Editing Leyden jar (section)

== Further developments ==
Within months after Musschenbroek's report about how to reliably create a Leyden jar, other electrical researchers were making and experimenting with their own Leyden jars.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Priestley|first1=Joseph|title=The History and Present State of Electricity, with original experiments|date=1775|location=London|pages=108|edition=3rd|url=https://archive.org/stream/historyandprese00priegoog#page/n154/mode/2up/|access-date=25 April 2018|publisher=London : Printed for C. Bathurst, and T. Lowndes ... J. Rivington, and J. Johnson ... S. Crowder, G. Robinson, and R. Baldwin ... T. Becket, and T. Cadell ...}}</ref> One of his expressed original interests was to see if the total possible charge could be increased.<ref>Godoy, Luis & Elishakoff, Isaac. (2020). The Experimental Contribution of Petrus Van Musschenbroek to the Discovery of a Buckling Formula in the Early 18th Century. International Journal of Structural Stability and Dynamics.</ref>

[[Johann Heinrich Winckler]], whose first experience with a single Leyden jar was reported in a letter to the [[Royal Society]] on 29 May 1746, had connected three Leyden jars together in a kind of electrostatic battery on 28 July 1746.<ref name=Allerhand>{{cite journal|last1=Allerhand|first1=A.|title=Who invented the earliest capacitor bank ("battery" of Leyden jars)? It's complicated|journal=[[Proceedings of the IEEE]] |date=2018 |volume=106 |issue=3|pages=498–500|doi=10.1109/JPROC.2018.2795846}}</ref> In 1746, [[Abbé Nollet]] performed two experiments for the edification of [[King Louis XV]] of France, in the first of which he discharged a Leyden jar through 180 [[Maison Militaire du Roi de France|royal guardsmen]], and in the second through a larger number of [[Carthusian monks]]; all of whom sprang into the air more or less simultaneously. The opinions of neither the king nor the experimental subjects have been recorded.<ref>{{cite book |title=[[The History and Present State of Electricity]] |first=Joseph |last=Priestley |author-link=Joseph Priestley |year=1769}}</ref>{{page needed|date=August 2021}}

[[Daniel Gralath]] reported in 1747 that in 1746 he had conducted experiments with connecting two or three jars, probably in [[Series and parallel circuits#Series circuits|series]].<ref name=Allerhand />

In 1746–1748, [[Benjamin Franklin]] experimented with charging Leyden jars in series,<ref>{{EB1911|noprescript=1|wstitle=Leyden Jar |volume=16 |page=528}}</ref> and developed a system involving 11 panes of glass with thin lead plates glued on each side, and then connected together. He used the term "electrical battery" to describe his electrostatic battery in a 1749 letter about his electrical research in 1748.<ref>Benjamin Franklin (1961). [https://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=3&page=352a To Peter Collinson, April 29, 1749] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171217065533/http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=3&page=352a |date=December 17, 2017 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Kuehn|first1=K|title=A Student's Guide Through the Great Physics Texts|chapter=Müschenbroek's Wonderful Bottle| volume=III. Electricity, magnetism and light|date=2016|publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3319218168 |pages=43–60| doi=10.1007/978-3-319-21816-8_4|series=Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics}}</ref> It is possible that Franklin's choice of the word ''battery'' was inspired by the humorous wordplay at the conclusion of his letter, where he wrote, among other things, about a salute to electrical researchers from a battery of [[cannon|guns]].<ref>{{cite web |author = Benjamin Franklin |title = To Peter Collinson, April 29, 1749 |url = https://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=3&page=352a |access-date = July 19, 2012 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20171217065533/http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=3&page=352a |archive-date = December 17, 2017 |url-status = dead }}</ref> This is the first recorded use of the term ''electrical battery''.<ref name=Allerhand /> The multiple and rapid developments for connecting Leyden jars during the period 1746–1748 resulted in a variety of divergent accounts in secondary literature about who made the first "battery" by connecting Leyden jars, whether they were in series or parallel, and who first used the term "battery".<ref name=Allerhand /> The term was later used for combinations of multiple electrochemical cells, the modern meaning of the term "battery".

The Swedish physicist, chemist, and meteorologist [[Torbern Bergman]] translated much of Benjamin Franklin's writings on electricity into German and continued to study electrostatic properties.<ref>Muller-Hillebrand, D. "Torbern Bergman as a Lightning Scientist." A Bicentenary Memorial of Swedish Lightning Research in the Context of 18th-century Electrical Discoveries. Uppsala University. 42 pages, Pg. 6. Published 1964.</ref>

Starting in late 1756, [[Franz Aepinus]], in a complicated combination of independent work and collaboration with [[Johan Wilcke]],<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last1=Home |first1=R.W.| encyclopedia=Aepinus's Essay on the Theory of Electricity and Magnetism|date=2015|publisher=[[Princeton University Press]]|title=The Electrical Background|isbn=978-1-4008-6952-7|orig-year=1979|pages=89–92}}</ref> developed an "air condenser", a variation on the Leyden jar, by using air rather than glass as the dielectric.  This functioning apparatus, without glass, created a problem for Benjamin Franklin's explanation of the Leyden jar, which maintained that the charge was located in the glass.<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 = 388|isbn= 978-0-520-03478-5|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=UlTLRUn1sy8C&pg=PA388}}</ref>