First edition of Cavendish's groundbreaking electrical research.

Excerpt from The Electrical Researches of the Honourable Henry Cavendish, F. R. S : Written Between 1771 and 1781, Edited From the Original Manuscripts in the Possession of the Duke of Devonshire, K. G The Electrical Researches of the Honourable Henry Cavendish, F.r.s: Written Between 1771 and 1781, Edited from the Original Manuscripts in the Possession of the Duke of Devonshire, K.g was written by J. Clerk Maxwell in 1879. This is a 524 page book, containing 186614 words and 74 pictures. Search Inside is enabled for this title. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Henry Cavendish (1731-1810), the grandson of the second duke of Devonshire, wrote papers on electrical topics for the Royal Society, but the majority of his electrical experiments did not become known until they were collected and published by James Clerk Maxwell a century later, in 1879, long after other scientists had been credited with the same results. Among Cavendish's discoveries were the concept of electric potential, which he called the 'degree of electrification'; an early unit of capacitance, that of a sphere one inch in diameter; the formula for the capacitance of a plate capacitor; the concept of the dielectric constant of a material; the relationship between electric potential and current, now called Ohm's Law; laws for the division of current in parallel circuits, now attributed to Charles Wheatstone; and the inverse square law of variation of electric force with distance, now called Coulomb's Law.