18th & 19th Century Static Electricity Devices

The Layden jar (above) was invented by Pieter van Musschenbroek in 1745 and named after the Universityof Leyden in the Netherlands. The jar was originally a sealed glass jar with a wire running through the cork seal and into the water within the bottle. The bottle had a conuctor wrapped around it. Later the water was replaced by a coating of conducting metal around the inside of the jar. The bottle can store the charge passed in through the wire on the thin layer of conductor around the inside of the jar, which is called a dielectric.

The Aepinus condenser (below) was invented by Franz Aepinus in 1789. Today, condensers are known as capacitors, which store energy between to plates. The condenser was used to demonstrate conduction and induction. It was designed so that the two plates could be moves, and the plate could be replaced with a different material. It was the first condenser created after the Leyden jar.