Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, has appeared in popular culture
as a character in novels, films, musicals, comics, and video games. His
experiment, using a kite, to prove that lightning is a form of
electricity has been an especially popular aspect of his biography in
fictional depictions.
Franklin, a 2024 Apple TV+ miniseries with Michael Douglas
as Franklin. It depicts the eight years Franklin spent in France
attempting to convince King Louis XVI to support the American
Revolutionary War.
As a supporting figure
Film, television, and theater
Franklin appears in Janice Meredith (1924), played by Lee Beggs.
Franklin appears in Lloyd's of London (1936), played by Thomas Pogue.
Franklin appears in several episodes of Histeria! (1998-2000), voiced by actor Billy West similarly to Jay Leno. He is frequently shown flying his kite in a lightning storm and being electrocuted as a running gag.
"It's a feeling of freedom, of seein' the light It's Ben Franklin with a key and a kite!"
Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda
wrote a song intended for the musical, "Ben Franklin's Song", that was
entirely about Franklin, but it was not included in the finished
production. In 2017, it was recorded and released by The Decemberists.
Franklin appears in the 2024 drama film Here, played by Keith Bartlett.
The Walt Disney cartoon Ben and Me (1953), based on the book by Robert Lawson, counterfactually explains that Franklin's achievements were actually the ideas of a mouse named Amos.
The 2004 film National Treasure has the main characters trying to collect clues left by Franklin to discover a treasure that he hid.
Franklin has been portrayed in several works of fiction, such as The Fairly OddParents, as having lightning-and-kite-based superpowers akin to those of Storm from X-Men.
The anime Code Geass
takes place in an alternate universe where Great Britain is known as
the Holy Britannian Empire. Franklin, who was responsible with appealing
to France for aid in the American war for independence, is instead
bribed by the Duke of Britannia with promises of territories in the
colonies and becomes an Earl. As a result, George Washington is killed during the Siege of Yorktown and the American movement for independence fails.
In Bentley Little's short story The Washingtonians and the Masters of Horror
episode of the same name, Franklin was revealed to have been a
composite of the accomplishments of several different people as opposed
to one real individual.
In Assassin's Creed III, Benjamin Franklin appears as a non-playable character. The player has the optional side-quest of retrieving lost pages from Poor Richard's Almanack
for Ben. Also, he is present in the cutaway scenes involving the
raising of George Washington to leader of the Continental Army and the
signing of the Declaration of Independence. In Assassin's Creed: Rogue, he has a small role as inventor and American ambassador in Paris.
In Beyond the Mask,
Benjamin Franklin (Alan Madlane) is a significant character who, along
with the protagonist Will(iam) Reynolds (Andrew Cheney), thwarts a plot
by the East India Company, headed by John Rhys Davies, to disrupt the signing of the Declaration of Independence with a bomb.
Benjamin Franklin's ghost appears in several Marvel comics as a companion to the Mercenary Deadpool. In the comic, Franklin found a way to harness the power of electricity to turn himself into a ghost.
Also in Marvel Comics, Dr. Strange's girlfriend Clea was seduced by a wizard (Stygyro) disguised as Ben Franklin during a time travel story arc. The "real" Ben Franklin made an appearance at the end of the story.
In the science fiction/alternate history short story "Existential
Trips" by William Bevill, Benjamin Franklin appears, and is referenced
throughout, as the inventor of a secret society of ghosts who fight
crime in time and other dimensions of space, using items from Franklin
including a stove and spectacles. Franklin's agents include Beatnik
writers Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.
Time-travel scenarios
The time-travel card game Early American Chrononauts includes a card called Franklin's Kite which players can symbolically acquire from the year 1752.
In an episode of The Flintstones
titled "The Time Machine" (season 5, episode 18, original airdate
January 15, 1965), the Flintstones and the Rubbles travel by time
machine to various periods in the future (from their perspective). One
of those stops is in Philadelphia, where they meet Benjamin Franklin as
he is conducting his kite-and-key experiment. When Wilma says something Franklin deems worthy of writing down, he asks Fred to hold the kite string. Naturally, the lightning picks that moment to strike the kite, electrifying Fred. In turn, Barney, Betty,
and Wilma try to separate Fred from the kite string, only to be
electrified themselves. "So that's how electricity works, eh?" says
Franklin. "I'd better write this down."
In season 3 of Bewitched, Aunt Clara accidentally brings him forward in time to repair a broken electrical lamp.
The science-fiction TV show Voyagers! had the main characters helping Franklin fly his kite in one episode and save his mother from a fictionalized Salem witch trial in the next episode.
The children's novelQwerty Stevens: Stuck in Time with Benjamin Franklin has the main characters using their time machine to bring Franklin into modern times and then to travel back with him to 1776.
In a 2004 sketch on the TV show MADtv, Franklin, played by Paul Vogt, sends Samuel Adams, played by Josh Meyers, to the future in a time machine he made from a rolltop desk. Franklin wanted to know if the American Revolution was a success, but gets frustrated when Adams only comes back to tell him that Samuel Adams Beer is a success. The time machine also brings back a man named Jerry, played by Ike Barinholtz, who is little help to Franklin.
A Saul of the Mole Men episode titled "Poor Clancy's Almanack" uses Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson
to explain the true mainstream conflict while revealing Clancy Burrows'
past. Both Franklin and Jefferson appear again in the spin-off Young Person's Guide to History. Dana Snyder portrayed Franklin in both series.
In the webcomic Spinnerette, Franklin is pulled through time
by a machine into present day. Because the timeline dictated he died in
1790, he was rendered effectively invulnerable to danger by way of
preternatural luck in order to avoid temporal paradoxes. He took up
hero-work and became a leading member of the American Superhero
Association.
In the animated series Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot,
the titular characters secure Franklin's aid to power a damaged time
machine that has brought them to colonial America on the first night of
the Revolutionary War.
Though he doesn't appear, Franklin is referred to in the Ben 10: Omniverse
series finale "A New Dawn", in which he is revealed to have crafted
various tools for George Washington's use as part of a secret society
predating the series' Plumbers, a galactic law enforcement division that
deals with various alien and supernatural threats.
A character clearly based on Franklin appears in Norm Novitsky's time-traveling film, In Search of Liberty, which was released in 2017.
In the Kids' TV show The Fairly OddParents, Franklin appears as a side character in some episodes.
People compared to Franklin
Manuel Torres,
the first Colombian ambassador to the United States, was called "the
Franklin of the southern world" by newspapers on his death in 1828. He
was a revolutionary, scholar and diplomat.
A Benjamin Franklin impersonator appears as a playable character in the video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2. One of the character's special moves replicates the kite experiment.
The mascot of the Philadelphia 76ersNBA team is a dog named Franklin, after Benjamin Franklin. An alternate logo for the team depicts Franklin playing basketball.
In the Cartoon Network comedy series Mad, Franklin appears as central character in some episodes.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 Gothic novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapientcreature
in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the
story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously
in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in
the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821.
Shelley travelled through Europe in 1815, moving along the river Rhine in Germany, and stopping in Gernsheim, 17 kilometres (11 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where, about a century earlier, Johann Konrad Dippel, an alchemist, had engaged in experiments. She then journeyed to the region of Geneva, Switzerland, where much of the story takes place. Galvanism and occult ideas were topics of conversation for her companions, particularly for her lover and future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley.
In 1816, Mary, Percy, John Polidori, and Lord Byron had a competition to see who wrote the best horror story.
After thinking for days, Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein after imagining a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made.
Frankenstein is one of the most well-known works of English literature. Infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic
movement, it has had a considerable influence on literature and on
popular culture, spawning a complete genre of horror stories, films, and
plays. Since the publication of the novel, the name "Frankenstein" has
often been used, erroneously, to refer to the monster, rather than to his creator/father.
Summary
Captain Walton introductory narrative
Frankenstein is a frame story written in epistolary form.
Set in the 18th century, it documents a fictional correspondence
between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville.
Robert Walton is a failed writer who sets out to explore the North Pole
in hopes of expanding scientific knowledge. After departing from Archangel, the ship is trapped by pack ice on the journey across the Arctic Ocean. During this time, the crew spots a dog sled
driven by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the ice splits apart,
freeing the ship, and the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man
named Victor Frankenstein from a drifting ice floe.
Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by
Walton's crew. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion; he sees
in Walton the same obsession that has destroyed him and recounts a
story of his life's miseries to Walton as a warning. The recounted story
serves as the frame for Frankenstein's narrative.
Victor Frankenstein's narrative
Victor begins by telling of his childhood. Born in Naples, Italy, into a wealthy Genevan
family, Victor and his younger brothers, Ernest and William, are sons
of Alphonse Frankenstein and the former Caroline Beaufort. From a young
age, Victor has a strong desire to understand the world. He is obsessed
with studying theories of alchemists,
though when he is older he realizes that such theories are considerably
outdated. When Victor is five years old, his parents adopt Elizabeth Lavenza
(the orphaned daughter of an expropriated Italian nobleman) whom Victor
plans to marry. Victor's parents later take in another child, Justine
Moritz, who becomes William's nanny.
Weeks before he leaves for the University of Ingolstadt in Germany, his mother dies of scarlet fever; Victor buries himself in his experiments to deal with the grief. At the university, he excels at chemistry
and other sciences, soon developing a secret technique to impart life
to non-living matter. He undertakes the creation of a humanoid, but due
to the difficulty in replicating the minute parts of the human body,
Victor makes the Creature tall, about 8 feet (2.4 m) in height, and proportionally large. Victor works at gathering the vital organs by pilfering charnel houses, mortuaries and by entrapping and vivisecting
feral animals. Despite Victor selecting its features to be beautiful,
upon animation the Creature is instead hideous, with dull and watery
yellow eyes and yellow skin that barely conceals the muscles and blood
vessels underneath. Repulsed by his work, Victor flees. While wandering
the streets the next day, he meets his childhood friend, Henry Clerval,
and takes Clerval back to his apartment, fearful of Clerval's reaction
if he sees the monster. However, when Victor returns to his laboratory,
the Creature is gone.
Victor falls ill from the experience and is nursed back to health
by Clerval. After recovering he forgets about the Creature and goes
into Clerval's study of Oriental languages, which he considers the
happiest time of his academic career. This is cut short when Victor
receives a letter from his father notifying him of the murder of his
brother William. Near Geneva, Victor sees a large figure and becomes
convinced that his creation is responsible. Justine Moritz, William's
nanny, is convicted of the crime after William's locket, which contained
a miniature portrait of Caroline, is found in her pocket. Victor knows
that no one will believe him if he testifies that it was the doing of
the Creature; Justine is hanged. Ravaged by grief and guilt, Victor
takes up mountain climbing in the Alps. While hiking through Mont Blanc's Mer de Glace, he is suddenly approached by the Creature, who insists that Victor hear his tale.
The Creature's narrative
Intelligent
and articulate, the Creature relates his first days of life, living
alone in the wilderness. He found that people were afraid of him and
hated him due to his appearance, which led him to fear and hide from
them. While living in an abandoned structure connected to a cottage, he
grew fond of the poor family living there and discreetly collected
firewood for them, cleared snow away from their path, and performed
other tasks to help them. Secretly living next to the cottage for
months, the Creature learned that the son was going to marry a Turkish
woman whom he was teaching his native language, which the Creature
listened in on the lessons and taught himself to speak and write. The
Creature also taught himself to read after discovering a lost satchel of
books in the woods. When he saw his reflection in a pool, he realized
his appearance was hideous, and it horrified him as much as it horrified
normal humans. As he continued to learn of the family's plight, he grew
increasingly attached to them, and eventually he approached the family
in hopes of becoming their friend, entering the house while only the
blind father was present. The two conversed, but on the return of the
others, the rest of them were frightened. The blind man's son attacked
him and the Creature fled the house. The next day, the family left their
home out of fear that he would return. Witnessing this, the monster
renounced any hope of being accepted by humanity, and vowed to get his
revenge. Although he hated his creator for abandoning him, he decided to
travel to Geneva
to find him because he believed that Victor was the only person with a
responsibility to help him. On the journey, he rescued a child who had
fallen into a river, but her father, believing that the Creature
intended to harm them, shot him in the shoulder. The Creature then swore
revenge against all humans. He travelled to Geneva using details from a
combination of Victor's journal and geography lessons gleaned from the
family. When in Switzerland he chanced upon William, who was at first
frightened, and the Creature held his wrist to calm him. When the boy
screamed his full name and that he had powerful parents, this sparked
the creature into killing the boy to spite Victor. The Creature then
took William's locket and placed it into the dress of Justine,
incriminating her as the murderer.
The Creature demands that Victor create a female companion like
himself. He argues that as a living being, he has a right to happiness.
The Creature promises that he and his mate will vanish into the South American
wilderness, never to reappear, if Victor grants his request. Should
Victor refuse, the Creature threatens to kill Victor's remaining friends
and loved ones and not stop until he completely ruins him. Fearing for
his family, Victor reluctantly agrees. The Creature says he will watch
over Victor's progress.
Victor Frankenstein's narrative resumes
Clerval accompanies Victor to England, but they separate, at Victor's insistence, at Perth, in Scotland. Travelling to Orkney
to build the second creature, Victor suspects that the Creature is
following him. As he works on the new creature, he is plagued by
premonitions of disaster. He fears that the female will hate the
Creature - or worse still - be even more evil than he is. Even more
worrying to him is the idea that creating the second creature might lead
to the creation of a race of beings
just as strong as the monster who could plague humanity. He tears apart
the unfinished female creature after he sees the Creature, who had
indeed followed Victor, watching through a window. The Creature
immediately bursts through the door to confront Victor and demands he
repair his destruction and resume work, but Victor refuses. The Creature
leaves, but gives a final threat: "I will be with you on your wedding
night." Victor interprets this as a threat upon his life, believing that
the Creature will kill him after he finally becomes happy.
Victor sails out to sea to dispose of his instruments, and falls
asleep in the boat. He awakens some time later, and is unable to return
to shore due to a change in the wind, and falls unconscious, drifting to
Ireland. When Victor awakens, he is arrested for murder. Despite the
severity of the charges, he is met with sympathy from the magistrate in charge of the trial, which suggests that the case is crumbling. Victor is acquitted when eyewitness testimony
confirms that he was in Orkney at the time the murder took place.
However, when shown the murder victim, Victor is horrified to see it was
Henry Clerval, whom the Creature strangled as part of his promise to
kill all his friends and family. Victor suffers another mental breakdown
and after recovering, he returns home with his father, who has restored
to Elizabeth some of her father's fortune. His father does not know of
the cause behind the murders of William and Henry, but senses a curse
and begs Victor to honour his mother's last wish that Victor marry
Elizabeth.
In Geneva, Victor is about to marry Elizabeth and prepares to
fight the Creature to the death, arming himself with pistols and a
dagger. The night following their wedding, Victor asks Elizabeth to stay
in her room while he looks for "the fiend". While Victor searches the
house and grounds, the Creature strangles Elizabeth. From the window,
Victor sees the Creature, who tauntingly points at Elizabeth's corpse;
Victor tries to shoot him, but the Creature escapes. Victor's father,
weakened by age and by the death of Elizabeth, dies a few days later.
Seeking revenge, Victor pursues the Creature across Europe and Russia,
though his adversary stays one step ahead of him at all times.
Eventually, the chase leads to the Arctic Ocean and then on towards the
North Pole, and Victor reaches a point where he is within a mile of the
Creature, but he collapses from exhaustion and hypothermia
before he can find his quarry, allowing the Creature to escape.
Eventually the ice around Victor's sledge breaks apart, and the
resultant ice floe comes within range of Walton's ship.
Captain Walton's conclusion
At
the end of Victor's narrative, Captain Walton resumes telling the
story. A few days after the Creature vanishes, the ship is trapped by
pack ice for a second time, and several crewmen die in the cold before
the rest of Walton's crew insists on returning south once it is freed.
Upon hearing the crew's demands, Victor is angered and, despite his
condition, gives a powerful speech to them. He reminds them of why they
chose to join the expedition and that it is hardship and danger, not
comfort, that defines a glorious undertaking such as theirs. He urges
them to be men, not cowards. However, although the speech makes an
impression on the crew, it is not enough to change their minds. Knowing
that continuing on would surely result in mutiny,
Walton agrees to abandon the voyage and return home, but Victor,
despite his condition, declares that he will continue to hunt the
Creature, and is adamant that he must be killed.
Victor dies shortly thereafter, telling Walton, in his last
words, to seek "happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition" but then
refuting this, speculating that some other scientist might succeed where
he has failed. Walton discovers the Creature on his ship, mourning
over Victor's body. The Creature tells Walton that Victor's death has
not brought him peace; rather, his crimes have made him even more
miserable than Victor ever was. The Creature vows to burn himself on a funeral pyre
so that no one else will ever know of his existence. Walton watches as
the Creature drifts away on an ice raft, never to be seen again.
Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died from infection eleven days after giving birth to her. Shelley grew close to her father, William Godwin,
having never known her mother. Godwin hired a nurse, who briefly cared
for her and her half sister, before marrying his second wife Mary Jane Clairmont,
who did not like the close bond between Shelley and her father. The
resulting friction caused Godwin to favour his other children.
Shelley's father was a famous author of the time, and her
education was of great importance to him, although it was not formal.
Shelley grew up surrounded by her father's friends, writers, and persons
of political importance, who often gathered at the family home. This
inspired her authorship at an early age. Mary, at the age of sixteen,
met Percy Bysshe Shelley (who later became her husband) while he was
visiting her father. Godwin did not approve of the relationship between
his daughter and an older, married man, so they fled to France along
with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont. On 22 February 1815, Shelley gave birth prematurely to her first child, Clara, who died two weeks later.
In the summer of 1816, Mary, Percy, and Claire took a trip to visit Claire's lover, Lord Byron, in Geneva.
Poor weather conditions, more akin to winter, forced Byron and the
visitors to stay indoors. To help pass time, Byron suggested that he,
Mary, Percy, and Byron's physician, John Polidori, have a competition to write the best ghost story to pass time stuck indoors. Mary was just eighteen years old when she won the contest with her creation of Frankenstein.
Literary influences
Shelley's work was heavily influenced by that of her parents. Her father was famous for Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and her mother famous for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her father's novels also influenced her writing of Frankenstein. These novels included Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, St. Leon, and Fleetwood. All of these books were set in Switzerland, similar to the setting in Frankenstein.
Some major themes of social affections and the renewal of life that
appear in Shelley's novel stem from these works she had in her
possession. Other literary influences that appear in Frankenstein are Pygmalion et Galatée by Mme de Genlis, and Ovid, with the use of individuals identifying the problems with society. Ovid also inspires the use of Prometheus in Shelley's title.
The influence of John Milton's Paradise Lost and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are evident in the novel. In The Frankenstein of the French Revolution, author Julia Douthwaite posits that Shelley probably acquired some ideas for Frankenstein's character from Humphry Davy's book Elements of Chemical Philosophy,
in which he had written that "science has ... bestowed upon man powers
which may be called creative; which have enabled him to change and
modify the beings around him ...". References to the French Revolution run through the novel; a likely source is François-Félix Nogaret [fr]'s Le Miroir des événemens actuels, ou la Belle au plus offrant
(1790), a political parable about scientific progress featuring an
inventor named Frankésteïn, who creates a life-sized automaton.
Both Frankenstein and the monster quote passages from Percy Shelley's 1816 poem, "Mutability",
and its theme of the role of the subconscious is discussed in prose.
Percy Shelley's name never appeared as the author of the poem, although
the novel credits other quoted poets by name. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798) is associated with the theme of guilt and William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" (1798) with that of innocence.
Many writers and historians have attempted to associate several
then-popular natural philosophers (now called physical scientists) with
Shelley's work because of several notable similarities. Two of the most
noted natural philosophers among Shelley's contemporaries were Giovanni Aldini, who made many public attempts at human reanimation through bio-electric Galvanism in London, and Johann Konrad Dippel,
who was supposed to have developed chemical means to extend the life
span of humans. While Shelley was aware of both of these men and their
activities, she makes no mention of or reference to them or their
experiments in any of her published or released notes.
Ideas about life and death discussed by Percy and Byron were of
great interest to scientists of that time. They discussed ideas from Erasmus Darwin and the experiments of Luigi Galvani as well as James Lind. Mary joined these conversations and the ideas of Darwin, Galvani and perhaps Lind were present in her novel.
Shelley's personal experiences also influenced the themes within Frankenstein.
The themes of loss, guilt, and the consequences of defying nature
present in the novel all developed from Mary Shelley's own life. The
loss of her mother, the relationship with her father, and the death of
her first child are thought to have inspired the monster and his
separation from parental guidance. In a 1965 issue of The Journal of Religion and Health
a psychologist proposed that the theme of guilt stemmed from her not
feeling good enough for Percy because of the loss of their child.
Composition
Draft of Frankenstein ("It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld my man completed ...")
During the rainy summer of 1816, the "Year Without a Summer", the world was locked in a long, cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. Mary Shelley, aged 18, and her lover (and future husband), Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, in Switzerland's Alps.
The weather was too cold and dreary that summer to enjoy the outdoor
holiday activities they had planned, so the group retired indoors until
dawn.
Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused
themselves by reading German ghost stories translated into French from
the book Fantasmagoriana. Byron proposed that they "each write a ghost story."
Unable to think of a story, Mary Shelley became anxious. She recalled
being asked "Have you thought of a story?" each morning, and every time
being "forced to reply with a mortifying negative."
During one evening in the middle of summer, the discussions turned to
the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be
re-animated," Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things".
It was after midnight before they retired and, unable to sleep, she
became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the "grim terrors" of
her "waking dream".
I saw the pale student of
unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the
hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of
some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half
vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the
effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the
Creator of the world.
In September 2011, astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake
Geneva villa the previous year and inspecting data about the motion of
the moon and stars, concluded that her "waking dream" took place between
2 a.m. and 3 a.m. on 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea
by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story.
Mary Shelley began writing what she assumed would be a short
story, but with Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded the tale
into a fully-fledged novel. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life." Shelley wrote the first four chapters in the weeks following the suicide of her half-sister Fanny.
This was one of many personal tragedies that impacted Shelley's work.
Shelley's first child died in infancy, and when she began composing Frankenstein in 1816, she was probably nursing her second child, who was also dead by the time of Frankenstein's publication. Shelley wrote much of the book while residing in a lodging house in the centre of Bath in 1816.
Byron managed to write just a fragment based on the vampire legends he heard while travelling the Balkans, and from this John Polidori created The Vampyre (1819), the progenitor of the romantic vampire literary genre. Thus two seminal horror tales originated from the conclave.
The group talked about Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment
ideas as well. Mary Shelley believed the Enlightenment idea that
society could progress and grow if political leaders used their powers
responsibly; however, she also believed the Romantic ideal that misused
power could destroy society.
Shelley's manuscripts for the first three-volume edition in 1818 (written 1816–1817), as well as the fair copy for her publisher, are now housed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The Bodleian acquired the papers in 2004, and they belong now to the Abinger Collection. In 2008, the Bodleian published a new edition of Frankenstein,
edited by Charles E. Robinson, that contains comparisons of Mary
Shelley's original text with Percy Shelley's additions and interventions
alongside.
An English editorial cartoonist conceives the Irish Fenian movement as akin to Frankenstein's creature, in the wake of the Phoenix Park murders in an 1882 issue of Punch.
Although the Creature was described in later works as a composite of whole body parts grafted together from cadavers and reanimated
by the use of electricity, this description is not consistent with
Shelley's work; both the use of electricity and the cobbled-together
image of Frankenstein's monster were more the result of James Whale's popular 1931 film adaptation of the story
and other early motion-picture works based on the creature. In
Shelley's original work, Victor Frankenstein discovers a previously
unknown but elemental principle of life, and that insight allows him to
develop a method to imbue vitality into inanimate matter, though the
exact nature of the process is left ambiguous. After a great deal of
hesitation in exercising this power, Frankenstein spends two years
painstakingly constructing the Creature's body (one anatomical feature
at a time, from raw materials supplied by "the dissecting room and the
slaughter-house"), which he then brings to life using his unspecified
process.
Newspaper illustrations from abridged versions of Frankenstein, 1910
Part of Frankenstein's rejection of his creation is the fact that he
does not give him a name. Instead, Frankenstein's creation is referred
to by words such as "wretch", "monster", "creature", "demon", "devil",
"fiend", and "it". When Frankenstein converses with the creature, he
addresses him as "vile insect", "abhorred monster", "fiend", "wretched
devil", and "abhorred devil".
In the novel, the creature is compared to Adam, the first man in the Garden of Eden.
The monster also compares himself with the "fallen" angel. Speaking to
Frankenstein, the monster says "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather
the fallen angel". That angel would be Lucifer (meaning "light-bringer") in Milton's Paradise Lost, which the monster has read. Adam is also referred to in the epigraph of the 1818 edition:
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?
Some have posited the creature as a composite of Percy Shelley and
Thomas Paine. If the creature's hatred for Victor and his desire to
raise a child mirror Percy's filial rebelliousness and his longing to
adopt children, his desire to do good and his persecution can be said to
echo Paine's utopian visions and fate in England.
The Creature has often been mistakenly called Frankenstein. In
1908, one author said "It is strange to note how well-nigh universally
the term "Frankenstein" is misused, even by intelligent people, as
describing some hideous monster." Edith Wharton's The Reef (1916) describes an unruly child as an "infant Frankenstein". David Lindsay's "The Bridal Ornament", published in The Rover, 12 June 1844, mentioned "the maker of poor Frankenstein". After the release of Whale's cinematic Frankenstein,
the public at large began speaking of the Creature itself as
"Frankenstein". This misnomer continued with the successful sequel Bride of Frankenstein (1935), as well as in film titles such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
Mary Shelley maintained that she derived the name Frankenstein
from a dream-vision. This claim has since been disputed and debated by
scholars that have suggested alternative sources for Shelley's
inspiration. The German name Frankenstein means "stone of the Franks", and is associated with various places in Germany, including Frankenstein Castle (Burg Frankenstein) in Darmstadt, Hesse, and Frankenstein Castle in Frankenstein, a town in the Palatinate. There is also a castle called Frankenstein in Bad Salzungen, Thuringia, and a municipality called Frankenstein in Saxony. The town of Frankenstein in Silesia (now Ząbkowice, Poland) was the site of a scandal involving gravediggers in 1606, and this has been suggested as an inspiration to the author. Finally, the name is borne by the aristocratic House of Franckenstein from Franconia.
Radu Florescu argued that Mary and Percy Shelley visited Frankenstein Castle near Darmstadt in 1814, where alchemist Johann Konrad Dippel
had experimented with human bodies, and reasoned that Mary suppressed
mention of her visit to maintain her public claim of originality.
A literary essay by A.J. Day supports Florescu's position that Mary
Shelley knew of and visited Frankenstein Castle before writing her debut
novel.
Day includes details of an alleged description of the Frankenstein
castle in Mary Shelley's "lost journals". However, according to Jörg
Heléne, Day's and Florescu's claims cannot be verified.
A possible interpretation of the name "Victor" is derived from Paradise Lost by John Milton, a great influence on Shelley (a quotation from Paradise Lost is on the opening page of Frankenstein and Shelley writes that the monster reads it in the novel).Milton frequently refers to God as "the victor" in Paradise Lost, and Victor's creation of life in the novel is compared to God's creation of life in Paradise Lost. In addition, Shelley's portrayal of the monster owes much to the character of Satan in Paradise Lost; and, the monster says in the story, after reading the epic poem, that he empathizes with Satan's role.
Parallels between Victor Frankenstein and Mary's husband, Percy
Shelley, have also been drawn. Percy Shelley was the first-born son of a
wealthy country squire with strong political connections and a
descendant of Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet of Castle Goring, and Richard Fitzalan, 10th Earl of Arundel. Similarly, Victor's family is one of the most distinguished of that republic and his ancestors were counsellors and syndics.
Percy's sister and Victor's adopted sister were both named Elizabeth.
There are many other similarities, from Percy's usage of "Victor" as a
pen name for Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire, a collection of poetry he wrote with Elizabeth,
to Percy's days at Eton, where he had "experimented with electricity
and magnetism as well as with gunpowder and numerous chemical
reactions," and the way in which Percy's rooms at Oxford were filled with scientific equipment.
Modern Prometheus
The Modern Prometheus is the novel's subtitle (though modern editions now drop it, only mentioning it in introduction). Prometheus, in versions of Greek mythology, was the Titan who created humans in the image of the gods so that they could have a spirit breathed into them at the behest of Zeus.
Prometheus then taught humans to hunt, but after he tricked Zeus into
accepting "poor-quality offerings" from humans, Zeus kept fire from
humankind. Prometheus took back the fire from Zeus to give to humanity.
When Zeus discovered this, he sentenced Prometheus to be eternally
punished by fixing him to a rock of Caucasus, where each day an eagle pecked out his liver, only for the liver to regrow the next day because of his immortality as a god.
Byron was particularly attached to the play Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, and Percy Shelley soon wrote his own Prometheus Unbound (1820). The term "Modern Prometheus" was derived from Immanuel Kant who described Benjamin Franklin as the "Prometheus of modern times" in reference to his experiments with electricity.
Publication
Shelley completed her writing in April/May 1817, and Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published on 1 January 1818 by the small London publishing house Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones. It was issued anonymously, with a preface written for Mary by Percy Bysshe Shelley and with a dedication to philosopher William Godwin, her father. It was published in an edition of just 500 copies in three volumes, the standard "triple-decker" format for 19th-century first editions.
A variety of different editions
A French translation (Frankenstein: ou le Prométhée Moderne, translated by Jules Saladin) appeared as early as 1821. The second English edition of Frankenstein was published on 11 August 1823 in two volumes (by G. and W. B. Whittaker) following the success of the stage play Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Brinsley Peake. This edition credited Mary Shelley as the book's author on its title page.
On 31 October 1831, the first "popular" edition in one volume appeared, published by Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley.
This edition was heavily revised by Mary Shelley, partially to make the
story less radical. It included a lengthy new preface by the author,
presenting a somewhat embellished version of the genesis of the story.
This edition is the one most widely published and read now, although a
few editions follow the 1818 text. Some scholars such as Anne K. Mellor prefer the original version, arguing that it preserves the spirit of Mary Shelley's vision.
Reception
Frankenstein
has been both well received and disregarded since its anonymous
publication in 1818. Critical reviews of that time demonstrate these two
views, along with confused speculation as to the identity of the
author. Walter Scott, writing in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine,
praises the novel as an "extraordinary tale, in which the author seems
to us to disclose uncommon powers of poetic imagination," although he
was less convinced about the way in which the monster gains knowledge
about the world and language. La Belle Assemblée described the novel as "very bold fiction" and the Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany hoped to see "more productions ... from this author". On the other hand, John Wilson Croker, writing anonymously in the Quarterly Review,
although conceding that "the author has powers, both of conception and
language," described the book as "a tissue of horrible and disgusting
absurdity."
In two other reviews where the author is known as the daughter of
William Godwin, the criticism of the novel makes reference to the
feminine nature of Mary Shelley. The British Critic
attacks the novel's flaws as the fault of the author: "The writer of it
is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is
the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the
gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall
therefore dismiss the novel without further comment". The Literary Panorama and National Register attacks the novel as a "feeble imitation of Mr. Godwin's novels" produced by the "daughter of a celebrated living novelist." Despite these reviews, Frankenstein
achieved an almost immediate popular success. It became widely known,
especially through melodramatic theatrical adaptations—Mary Shelley saw a
production of Presumption; or The Fate of Frankenstein, a play by Richard Brinsley Peake, in 1823.
Critical reception of Frankenstein has been largely positive since the mid-20th century. Major critics such as M. A. Goldberg and Harold Bloom have praised the "aesthetic and moral" relevance of the novel, although there have also been critics, such as Germaine Greer,
who criticized the novel for technical and narrative defects: for
example, she claimed that its three narrators all speak in the same way.
In more recent years the novel has become a popular subject for
psychoanalytic and feminist criticism: Lawrence Lipking states: "[E]ven
the Lacanian subgroup of psychoanalytic criticism, for instance, has produced at least half a dozen discrete readings of the novel". Frankenstein has frequently been recommended on Five Books, with literary scholars, psychologists, novelists, and historians citing it as an influential text.
Today, the novel is generally considered to be a landmark work as one
of the greatest Romantic and Gothic novels, as well as one of the first
science fiction novels.
Brian Aldiss has argued for regarding it as the first true science-fiction
story. In contrast to previous stories with fantastical elements
resembling those of later science fiction, Aldiss states, the central
character "makes a deliberate decision" and "turns to modern experiments
in the laboratory" to achieve fantastic results.
Film director Guillermo del Toro describes Frankenstein
as "the quintessential teenage book", noting that the feelings that
"You don't belong. You were brought to this world by people that don't
care for you and you are thrown into a world of pain and suffering, and
tears and hunger" are an important part of the story. He adds that "it's
an amazing book written by a teenage girl. It's mind-blowing." Professor of philosophy Patricia MacCormack
says that the Creature addresses the most fundamental human questions:
"It's the idea of asking your maker what your purpose is. Why are we
here, what can we do?"
The study of electrical phenomena dates back to antiquity, with
theoretical understanding progressing slowly until the 17th and 18th
centuries. The development of the theory of electromagnetism in the 19th
century marked significant progress, leading to electricity's
industrial and residential application by electrical engineers by the century's end. This rapid expansion in electrical technology at the time was the driving force behind the Second Industrial Revolution,
with electricity's versatility driving transformations in both industry
and society. Electricity is integral to applications spanning transport, heating, lighting, communications, and computation, making it the foundation of modern industrial society.
History
Thales, the earliest known researcher into electricity
Ancient cultures around the Mediterranean knew that certain objects, such as rods of amber, could be rubbed with cat's fur to attract light objects like feathers. Thales of Miletus made a series of observations on static electricity around 600 BCE, from which he believed that friction rendered amber magnetic, in contrast to minerals such as magnetite, which needed no rubbing.
Thales was incorrect in believing the attraction was due to a magnetic
effect, but later science would prove a link between magnetism and
electricity. According to a controversial theory, the Parthians may have had knowledge of electroplating, based on the 1936 discovery of the Baghdad Battery, which resembles a galvanic cell, though it is uncertain whether the artifact was electrical in nature.
Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive research on electricity in the 18th century, as documented by Joseph Priestley (1767) History and Present Status of Electricity, with whom Franklin carried on extended correspondence.
Electricity would remain little more than an intellectual curiosity for millennia until 1600, when the English scientist William Gilbert wrote De Magnete, in which he made a careful study of electricity and magnetism, distinguishing the lodestone effect from static electricity produced by rubbing amber. He coined the Neo-Latin word electricus ("of amber" or "like amber", from ἤλεκτρον, elektron, the Greek word for "amber") to refer to the property of attracting small objects after being rubbed. This association gave rise to the English words "electric" and "electricity", which made their first appearance in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646.
Further work was conducted in the 17th and early 18th centuries by Otto von Guericke, Robert Boyle, Stephen Gray and C. F. du Fay. Later in the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin
conducted extensive research in electricity, selling his possessions to
fund his work. In June 1752 he is reputed to have attached a metal key
to the bottom of a dampened kite string and flown the kite in a storm-threatened sky. A succession of sparks jumping from the key to the back of his hand showed that lightning was indeed electrical in nature. He also explained the apparently paradoxical behavior of the Leyden jar
as a device for storing large amounts of electrical charge in terms of
electricity consisting of both positive and negative charges.
Michael Faraday's discoveries formed the foundation of electric motor technology.
In 1887, Heinrich Hertz discovered that electrodes illuminated with ultraviolet light create electric sparks more easily. In 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper that explained experimental data from the photoelectric effect
as being the result of light energy being carried in discrete quantized
packets, energising electrons. This discovery led to the quantum revolution. Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for "his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". The photoelectric effect is also employed in photocells such as can be found in solar panels.
The first solid-state device was the "cat's-whisker detector" first used in the 1900s in radio receivers. A whisker-like wire is placed lightly in contact with a solid crystal (such as a germanium crystal) to detect a radio signal by the contact junction effect. In a solid-state component, the current
is confined to solid elements and compounds engineered specifically to
switch and amplify it. Current flow can be understood in two forms: as
negatively charged electrons, and as positively charged electron deficiencies called holes. These charges and holes are understood in terms of quantum physics. The building material is most often a crystalline semiconductor.
By modern convention, the charge carried by electrons is defined as negative, and that by protons is positive. Before these particles were discovered, Benjamin Franklin had defined a positive charge as being the charge acquired by a glass rod when it is rubbed with a silk cloth. A proton by definition carries a charge of exactly 1.602176634×10−19 coulombs. This value is also defined as the elementary charge.
No object can have a charge smaller than the elementary charge, and any
amount of charge an object may carry is a multiple of the elementary
charge. An electron has an equal negative charge, i.e. −1.602176634×10−19 coulombs. Charge is possessed not just by matter, but also by antimatter, each antiparticle bearing an equal and opposite charge to its corresponding particle.
The presence of charge gives rise to an electrostatic force: charges exert a force on each other, an effect that was known, though not understood, in antiquity.
A lightweight ball suspended by a fine thread can be charged by
touching it with a glass rod that has itself been charged by rubbing
with a cloth. If a similar ball is charged by the same glass rod, it is
found to repel the first: the charge acts to force the two balls apart.
Two balls that are charged with a rubbed amber rod also repel each
other. However, if one ball is charged by the glass rod, and the other
by an amber rod, the two balls are found to attract each other. These
phenomena were investigated in the late eighteenth century by Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, who deduced that charge manifests itself in two opposing forms. This discovery led to the well-known axiom: like-charged objects repel and opposite-charged objects attract.
The force acts on the charged particles themselves, hence charge
has a tendency to spread itself as evenly as possible over a conducting
surface. The magnitude of the electromagnetic force, whether attractive
or repulsive, is given by Coulomb's law, which relates the force to the product of the charges and has an inverse-square relation to the distance between them. The electromagnetic force is very strong, second only in strength to the strong interaction, but unlike that force it operates over all distances. In comparison with the much weaker gravitational force, the electromagnetic force pushing two electrons apart is 1042 times that of the gravitational attraction pulling them together.
Charge originates from certain types of subatomic particles, the most familiar carriers of which are the electron and proton. Electric charge gives rise to and interacts with the electromagnetic force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Experiment has shown charge to be a conserved quantity,
that is, the net charge within an electrically isolated system will
always remain constant regardless of any changes taking place within
that system.
Within the system, charge may be transferred between bodies, either by
direct contact, or by passing along a conducting material, such as a
wire. The informal term static electricity
refers to the net presence (or 'imbalance') of charge on a body,
usually caused when dissimilar materials are rubbed together,
transferring charge from one to the other.
Charge can be measured by a number of means, an early instrument being the gold-leaf electroscope, which although still in use for classroom demonstrations, has been superseded by the electronic electrometer.
The movement of electric charge is known as an electric current, the intensity of which is usually measured in amperes.
Current can consist of any moving charged particles; most commonly
these are electrons, but any charge in motion constitutes a current.
Electric current can flow through some things, electrical conductors, but will not flow through an electrical insulator.
By historical convention, a positive current is defined as having
the same direction of flow as any positive charge it contains, or to
flow from the most positive part of a circuit to the most negative part.
Current defined in this manner is called conventional current. The motion of negatively charged electrons around an electric circuit, one of the most familiar forms of current, is thus deemed positive in the opposite direction to that of the electrons. However, depending on the conditions, an electric current can consist of a flow of charged particles
in either direction, or even in both directions at once. The
positive-to-negative convention is widely used to simplify this
situation.
An electric arc provides an energetic demonstration of electric current.
The process by which electric current passes through a material is termed electrical conduction,
and its nature varies with that of the charged particles and the
material through which they are travelling. Examples of electric
currents include metallic conduction, where electrons flow through a conductor such as metal, and electrolysis, where ions (charged atoms) flow through liquids, or through plasmas such as electrical sparks. While the particles themselves can move quite slowly, sometimes with an average drift velocity only fractions of a millimetre per second, the electric field that drives them itself propagates at close to the speed of light, enabling electrical signals to pass rapidly along wires.
Current causes several observable effects, which historically
were the means of recognising its presence. That water could be
decomposed by the current from a voltaic pile was discovered by Nicholson and Carlisle in 1800, a process now known as electrolysis. Their work was greatly expanded upon by Michael Faraday in 1833. Current through a resistance causes localised heating, an effect James Prescott Joule studied mathematically in 1840. One of the most important discoveries relating to current was made accidentally by Hans Christian Ørsted in 1820, when, while preparing a lecture, he witnessed the current in a wire disturbing the needle of a magnetic compass. He had discovered electromagnetism, a fundamental interaction between electricity and magnetics. The level of electromagnetic emissions generated by electric arcing is high enough to produce electromagnetic interference, which can be detrimental to the workings of adjacent equipment.
In engineering or household applications, current is often described as being either direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC). These terms refer to how the current varies in time. Direct current, as produced by example from a battery and required by most electronic devices, is a unidirectional flow from the positive part of a circuit to the negative.
If, as is most common, this flow is carried by electrons, they will be
travelling in the opposite direction. Alternating current is any current
that reverses direction repeatedly; almost always this takes the form
of a sine wave.
Alternating current thus pulses back and forth within a conductor
without the charge moving any net distance over time. The time-averaged
value of an alternating current is zero, but it delivers energy in first
one direction, and then the reverse. Alternating current is affected by
electrical properties that are not observed under steady state direct current, such as inductance and capacitance. These properties however can become important when circuitry is subjected to transients, such as when first energised.
The concept of the electric field was introduced by Michael Faraday.
An electric field is created by a charged body in the space that
surrounds it, and results in a force exerted on any other charges placed
within the field. The electric field acts between two charges in a
similar manner to the way that the gravitational field acts between two masses, and like it, extends towards infinity and shows an inverse square relationship with distance.
However, there is an important difference. Gravity always acts in
attraction, drawing two masses together, while the electric field can
result in either attraction or repulsion. Since large bodies such as
planets generally carry no net charge, the electric field at a distance
is usually zero. Thus gravity is the dominant force at distance in the
universe, despite being much weaker.
Field lines emanating from a positive charge above a plane conductor
An electric field generally varies in space,
and its strength at any one point is defined as the force (per unit
charge) that would be felt by a stationary, negligible charge if placed
at that point. The conceptual charge, termed a 'test charge',
must be vanishingly small to prevent its own electric field disturbing
the main field and must also be stationary to prevent the effect of magnetic fields. As the electric field is defined in terms of force, and force is a vector, having both magnitude and direction, it follows that an electric field is a vector field.
The study of electric fields created by stationary charges is called electrostatics.
The field may be visualised by a set of imaginary lines whose direction
at any point is the same as that of the field. This concept was
introduced by Faraday, whose term 'lines of force'
still sometimes sees use. The field lines are the paths that a point
positive charge would seek to make as it was forced to move within the
field; they are however an imaginary concept with no physical existence,
and the field permeates all the intervening space between the lines.
Field lines emanating from stationary charges have several key
properties: first, that they originate at positive charges and terminate
at negative charges; second, that they must enter any good conductor at
right angles, and third, that they may never cross nor close in on
themselves.
A hollow conducting body carries all its charge on its outer surface. The field is therefore 0 at all places inside the body. This is the operating principal of the Faraday cage, a conducting metal shell which isolates its interior from outside electrical effects.
The principles of electrostatics are important when designing items of high-voltage equipment. There is a finite limit to the electric field strength that may be withstood by any medium. Beyond this point, electrical breakdown occurs and an electric arc
causes flashover between the charged parts. Air, for example, tends to
arc across small gaps at electric field strengths which exceed 30 kV per
centimetre. Over larger gaps, its breakdown strength is weaker, perhaps
1 kV per centimetre. The most visible natural occurrence of this is lightning,
caused when charge becomes separated in the clouds by rising columns of
air, and raises the electric field in the air to greater than it can
withstand. The voltage of a large lightning cloud may be as high as
100 MV and have discharge energies as great as 250 kWh.
The field strength is greatly affected by nearby conducting
objects, and it is particularly intense when it is forced to curve
around sharply pointed objects. This principle is exploited in the lightning conductor,
the sharp spike of which acts to encourage the lightning strike to
develop there, rather than to the building it serves to protect.
A pair of AA cells. The + sign indicates the polarity of the potential difference between the battery terminals.
The concept of electric potential is closely linked to that of the
electric field. A small charge placed within an electric field
experiences a force, and to have brought that charge to that point
against the force requires work.
The electric potential at any point is defined as the energy required
to bring a unit test charge from an infinite distance slowly to that
point. It is usually measured in volts, and one volt is the potential for which one joule of work must be expended to bring a charge of one coulomb from infinity. This definition of potential, while formal, has little practical application, and a more useful concept is that of electric potential difference,
and is the energy required to move a unit charge between two specified
points. An electric field has the special property that it is conservative,
which means that the path taken by the test charge is irrelevant: all
paths between two specified points expend the same energy, and thus a
unique value for potential difference may be stated.
The volt is so strongly identified as the unit of choice for
measurement and description of electric potential difference that the
term voltage sees greater everyday usage.
For practical purposes, defining a common reference point to
which potentials may be expressed and compared is useful. While this
could be at infinity, a much more useful reference is the Earth itself, which is assumed to be at the same potential everywhere. This reference point naturally takes the name earth or ground.
Earth is assumed to be an infinite source of equal amounts of positive
and negative charge and is therefore electrically uncharged—and
unchargeable.
Electric potential is a scalar quantity. That is, it has only magnitude and not direction. It may be viewed as analogous to height:
just as a released object will fall through a difference in heights
caused by a gravitational field, so a charge will 'fall' across the
voltage caused by an electric field. As relief maps show contour lines marking points of equal height, a set of lines marking points of equal potential (known as equipotentials)
may be drawn around an electrostatically charged object. The
equipotentials cross all lines of force at right angles. They must also
lie parallel to a conductor's
surface, since otherwise there would be a force along the surface of
the conductor that would move the charge carriers to even the potential
across the surface.
The electric field was formally defined as the force exerted per
unit charge, but the concept of potential allows for a more useful and
equivalent definition: the electric field is the local gradient
of the electric potential. Usually expressed in volts per metre, the
vector direction of the field is the line of greatest slope of
potential, and where the equipotentials lie closest together.
Ørsted's discovery in 1821 that a magnetic field
existed around all sides of a wire carrying an electric current
indicated that there was a direct relationship between electricity and
magnetism. Moreover, the interaction seemed different from gravitational
and electrostatic forces, the two forces of nature then known. The
force on the compass needle did not direct it to or away from the
current-carrying wire, but acted at right angles to it.
Ørsted's words were that "the electric conflict acts in a revolving
manner." The force also depended on the direction of the current, for if
the flow was reversed, then the force did too.
Ørsted did not fully understand his discovery, but he observed
the effect was reciprocal: a current exerts a force on a magnet, and a
magnetic field exerts a force on a current. The phenomenon was further
investigated by Ampère,
who discovered that two parallel current-carrying wires exerted a force
upon each other: two wires conducting currents in the same direction
are attracted to each other, while wires containing currents in opposite
directions are forced apart. The interaction is mediated by the magnetic field each current produces and forms the basis for the international definition of the ampere.
The
electric motor exploits an important effect of electromagnetism: a
current through a magnetic field experiences a force at right angles to
both the field and current.
This relationship between magnetic fields and currents is extremely important, for it led to Michael Faraday's invention of the electric motor in 1821. Faraday's homopolar motor consisted of a permanent magnet sitting in a pool of mercury.
A current was allowed through a wire suspended from a pivot above the
magnet and dipped into the mercury. The magnet exerted a tangential
force on the wire, making it circle around the magnet for as long as the
current was maintained.
Experimentation by Faraday in 1831 revealed that a wire moving
perpendicular to a magnetic field developed a potential difference
between its ends. Further analysis of this process, known as electromagnetic induction, enabled him to state the principle, now known as Faraday's law of induction, that the potential difference induced in a closed circuit is proportional to the rate of change of magnetic flux through the loop. Exploitation of this discovery enabled him to invent the first electrical generator in 1831, in which he converted the mechanical energy of a rotating copper disc to electrical energy. Faraday's disc
was inefficient and of no use as a practical generator, but it showed
the possibility of generating electric power using magnetism, a
possibility that would be taken up by those that followed on from his
work.
An electric circuit is an interconnection of electric components such
that electric charge is made to flow along a closed path (a circuit),
usually to perform some useful task.
The resistor is perhaps the simplest of passive circuit elements: as its name suggests, it resists
the current through it, dissipating its energy as heat. The resistance
is a consequence of the motion of charge through a conductor: in metals,
for example, resistance is primarily due to collisions between
electrons and ions. Ohm's law is a basic law of circuit theory,
stating that the current passing through a resistance is directly
proportional to the potential difference across it. The resistance of
most materials is relatively constant over a range of temperatures and
currents; materials under these conditions are known as 'ohmic'. The ohm, the unit of resistance, was named in honour of Georg Ohm,
and is symbolised by the Greek letter Ω. 1 Ω is the resistance that
will produce a potential difference of one volt in response to a current
of one amp.
The capacitor
is a development of the Leyden jar and is a device that can store
charge, and thereby storing electrical energy in the resulting field. It
consists of two conducting plates separated by a thin insulatingdielectric layer; in practice, thin metal foils are coiled together, increasing the surface area per unit volume and therefore the capacitance. The unit of capacitance is the farad, named after Michael Faraday, and given the symbol F:
one farad is the capacitance that develops a potential difference of
one volt when it stores a charge of one coulomb. A capacitor connected
to a voltage supply initially causes a current as it accumulates charge;
this current will however decay in time as the capacitor fills,
eventually falling to zero. A capacitor will therefore not permit a steady state current, but instead blocks it.
The inductor
is a conductor, usually a coil of wire, that stores energy in a
magnetic field in response to the current through it. When the current
changes, the magnetic field does too, inducing a voltage between the ends of the conductor. The induced voltage is proportional to the time rate of change of the current. The constant of proportionality is termed the inductance. The unit of inductance is the henry, named after Joseph Henry,
a contemporary of Faraday. One henry is the inductance that will induce
a potential difference of one volt if the current through it changes at
a rate of one ampere per second. The inductor's behaviour is in some
regards converse to that of the capacitor: it will freely allow an
unchanging current, but opposes a rapidly changing one.
Electric power, like mechanical power, is the rate of doing work, measured in watts, and represented by the letter P. The term wattage is used colloquially to mean "electric power in watts." The electric power in watts produced by an electric current I consisting of a charge of Q coulombs every t seconds passing through an electric potential (voltage) difference of V is
Electric power is generally supplied to businesses and homes by the electric power industry. Electricity is usually sold by the kilowatt hour
(3.6 MJ) which is the product of power in kilowatts multiplied by
running time in hours. Electric utilities measure power using electricity meters, which keep a running total of the electric energy delivered to a customer. Unlike fossil fuels, electricity is a low entropy form of energy and can be converted into motion or many other forms of energy with high efficiency.
Today, most electronic devices use semiconductor components to perform electron control. The underlying principles that explain how semiconductors work are studied in solid state physics, whereas the design and construction of electronic circuits to solve practical problems are part of electronics engineering.
Faraday's and Ampère's work showed that a time-varying magnetic field
created an electric field, and a time-varying electric field created a
magnetic field. Thus, when either field is changing in time, a field of
the other is always induced. These variations are an electromagnetic wave. Electromagnetic waves were analysed theoretically by James Clerk Maxwell
in 1864. Maxwell developed a set of equations that could unambiguously
describe the interrelationship between electric field, magnetic field,
electric charge, and electric current. He could moreover prove that in a
vacuum such a wave would travel at the speed of light, and thus light itself was a form of electromagnetic radiation. Maxwell's equations, which unify light, fields, and charge are one of the great milestones of theoretical physics.
The work of many researchers enabled the use of electronics to convert signals into high frequency
oscillating currents and, via suitably shaped conductors, electricity
permits the transmission and reception of these signals via radio waves
over very long distances.
In the 6th century BC the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus
experimented with amber rods: these were the first studies into the
production of electricity. While this method, now known as the triboelectric effect, can lift light objects and generate sparks, it is extremely inefficient. It was not until the invention of the voltaic pile
in the eighteenth century that a viable source of electricity became
available. The voltaic pile, and its modern descendant, the electrical battery, store energy chemically and make it available on demand in the form of electricity.
Electrical power is usually generated by electro-mechanical generators. These can be driven by steam produced from fossil fuel combustion or the heat released from nuclear reactions, but also more directly from the kinetic energy of wind or flowing water. The steam turbine invented by Sir Charles Parsons
in 1884 is still used to convert the thermal energy of steam into a
rotary motion that can be used by electro-mechanical generators. Such
generators bear no resemblance to Faraday's homopolar disc generator of
1831, but they still rely on his electromagnetic principle that a
conductor linking a changing magnetic field induces a potential
difference across its ends. Electricity generated by solar panels rely on a different mechanism: solar radiation is converted directly into electricity using the photovoltaic effect.
Wind power is of increasing importance in many countries.
Demand for electricity grows with great rapidity as a nation modernises and its economy develops. The United States showed a 12% increase in demand during each year of the first three decades of the twentieth century, a rate of growth that is now being experienced by emerging economies such as those of India or China.
The invention in the late nineteenth century of the transformer meant that electrical power could be transmitted more efficiently at a higher voltage but lower current. Efficient electrical transmission meant in turn that electricity could be generated at centralised power stations, where it benefited from economies of scale, and then be despatched relatively long distances to where it was needed.
Normally, demand of electricity must match the supply, as storage of electricity is difficult. A certain amount of generation must always be held in reserve to cushion an electrical grid against inevitable disturbances and losses. With increasing levels of variable renewable energy
(wind and solar energy) in the grid, it has become more challenging to
match supply and demand. Storage plays an increasing role in bridging
that gap. There are four types of energy storage technologies, each in
varying states of technology readiness: batteries (electrochemical storage), chemical storage such as hydrogen, thermal or mechanical (such as pumped hydropower).
Electricity is a very convenient way to transfer energy, and it has been adapted to a huge, and growing, number of uses. The invention of a practical incandescent light bulb in the 1870s led to lighting
becoming one of the first publicly available applications of electrical
power. Although electrification brought with it its own dangers,
replacing the naked flames of gas lighting greatly reduced fire hazards
within homes and factories.
Public utilities were set up in many cities targeting the burgeoning
market for electrical lighting. In the late 20th century and in modern
times, the trend has started to flow in the direction of deregulation in
the electrical power sector.
The resistive Joule heating effect employed in filament light bulbs also sees more direct use in electric heating.
While this is versatile and controllable, it can be seen as wasteful,
since most electrical generation has already required the production of
heat at a power station.
A number of countries, such as Denmark, have issued legislation
restricting or banning the use of resistive electric heating in new
buildings. Electricity is however still a highly practical energy source for heating and refrigeration, with air conditioning/heat pumps
representing a growing sector for electricity demand for heating and
cooling, the effects of which electricity utilities are increasingly
obliged to accommodate. Electrification is expected to play a major role in the decarbonisation of sectors that rely on direct fossil fuel burning, such as transport (using electric vehicles) and heating (using heat pumps).
The effects of electromagnetism are most visibly employed in the electric motor, which provides a clean and efficient means of motive power. A stationary motor such as a winch is easily provided with a supply of power, but a motor that moves with its application, such as an electric vehicle, is obliged to either carry along a power source such as a battery, or to collect current from a sliding contact such as a pantograph. Electrically powered vehicles are used in public transportation, such as electric buses and trains, and an increasing number of battery-powered electric cars in private ownership.
Electricity is used within telecommunications, and indeed the electrical telegraph, demonstrated commercially in 1837 by Cooke and Wheatstone, was one of its earliest applications. With the construction of first transcontinental, and then transatlantic, telegraph systems in the 1860s, electricity had enabled communications in minutes across the globe. Optical fibre and satellite communication
have taken a share of the market for communications systems, but
electricity can be expected to remain an essential part of the process.
Electronic devices make use of the transistor, perhaps one of the most important inventions of the twentieth century, and a fundamental building block of all modern circuitry. A modern integrated circuit may contain many billions of miniaturised transistors in a region only a few centimetres square.
A voltage applied to a human body causes an electric current through
the tissues, and although the relationship is non-linear, the greater
the voltage, the greater the current.
The threshold for perception varies with the supply frequency and with
the path of the current, but is about 0.1 mA to 1 mA for mains-frequency
electricity, though a current as low as a microamp can be detected as
an electrovibration effect under certain conditions. If the current is sufficiently high, it will cause muscle contraction, fibrillation of the heart, and tissue burns.
The lack of any visible sign that a conductor is electrified makes
electricity a particular hazard. The pain caused by an electric shock
can be intense, leading electricity at times to be employed as a method
of torture. Death caused by an electric shock—electrocution—is still used for judicial execution in some US states, though its use had become very rare by the end of the 20th century.
Electricity is not a human invention, and may be observed in several forms in nature, notably lightning. Many interactions familiar at the macroscopic level, such as touch, friction or chemical bonding, are due to interactions between electric fields on the atomic scale. The Earth's magnetic field is due to the natural dynamo of circulating currents in the planet's core. Certain crystals, such as quartz, or even sugar, generate a potential difference across their faces when pressed. This phenomenon is known as piezoelectricity, from the Greekpiezein (πιέζειν), meaning to press, and was discovered in 1880 by Pierre and Jacques Curie. The effect is reciprocal: when a piezoelectric material is subjected to an electric field it changes size slightly.
Some organisms, such as sharks, are able to detect and respond to changes in electric fields, an ability known as electroreception, while others, termed electrogenic, are able to generate voltages themselves to serve as a predatory or defensive weapon; these are electric fish in different orders. The order Gymnotiformes, of which the best known example is the electric eel, detect or stun their prey via high voltages generated from modified muscle cells called electrocytes. All animals transmit information along their cell membranes with voltage pulses called action potentials, whose functions include communication by the nervous system between neurons and muscles. An electric shock stimulates this system, and causes muscles to contract. Action potentials are also responsible for coordinating activities in certain plants.
Cultural perception
It is said that in the 1850s, British politician William Ewart Gladstone asked the scientist Michael Faraday why electricity was valuable. Faraday answered, "One day sir, you may tax it."However, according to Snopes.com "the anecdote should be considered
apocryphal because it isn't mentioned in any accounts by Faraday or his
contemporaries (letters, newspapers, or biographies) and only popped up
well after Faraday's death."
In the 19th and early 20th century, electricity was not part of the everyday life of many people, even in the industrialised Western world. The popular culture
of the time accordingly often depicted it as a mysterious,
quasi-magical force that can slay the living, revive the dead or
otherwise bend the laws of nature. This attitude began with the 1771 experiments of Luigi Galvani in which the legs of dead frogs were shown to twitch on application of animal electricity.
"Revitalization" or resuscitation of apparently dead or drowned persons
was reported in the medical literature shortly after Galvani's work.
These results were known to Mary Shelley when she authored Frankenstein
(1819), although she does not name the method of revitalization of the
monster. The revitalization of monsters with electricity later became a
stock theme in horror films.
As public familiarity with electricity as the lifeblood of the Second Industrial Revolution grew, its wielders were more often cast in a positive light, such as the workers who "finger death at their gloves' end as they piece and repiece the living wires" in Rudyard Kipling's 1907 poem Sons of Martha. Electrically powered vehicles of every sort featured large in adventure stories such as those of Jules Verne and the Tom Swift books. The masters of electricity, whether fictional or real—including scientists such as Thomas Edison, Charles Steinmetz or Nikola Tesla—were popularly conceived of as having wizard-like powers.
With electricity ceasing to be a novelty and becoming a necessity
of everyday life in the later half of the 20th century, it acquired
particular attention by popular culture only when it stops flowing, an event that usually signals disaster. The people who keep it flowing, such as the nameless hero of Jimmy Webb's song "Wichita Lineman" (1968), are still often cast as heroic, wizard-like figures.
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