Electricity was the scientific fashion of the Enlightenment, 'an Entertainment for Angels, rather than for Men'. Lecturers attracted huge audiences to marvel at sparkling fountains, flaming drinks, pirouetting dancers and electrified boys. Enlightenment optimists predicted that this new-found power of nature would cure illnesses, improve crop production, even bring the dead back to life. Benjamin Franklin, better known as one of America's founding fathers, played a key role in developing the new instruments and theories of ...
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Electricity was the scientific fashion of the Enlightenment, 'an Entertainment for Angels, rather than for Men'. Lecturers attracted huge audiences to marvel at sparkling fountains, flaming drinks, pirouetting dancers and electrified boys. Enlightenment optimists predicted that this new-found power of nature would cure illnesses, improve crop production, even bring the dead back to life. Benjamin Franklin, better known as one of America's founding fathers, played a key role in developing the new instruments and theories of electricity during the eighteenth century. Celebrated for drawing lightning down from the sky with a kite, Franklin was an Enlightenment expert on electricity, developing one of the most successful explanations of this mysterious phenomenon. But Patricia Fara, Senior Tutor of Clare College Cambridge, reveals how the study of electricity became intertwined with Enlightenment politics. By demonstrating their control of the natural world, Enlightenment philosophers hoped to gain authority over society. And their stunning electrical performances provided dramatic evidence of their special powers.
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Add this copy of An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the to cart. $2.25, very good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2003 by Icon Books.
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New. Book. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Essex, Icon Books, 2003. Reprint. 8vo. Paperback with pictorial cover, 177 pp. "The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was fascinated by scientific experiments, " writes Patricia Fara in the Introduction to this tale of the strange birth of electrical science, and its emergence from a high-society party trick to a symbol of man's dominance over nature. Fara writes of Benjamin Franklin, of course, but also of possibly lesser-known personnages in such chapters as "Robert Boyle and the Air-pump, " "Francis Hauksbee and the Electrical Machine, " "Henry and the Torpedo, " and "Luigi Balvani and his Frogs." "Vividly captures the ferment created by the new science of the Enlightenment, Fara deftly shows how new knowledge emerged from a rich mix of improved technology, medical quackery, Continental theorizing, religious doubt and scientific rivalry."-New Scientist. New.
