Link: LED at 50

Another day, another great History of Science BBC audio slideshow. This one's on the LED, the Light Emitting Diode, invented in 1962 by Nick Holonyak. He invented the lower energy red LED 50 years ago and it's taken much of that half-century to work our way up into the other (higher energy) colours so we can have white light. Holonyak says each higher energy colour required learning from the previous colour how to do it-- a very methodical, incremental way of cracking a problem.

Are blue LEDs out of focus for you? For me they are diffuse splodges compared to the red ones. 

Nick Holonyak and his Red LED

Book Review: The Battery

The full title of this book by Henry Schlesinger is The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution. It simply tells the story of the invention and use of the battery throughout history.

‘Simply’ is the right term, but it’s not at all a bad thing. Aside from the title, this book has no pretentions to grandeur. It takes a small thing that we all rely on and tells its story through the much more well-known, more beloved, more written about story of the objects it powers. A single battery itself takes pride of place on the cover, humbly noble.  

Voltaic Pile: the first battery

Until reading this book, my knowledge of the history of electricity was focused on current. The bulky, very basic battery only starts in the spotlight early on before being shunted out in the Edison and Tesla years by current. The otherwise lovely BBC Story of Electricity (which I have mentioned before) does just this, leaving the battery in the dust after the first episode.

The book captures this in a quote from Edison, when he was investigating the use of the battery for powering the new electric lighting:

“The storage battery is, in my opinion, a catch penny, a sensation, a mechanism for swindling the public by stock companies.” (pg 144)

But the battery didn’t die out and disappear, even for Edison himself. A relatively simple technology that hasn’t changed dramatically over the years, the battery’s been a necessary little (semi-)portable powerhouse in continuous and heavy use since it was invented. Schlesinger describes batteries powering theatre and party lights, early and later telegraphs, ticker tape machines, telephones, farmhouse and army radios, doorbells, flashlights, even the famous green light on the end of the dock in The Great Gatsby… they made these early electric objects possible for a majority of people before current was common and widespread. Of course, they remain crucial to our lives—and in some ways their uses remain almost unchanged.

The much-less messy dry cell batteries "for telephone service".

Some of the most fascinating things that captured my interest were the importance of “unwieldy” maintenance of early wet home batteries, the use of small amounts of electricity in favour of large amounts and the myriad of tiny devices built around, not the existence of electricity itself, but the battery specifically—not to mention the scientific advances made possible by the battery. The book itself makes a good case (although not explicitly) for the powerful technological determinism of the battery—the battery guiding the creation of a certain world, rather than being pressed into service by the march of progress.

The way Schlesinger’s clear, well-written and constructed book presents it, the battery is the Frodo of the electric world. Small and frequently low-powered compared to others, but highly determined and usually portable, it can accomplish a lot for little input.

Noble battery, we salute you.   

Ps. The book is available for your electronic book, so you can read it using your own battery!

Nikola Tesla: The Greatest Geek

The Oatmeal's Drawing of The Greatest Geek

The internet loves Nikola Tesla. The Oatmeal recently promoted a successful bid to raise money to purchase a New York State building called Wardenclyffe from which Tesla was once going to wirelessly power our homes. With The Oatmeal's promotion, the fundraising project raised over $850,000 USD in around a week.

It's safe to say that the power of the internet has voted in favour of the reclusive electric genius Nikola Tesla. What is interesting about this is why; after all, when I was growing up it was Thomas Edison, Tesla's direct rival, who was the inventor of electrical things.

Well, The Oatmeal gives the biggest hint, saying,

Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived

and backs up this enormously grandiose claim with an impassioned comic explaining very clearly why.

But the important thing here is not that Tesla was a geek it's that geeks, along with bowties, are cool. Is there a suggestion that geeks make better scientists implicit in this statement? 

To me, Tesla seems to fulfill one type of scientist-hero stereotype: the lonely/introverted, maverick, somewhat or very eccentric scientist, screwed over by aspects of society, nevertheless goes on to work horrendous hours and develop ideas that ultimately prove to win everyone over-- but not at great personal cost. Tesla, dying alone and quite definitely crazy, fits this description perfectly.

The BBC four series Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity (presented by Jim Al-Khalili) uses Tesla's story to frame their second episode, the Age of Invention, noting that the drama of Tesla's life makes him interesting. His inventions have a wacky side which makes him a darling of fantasy: an electrical zap gun in the show Warehouse 13 is called a Tesla, and in Sanctuary Tesla was a part-vampire.

QMx's 'Tesla' Zap Gun from Warehouse 13

Edison, on the other hand, has no supernatural alter-egos and no zap guns. He's known popularly for electrocuting dogs to prove that Tesla's Alternating Current was dangerous, and for stealing his employees  inventions. He's popularly derided for being the chieftian of an incremental research group-type science.

But hang on, Edison may not have had the same electrifying (heh) sparks (heh) of genius that Tesla did, but the vast majority of scientists work the way that Edison did-- as part of a group where everyone has a clearly defined role and a clearly defined pay, and everyone contributes to developing a certain product, often a better version of something that already exists (ahem, Samsung vs. Apple). While alternating current won the day, much of what we run on alternating current got its start in Edison's company.

What I don't want to do is contest that Tesla's popularity, especially after a long period of being rather unsung, is not absolutely deserved. I certainly approve of giving him in a museum in the country which he loved and did the vast majority of his spectacular living and inventing.

That said, this conflict* interests me: we, in our geek-championing society, want to value the scientist as an individual creator and we applaud his or her individual contributions. However, the overwhelming amount of actual science, engineering and design that goes on is done by people who work in company models very much like the one Edison created where the individual inventor's contribution is--at best--indistinct.

*Or perhaps it's not a conflict at all, just an expression of the human like of a good story.