Free Book Download: Much Ado About Almost Nothing

Much Ado About Almost Nothing

A History of Electricity and Electronics

2007, Hans Camenzind

This is the story of the electron. 3,000 years ago the tiny particle caused nothing but fear and superstition whenever it appeared. Its perception by man changed slowly as a few heretics dared to investigate. Then man discovered the "Leyden Jar", a gadget which produced a vicious electrical shock, to the amusement of the experimenters and kings.

Discover a new side of Benjamin Franklin as an unlikely scientist in an unlikely place, who stunned the European establishment by discovering fundamental principles and thus opened the field to other people. People like Luigi Galvani (who drew the wrong conclusions), Alessandro Volta (who corrected him and ruined his life), André Ampere, an emotional mathematician, and Georg Ohm, who discovered the basic law of electricity but presented it so badly that he was ignored.

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http://www.historyofelectronics.com/