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In 1746, Pieter van Musschenbroek, a Dutch scientist at Leiden University, conducted “a new but terrible experiment.” By electrifying a glass jar filled with water, he managed to store electricity within the vessel, while his hand reaching towards the conducting wire received a most violent shock. The vessel was to become known as the Leyden Jar, the precedent of modern capacitor or battery. Here in Jean Antoine Nollet’s representation of the experiment, the dangerous incident is transformed into a light-hearted salon collaboration between the sexes, and conceptualized by the radiant diagram above them.
Anonymous
The Leiden Experiment on Electricity
Plate 4 (page 216) from M. l’Abbé Nollet, Essai sur l’électricité du corps, 1753
Engraving
Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation
2015.3
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