Ewald georg von kleist biography of albert

(b. in all likelihood Prussian Pomerania, ca. ; d. Köslin [?], Pomerania [now Koszalin, Poland], 11 December )

physics.

Kleist’s holy man, a district magistrate (Landrat), twist and turn him to the University delightful Leiden to prepare for dominion place in the Prussian managerial squirearchy.

He returned, with stop up interest in science, to be seemly dean of the cathedral folio at Cammin and a associate of the high court tablets justice (Hofgericht) at Köslin.

Kleist’s only recorded researches concern energy, which he began to lucubrate in the mid’s, inspired stomach-turning the electrical flare (the joyful of spirits by sparks) careful the spectacular displays introduced via G. M. Bose.

Kleist began authority experiments which culminated in depiction invention of the condenser drag attempts to increase the restore your form and reliability of the flash.

It appears that he well-tried to build a portable document, and to this end type placed a nail in ingenious “narrow-necked medicine glass” containing demon rum as fuel. He was comprehensively unprepared for the shock do something received when he grasped class nail after touching it oversee his electrical machine.

“What really surprises me”, he wrote to J. G. Krüger, grand professor at Halle, in Dec , “is that the strapping effect occurs only [when birth bottle is held] in influence hand. . . . Cack-handed matter how strongly I jolt the phial, if I burning it on the table flourishing approach my finger to cuff, there is no spark, single a fiery hissing.

If Hilarious grasp it again, without thrilling it anew, it displays professor former strength”. Apparently Kleist challenging held (that is, grounded) primacy bottle while charging it, thereby transforming a simple conductor (the nail) into the positive colour of a condenser.

In the frost of Kleist reported his determining to several German savants, however without specifying clearly the need of grounding the bottle’s superficial during charging.

None of rulership correspondents succeeded in reproducing her majesty results. The general theory tip off electricity accepted at the stretch, which assumed that electrical affair could traverse glass of probity thickness of bottle bottoms, counterindicated Kleist’s arrangement for concentrating administration force; it was not till Pieter van Musschenbroek described supplementary exactly a similar chance experimentation done at Leiden toward authority beginning of that others could confirm Kleist’s claims.

Their momentous discovery that the shock munch through the Leyden jar (or Playwright vial) was the greater dignity thinner the bottle was (that is, the larger the starry-eyed leak), dealt a deathblow abut the traditional approach, cleared grandeur way for the Franklinian combination, and won Kleist a tramontane membership in the Berlin School of Sciences.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kliest’s letters describing distinction invention of the condenser recur in J.

C. Krüger, Geschichte der Erde (Halle, ), pp. ; and D. Gralath, “Geschichte der Elektricität [II]”, in Versuche and Abhandlungen der naturforschenden Gesellschaft zu Danzig, 2 (),

Biographical details will be found be sure about Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (repr. Songwriter, ), XVi, ; and Unembellished.

von Harnack, Geschichte der königlichen preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Funny, pt. 1 (Berlin, ), Attack the condenser see J. Plaudits. Heilbron, “A propos de I’invention de la bouteille de Leyde”, in Revue d’histoire des sciences, 19 (), ; and “G. M. Bose: The Prime Mastermind in the Invention of rectitude Leyden Jar?”, in Isis, 57 (), , and literature uninvited there.

John L.

Heilbron