Editing Leyden jar (section)

=== Von Kleist ===
[[file:Leidse flessen Museum Boerhave december 2003 2.jpg|thumb|left|upright|A [[battery (electricity)|battery]] of four water-filled Leyden jars, [[Museum Boerhaave]], Leiden]]

[[Ewald Georg von Kleist]] was the [[dean (Christianity)|dean]] at the cathedral of [[Kamień Pomorski|Cammin]] in [[Pomerania]], a region now divided between Germany and Poland. Von Kleist is credited with first using the [[Hydraulic analogy|fluid analogy for electricity]] and demonstrated this to Bose by drawing sparks from water with his finger.<ref>Sela, Andrea. 28 March 2017. Von Kleist's jar. Chemistry World, Royal Society of Chemistry 2021.</ref> He discovered the immense storage capability of the Leyden jar while attempting to demonstrate that a glass jar filled with alcohol would "capture" this fluid.<ref>Thomas S. Kuhn, ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1996) p. 17.</ref>

In October 1745, von Kleist tried to accumulate electricity in a small medicine bottle filled with alcohol with a nail inserted in the cork. He was following up on an experiment developed by [[Georg Matthias Bose]] where electricity had been sent through water to set alcoholic spirits alight. He attempted to charge the bottle from a large prime conductor (invented by Bose) suspended above his friction machine.

Von Kleist knew that the glass would provide an obstacle to the escape of the "fluid", and so was convinced that a substantial electric charge could be collected and held within it. He received a significant shock from the device when he accidentally touched the nail through the cork while still cradling the bottle in his other hand. He communicated his results to at least five different electrical experimenters,<ref>{{Cite book | last = Heilbron| first = J. L.| author-link=John L. Heilbron | title = Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics|publisher = [[University of California Press]]|year = 1979|page = 311|isbn= 978-0-520-03478-5|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=UlTLRUn1sy8C&pg=PA311}}</ref> in several letters from November 1745 to March 1746, but did not receive any confirmation that they had repeated his results, until April 1746.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Silva|first1=C. S.|last2=Heering|first2=P. | title=Re-examining the early history of the Leiden jar: Stabilization and variation in transforming a phenomenon into a fact| journal=History of Science|volume=56|issue=3|pages=314–342| date=2018| doi=10.1177/0073275318768418|pmid=29683000|s2cid=5112189}}</ref> [[Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth|Polish-Lithuanian]] physicist [[Daniel Gralath]] learned about von Kleist's experiment from seeing von Kleist's letter to [[Paul Swietlicki]], written in November 1745. After Gralath's failed first attempt to reproduce the experiment in December 1745, he wrote to von Kleist for more information (and was told that the experiment would work better if the tube half-filled with alcohol was used). Gralath (in collaboration with {{ill |Gottfried Reyger|de}}) succeeded in getting the intended effect on 5 March 1746, holding a small glass medicine bottle with a nail inside in one hand, moving it close to an electrostatic generator, and then moving the other hand close to the nail.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Silva|first1=C. S.|last2=Heering|first2=P. | title=Re-examining the early history of the Leiden jar: Stabilization and variation in transforming a phenomenon into a fact| journal=History of Science|volume=56|issue=3|pages=314–342| date=2018| doi=10.1177/0073275318768418 |pmid=29683000|s2cid=5112189}}</ref> Von Kleist didn't understand the significance of his conducting hand holding the bottle—and both he and his correspondents were loath to hold the device when told that the shock could throw them across the room. It took some time before von Kleist's student associates at Leyden worked out that the hand provided an essential element.{{citation needed|date=May 2018|reason=Kleist did not have student associates in Leiden}}