Mechanical light bulb from 1675 [video]

1 comments

• ck23 hours ago
  for a moment I thought this was going to be about arc-lights in the 1800s that mechanically touch electrodes and then draw apart<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Arc_lamp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Arc_lamp</a><p>it&#x27;s amazing how far we&#x27;ve come<p>think about Benjamin Franklin twenty-five years before Declaration of Independence naming the first &quot;battery&quot; (out of the concept of lined-up artillery) by connecting a series of lynden jars (basically capacitors) - he also invented the concept of +&#x2F;- positive and negative<p>now we&#x27;ve got space telescopes and probes leaving the solar system<p>imagine what&#x27;s coming in another 300 years
  • ambicapter3 hours ago
    &gt; naming the first &quot;battery&quot; (out of the concept of lined-up artillery)<p>That&#x27;s an amazing fun fact.
    • throwway1203852 hours ago
      Another fun fact is that it was impossible to deduce from any of Ben Franklin&#x27;s experiments what material was transferred and what material remained in place to give rise to &quot;charge&quot; as we think of it. So he picked a convention that we&#x27;ve continued to use even after we learned that his negative charges were the material that gets transferred by friction.
    • ck21 hour ago
      somewhat more &quot;fun&quot; and impressive (despite useless) are &quot;Franklin Bells&quot; which way before anyone figured out electric motors, was the first example of electricity to mechanical energy<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Franklin_bells" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Franklin_bells</a><p>of course incredibly crude<p>(imagine showing a paperclip motor to someone in 1750 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;player.vimeo.com&#x2F;video&#x2F;120255518" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;player.vimeo.com&#x2F;video&#x2F;120255518</a> )<p>but it must be said, as genius as Franklin was, sadly he bears the original sin of owning slaves EVEN AS AN ABOLITIONIST and didn&#x27;t free them until after his death (via will) - it&#x27;s more than a little f-ed up
      • Andrew_nenakhov26 minutes ago
        &gt; but it must be said, as genius as Franklin was, sadly ..<p>Some people can&#x27;t help themselves from bringing irrelevant facts to the conversation.
      • WalterBright29 minutes ago
        People are better judged by the mores of their time, not our time.<p>Besides, without Franklin, there would be no United States, the free-est country in history.
        • wat100007 minutes ago
          Plenty of people at the time thought slavery was evil. Franklin was even one of them, calling it &quot;cancer.&quot; He said this while still owning slaves, which is rather peculiar, but people are complicated.
        • ck27 minutes ago
          Yeah no, Norway and a few others are the free-est country in history, just because someone declares US is &quot;free&quot; doesn&#x27;t make it true, we disappear citizens all the time, police can seize your property without cause, government can seize your land for datacenters and women lose more and more rights every year<p>Again, Franklin knew slavery was wrong, literally campaigned to end it for that reason, yet did it himself for decades in the meanwhile, not a difficult horror to grasp in any time
  • helterskelter1 hour ago
    Franklin also invented the lightning rod, something which we take for granted these days.