fluid obeying certain rules that enabled it to act at a distance – through the glass walls of the Leyden jar, or traversing the short distance between charged objects.
Electricity is present in all bodies in a normal, balanced amount. Electrification merely transfers this electricity from one place to another, creating a deficit in one place and an excess elsewhere. This “one-fluid” theory of electricity is essentially the same as fluid model employed to this day: electricity is due to a fluid-like material called “charge” that gives rise to “currents” as the fluid flows through wires. Charge is a kind of elastic fluid within conductors, in Franklin’s view, that can even act at a distance to some extent, through the glass of a Leyden jar. That action-at-a-distance aspect requires the introduction of fields.
Next time: 4.3 Actions at a Distance: Fluids or Fields?
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References
[i] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, p. 45.
[ii] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, p. 45.
[iii] Ducheyne, Steffen, “The Times and Life of John Th. Desaguliers (1683-1744): Newtonian and Freemason,” Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 87, fasc. 2, 2009. pp. 349-363. doi: 10.3406/rbph.2009.7676. See: https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_2009_num_87_2_7676.
[iv] Heilbron, J.L., Element of Early Modern Physics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982, pp. 171-174.
[v] Du Fay, “A Discourse Concerning Electricity,” The Philosophical Transactions and Collections Abridged and Disposed Under General Heads, Vol. 8, Part II, 1747, p. 393-397. Originally published December 23, 1733. Note, Peck attributes the vitreous/resinous distinction to Gray. See: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Philosophical_Transactions_and_Colle/pRAxPFJxVNkC?hl=en&gbpv=0
[vi] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, pp. 33-44.
[vii] Priestley, Joseph, The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments, 2nd ed. corrected and enlarged, London: J. Dodsley et al, 1769, pp. 48-49.
[viii] Mottelay, Op.Cit., p. 48.
[ix] Benjamin, Park, A History of Electricity (The Intellectual Rise in Electricity) From Antiquity to the Days of Benjamin Franklin, New York: John Wiley & Sons: 1898, see Chapter XV, pp. 516-536.
[x] Duke of Luynes, Mémoires du Duc de Luynes Sur La Cour de Louis XV 1735-1758 vol. 7, 1744-1745, Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, Fils et Co, 1861, pp. 252-253. See: https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/xvlby_j8FgoC?hl=en&kptab=editions&gbpv=1&bsq=nollet
Note, the Duke’s account describes a demonstration in “la grande galerie ici,” “the grand gallery here,” on Monday, March 14, 1746. This was a common term in the 17th century for what we now call the “Hall of Mirrors.” Other sources claim a demonstration with twelve, seventy-four, and finally one hundred forty people on June 13, 1746, but I was unable to verify that. The Abbé performed demonstrations for the Queen and Crown Princess (La Dauphine) and was gifted books (Vol. 6, p. 3, 479). The Abbé also received an apartment at Versailles formerly occupied by the sculptor Coustou (vol. 7, p. 238).
[xi] Benjamin, Park, A History of Electricity (The Intellectual Rise in Electricity) From Antiquity to the Days of Benjamin Franklin, New York: John Wiley & Sons: 1898, p. 518.
“Reproduced in facsimile from the frontispiece of Nollet’s Essai sur l’électricité des corps. Paris, 1746. The boy is suspended on silk lines and electrified by the excited glass tube held by the lecturer, so that his hand attracts bits of loose foil on the table below.”
[xii] Portrait of John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683–1744). See: https://infogalactic.com/info/File:John_Theophilus_Desaguliers.jpg
[xiii] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fran%c3%a7ois_de_Cisternay_du_Fay#/media/File:Charles_Fran%C3%A7ois_de_Cisternay_du_Fay.jpg
[xiv] Portrait of the Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet; see: https://picryl.com/media/portrait-of-jean-antoine-nollet-6a3be8
[xv] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, p. 45.
[xvi] Portrait of Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692–1761) Dutch scientist by Hieronymus van der Mij (1687-1761) - Collectie Icones Leidenses 147 ( https://socrates.leidenuniv.nl/ ). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_van_Musschenbroek#/media/File:P_v_Musschenbroek_t-E.jpg
[xvii] Wormell, L., Electricity in the Service of Man: A Popular and Practical Teatise on the Applications of Electricity in Modern Life, London: Cassell & Company, Limited, 1890, p. 68.
[xviii] Marchant, William Henry, Wireless Telegraphy: A handbook for the use of operators and students, Whittaker and Co., New York, 1914, p. 7, fig. 6See: https://infogalactic.com/w/images/b/b7/Leyden_jar_showing_construction.png
[xix] Brother Potamian and James J. Walsh, Makers of Electricity, New York: Fordham University, 1909, p. 87.
[xx] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, p. 45.
[xxi] Franklin, Benjamin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Charles W. Elliot, ed., Boston: Harvard Classics,1909, p. 123.
It was, however, some time before those papers were much taken notice of in England. A copy of them happening to fall into the hands of the Count de Buffon, a philosopher deservedly of great reputation in France, and, indeed, all over Europe, he prevailed with M. Dalibard to translate them into French, and they were printed at Paris. The publication offended the Abbe Nollet, preceptor in Natural Philosophy to the royal family, and an able experimenter, who had form’d and publish’d a theory of electricity, which then had the general vogue. He could not at first believe that such a work came from America, and said it must have been fabricated by his enemies at Paris, to decry his system. Afterwards, having been assur’d that there really existed such a person as Franklin at Philadelphia, which he had doubted, he wrote and published a volume of Fetters, chiefly address’d to me, defending his theory, and denying the verity of my experiments, and of the positions deduc’d from them.
It’s an amusing story, but I was unable to confirm Franklin’s self-flattering tale from other sources, so take it with the appropriate level of historical skepticism.
[xxii] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, pp. 33-44.
[xxiii] Watson, William, “An Account of Mr. Benjamin Franklin’s Treatise, Lately Published, Intituled, Experiments and Observations on Electricity made at Philadelphia in America,” Read June 6, 1751, Philosophical Transactions, vol. 47, 1751-1752, pp. 202-211.
[xxiv] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, pp. 47-78.
[xxv] Brother Potamian and James J. Walsh, Makers of Electricity, New York: Fordham University, 1909, p. 90.
[xxvi] Brother Potamian and James J. Walsh, Makers of Electricity, New York: Fordham University, 1909, p. 91.
[xxvii] Brother Potamian and James J. Walsh, Makers of Electricity, New York: Fordham University, 1909, p. 87.
[xxviii] Portrait of William Watson (1715 – 1787) See: https://infogalactic.com/w/images/6/6a/William_Watson.jpg
[xxix] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, p. 50.
[xxx] Brother Potamian and James J. Walsh, Makers of Electricity, New York: Fordham University, 1909, pp. 103-105.
[xxxi] Franklin, Benjamin, A Letter of Benjamin Franklin, Esq; to Mr. Peter Collinson, F. R. S. concerning an Electrical Kite. Phil. Trans. 1751–1752 47, October 1, 1752, pp. 565–567.
[xxxii] Portrait of Benjamin Franklin with his Kite in the background. After the painting by Benjamin West (~1816). Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). See: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/rs5edyhm
[xxxiii] Death of the German physicist Georg Wilhelm Richmann (1711–1753), who was shocked by lightning during one of their thunderstorm electrical experiments in Saint Petersburg. See: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richmanns_Tod_1753.jpg
[xxxiv] I am not entirely sure this is the same engraver, for there are several historical engravings of the incident.
[xxxv] Priestley, Joseph, The History and Present State of Electricity with Original Experiments, 2nd ed., corrected and enlarged, London: J. Dodsley et al, 1769, pp. 84-85.
“We are not, however, to infer from these instances, that all the electricians were struck with this panic. Few, I believe, would have joined with the cowardly professor, who said that he would not take a second for the kingdom of France. Far different from these were the sentiments of the magnanimous Mr. Boze [Georg Matthias Bose (1710–1761)], who with a truly philosophic heroism, worthy of the renowned Empedocles, said he wished he might die by the electric shock that the account of his death might furnish an article for the memoirs of the French academy of sciences. But it is not given to every electrician to die in so glorious a manner as the justly envied Richman.”
[xxxvi] Priestley, Joseph, The History and Present State of Electricity with Original Experiments, 2nd ed., corrected and enlarged, London: J. Dodsley et al, 1769, pp. 709-712.
[xxxvii] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, p. 53.
[xxxviii] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, p. 54-56.
[xxxix] Joseph Priestley. Line engraving. Wellcome Collection. See: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/k75juv9y/items
[xl] See: https://infogalactic.com/info/File:John_Robison.png
[xli] Brother Potamian and James J. Walsh, Makers of Electricity, New York: Fordham University, 1909, pp. 113-114.
[xlii] Watson, Thomas E., The Story of France From the Earliest Times to the Consulate of Napoleon Boneparte, vol. 2, 7th ed., Thomson, Georgia: The Jeffersonian Publishing Company, 1919, pp. 350-351.
“Franklin’s lightning-rod had been adopted by a rich landowner of the neighbourhood, and the good folks who see wickedness in all new things raised a clamour against these rods. “What! Shouldn’t God have the right to strike a house with lightning, if he pleased? Should poor, sinful, erring mortals presume, by the putting up of preventives, to interfere with the heavenly agencies?” Such was the wail of the orthodox. The priests clamoured, the people clamoured ; and the municipal authorities actually ordered Vissery, the landowner, to pull down the rods The municipality was of the opinion that there was impiety in the erection of conductors whose avowed purpose was to make God's lightnings miss a house which they would otherwise have hit. Vissery, strange to say, was not cowed by this outcry. He employed Robespierre to defend him in his right to use the rods, and won his case. Even in France human reason was beginning to rebel against the absurdities of orthodoxy.”
[xliii] Riskin, Jessica, “The Lawyer and the Lightning Rod,” Science in Context, vol. 12, no. 1, 1999, pp. 61-99.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889700003318
See: https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/lawyer.pdf
[xliv] Portrait of Maximilien de Robespierre c. 1790 (anonymous), Musée Carnavalet, Paris. See: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robespierre.jpg
[xlv] Janin, M. Jules, LA RÉVOLUTION FRANÇAISE, Paris: Imprimerie de Ch. Lahure, 1862–1865, p. 101. See: https://www.google.com/books/edition/La_R%C3%A9volution_fran%C3%A7aise/B6pFAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
[xlvi] Huet, Marie-Hélène, “Thunder and Revolution: Franklin, Robespierre, Sade,” The Eighteenth Century, vol. 30, no. 2, The French Revolution 1789—1989: Two Hundred Years of Rethinking (1989), pp. 13-32. See: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42705722
[xlvii] Robison, John, Proofs of a Conspiracy: Against All The Religions and Governments Of Europe, Carried On In The Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies, 1798.
[xlviii] Brother Potamian and James J. Walsh, Makers of Electricity, New York: Fordham University, 1909. Plate between pp. 132-133.
[xlix] Galvani’s frog legs. See: https://infogalactic.com/info/File:Galvani-frogs-legs-electricity.jpg
[l] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, pp. 68-69.
[li] Martinez, Giulio, “The Volta Centenary,” Electrical World and Engineer, August 26, 1899, pp. 309–311.
[lii] Whittaker, Edmund, History of the Theories of Æther and Electricity, vol. 1, New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1951, pp. 71-73.
[liii] See: https://infogalactic.com/w/images/5/52/Alessandro_Volta.jpeg
[liv] Voltaic pile, Europe, 1800-1899. Credit: Science Museum, London. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). See: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/wabsabbz/items
“First described in 1800 by Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), a voltaic pile consists of a series of zinc and cooper discs separated by conducting cards. The pile produces continuous electric current and was used for experiments. This voltaic pile was exhibited at the Volta Centenary Exhibition in Volta’s birthplace, Como, Italy, in 1899. A fire on 8 July 1899 destroyed a large number of objects. This is one of those that were salvaged. maker: Unknown maker Place made: Europe.”
[lv] Brother Potamian and James J. Walsh, Makers of Electricity, New York: Fordham University, 1909, pp. 179-180.
[lvi] Brother Potamian and James J. Walsh, Makers of Electricity, New York: Fordham University, 1909. Plate between pp. 156-157.
[lvii] Richard Rothwell, Portrait of Mary Shelley (1797-1851), see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley#/media/File:Mary_Wollstonecraft_Shelley_Rothwell.tif
[lviii]. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Frankenstein ; or, The Modern Prometheus. In Three Volumes, London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mayor, & Jones, 1818, vol. 1, 73-74. See: https://archive.org/details/shelleyfrankenstein01/page/74/mode/2up?q=ancient+teachers
[lix] Victor Frankenstein observing the first stirrings of his creature. Engraving by W. Chevalier after Th. von Holst, 1831. See: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/p67zzz4d/items
[lx] Jones, E. Michael, Monsters From the Id, South Bend: Fidelity Press, 2000. See in particular Part I.
[lxi] Jones, E. Michael, “Frankenstein,” High School Commencement Address, June 1995.
“Frankenstein is at its deepest level a protest against what de Sade---and by extension the Enlightenment---stood for. If you carelessly bring life into the world without regard to the moral law (which is another definition of sexual liberation) you invariably create monsters which will return and destroy not only you, but your friends and family, indeed, your entire culture as well.
“Mary Shelley felt this particularly acutely at the time. She was an 18-year-old girl, pregnant by a man who was at the time married to someone else, reading the Marquis de Sade's vision of the future. A vision which had already led to the horrors of the French Revolution. In gazing at the pornographic illustrations in Justine, she was smart enough to understand what role 18-year-old girls were going to play in the brave new world by revolutionaries like her father and soon to be husband. ‘Woman,’ said the divine Marquis in Justine, ‘is a machine for voluptuousness.’ Sexual license is in its way ultimately just a way of treating people like machines, and as Mary must have understood by reading Justine, the fate of female machines was not a happy one. The trajectory of his novels is the trajectory of pornography itself. When sex is separated from the moral order, someone ends up getting tortured and killed.
“Frankenstein is a protest against the vision of the world proposed by the Enlightenment, whose vision was proposed in explicit terms by the Marquis de Sade. It keeps getting retold because we still live in that world.”
See: https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/frankenstein-10806
In my reading of Frankenstein the "monster" was not created amoral. His resentment resulted from frustrations at his attempts to be part of society, being rejected for his ugliness.
Typo:
As Richmann experimented, a ball of lightning appeared, striking Richmann in the forehead, singing his clothes
Should read:
As Richmann experimented, a ball of lightning appeared, striking Richmann in the forehead, singeing his clothes
Singe, not sing.