Zahlen, bitte! 200 literally electrified monks in the service of science

The Age of Enlightenment is also the age of the discovery of static electricity. From 1730 to 1740, the static electricity machine was significantly improved and presented by scientists, but also by showmen at fairs. The “science of sparks” was a spectacle but also a phenomenon that was difficult to explain. The accidental discovery of the Leiden bottle provided scientists with a capacitor to assist them in their experiments.

One of them was Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet, who coined the name “Leiden bottle” for the discovery of the electrical storage device by Pieter van Musschenbroek and Ewald Georg von Kleist, respectively. The physicist Nollet was an advocate of the “two-liquid theory,” which explained electricity with two liquids in electrified bodies, which he called “effluvium” and “affluvium.”

Zahlen, bitte!

In this section, we present amazing, impressive, informative and funny figures ("Zahlen") from the fields of IT, science, art, business, politics and, of course, mathematics every Tuesday. The wordplay "Zahlen, bitte!" for a section about numbers is based on the ambiguity of the German word "Zahlen." On one hand, "Zahlen" can be understood as a noun in the sense of digits and numerical values, which fits the theme of the section. On the other hand, the phrase "Zahlen, bitte!" is reminiscent of a waiter's request in a restaurant or bar when they are asked to bring the bill. Through this association, the section acquires a playful and slightly humorous undertone that catches the readers' attention and makes them curious about the presented numbers and facts.

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200 monks dance under electricity

Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet was born in Pimpré near Noyon in 1700 and initially studied theology. He was ordained a priest but never exercised the ministry, although he retained the title of abbé. Under the influence of the natural scientist René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, he opted for physics and initially worked for the physicist Charles du Fay, who carried out numerous experiments with frictional electricity. Du Fay realized in 1733 that there must be two types of electricity, which he called glass electricity and resin electricity.

But how quickly did these positive and negative liquids actually spread? In 1746, Nollet therefore gathered 200 Carthusian monks in a 1.5 km circle in the most elaborate experiment of his time. They were connected to each other by wires and brass rods in their hands. He connected them to an electrically charged Leiden bottle via another brass rod. The monks simultaneously twitched and stumbled under the electric shock, which led Nollet to observe that this electricity traveled rapidly and that the speed could not be measured with the means of the time.

When King Louis XV learned of the experiment, he ordered Nollet to Versailles and had Nollet repeat the experiment with 180 soldiers. He was royally amused to see how his soldiers staggered and had further physical experiments shown to him. Later, Nollet, the son of a farmer, became a teacher to the king's children.

In addition to his theory, Nollet himself constantly developed new experiments, such as the electric boy, who was suspended in the air on insulating ropes and charged with an electrifying machine, or “put into an electrical state,” as Nollet wrote. Spectators could then observe how objects stuck to his body, they could also touch him and get a small electric shock.

Electricity as a theory of two liquids

Nollet summarized his two-liquid theory of electricity in 1749 in his work “Recherches sur les causes particulieres des phénoménes électriques,” which attracted a great deal of attention. He was professor of physics at the College de Navarre in Paris when Benjamin Franklin's “Experiments and Observations on Electricity made at Philadelphia in America” appeared, which explained electricity with a “single fluid, two charges theory”. Franklin wrote that two different charges balance each other out, as in the management of a business account. In the course of his experiments, Franklin had also recognized that lightning was nothing more than electrical sparks that could be deflected with a lightning rod.

Lightning, feared as a divine power since ancient times, was a physical phenomenon. “He has snatched the lightning from the heavens, the sceptre from the tyrants,” wrote Anne Robert Jacques Turgot. Franklin's book was immediately translated into French and provided with a preface that completely ignored Nollet and his experiments. Nollet immediately began a series of heated and polemical letters to Franklin that divided the young science of physics into Franklinists and non-Franklinists. With his authority as a member of the French Academy of Sciences, Nollet ensured that lightning rods were frowned upon in France. It was only after his death that the first lightning conductor was installed, on the roof of the Academy in Dijon of all places.

Nollet wrote in French, Franklin in English. The experimental physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg wrote about the theories of the two opponents in German: Part of the Age of Enlightenment was that science abandoned Latin as the scholarly language. Even the English physician William Gilbert, who coined the term “electricity” in contrast to magnetism, wrote in Latin: “De Magnete, Magnetisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure” was his main work. By using vernacular languages, scientific knowledge spread much faster and was also reproduced outside the world of scholars. This popularization was not without consequences: Nollet's famous experiment with his king's soldiers in Versailles soon circulated as a widely printed illustration of the “electric force.”

(afl)