Part 9: The wonderful 'Shock' Jar of Musschenbroek
The next man, almost, a contemporary to our guys unto now, represents the transition period from natural philosophy to experimental physics. This man is from the Netherlands, a Dutch mathematician, physicist(well, sort of), philosopher, etc. the name is: Pieter Van Musschenbroek(1692 - 1761).
Pieter Van Musschenbroek
This guy, was a complete physicist, what I would term such people based on nothing but my own insignificant opinion, as his works constitute a sense of astute observation and deep thinking when it comes to philosophy. His book '
Elementa Physica' is still studied as a textbook on experimental physics in various universities. This is from an essay on him I found on research gate. This helps understand his position within the framework and the state of physics and philosophy in that era.
But, because his work of our interest does not comprise any fundamental or deep concept of electricity but just a giant discovery of a device, we'll move straight to it. The first mention of this device comes in Musschenbroek's letter to the time's famous public figure:
Réne-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur dated Jan 20, 1746. This is the relevant excerpt in the original Latin and in English:
I got this from chatGPT as I could not find this letter's original pdf anywhere on the internet, as much as I cared to look for it. Upon looking for further works where the jar is mentioned, I found this piece named:
'Essai Sur L'Electricité Des Corps' (French: Essay on the electricity of bodies) dated 1746-1747. Although, by the length of the pdf of the photographed manuscript I found, this does appear to be larger than an essay.
Interestingly, on the first page of my copy, I found the illustration of the flying boy experiment, a testament to its popularity in those times. Now the copy I found is completely in French, So, I'm gonna provide the excerpts, where my knowledge, from google translate. First written is a letter to someone called:
Monseigneur the Dauphin from someone called:
JA Nollet -> Okay, turns out this is not Musschenbroek's work, this is a work of another, very eminent, physicist:
Jean Antoine Nollet. So, instead of digressing any further, we must focus on Musschenbroek and his jar.
To that end, what I stumbled upon was an article on Academia's website titled: 'Petrus Van Musschenbroek(1692 - 1761) and the early Leiden Jar: A discussion of the neglected manuscripts'. Now, the name of the device I did not disclose earlier as I wanted it to unfold in its natural chronological order if its original writings but because of how painstaking it is to find a copy of the original works: I think the secondary sources are fine too, we may find the original works along the way.
So, initially here's a description of his discovery: A charge storing device called: The Leiden Jar. Leiden, of-course, referring to the city in Netherlands where Musschenbroek taught. Here's an excerpt from Linda Hall Library's website elucidating upon the jar:
Apparently there was some controversy upon some German guy having discovered the same device on his own a year earlier. Here's an excerpt from the same piece:
Here's a cool demonstration of this phenomenon on
YouTube, although the design does not match the jar's. design much. Now, just to keep up the rigor of our study, I went back to the hunt for primary sources and manuscripts to the Academia's article. Also,
here's an Electroboom video on it. His design does somewhat match Musschenbroek's.
Now, here on Academia's website. I don't think the full article is available for free and I'll refrain from buying this(I'd rather buy subscription of the original works). So, let's see how much we get outta this. The first part of this article is Acknowledgements where he expresses his gratitude towards the special collections Department at Leiden University: which makes me think that the material I am facing difficulty finding is most probs in their care and isn't very public. Next comes what's titled: Introduction. In this part, the author gives a clarity on what he aims to accomplish/study through this paper which is mainly about Van Musschenbroek's work on the jar and electricity overall, his approach, methodology and thinking. The author explores Musschenbroek's own writings to do so, and also some secondary literature. He also explores Musschenbroek's initial reaction to jar. He mentions Musschenbroek's popularity in his own time and also mentions how his book was one of the most comprehensive electrical research. He also, interestingly mentions this:
The next section is titled:
'The Early History of Leiden Jar in the Secondary Literature'. Herein, he sources a man called
John Heilbron(who was, very interestingly, an American Historian of Science [1934 - 2023]
) according to whom, accounts on the jar's discovery are mostly based on Musschenbroek's letter to
Réne Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur and
Joseph Priestley's account in the history of electricity. He says:
And then Heilbron states that Musschenbroek's jar experiment was likely a repetition of an earlier experiment.
Something really interesting mentioned here, is something called:
Rule of Dufay. Which, as mentioned here, appears in Heilbron's works concerning this. Here's what's mentioned about it:
Heilbronn says that this rule was generally followed and was a common procedure. in electrical experimentation. He says that the violation of this procedure caused an accidental discovery of this device. Here's what he thinks would've happened:
Although other authors named
Gibelle Celestino Silva and
Petter Heering, is a recent article challenges Hielbron's interpretation. Refer to the academic articles to know the specific arguments for yourself. I am, however, attaching here- an important excerpt:
The next section is titled: '
Van Musschenbroek On Electricity in his Textbooks'. He first discusses how, when and what matter concerning electricity slowly made its way into Musschenbroek's textbooks on Natural Philosophy. He says Musschenbroek provides just an account of electrical experiments but does not try any explanation as for the cause of such phenomena. Here's why in Musschenbroek's own words:
Here is another excerpt from Musschenbroek's primary work emphasizing the paucity of experimental work regarding electricity.
Further in this section the author discusses the later sections of Musschenbroek's book. The next section is titled: '
The Manuscript'. This is the section where the manuscripts are finally discussed
en length. This is the author's preliminary remark.
He starts off by stating that Musschenbroek's work can be divided into four parts. The first part, he says consists of a summary of opinion found in the literature on electricity. He then discusses the reasons of neglect towards these manuscript which included language barriers, style of writing, content etc. He then provides a summary of the main subjects discussed in the first part.
Then he comments on Musschenbroek's contents, style of writing and hence, a derived flow of thought. He then says that Musschenbroek, in his work, uses a "
scheme of Research questions" to organize this work, then incorporating results from his own experiments, meanwhile also commenting on others', then planning ahead, and proposing future experiments. He then alludes to the fact that no apparent order can be found in the list and the experiments can be linked back to the aforementioned
research questions. He then provides a short description of Van Musschenbroek's experimental setup. He says, (inferring from the reports), that he used the set up that had been introduced into electrical research by:
George Mathia Bose(1710 - 1761) or
Christian August Hausen(1693 - 1743).
And here we go again, the author again takes us back to JA Nollet, and his Essai Sur l'electricité des corps, from which, he provides an illustration of the experimental setup. Here's the illustration and its description by the author.
He then describes the possibility of variations on this set-up and how Musschenbroek tried several variations. Here's a relevant excerpt:
After yapping some more about some other variations, observations, self-reflections and how Musschenbroek measured electricity, the author finally turns to the jar. He says: "The experiment is part of a series of experiments dealing with the electrification of water." Here is his method elucidated and his observations too:
Further it is mentioned that as in
experiment 29 of his textbook, he arrived at a conclusion: "That electric force do not go through the water but only runs along its surface." Next, the author mentions
experiment 31 which deals with effect of water on glass, which led him to the following conclusion:
It was in this experiment that he mentions his experiences with the jar:
An illustration of the jar
This is the earliest written account by Van Musschenbroek of his experiments with what people call:
The world's first Capacitor. He then goes on yapping about Musschenbroek and his contemporaries' beliefs regarding the choice of the type of glass, and of water. Then are some passages and excerpts regarding their understanding of the working of this phenomena of electricity. Particularly, Van Musschenbroek's belief in the heterogenous nature of electricity. Here in his own words, in
experiment 9 in the manuscript:
He then goes on discussing this and arguing on which of the historians' interpretation, reasoning and conjectures are correct regarding the contemporary beliefs and the discovery of the jar. One interesting thing which informs us something about the nature of Mr. Musschenbroek is that he avoided "
Hasty Generalizations" as the author puts it, and emphasized a systematic variations in experimentation. This is an interesting excerpt from Musschenbroek's letter to Bose:
The last section is titled:
Conclusion. -> Which I'm not gonna write much about because I've already elucidated upon the parts of our interest. But one thing I must say is that the author finally gives this Heilbron guy a piece of his mind, if he ever met him, for calling Musschenbroek's methods "unimaginative".
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