Static electricity

= Introduction =
Static electricity is a type of magic. It has had many uses
throughout history, however recent concerns about its safety have led
to a decline in its popularity.
=History=
==Discovery of static electricity==
In 600 BC electricians discovered that rubbing a piece of amber on a cat's fur would cause it
to attract small pieces of polystyrene. This discovery led to the invention of the first
apparatus for the mass production of static electricity, in which a number of cats are
attached to the rim of a rotating wheel, aligned such that their fur comes into contact
with a specially shaped block of amber.
Maintenance of the device proved to be almost impossible as the cats were rarely docile. 
Adding catnip to the amber alleviated the problems somewhat, but made the electricity
smell somewhat unpleasant.
It was soon discovered that static electricity had the amazing ability
to make balloons stick to walls. This ensured its commercial success.
Soon every tavern and ale-house in the country boasted its very own
cat-powered balloon charging machine.
Many inventors filed patents claiming that it was possible for the motion of such a device to be powered by the cats themselves via a treadmill arrangement, thus creating limitless static electricity seemingly out of nowhere. On closer investigation, however, almost all of these devices turned out to be frauds.
== Static electricity: the formative years ==
By the early 1700s the uses for static electricity were growing in number and variety, and
maintaining the supply of cats presented great problems. Methods of
storing and transporting static electricity were clearly needed.
Early attempts to use cardboard boxes to store the electricity proved unreliable and dangerous,
as the electricity would leak from the bottom of the box and cause contamination of
the ground. This proved especially problematic for sheep farmers as the escaped
electricity would cause the sheeps' wool to stand on end. Any slight breeze would
pick up the sheep and carry them for miles, much like a dandelion seed. The
static electricity would then accumulate in the atmosphere, causing lightning.
Enter the Dutch physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek who hit upon the revolutionary
idea of storing the electricity in a jar. This proved much more reliable because a
simple lid could be used to prevent the electricity from spilling out. His invention
was titled the Leyden jar because nobody could remember how to spell "van
Musschenbroke".
Experiments were also carried out to test the widely held belief that static electricity could be transported from place to place by conducting it through metal cables. The main proponent of this idea was the French clergyman and physicist Jean-Antoine Nollet who performed a spectacular demonstration of the principle in the spring of 1746. Two hundred monks from the Grand Convent of the Carthusians were arranged into a line over a mile long. Between each pair of monks was a 25-foot iron wire. On discharging a Leyden jar through the monks, they were observed to jump, twitch and swear simultaneously, confirming that static electricity could be transferred through the wires over great distances and at high speed.
Understandably it proved difficult to ensure that the monks maintained a steady grasp on the wire. This greatly limited the usefulness of Nollet's invention for the bulk transport of large quantities of static electricity. However it was soon realised that the device presented a highly practical method of communicating over long distances, and later on the so-called "electric telegraph" would become an extremely common feature of everyday society.
Later in the 1700s Benjamin Franklin became interested in static electricity
after one of his regular kite-flying sessions was interrupted by a thunderstorm.
Franklin went on to harness the power of static electricity for numerous purposes,
leading to the invention of the lightning rod, the glass harmonica, the Franklin stove,
bifocal glasses, the urinary catheter and the US Constitution. Franklin also attempted
to use static electricity as a method of execution; while he failed to scale
up van Mushenbrok's invention to human electrocution size, variants of his ideas are
still used today in Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises the world over.
At around this time, the Italian wasp-herder Luigi Galvani was
experimenting with frogs' legs. He discovered that they could be made
to twitch by applying a discharge of static electricity to them, and
predicted that a generator of static electricity could be built using
frogs instead of cats. The machine failed to work, leading to his
ideas being widely denounced as fraudulent by the scientific community
of the time.
==The golden age of static electricity==
At this point, people hit upon the idea of using conveyor belts to
transport van Musselbrake's jars of electricity from place to
place. Suddenly, the generation of electricity could be centralised.
An entire industry was born as the demand for highly trained feline
engineers blossomed. Whole towns were born around the newly
established catteries. Great wooden catwheels dominated the skylines of every town and city; rattling conveyor belts ran alongside every major road, watched over vigilantly by armies of Nollet's monks, twitching furiously with telegrams and messages of every form. At one point over half of the adult population
was employed in the industry of breeding cats and tying them to
wheels. The steady increase in thunderstorms was dismissed by the public as a fair price to pay for progress.
However it was not until the invention of the van de Graaff generator
that static electricity reached its zenith. This revolutionary device
did away with the live cats completely, replacing them instead with a
belt of catskin. This machine was more time-consuming to produce but
proved to be far more reliable and cheaper to run as there was no
longer a need to feed the cats.
== The Descent of Static Electricity ==
The National Union of Catworkers were the first to object to the new
invention. A series of strikes resulted in often bloody conflicts
between the catworkers and the police. The new machine threatened the
livelihoods of many; whole communities were destroyed as mass
closures of catteries threatened to bring about the death of an entire
industry.
Later on, distemper flared among the hippies. The manufacture of
catskin belts was seen as an unacceptable exploitation of animals. As
the traditional method had been in use for many hundreds of years, it
was thought to be clearly more humane. For many years it was common to
see so-called "organic" electricity offered for sale, which was
guaranteed to have been produced only using live cats.
The tension with the hippies entered the public eye dramatically
in June of 1985 with the so-called "Battle of the Catfield". Many
thousands of cats had been rescued by the hippies from certain death
at the hands of the catskin manufacturers. They were cornered in a
field by police and soundly tasered. The discharge of static
electricity from the tasers caused many of the cats to become charged
and float into the sky; the resulting thunderstorms were the worst in
living memory, resulting two years later in a hurricane which even
Michael Fish was unable to predict.
This was the real death knell for static electricity. Public concern
rapidly mounted over the environmental consequences of its
accumulation in the atmosphere. For hundreds of years, spilt static
electricity had sent everyday animals floating into the sky, and the
increasing lightning storms were leading many to fear that the world
was on the brink of imminent environmental collapse. The tide of
public opinion rapidly changed against static electricity and its
popularity began to wane.
=Static electricity today=
thumb|200px|Effects of static electricity.
Static electricity is mainly used today for its ability to make people's hair stand on end.
This is useful not only for fashion purposes and in barber shops, but also
for the production of horror films and, surprisingly, the pasteurisation of milk.
Category:Electromagnetics