(August 24, 2015 at 10:24 pm)ignoramus Wrote: What's needed before they can harness electricity?
You could build a Voltaic pile. The pile is made of up of zinc and copper plates with vinegar- or brine-dampened pieces of leather or pasteboard placed in between each plate. The plates were then stacked in alternating order one on top of the other with the bottom plate and the top plate acting as the positive and negative terminals. This was the first serious attempt at building a battery in the 1700's. Although the Parthians (In ~250BC) arguably made the first batteries by putting a copper cylinder (With an iron rod sticking out of the top) and vinegar in a clay pot, apparently they used it to electroplate silver.
You need a means of power transmission (wires).
Also, a working knowledge of Ohm's law would be useful (Voltage= Current x Resistance/Current= Voltage ÷ Resistance/Resistance= Voltage ÷ Current). Although this works best with an ideal conductor.
Got all that? Now all you need to do is to manufacture something that will need electrical power.
I'm with Min, printing press. Yes they used it to make Bibles but the Age of Reason might never have happened otherwise.
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. ~ George Bernard Shaw
