Who is invented capacitor

In a tuned circuit, these resistances contribute to the "Q" quality factor. The electrical current through a capacitor is defined and described in detail as displacement current , originally theorized by Maxwell. Sprague Electric: An Electronic Giant's Rise, Fall, and Life after Death -- a history of a capacitor manufacturing company, with a lot of detail on how capacitors, condensers, and other electronics work.

Explore content Browse by Subject. Oral Histories. First Hand Histories. Special pages. Recent changes. User assistance Help. Tools What links here. Related changes. Printable version. Permanent link. Page information. Science was a fashionable quest and public talks on scientific subjects were well attended by the educated and empowered classes of Europe. On the whole, electricity was easily one of the hottest topics in the 18 th century and a lot of exploration was done with electrostatic machines that used friction to generate charge.

Though friction is quite an easy and inexpensive way to separate charge that could be used in electric experiments, the quantity of charge generated was too less.

So, professionals were badly in need of some way of increasing the amount of charge available for experiments. The first device for storing charge was discovered in the winter months of by two electricians who worked independently. The device that was built by Von Kleist had a medicine bottle that was filled partly with water and well sealed with a cork.

A nail was pushed through the cork into the water. By holding the bottle in one hand, the nail was made to contact the terminal of an electrostatic machine; this helped acquire some charge. When Von Kleist reached for the nail in order to remove it from the stopper while still holding the bottle, he noticed that the separated charges were able to reunite by flowing through his own body.

Van Musschenbroek came up with almost a similar device in the form of Leyden jar named after the city which is typically known as the first capacitor. The device and experiences of Van Musschenbroek was very similar to that of von Kleist; however, with three exceptions. One, it was a visiting student named Andreas Cunaeus who made the shocking discovery and not van Musschenbroek himself. Two, he did make a lot of improvements to the device the most important of which is removing the water and using a metallic foil to wrap both the inside and outside of the jar.

Three, he wrote to his colleagues to explain them all about the device and the experience. In his letters to his colleagues, he had mentioned not to try this because it was a terrible experience.

On the other hand, Kleist, however, did not have detailed records and in depth notes and so he was often overlooked as a contributor to the evolution of the capacitor. Nevertheless, as years passed, both were given equal credit as it was well established that their research was completely independent of each other and simply a scientific coincidence. The Leyden jar was employed comprehensively to conduct many early experiments in electricity; besides, its discovery carried great significance in the study of electricity.

Early on, researchers had used insulated conductors of large dimensions if they wanted to store a charge.

The Leyden jar offered a much more compact alternative. The Leyden jar was quite a simple device. The high voltage source was the friction machine and the hand and body provided a ground.

Daniel Gralath, a physicist and the mayor of Danzig, Poland was the first to connect multiple jars in parallel to increase the quantity of stored charge. In the s and s Benjamin Franklin, in what was to later become the United States of America, also experimented with Leyden jars and called this collection of multiple Leyden jars a battery, due to its similarity with a battery of cannon. Franklin did a lot of experiments with both water filled Leyden jars and foil lined Leyden jars and concluded that the charge was stored on the glass and not in the volume of water.

He did this by working with dissectible Leyden jars see the photos above , ones where the outer and inner foils could be removed from the glass. This was later proven to be incorrect. Franklin worked with soda glass which is hygroscopic. As the foils were removed from the glass, charge was transferred via corona to moisture on the glass. When a jar of paraffin wax or baked glass is used instead, the charge remains on the metal plates. There is another weaker effect called dielectric absorption which involves the dipoles within the glass, or dielectric, and allows capacitors to retain some of their charge after the plates are shorted.

Franklin subsequently worked with flat glass plates with foil on either side, described connected in series in one letter. He found that a charged object either had an excess of this fluid or a deficiency. This disproved the idea of the two types of electricity, vitreous electricity and resinous electricity. In Alessandro Volta, working with different methods to measure electrical potential voltage, V and charge Q discovered that for a given object, V and Q are proportional, i.

It was for this work that the unit volt was named after him. For a long time they were referred to as condensers and still are for some applications and in some countries. He did these experiments with spherical capacitors, basically two concentric metal spheres in between which he could have air, glass, wax, shellac or other materials. Keeping the potential difference constant he then measured the charge when the gap was filled with other materials. He found that the charge was greater with the other materials than it was with air.

He called it the specific inductive capacity and it was for this work that the unit for capacitance is called the farad. Leyden jars and capacitors made of flat glass plates with foil remained in use for spark gap transmitters and medical electrotherapy equipment until the late s.

With the invention of wireless radio capacitors began to take their modern form, partly due to the need for lower inductance to work with higher frequencies. Smaller capacitors were made using flexible dielectric sheets, such as oiled paper, often rolled with foil on either side. But the history of modern capacitors is a large topic for another post. One fun thing about the early history of capacitors is that they have a very DIY feel to them, many having been homemade.

In fact, Leyden jars are still used today by high-voltage hackers, as in this 3D printed Wimshurst machine and for pure fun as in this Leyden jar of doom. Do you make Leyden jars or any other types of capacitors for any things you build? Also, are there instances where you use, or see used, the term condenser instead of capacitor? Let us know in the comments below. The term condenser is still used sometimes with small engines that still have points-condenser type ignition.

These were built with aluminum foil and plate glass, about as simple as they come. I recall a boy making caps using wax paper and aluminum foil. And discovering that applying too much voltage would cause them to explode with a loud bang. Mom hated when I did that.

I have a vague memory of a Crystal Set Construction project shown in my Cub Scout manual, back in the s. The cellophane wrapper was cut into squares and the inner foil wrap was cut into smaller squares.

Alternating squares of foil were somehow connected together to become the plates of the capacitor and the poles of the capacitor. I also vaguely remember winding several coils on toilet paper tubes and one on an oatmeal box.