Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 series outlining aspects of the history of electricity

History of electricity

The history of electromagnetism dates back over several thousand years. In the history of electromagnetic theory, the ancients would have been acquainted with the effects of atmospheric electricity, in particular lightning as thunderstorms in most southern latitudes are common, and they also knew...

. The series was a co-production between the Open University

Open University

The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...

 and the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 and aired in October 2011 on BBC Four

BBC Four

BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....

. The programmes were presented by Jim Al-Khalili

Jim Al-Khalili

Jim Al-Khalili OBE is an Iraqi-born British theoretical physicist, author and science communicator. He is Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey...

.

Episodes

• Spark: How pioneers unlocked electricity's mysteries and built strange instruments to create it.
• The Age of Invention: How harnessing the link between magnetism and electricity transformed the world.
• Revelations and Revolutions: After centuries of experimentation, how we finally came to understand electromagnetism.

Spark

In the first episode Al-Khalili introduces the history of our understanding of electricity and the harnessing of its power. He covers the achievements of these "natural philosophers" - Francis Hauksbee

Francis Hauksbee

Francis Hauksbee the elder , also known as Francis Hawksbee, was an 18th-century English scientist, and a Fellow of the Royal Society...

, Stephen Gray

Stephen Gray (scientist)

Stephen Gray was an English dyer and amateur astronomer, who was the first to systematically experiment with electrical conduction, rather than simple generation of static charges and investigations of the static phenomena....

, Musschenbroek

Pieter van Musschenbroek

Pieter van Musschenbroek was a Dutch scientist. He was a professor in Duisburg, Utrecht, and Leiden, where he held positions in mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and astrology. He is credited with the invention of the first capacitor in 1746: the Leyden jar. He performed pioneering work on the...

, Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

, Henry Cavendish

Henry Cavendish

Henry Cavendish FRS was a British scientist noted for his discovery of hydrogen or what he called "inflammable air". He described the density of inflammable air, which formed water on combustion, in a 1766 paper "On Factitious Airs". Antoine Lavoisier later reproduced Cavendish's experiment and...

, Galvani, Volta

Alessandro Volta

Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Gerolamo Umberto Volta was a Lombard physicist known especially for the invention of the battery in 1800.-Early life and works:...

 and Humphry Davy

Humphry Davy

Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet FRS MRIA was a British chemist and inventor. He is probably best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine...

.

The programme starts with Hauksbee's invention of a static-electricity generator and its subsequent demonstration to the high-minded. It covers Franklin and the resulting experiments to capture and tame lightning. The narrative continues with Cavendish's investigations of the electric shock received from the torpedo fish. Al-Khalili expands on the development of the electric battery following Volta's discovery that simultaneously licking a copper coin and a silver spoon would generate a tingle of electricity. The programme finishes with the first breakthrough in finding a commercial use for electricity: Humphry Davy demonstrating the first carbon-arc light before members of the Royal Institution

Royal Institution

The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...

.:

The Age of Invention

In the second episode Professor Jim covers the scientists who discovered the links between electricity and magnetism leading to a way to generate electric power- Hans Christian Oersted

Hans Christian Ørsted

Hans Christian Ørsted was a Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields, an important aspect of electromagnetism...

, Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday, FRS was an English chemist and physicist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry....

, William Sturgeon

William Sturgeon

William Sturgeon was an English physicist and inventor who made the first electromagnets, and invented the first practical English electric motor.-Early Life :...

 and Joseph Henry

Joseph Henry

Joseph Henry was an American scientist who served as the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as a founding member of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science, a precursor of the Smithsonian Institution. During his lifetime, he was highly regarded...

.

The development of commercial applications started with Samuel Morse and Al-Khalili then tells the story of 1866 transatlantic cable. He revisits the "war of currents" rivalry between Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

's DC

Direct current

Direct current is the unidirectional flow of electric charge. Direct current is produced by such sources as batteries, thermocouples, solar cells, and commutator-type electric machines of the dynamo type. Direct current may flow in a conductor such as a wire, but can also flow through...

 and Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer...

's AC

Alternating current

In alternating current the movement of electric charge periodically reverses direction. In direct current , the flow of electric charge is only in one direction....

, championed by George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse

George Westinghouse, Jr was an American entrepreneur and engineer who invented the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry. Westinghouse was one of Thomas Edison's main rivals in the early implementation of the American electricity system...

.

Revelations and Revolutions

In the final episode Al-Khalili brings the story up to date covering the achievements of James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell of Glenlair was a Scottish physicist and mathematician. His most prominent achievement was formulating classical electromagnetic theory. This united all previously unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and optics into a consistent theory...

; Heinrich Hertz; Oliver Lodge; Jagadish Bose; William Crookes

William Crookes

Sir William Crookes, OM, FRS was a British chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, London, and worked on spectroscopy...

; Mataré & Welker

Heinrich Welker

Heinrich Johann Welker was a German theoretical and applied physicist who invented the "transistron", a form of transistor made at Westinghouse independently of the first successful transistor made at Bell Laboratories...

; and William Shockley

William Shockley

William Bradford Shockley Jr. was an American physicist and inventor. Along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, Shockley co-invented the transistor, for which all three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s...

.