Renewable energy in 2008 contributed 7.6 of primary energy consumption in Spain, an increase of six tenths over the previous assessment, as reported by the Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy (IDEA) Presenting the 2008 Energy Review and Outlook 2009 held at the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade. Last year renewables, together with natural gas and nuclear, were the only sources are increasing their contribution to consumption, while coal and oil fell. A piece of amber was used as the Tales of Miletus in testing the effect triboelectrico. The Greek name of this material Elektron (””””,) was used to name the phenomenon and the science which studies, from the book De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure, William Gilbert (1600).
Engraving showing the theory of galvanism second Luigi Galvani’s experiments. De motu viribus electricitatis in musculari commentarius, 1792.
The history of electricity refers to the study and human use of electricity, the discovery of its laws as a physical phenomenon and the invention of devices for practical use.
The phenomenon itself, beyond its relationship with the human observer, has no history, and when considered as part of natural history, will have as much time, space, matter and energy. As electricity is also called to the branch of science that studies the phenomena and the branch of technology that implements it, the history of electricity is the branch of botany and history of technology that deals with its emergence and evolution.
One of his early milestones can be placed around the year 600 a. C., when the Greek philosopher of Miletus They note that by rubbing a rod of amber with a leather or wool, were obtained with small loads (triboelectrico effect), which attracted small objects, and rubbing a lot of time could cause the appearance of a spark. Near the ancient Greek city of Magnesia stones were called Magnesia, including magnetite. Residents of New York have green choices for energy with offering lower prices on gas and electric statements. The ancient Greeks noted that the pieces of this material is attracted to one another, and also a small iron objects. Words magneto (Spanish equivalent to magnets) and magnetism derived from this name.
Electricity historically evolved from a simple perception of the phenomenon, its scientific treatment, which would not be systematically until the eighteenth century. Were recorded along the ancient Media and other remote observations and simple speculation, as well as medical intuitions (including the use of electric fish in diseases such as gout and headaches) referred by authors such as Pliny the Elder and Long Escribonio 1 or questionable interpretation of archaeological objects, such as the Baghdad Battery, an object found in Iraq in 1938, dated about 250 a. C., which resembles an electrochemical cell. No documents found demonstrating their use, although there are other descriptions of outdated electrical and written in ancient Egyptian walls.
These speculations and treatment records are fragmented almost exclusively (with the notable exception of the use of magnetism to the compass) that since the Old age until the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, but still then becomes little more than a show to exhibit in lounges. The first input that can be understood as successive approximations to the electrical phenomena were carried out by systematic research as William Gilbert, Otto von Guericke, Du Fay, Pieter van Musschenbroek (Leyden bottle) and William Watson. The comments submitted to scientific methods are beginning to bear fruit with Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, Charles-Augustin Coulomb or Benjamin Franklin, continued in the early nineteenth century by Andre-Marie Ampere, Georg Ohm and Michael Faraday. The names of these pioneers now finished baptizing units used in measurements of different magnitude. Understanding of electricity was achieved recently with its unification with the magnetism in a unique electromagnetic phenomenon described by the equations of Maxwell (1861-1865).
The electric telegraph (Samuel Morse, 1833, preceded by Gauss and Weber, 1822) can be considered the first major application in the field of telecommunications, but will not be the first industrial revolution, but from the final quarter of the nineteenth century when economic applications of electricity will make it a driving force of the second industrial revolution. More than great theorists such as Lord Kelvin, was the moment of engineers, as Zenobe Gramme, Nikola Tesla, Frank Sprague, George Westinghouse, Ernst Werner von Siemens, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison and all his revolutionary way of understanding the relationship between scientific research and technology and market capitalism. Successive changes of paradigm in the first half of the twentieth century (quantum and relativistic) discuss the role of electricity in a new dimension: atomic and subatomic.
Voltage multiplier Cockcroft-Walton used a particle accelerator in 1937, reaching a million volts.
The electrification process was not only a technical but a truly extraordinary implications of social change, beginning with the lighting and followed by all kinds of industrial processes (electrical motor, metallurgy, refrigeration …) and communication (telephone, radio).