Zel-kun’s Words

I posted before on Benjamin Franklin and how despite what my education would have me believe, he did a whole lot more cool things than fly kites and invent stoves.

And, of course, he discovered electricity!

But in my adult mind, something doesn’t seem right.  Surely he had some sort of knowledge that lightning was something other than light and heat, else why would he come to the conclusion that flying a kite would do anything other than burn it?

So I decided to do some research to see what was up…

Turns out electricity was discovered long, long before Mr. Franklin came around.  There’s evidence that even the Mesopotamians had some knowledge.  And static electricity was also a known concept in science before Franklin came around.

Turns out Franklin was testing out his hypothesis that lightning was electricity.  He, of course, was correct, and essentially proved that lightning was electricity.  He did not discover electricty.  Great man, yes.  Father of electricity, no.

This of course led me to another question: Who first HARNESSED electricity?

Better question is: Why don’t I know this?  Shouldn’t this have been mentioned along with Franklin and Edison?  (and why isn’t Tesla mentioned more often?  Damn I love Tesla)

I mean, discovering it is really great, don’t get me wrong, but someone HARNESSING it is how all of our handy devices work.

Well, two answers to that (its Zel’s educational corner!):

1. Those ancient Mesopotamians had a device that used electroplating (think lemon battery from Mr. Wizard, or look it up) to generate a mild shock.  Its not known what it was used for, but they harnessed a small amount, nonetheless.

2. Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (damn I love that long name), guy who lived around the same time as Franklin, but who made what is accepted as the first battery, and a device to generate static electricity.  And even though I can’t find it, I can only assume that ‘volts’ are attributed to him.  If you know otherwise, let me know.

So ends ‘Zel’s Educational Corner.’

Zel-kun out.

On Saturday, I went to my mother’s house to collect some of my old things and visit.

Unlike when I moved to Chicago, moving to my mother’s was very spontaneous and unplanned.  I had found an IT job in Downer’s Grove (suburb west of Chicago) by sheer luck, and I needed to start right away.  I packed as much crap as I could into the back of my car, threw away a lot of stuff I didn’t need, and left.  Of the stuff I DID bring, about half found its way into the attic and was forgotten.  So it was strange to go through them and find things I forgot I ever owned:

Various Statues of Dragons - I knew I had those, but never realized just how damn many.

A copy of Suikoden III - Remember when I went NUTS looking for another copy?  Yeah, I had one in the house the whole time.

Microfibre Eyeglass Cloth - Score.

Two Playstation 2 Controllers - And here I went and bought replacements.

Two Gamecube Controllers - Brings the total up to four, awesome.

A Tin of Creme Savers - Five year-old candy that’s been sitting in the attic?  You bet I’ll have some!

Gladiator Cow - It was given to me by Kyle or Jeff (Sorry guys, I REALLY can’t remember), which is a cow in gladiatorial armor.  Not a minotaur or hominid cow, no.  A moo-cow in armor.  Which now rests in its place of honor on top of my bookcase.

Ninetendo Entertainment System and three controllers - Classic, still has the little crack in the corner where it fell after I kicked the dresser after losing a game of Punch-Out.

Six Daggers - I have no idea where to put these darn things.

A copy of Tsuganai: Atonement - I was in the middle of playing this game when I moved and forgot about it entirely.  It is testament to how my life hit a brick wall and stopped when I moved.

After all that, I get home and spend a little bit of time playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (the best one), and go to sleep.  In the morning, Zai gets a call from me on her cell phone.  Only its not me, its my mother, and my cell phone is at her house.

Doh.

So I take another trip out there to pick it up.  While I was out there, we had lunch, and I nearly forgot my phone at the restaurant.

Oh, and today, forgot my security card for work, so I had to knock on our door like a yutz.

At least I didn’t forget to write about it.

Zel-kun out.