HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY & ELECTRONICS

Dr. V.C.VEERA REDDY

PROFESSOR (Rtd)
DEPT.OF ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONICS ENGG. S.V.U.COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING TIRUPATI-517 502 E-mail: veerareddy_vc@yahoo.com Phone: 9849409094, 08772249988

Electricity

History of electricity
Like the history of a nation from which its people get inspired, the history of any science inspires its future generations. Even more than that those who spent their whole life for the inventions/ discoveries, they did not do that for themselves rather they did it for the whole society, the whole world

History of electricity
According to Indian and Greek Mythology, people used to send the information very quickly In Ramayana and Mahabharatha Puspaka Vimanam, sanjeevini and divya dhrusti were used. But no record evidence and documentation to support. Technology to build huge temples and forts was there long before( Tanjore..)

Bruhadeeswar temple
This temple is one of India's most prized architectural sites. Built in 1010 AD by Raja Raja Chola I in Thanjavur also popularly known as the Big Temple', turned 1000 years old in 2010. Huge kalasam or Vimanam (top portion of the shrine) is believed to weigh 81.28 tones and was raised to its present height(66m) by dragging on an inclined plane of 6.44 km.

History of electricity
Long before people were aware of shocks from Electric Fish. Ancient Egyptian texts dating from 2750 BC referred to these fish as the "Thunderer of the Nile. Patients suffering from ailments such as headache were directed to touch electric fish in the hope that the powerful jolt might cure them

 An object found in Iraq in 1938, dated to about 250 BC and called the Baghdad Battery. It Resembles a galvanic cell and is believed by some to have been used for electroplating in Mesopotamia, although this has not yet been proven.

History of Electricity..

Ancient Greeks Static Electricity

Rub amber with wool. Amber becomes

negatively charged by attracting negative charges from the wool. The wool becomes positively charged. The amber can then pick up a feather.

 Ancient cultures around the Medi -terranean knew that certain objects, such as rods of amber, could be rubbed with cat's fur to attract light objects like feathers. At around 450 B.C. Democritus, a later Greek philosopher, developed an atomic theory that was remarkably similar to our modern atomic theory. The hypothesis of Leucippus and Democritus held everything to be composed of atoms.

History of electricity.

History of Electricity..
Thales of Miletus, a Greek philosopher made a series of observations on static electricity around 600 BC, from which he believed that friction rendered amber magnetic, in contrast to minerals such as magnetite, which needed no rubbing. This strange effect remained mystery for over 2200 years.

2200 Years Later

Around 1600 AD, William Gilbert, a physician who lived in London studied magnetic phenomena and demonstrated that the Earth itself was a huge magnet. This electric and electronic world was not just the effort of some years or decades, rather it is the result of the hard work of great minds since ages. So now it is the time to remember them.

History of electricity
The development of the modern day electrical energy system took a few centuries. Prior to 1800, scientists like William Gilbert, Coulomb, Luigi Galvani, Benjamin Franklin, Alessandro Volta etc. worked on electric and magnetic field principles. However, none of them had any application in mind. They also probably did not realize that their work will lead to such an exciting engineering innovation. They were just motivated by the intellectual curiosity.

History of electricity.
Between 1800 and 1810 commercial gas companies were formed - first in Europe and then in North America. Around the same time with the research efforts of scientists like Sir Humphrey Davy, Andre Ampere, George Ohm and Karl Gauss the exciting possibilities of the use of electrical energy started to dawn upon the scientific community.

History of electricity
In England, Michael Faraday worked on induction principle between 1821 and 1831. The modern world owes a lot to this genius. Faraday subsequently used his induction principle to build a machine to generate voltage. Around the same time American Engineer Joseph Henry also worked independently on the induction principle and applied his work on electromagnets and telegraphs.

History of electricity
For about three decades between 1840 and 1870 engineers like Charles Wheatstone, Alfred Varley, Siemens etc built primitive generators using the induction principle. It was also observed around the same time that when current carrying carbon electrodes were drawn apart, brilliant electric arcs were formed. The commercialization of arc lighting took place in the decade of 1870s. The arc lamps were used in lighthouses and streets.

History of electricity
From early 1800 it was noted that a current carrying conductor could be heated to the point of incandescent. Therefore the idea of using this principle was very tempting and attracted attention. In October 1879 Thomas Alva Edison lighted a glass bulb with a carbonized cotton thread filament in a vacuum enclosed space. This was the first electric bulb that glowed for 44 hours before burning out. Edison himself improved the design of the lamp later.

History of electricity.
The Pearl Street power station in New York City was established in 1882 to sell electric energy for incandescent lighting. The system was direct current three-wire, 220/110 V and supplied Edison lamps for a total power requirement of 30 kW The only objective of the early power companies was illumination. However we can easily visualize that this would have resulted in the under utilization of resources.

History of electricity..
The lighting load peaks in the evening and by midnight it reduces drastically. It was then obvious to the power companies that an elaborate and expensive set up would lay idle for a major amount of time. This provided incentive enough to improve upon the design of electric motors to make them commercially viable. As the motors became popular very quickly and were used in many applications. With this the electric energy era really and truly started

Brief History of Great scientists

William Gilbert
The history of electricity begins with William Gilbert a physician who served Queen Elizabeth I of England. Electricity would remain little more than an intellectual curiosity for millennia until 1600 AD, when the English scientist William Gilbert made a careful study of electricity and magnetism , distinguishing the Lodestone effect from static electricity produced by rubbing amber Gilbert raised the interest in the new science greatly. It was Gilbert who coined the expression "electrica" in his famous book.

William Gilbert Contd..

Inspired and educated by William Gilbert several European inventors such as, Otto Von Guericke of Germany, Charles Francois Du Fay of France, and Stephen Gray of England, expanded the knowledge of electricity.

History of electricity.
In 1660, Otto von Guericke invented a machine that produced static electricity, this was the first electric generator. In 1729, Stephen Gray discovered the principle of the conduction of electricity. In 1733, Charles Francois du Fay discovered that electricity comes in two forms which he called resinous (-) and vitreous (+), now called negative and positive.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790

Benjamin Franklin
The formal beginning of electrical engineering goes back to 18th century when Franklin gave the explanation to the cause of thunder and lightning. It was a big mystery at that time. But, the lucid explanation of Franklin gave the first idea of charge flow and its consequence.

 Benjamin Franklin, fathers of American Nation, was born in Boston on Jan 17, 1706, conducted extensive research on electricity in the 18th century. Among his many creations were the lightning roda device which saved countless homes, lives and ships from lightning induced fires He extracted electricity from clouds through kites experiment.

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

His kite experiment demonstrated that lightning is electricity. He was the first to use the terms positive and negative charge. Franklin was one of seventeen children. He quit school at age ten to become a printer. His life is the classic story of a self-made man achieving wealth and fame through determination and intelligence.

Franklin Contd.. In 1752, Franklin proved that lightning and the spark from amber were one and the same thing. This story is a familiar one, in which Franklin fastened an iron spike to a silken kite, which he flew during a thunder storm, while holding the end of the kite string by an iron key. When lightning flashed, a tiny spark jumped from the key to his wrist. The experiment proved Franklin's theory, but was extremely dangerous - he could easily have been killed

Luigi Galvani
There after the next big name was Luigi Galvani an Italian professor of medicine who discovered the so called bio- electricity from his famous experiment using the frog leg. He thought that electricity as one of the sources of life. That created some ideas that electricity is related to life at that time. But, anyway his famous frog leg experiment gave some solid basis to the future researchers to develop the concept of potential difference.

Luigi Galvani In 1786, Luigi Galvani,, found that when the leg of a dead frog was touched by a metal knife, the leg twitched violently. Galvani thought that the muscles of the frog must contain electricity. In 1791, Galvani published his discovery of Bioelectricity, demonstrating that electricity was the medium by which Nerve cells passed signals to the muscles.

Voltas Story

In 1745, Alessandro Volta was born in Italy.

In 1774, he was 29-year-old, who was appointed professor of physics in the Come high school.

In 1779, he received a professorial appointment at University of Pariah.

In 1827, he died, at that time, he was already 82-year-old

Alessandro Volta
1792, another Italian scientist, Alessandro Volta, disagreed. The mystery of the frog-leg experiment was disclosed by Alessandro Volta. He repeated Galvanis frog leg experiment using various types of electrodes. There after he concluded that the spark in the frog-leg experiment is not due to the frog rather it has a different reason

Alessandro Volta He realized that the main factors in Galvani's discovery were the two different metals - the steel knife and the tin plate - upon which the frog was lying. Volta showed that when moisture comes between two different metals, electricity is created. This led him to invent the first electric battery, the voltaic pile, which he made from thin sheets of copper and zinc separated by moist pasteboard.

Alessandro Volta
In 1800, Alessandro Volta of Italy built the voltaic pile and discovered the first practical method of generating electricity. Alessandro Volta had just invented the DC battery in 1800, and it showed great potential for the future. Most scientists were occupied in the study of the applications of DC electricity, and the next step in developing the alternator had to wait for thirty-six years.

Oersted
The strangest and the most effective thing in the history of electrical engineering is the merging of magnetism with the electricity which gives rise to the one of the most fundamental interactions of nature known as the electromagnetic interaction. But it happened quite late in 1820 when Oersted found that the needle of a compass is deflected when kept near a current carrying conductor

Charles-Augustin Coulomb
Though the concept of charge was there before Coulomb there was no formal mathematical theory to explain the concept. So Coulombs theory was regarded as the first mathematical expression that defined the electrical charge in a well defined manner. He also invented the torsion balance and that helped him to calculate the force of interaction between the electrical charges, which is today known as Coulomb force after his name.

Charles-Augustin Coulomb

Coulomb(1736-1806) of France was a pioneer in the field of electricity, magnetism and applied mechanics. In magnetism he determined the quantitative force law, created a theory of magnetism based on molecular polarization, and introduced the idea of demagnetization.

Gauss
Gauss(1777-1855)was a German mathematician and Physical Scientist who contributed significantly to many fields, including geophysics, astronomy and optics. Gauss also gave the alternative forms of mathematical equations to explain electricity and magnetism. Those works of Gauss are known as Gauss theorems.

Andr-Marie Ampre Ampere (France, 1775-1836) was a mathematician, a chemist, a physicist and a philosopher. His father exposed Ampere to a library. Ampere soon discovered and perfected his mathematical talents. Ampere became the professor of physics and chemistry . Between 1820 and 1825, after a series of experiments, Ampere provided factual evidence for his contention that magnetism was electricity in motion and was able to unify the fields of electricity and magnetism on a basic numeric level .

 The unit of the current is named by Andre Marie Ampere.

In 1775, he was born in the town of French Lyon.

In 1787, he was 12-year-old, he had already learned differentiation and integral calculus. In 1822, he discovered Amperes Law.

In 1836, he died in Marseilles, at that time, he was 61-year-old.

Coulombs Story
In 1736, Charles Augustine de Coulomb was born in Angouleme, France.
In 1777, he invented the torsion balance for measuring the force of magnetic and electrical attraction. In 1779, he published the Theory of Simple Machines, an analysis of friction in machinery. In 1806, he died in Paris, France. He had 70year-old.

Georg Simon Ohm

Georg Simon Ohm (Germany, 1789-1854) was a mathematician and a physicist. His father provided him a solid education in mathematics, physics, chemistry and the philosophies of Kant and Fichte. His mathematical talents were soon recognized by the Erlangen professor Langsdorf. Georg Simon matriculated in 1805 and studied 3 semesters at the University of Erlangen. He began to teach mathematics in September 1806. He received his Ph.D on the 25th of October 1811. He began his experiments on electricity and magnetism after 1820

Simon Ohm
It was not known why some energy in the form of potential difference is required to make the charges flow from one end to the other. The explanation came from the German scholar George Simon Ohm. He for the first time introduced the concept of resistance and conductance. In almost all the conductors there is some resistance that opposes the flow of current through them

Simon Ohm
Due to Resistance the charges cannot flow in the conductors without the presence of any energy source in the form of potential difference. Then it was proved that potential difference is very important to keep the charges moving from one end to the other in a conductor. Potential differences can be created in various ways

Sir Humphry Davy

Humphry Davy born in1778 was a British chemist best known for his experiments in electro-chemistry and his invention of a miner's safety lamp. He was apprenticed to a surgeon and aged 19 went to Bristol to study science. He was hired as an assistant lecturer in chemistry at the Royal Institution. There he was a great success, with his lectures soon becoming a draw for fashionable London society.

Sir Humphry Davy

He investigated gases. He prepared and inhaled nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and in 1800 published the results of his work in 'Researches, Chemical and Philosophical'. This made his reputation and the following year he was hired as an assistant lecturer in chemistry at the Royal Institution. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1803 and was awarded its Copley Medal in 1805.

Sir Humphry Davy

Davy was now considered one of Britain's leading scientists and was knighted in 1812. In 1813, Davy set off on a two year trip to Europe. He visited Paris - even though Britain and France were at war - where he collected a medal awarded to him by Napoleon, and identified the element iodine for the first time.

 In the next phase started the real victory of the electrical engineering under the leadership Michel Faraday. He not only gave birth to some interesting theories, but himself invented some fundamental electrical machines like the transformer and electric motors. Faraday was a poor child who had always aims to do something big in the scientific research. He got the opportunity from the then big name Humphrey Davy.

Michel Faraday

Michael Faraday
(1791-1867) an Englishman, made one of the most significant discoveries in the history of electricity: Electromagnetic induction. His pioneering work dealt with how electric currents work. Many inventions would come from his experiments, but they would come fifty to one hundred years later.

Faraday

Maxwell

Faradays law was not accepted by many of his contemporaries because the nature of the lines of forces he described did not sound satisfactory to many at that time, but there was another genius to understand and explain it quite lucidly. He is none other than Maxwell Maxwell combined all the mathematical equations available at that time and helped to systematize the electrical science

Maxwell
He unified the optics as a part of the whole electromagnetism. After Maxwell it was just the matter of time to invent the electrical machines and communication devices to deliver the service to the mankind and to take the civilization in the road of science and technology.

James Maxwell (1831-1879)

a Scottish mathematician translated Faraday's theories into mathematical expressions. Maxwell was one of the finest mathematicians in history. A Maxwell is the electromagnetic unit of magnetic flux, named in his honor. Today he is widely regarded as secondary only to Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein in the world of science

MICHAEL FARADAY Michael Faraday was born on 22 Sept. 1791 in south London and was an English Chemist and Physicist. His family was not well off and Faraday received only a basic formal education. When he was 14, he was apprenticed to a local bookbinder and during the next seven years, educated himself by reading books on a wide range of scientific subjects.

MICHAEL FARADAY
In 1812, Faraday attended four lectures given by the chemist Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. Faraday subsequently wrote to Davy asking for a job as his assistant. Davy turned him down but in 1813 appointed him to the job of chemical assistant at the Royal Institution. When current Could produce magnetism, why magnetism couldnt produce Electricity?

MICHAEL FARADAY
A year later, Faraday was invited to accompany Davy and his wife on an 18 month European tour, taking in France, Switzerland, Italy and Belgium and meeting many influential scientists. On their return in 1815, Faraday continued to work at the Royal Institution, helping with experiments for Davy and other scientists

MICHAEL FARADAY
He gave many fundamental theories which are like the back bone to the electrical sciences. His concept of lines of forces was not accepted by the then scientific community, but was later found to be the fundamental fact of electromagnetism. He first gave the knowledge of electrical power generation and made the first transformer of the world. But it was a bit strange that he himself did not have the idea that his discoveries will some day change the science of the world

Faraday
Faradays laws of electrolysis were beneficial to both the chemists and physicists of that time. That also was a fundamental tool to prove that the electric charges are quantized. He also gave the concept of inductance, which was also developed by another great of that time, Joseph Henry. So the electrical engineering was unstoppable and running really fast to be the most attractive science at that time

Joseph Henry
Joseph Henry (USA, 1797-1878) was a pioneer in the field of electromagnetism. He was born to a Scottish descent. His elementary education was in Albany and Galway, New York. He came from a poor family and was apprenticed to an Albany watchmaker and silversmith. In 1827, he started active research on electricity and magnetism. He independently uncovered the sense of Ohm's law and engaged in impedance matching. In 1832, Henry discovered selfinductance following some experiments.

Znobe Gramme
It was the Belgian-French inventor Znobe Gramme who designed the alternator. In 1867 he improved the AC generator (alternator) making it a more practical device for the production of alternating current; two years later he improved the DC dynamo In 1871 Gramme and his associate Hippolyte Fontaine opened a factory, and the electrical generating equipment they produced marked a turning point, for it is upon their work that the electrical industry was established.

Znobe Gramme
In 1873 Gramme and Fontaine accidentally discovered that the device was reversible and spin when connected to any DC power supply. The Gramme machine was the first usefully powerful electric motor that was successful industrially. Before Gramme's inventions, electric motors attained only low power and were mainly used as toys .

Nikola Tesla
In 1893, Nikola Tesla made the first public demonstration of radio communication. Addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the National Electric Light Association, he described and demonstrated in detail the principles of radio communication.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

He was born of Serbian parents. He envisioned a world without poles and power lines. Referred to as the greatest inventive genius of all time. Tesla's system triumphed to make possible the first large-scale harnessing of Niagara Falls with the first hydroelectric plant in the United States in 1886 to town of Buffalo.

Nikola Tesla
Tesla began working with Edison and spent a year in the futile attempt to convince Edison of the advantages of AC. Because alternators did not require the slip rings and commutators which caused arcing in the DC dynamos. In addition, alternators produced voltages that could be increased with a transformer and carried great distances with high tension wires.

Tesla contd..
But one of Edison contemporaries Nikola Tesla had something different in his mind. He used his brain to make AC popular. He invented the induction motor and proved that AC can be used more efficiently than DC When Tesla obtained a patent for his electric motor in 1888, he sold the rights to George Westinghouse.

Nikola Tesla
Ironically, Westinghouse underbid Edison for the contract to provide electricity at the Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He immediately contacted Tesla, who manufactured a polyphase (two-phase) AC system and made this first electrical exposition in history a spectacular success. By 1895 the water power of Niagara Falls was being used to generate alternating current, and this led to an increasing preference for alternating current.

Thomas Alva Edison

The first achievement after Maxwells theory was the invention of the electric bulbs by another genius Thomas Edison. He lighted the world by his electric bulbs. He invented numerous electrical devices and contributed the most to the consumer electrics. He was mainly using DC and was the greatest advocate of the use of DC

Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was both a scientist and an inventor. Born in 1847, Edison would see tremendous change take place in his lifetime. He was also to be responsible for making many of those changes occur. When Edison was born, society still thought of electricity as a novelty, a fad. By the time he died, entire cities were lit by electricity. Much of the credit for that progress goes to Edison. In his lifetime, Edison patented 1,093 inventions.

Thomas Alva Edison

Another big thing had happened at the same time while Edison was trying to light an electric bulb. That was the Edison effect or the thermo ionic effect. Edison found that in a closed environment even without the physical contact of wires there exist a small current through them when they are heated to a sufficiently high temperature.

George Westinghouse
George Westinghouse, Jr. ( 1846 1914) was an American engineer and entrepreneur who invented the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry. He was also one of Edisons rivals in the early implementation of the American electricity system. He took out more than 400 patents first time.

Westinghouse contd..
Westinghouse also became a pioneer in the use of alternating current for electric power distribution. In 1886, he founded the Westinghouse Electrical Company, attracting Nikola Tesla to work with him. Nine year later, Westinghouse harnessed the power of the Niagara Falls to generate successfully enough electricity for the town of Buffalo.

19th century
While it had been the early 19th century that had seen rapid progress in electrical science. The late 19th century would see the greatest progress in electrical engineering. The history of electronics is a story of the twentieth century and three key components, the vacuum tube, the transistor, and the integrated circuit played major role in the development of electronics

Graham Bell
By the same time there was a great need to reduce the distance of the various parts of the world by means of some communication technology. Alexandra Graham Bell opened the account by inventing the telephone. At around the same time the telegraphic communication using the Morse code was very popular. That was even used for the transatlantic communications

Hertz
But the main breakthrough, which mesmerized the communication science, came when the German physicist Henry Hertz discovered the radio waves and also gave the methods to transmit and detect them. Then started a new chapter in the communication technology area. Not far than a decade after that the Russian scientist Popov and the Italian electrical engineer Marconi invented the radio and used antennas for radio communications.

Marconi
Marconis radio needs some good detectors for receiving incoming radio waves. For that reason a good rectifier was needed which can convert the AC into DC. Someone brings the breakthrough when all the great minds are in need. That happened again. The then famous English physicist Fleming found an alternative to the DC production. He invented the first vacuum tube using the principle known as Edison Effect.

JOHN AMBROSE FLEMING

Born on 29 November 1849 was an English electrical engineer and physicist. He is known for inventing the first thermionic valve or vacuum tube, the diode, then called the kenotron in 1904. He is also famous for the left hand rule (for electric motors). He studied in University college, London and Cambridge university

LEE DE FOREST
Just after two years of Flemings diode, Forest in the US invented another similar device which was named as triode, because it had three electrodes. Besides the anode and cathode there was an extra electrode known as grid. The grid was controlling the flow of charges from the anode to the cathode. It was wonderful that triode had the characteristics of an amplifier. So it helped a lot in the growth of the communication at that time.

ARMSTONG
Was born in New York City in 1890. He studied at Columbia University and an American electrical engineer and inventor. He invented the regenerative circuit while he was an undergraduate and patented it in 1914, followed by the super-regenerative circuit in 1922, and the superheterodyne receiver in 1918. Armstrong was also the inventor of modern frequency modulation (FM) radio transmission.

ARMSTRONG
He has been called the most prolific and influential inventor in radio history. He held 42 patents and received numerous awards including the first IEEE Medal of Honor, the French Legion of Honor, the 1941 Franklin Medal and the 1942 Edision Medal. He is a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the International Telecom unions roaster of great inventors.

 A revolution in the whole science came when Einstein proposed his historic theory of relativity. But no one was ready to accept his theory at that time. But the work of J J Thomson and Rutherford opened the secrets of the atoms and its subparticles. Max Plank and Niels Bohr provided the further explanation to the atomic theory

Albert Einstein

Einstein
Einstein himself came with his big version known as the general theory of relativity. He was not bothered about the critics. He himself saved the corpuscular theory of light from death and opened the road to the quantum theory. It was not far to bring the quantum theory into light after Einsteins Nobel winning photo-electric effect.

Fermi-Dirac
Louis De Broglie, Heisenberg, Schrdinger and Dirac proved the reality of the quantum theory. So the research in the scientific community got a great speed.

At that time the physics of solids were also on its way to bloom. Many theories like the Fermi-Dirac equations had opened the wide scale research on the solids

 In Bell labs the scientists were desperately looking for some alternative to the vacuum diodes and triodes for the communication technology. After the end of the horrible WW2 the whole world took some rest. But the scientific community who were working in the war forcefully or by the motivation of the countrys top leaders did not rest. Rather they started their original intended works at their previous work places.

Effect Electronics

Effect Electronics
The research group in the Bell Labs found that the existing technology and the devices for better communication were not available at that time. So their main concern was to find some alternative for the existing amplifiers. The valve amplifiers were the main obstacle in the road of progress. So, they looked for some solid state devices. Bell labs too took some leading in the development of the communication sciences.

Effect Electronics
The findings of Russell Ohl had confirmed that the pure silicon when doped with some impurities of tri and pentavalent materials can be used as two layers of a PN junction diode. They had some foresights that, the junction phenomenon may be used for the building of a new amplifier. The group led by William Shockley was investigating these facts. Other team members were Morgan, Bardeen, Brattain, Gibney, Moore and Pearson.

Effect Electronics
Fortune favors the brave. The auspicious day came and the science started growing at an exponential rate there after. Thanks to the genius of the three young scientists of the Bell labs. They found a new concept known as Transistor effect. It was for the first time discovered by Bardeen and Brattain, who thought that the effects are mainly due to some surface phenomenon . That is known as point contact transistor.

Effect Electronics
But Shockley was not dormant. He too was working hard on something different, which is today known as n-p-n transistor. He gave the theory that the transistor effect was due to some bulk phenomenon. After that he worked hard on the semiconductor theories and gave a satisfactory explanation to the transistor effect. His book Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors is a popular book today as well. There were some other problems which were barriers in the production of transistors in large scale.

Effect Electronics
The real electronics what it is called today was actually started after the discovery of the transistor effect. Transistor opened the road for the electronics and there after electronics got its independent identity in electrical engineering. More importantly it opened the road for the computing world. Computers of various types started hitting the market and the research works got a boost.

Effect Electronics
Some other problems were also there like the assembling of the electronic components on a single mother board. It was worsened when the metallic contacts cross each other and crowded the mother board. Jack Kilby in Texas Instruments found a very nice solution. He suggested to throw away all the wires and tried to connect the resistors, capacitors and transistors on the same piece of wafer internally.

 Surprisingly his ideas worked and gave birth to the Integrated Circuit industries. At around the same time Shockley had left Bell Labs and started his own company in California, whose name was Shockley Semiconductor. Some other brilliant young researchers also joined his company there. Among them who are famous today are Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Jean Hoerni. Robert Noyce also did many contributions to the IC technology by joining the Fairchild Company and the Fairchild Semiconductor was born

Effect Electronics

Effect Electronics
By the efforts of both Noyce and Kilby the IC industry became very popular and looked forward for its next successor, the microprocessor. Another history was being made in the USSR at the same time. The first artificial satellite Sputnik was sent to the space. There was a big demand for the better electronic components for the control and performance of the satellite and other electrical devices like the big motors and generators

Effect of Electonics
Huge demand of transistors and ICs revolutionized the electronics industry at that time. A new type of transistor was invented in early sixties, which is known as MOSFET. MOSFET is slower than the junction transistor but it is smaller, cheaper and consumes less power.

Effect of Electronics
In 1965 Gordon Moore came out with an awesome paper called Cramming more Components onto Integrated Circuits. In that paper he described that the number of transistors used on a single chip of silicon will grow exponentially. In 1968 Robert Noyce and Moore left Fairchild to start Intel, both of whom were very popular already in the field of microelectronics. In 1971 their company invented the first microprocessor well known as 4004 having 2300 transistors on one silicon chip

Effect of Electronics
VLSI-The credit mainly goes to the young engineer Ted Hoff. While working on a Japanese project he found some problems with integrated circuits and planned to have even larger integrated circuits which can have the whole computer on a single chip. That microprocessor led the way to the successors like the 8080, 8085, 80486, Pentium series and the most modern processors like the Xeon too.

Effect of electronics
VLSI consists of thousands of circuits with onand-off switches or gates between them on a single chip. Microcomputers, medical equipment, video cameras, and communication satellites are only examples of devices made possible by integrated circuits.

Computers
The computers were another main attraction at that time. Due to the world wars there was a big need of computers for war related tasks like code breaking. During the first and second world war some computers were made for this purpose. But they were not that efficient as many of them were using decimal systems and all the prime components were made up of vacuum tubes.

Computers
One of the most important and admirable creation of the 20th century scientists was the invention of computer. Thats why many say that 20th century is the century of computers. The needs of computers were at peak during the WWII. In Britain the German-code breaking project was being done by Colossus, one of the early computers

Computers
At the same time another general purpose programmable computer was being used in Harvard University which was built with help of IBM. The main aim was to break the security codes of the enemy. Keeping this in mind the ENIAC was invented in the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. It was a huge computer of 30 tonnes, fairly fast and having many vacuum diodes and triodes in the operation. It had covered some rooms and many of its parts were mechanical

Computers
The discovery of the transistor effect gave birth to new ideas for new computers. They are popularly known as second generation computers. The efforts of Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce gave birth to the third generation computers, which used the ICs and the companies like IBM started the mainframe machines having more storage capacity and faster speed. After the invention of the first microprocessor 4004 in 1971 in Intel everyone in the microelectronic industries thought that microprocessors can help in the rapid growth of computers

Computers
They started many new projects in inventing new microprocessors and the forth generation of computers started. The first personal computer built was the Altair 8800 of MITS which came around 1975. At the same time Apple computer was started and the first Apple machines hit the market in 1976. Many companies now got ready to provide computers at the household level. Among them the front runners were IBM and Apple

Computers
In parallel to the development in the hardware the software industry was also blooming. There were many operating systems and computer languages at the starting of 70s. The most popular languages were FORTRAN, COBOL and PASCAL etc. But the C language by Dennis Ritchie found to be very helpful in system programming. Even today C has that dominance. In the early eighties the most popular OOP technology was started with the birth of C++.

 At the end of the nineties the new technologies like the Java helped a lot in the development of the web. Then the scenario was stolen by software companies like the Microsoft and Oracle who made the computing very popular and the computers no more remained a tool of the scientific community.

Computers

Computers
At the same time there was a huge demand for the time limited tasks, which were nearly impossible by the general computers. So the faster computers or the supercomputers were in the mind of many scientists. Among them the front runner was Seymour Cray, who started the supercomputer industry form his Cray series. Unlike the general computers the super computers were using a large number of parallel processors and high speed logics.

 Tim Berners Lee, researcher, thought of the interconnection of the computers to form a common network. He tried it using the existing protocols like the http, ftp, and DNS etc. In addition to that he added a new framework which is now popularly known as WWW or the World Wide Web. The internet was born. The whole knowledge banks of the world, the whole information regarding anything are just now clicks away. It became possible due to great person Tim berners-Lee.

WWW-INTERNET-Tim Berners-Lee

Television- John logie Baird

The invention of the television was a miraculous thing for the mankind. It was revolution in both communication technology and also for the world media. The distances between the continents did not seem to be far enough. People were able to watch the distant things from their home. The entertainment industry got new life. The popular artists through out the world become well known and got a huge recognition

John logie Baird

The credit goes to the British engineer John Logie Baird who followed the foot prints of Marconi and tried to send the images in the same way as the speech. After a long experiment he found that a series of static pictures if sent within a small interval of time in between them, seem to be moving. This move was successful after a number of trails.

Engineers role
These scientists have worked for 25 hours a day sacrificing their social life and some of them lost their lives because of their own experiments. Because of their sacrifice, self less effort , we are happy and enjoying comforts. Almost all modern activities run on electricity. Entire world will stall if power failure occurs and we cannot imagine any activity without electricity

Power loss
It is your turn to do research on power loss. Dr. Abdul Kalam the then president of India addressed the need to reduce the power loss. If we can save 16% loss we could save 25600 MW of power on installed capacity of 1,57,000 MW by the end of 2012.

10 Great Scientists who were Killed by Their Own Experiments

These are the great people whose discoveries have changed the world but they were unfortunate as they died or injured themselves while performing their experiments. The advances they have made to science are incredible and many of them opened the doors for some of mans greatest discoveries and inventions.

1. Sir David Brewster

Sir David was a Scottish scientist, and a writer. Optics and light polarization was the field of his interest. Optics is a field requiring excellent vision. In 1831, Sir David performed a chemical experiment which almost blinded him. He remained affected with eye troubles until his death. Sir David is well known as the inventor of the kaleidoscope a toy that gives joy to millions of children over the years.

2. Alexander Bogdanov
Alexander Bogdanov was a Russian physician, philosopher, economist, and a science fiction writer. In 1924, he started experiments with blood transfusion. After performing 11 transfusions himself, he stated that he had improved his eye sight. Unfortunately, Bogdanov forgot to test the health of the blood of the donor which he was using. In 1928, Bogdanov took a transfusion of blood infected with malaria and tuberculosis which made him died shortly.

3. Karl Scheele
Scheele was a pharmaceutical chemist and had discovered many chemical elements. The most notable of his discoveries were oxygen, molybdenum, tungsten, manganese and chlorine. Scheele had the habit of taste testing his discoveries and managed to survive his tastetest of hydrogen cyanide. But he was unfortunate while tasting mercury and died from the symptoms of mercury poisoning.

4. Elizabeth Ascheim
Elizabeth Ascheim and her husband Woolf both were very much exited about the new discovery of Rntgen x-rays. she bought an xray machine which was the first x-ray lab in San Francisco. She and Woolf spent some years in experimenting with the machine. Unfortunately, they did not realize the consequences of their lack of protection to xrays and Elizabeth died of an extremely widespread and violent cancer

 Jean Francois was a teacher of chemistry and physics. In 1783, he witnessed the worlds first balloon flight that created a passion in him for flight. He traveled at an altitude of 3,000 feet using a hot air balloon. Later, De Rozier planned a crossing of the English Channel from France to England. He took the flight but unfortunately after reaching 1,500 feet in a combined hot air and gas balloon, the balloon deflated and made him to fall to his death.

5. Jean Francois De Rozier

6. Sir Humphry Davy

Sir Humphry Davy was a brilliant British chemist and inventor. He was so much passionate about chemistry. He had a habit of inhaling various gases while dealing with them. Luckily this habit led to his discovery of anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide. But, unfortunately, this same habit led to him nearly killing himself on many occasions. The frequent poisonings of gases made him useless for the remaining two decades of his life. He had also damaged his eyes.

7. Michael Faraday
After the injury of a brilliant British chemist Sir Humphrey Davys eyes, Faraday became an trainee to him. He made efforts to improve Davys methods of electrolysis and to make useful discoveries in the field of electro-magnetics. Unfortunately, Faraday also suffered damage to his eyes in a nitrogen chloride explosion. He spent the rest of his life suffering with chronic chemical poisoning.

8. Galileo
Galileo also referred to as the father of modern physics. His work on the refinement of the telescope was brilliant. It opened up the doors of the universe for future generations. But it also damaged his eyesight. He was fascinated with the sun and spent many hours staring at it. As a result of which, he got extreme damage to his retinas. This was the most likely cause of his near blindness in the last four years of his life.

9. Louis Slotin
Slotin worked on the US project to design the first nuclear bomb. While performing experiments for his project, he accidentally dropped a sphere of beryllium on a second sphere causing a prompt critical and affected by radiation. Slotin was rushed to hospital where he died nine days later. The amount of radiation he exposed to was equivalent to standing 4800 feet away from an atomic bomb explosion.

10. Marie Curie

Curie along with her husband Pierre discovered radium in 1898. She spent rest of her life performing radiation research and studying radiation therapy. Her constant exposure to radiation led to her contracting leukemia and due to which she died in 1934. Curie is the first and only person who received two Nobel prizes in science in two different fields, chemistry and physics.

Scientists and inventions

Arc Lamp, 1879. Inventor : C.F. Brush (U.S.) (1849-1929). Cleveland, Ohio Electric Battery, 1800. Inventor : Volta (Italian) Electric Fan, 1882. Inventor : Wheeler (USA).

Scientists and inventions

Electric Flat Iron, 1882. Inventor : H.W. Seeley (U.S.), New York City. Electric Generation (Static), 1660. Inventor : Otto von Gueriche (Germany). Electric Lamp, 1879. Inventor : Thomas Alva Edison (U.S.) (18471931). First practical demonstration

Scientists and inventions

Electric Motor (DC), 1873. Inventor : Zenobe Gramme (Belgium) (1826-1901). Exhibited in Vienna. Electric Motor (AC), 1888. Inventor : Nikola Tesla (U.S.) (1856-1943 Electromagnetic Induction, 1831. Inventor : Michael Faraday (Great Britain); discovered previously, but not published, by Joseph Henry (U S).

Scientists and inventions

Gramophone, 1878. Inventor : Thomas Edison (USA) Lightning Conductor, 1752. Inventor : Benjamin Franklin (U.S.) (1706-90), Philadelphia.

Scientists and inventions

Microphone, 1876. Inventor : Alexander Graham Bell (U.S.) (1847-1922). Name coined 1878 by David Hughes. Transformer (induction coil), 1842. Inventor : William Stanley, Jr. (U.S) Transistor, 1948. Inventors : John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain (U.S). Researched at Bell Telephone Laboratories. First application for a patent was by Dr Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in Canada in October 1925.