The Connection Between Ben Franklin and Your Smartphone
Smithsonian shares how Ben Franklin’s understanding of electricity influenced modern technology.
Franklin theorized that linking several jars could increase the size of the charge they could hold. He called these linked jars a “battery,” and became the first to use that term to describe an electrical device, although the first real battery as we know them today wasn’t invented until almost a decade after his death. When he was trying to figure out how Leyden jars work, Franklin realized that he didn’t need a jar: “You can stack some glass plates together and get the same capacitor effect,” says Wallace.
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