An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the Enlightenment

Revolutions in Science

by Patricia Fara

An Entertainment for Angels, rather than for Men, one observer called electricity, and it proved to be the most significant scientific discovery of the Enlightenment. Lecturers attracted huge audiences who marveled at sparkling fountains, flaming drinks, pirouetting dancers, and electrified boys. Flamboyant experimenters made chains of soldiers leap into the air, while wealthy women titillated their admirers with a sensational electric kiss. Optimists predicted that this strange power of nature would cure illnesses, improve crop production, even bring the dead back to life. An Entertainment for Angels tells the story of how electricity charged the eighteenth-century imagination. With contemporary illustrations and engaging prose, Patricia Fara vividly portrays the struggles to understand the unusual and exciting effects that electrical experiments were producing.

One of the heroes of the story is Benjamin Franklin, renowned on both sides of the Atlantic as an expert on electricity, who introduced lightning rods to protect tall buildings, pioneered techniques to treat paralyzed patients, and developed one of the most successful explanations of this mysterious phenomenon. Others include Luigi Galvani, whose electrical research on frogs and animals makes for grisly reading but led to the discovery of direct current electricity; and Alessandro Volta, who―with Napoleon's enthusiastic support―became one of Europe's leading scientific practitioners and invented the world's first battery.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Science, History Of Science

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 10, 1998

About the author

Patricia Fara is a historian of science at the University of Cambridge. She is a graduate of the University of Oxford and did her PhD at the University of London. She is a former Fellow of Darwin College and is currently a Fellow of Clare College where she is Senior Tutor and Tutor for graduate students. Fara is also a research associate and lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. Fara is author of numerous popular books on the history of science and has been a guest on BBC Radio 4's science and history discussion series, In Our Time. She began her academic career as a physicist but returned to graduate studies as a mature student to specialise in History and Philosophy of Science, completing her PhD thesis at Imperial College, London in 1993.

Her areas of particular academic interest include the role of portraiture and art in the history of science, science in the 18th century England during the Enlightenment and the role of women in science. She has written and co-authored a number of books for children on science. Fara is also a reviewer of books on history of science.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

My partner recently introduced me to the phrase "Dead Historical Boyfriend" and boy does this author have one. Benjamin Franklin was no doubt important in the early days of electricity, but not nearly as important as this author would have you believe. I fail to see why everything had to be brought back to him again and again. I learned a few things I didn't already know (not about Franklin, as I have read his autobiography), so the book succeeded in that regard, but I would have liked a more balanced view portrayed than the one we get here.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit wide-eyed, this brief description of the Enlightenment's process of understanding electricity includes just enough tech talk to make the concepts understandable, without shocking the reader with math or jargon. As magicians are well aware (at least those who read the history of magic) 18th century performers often included electrical demonstrations in their programs, as soon as new discoveries were published. Fara discusses several of those demonstrators, including some who went on to contribute to electrical theory.
Battles over theory and the meanings of experimental results raged as the basic process of scientific method was invented. Religion intruded, of course, as it still does, attempting to stifle material understanding.

[Jerrid Kruse · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author illustrates the role of politics, prior knowledge (theoretical commitments), and serendipity in the development of ideas about electricity from about 1700 to 1800, mostly in Europe, but also in the US/colonies. The book makes connections between development of technology and development of ideas and how the two are often linked and often distinct. I also how the competitive nature of science is highlighted between scientists and between nations.

[Adam Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Entertainment for Angels is a bit of a cheat. It looks like a full account of electricity in the enlightenment age but if you look carefully, the text is a little larger and spaced out than usual and the pages are on thicker paper, almost as if the book is a shorter one trying to look like a larger one.

So, it’s not as deep an experience as could be hoped for but it is an enjoyable romp through several decades of electrical history, with a particular emphasis on the showmanship of early electrical research, the piecemeal nature of scientific advance and the odd way in which advances in equipment came first and theory had to catch up.

One of the most enjoyable elements of the book was how knowledge of electricity and discovery of its effects grew up from a sense of play. The first battery (so named because like a battery of guns, the effect was increased by grouping them together) was discovered by accident. It was then used to attract objects to suspended orphans, or electrocute 400 monks. I particularly liked the story when the trick didn’t work and the current kept dying at one particular monk. They started to suspect the monk might be a woman in secret (though why that should break the current, I’ve no idea) but it turned out to be because they were standing on a wet patch of ground.

I loved all the talk of pranks and tricks, the cutlery that shocked the dinner guests, the hidden electric ‘mines’ in one person’s house. I loved how silliness built up phenomena to see and evidence which then led to electrical theories. I followed the description of the electrical theories pretty well but now I think I understand the false ways that eighteenth century scientists thought electricity works more than I understand how electricity actually works.

I very much enjoyed this book as a run through of electrical science in the 18th century, it told its story well, was very entertaining and gave me a few new ideas to play with.

[Charley Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love my field of work and never tire of learning about its history (young as it is). I would've loved a tad more connection to our current (get it?) times but overall a very concise book. I would've loved to see Fara tackle 19th and 20th Century physics more as that last chapter was great but I've definitely come away with a better appreciation for the Electricians of the past!

[Sky · Rating 4 out of 5]

+Patricia does a great job creating an insightful, entertaining and easy to read series of chapters. She effectively hones in on the various occurrences involving the scientific evolution of the discovery of electricity in the 18th century. I would happily recommend it.

-The book seems to end abruptly.

[Lissa Notreallywolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unlike most history of science books, this one is enough to make one laugh aloud. Science at one point was an entertainment opportunity, where people hired folks to perform experiments. My favorite was the electrical boys, with Mesmer ranking a close second.

[Zedder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun history of electricity.