Turns out that up the road about an hour and a quarter in the town of Bellingham is a fascinating place...the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention. It is filled with amazing devices from the history of electrical technology. One of the first we saw upon entering was this static electricity machine.
Quickly followed by the inventions of Pieter van Musschenbroek at the university of Leyden. He devised a jar to collect charge (the Leyden Jar) and a pivoting pointer that moved when a charged object was near.
Ben Franklin also contributed. We all know about the episode with the kite, but he also invented Franklin's Bells. When connected to the static electricity machine you see in the plexiglass box beside it, the charge deposited on the tubes and suspended balls would swing back and forth. Being attracted and, after touching, repelled, the whole thing was put in motion and the bells would ring.
After Hertz discovered electromagnetic radiation, A colleague over at the University of Bologna, Augusto Righi, built his own transmitter and detector of these "Hertzian waves" and became a leading expert in them. This device is clearly made to study the angular distribution of the radiation emitted. Turns out this Righi was also a friend of Marconi. Small world, eh?
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