Make thin copper wire. (Or other metal should work. Anything you can work into a thin wire. Copper is one of the easiest to make thin wire from, but gold would also work well if you can afford it.)
Coat the wire in a thin layer of wax.
Coil the wire.
Spin a lodestone rapidly inside the coil.
Electricity will then come from the ends of the wires.
Come on, people. Stop reveling in your ignorance and go learn something.
Isn’t conductivity pretty much the defining characteristic of what makes a metal a metal?
At any rate, any metal that people have access to in ye olden days will be conductive. If there really is such a thing as non-conductive metal, I’m sure it’s some quite rare and exotic stuff.
Being malleable enough to easily make thin wire out of is the more difficult part. But both copper and gold qualify nicely, and both of those should be very familiar to people even a very long time ago. Possibly, lead might also be usable, and that’s also something people in antiquity should be familiar with already.
Lead is actually a great example of a metal with incredibly high electrical resistance. It’s technically conductive, yes, but you’re not going to make any electricity with it.
Steel, being one of the first alloys commonly made, also has high electrical resistance. Gold and copper would work, but it would be difficult to convince people in the past to use what was effectively money to create something like wire.
I mean, would you chop up some dollar bills to make strips of cloth that are part of a machine you’ve never heard of from some guy claiming to be a time traveler?
I’d let that person earn a few bucks. Also gold and copper wire did exist in those times, but it was commonly used as part of jewelry. Well depending on where you are. Ideally you’re in an urban environment with administrative rule. The new languages will be difficult to learn but any Egyptian or Mesopotamian society is going to value someone who can do arithmetic in their head. Earning money from that to buy equipment is going to be the key.
I mean, would you chop up some dollar bills to make strips of cloth that are part of a machine you’ve never heard of from some guy claiming to be a time traveler?
If you can melt it back down into money after trying it, sure.
There are plenty of examples of gold and copper jewelry at the time, so people (at least somewhat wealthy people) would be no strangers to using it for ‘frivolous’ purposes sometimes.
While every metal is conductive, there is a lot of variability in how well they conduct. IIRC lead is a pretty terrible conductor and would have possibly been common enough in ye olden times.
BUT - Doesn’t whatever is in the windings have to have some magnetic interactivity too? Like, I know copper doesn’t attach to magnets the way iron does, but it still interacts in other ways (like a magnet falls very slowly through a copper pipe, for example). Do all (or most) metals do this too and I’m just not aware because we typically use copper for all these types of things? Or does it not matter because the conductors are making an electromagnetic field and the base magnetic properties of the windings don’t matter as long as they conduct? (is how much they interact with magnetic fields related at all to how good of a conductor the material is?? Are you an Electrical Engineer or some type of materials scientist that can answer all of my random questions??? lol)
Doesn’t whatever is in the windings have to have some magnetic interactivity too?
Nope! The coil windings don’t need to have any intrinsic magnetic properties at all. A magnetic field moving over any conductor will induce electric current. Doesn’t even actually need to be made of metal. You could technically do it with anything conductive – say, a hose full of salt water.
In fact, a lot of modern generators/motors don’t have any magnetic parts inside them. Instead of rotating a permanent magnet, you can rotate an electromagnet, which is just more copper coils with a current passed through them. And that can work as your magnet to create electricity with. That approach, though, requires some startup power to energize the electromagnet, so it’s not really suitable when you’re trying to bootstrap the very first production of electricity.
Or does it not matter because the conductors are making an electromagnetic field and the base magnetic properties of the windings don’t matter as long as they conduct? (is how much they interact with magnetic fields related at all to how good of a conductor the material is?
Yes to all of those. To put it in a (perhaps overly) simplified way: Electrons in any and every material are ‘grabbed’ by magnetic fields. When the magnetic field moves (relative to the material the electrons are in), the electrons want to move with the field. (Each electron is, itself, a tiny electromagnet.) The more conductive the material is, the more easily the electrons will be able to move along with that magnetic field. And moving electrons is what we call ‘electricity’. In a poorly conductive or non-conductive material, the electrons can’t move easily – they stay stuck where they are in the material and electricity doesn’t flow well.
(Electrons flow well in metals because the way metal atoms bond together with each other causes them to share outer shell electrons with each other. In a solid piece of metal, all the atoms are sharing some of their electrons with each other, leaving the electrons freely able to hop around from atom to atom anywhere through the material. Fun fact: this is also why most metals are reflective and shiny (when not oxidized/corroded) – incoming photons of light hit this swarm of freely moving electrons and get bounced right back out.)
Are you an Electrical Engineer or some type of materials scientist that can answer all of my random questions?
Science fiction writer, mainly, lol! But it does mean I spend a lot of time getting into the weeds of how such things work.
Did actually take one semester of engineering classes once, before deciding to go a different direction.
The slowing down is a function of conductivity. Electromagnetism means the magnet induces current resulting in magnetism pushing back. Ferromagnetism on the other hand is a somewhat rare property of some metals where all of their atoms can be pushed into the same magnetic orientation.
Disclaimer I’m an engineer half remembering this stuff
Then somehow out of your hands, the time machine takes you to the time of ea-nasir, and you wind up learning the language just to write a strongly worded tablet.
Well, yeah. In any case, the language barrier will have to be overcome first. No matter who you are or what you’re trying to do, if you go more than a few hundred years in the past, you’re probably going to need to learn a new language before you can communicate anything to anyone. Even if you know a very old language, it was probably spoken very differently in antiquity than the way people speak it now.
Classical latin education ftw. But fr that’s the best odds you’re going to get. Classical Latin is often taught as it was in the late republic/Julian dynasty, unless you got ecclesiastical Latin in which case, you’ve got a decent area and you better hope you’re in the middle ages in europe and want to talk to the clergy.
But yeah, in general ancient languages as we currently understand them are really the languages of the educated, elites, merchants, and clergy. You have exceptions for highly literate societies like Rome where we have plenty of graffiti teaching us vulgar words like irrumatio. But for the most part writing was for records and official communication for a long time.
Make thin copper wire. (Or other metal should work. Anything you can work into a thin wire. Copper is one of the easiest to make thin wire from, but gold would also work well if you can afford it.)
Coat the wire in a thin layer of wax.
Coil the wire.
Spin a lodestone rapidly inside the coil.
Electricity will then come from the ends of the wires.
Come on, people. Stop reveling in your ignorance and go learn something.
Not necessarily. Not every metal is conductive
???
Isn’t conductivity pretty much the defining characteristic of what makes a metal a metal?
At any rate, any metal that people have access to in ye olden days will be conductive. If there really is such a thing as non-conductive metal, I’m sure it’s some quite rare and exotic stuff.
Being malleable enough to easily make thin wire out of is the more difficult part. But both copper and gold qualify nicely, and both of those should be very familiar to people even a very long time ago. Possibly, lead might also be usable, and that’s also something people in antiquity should be familiar with already.
Lead is actually a great example of a metal with incredibly high electrical resistance. It’s technically conductive, yes, but you’re not going to make any electricity with it.
Steel, being one of the first alloys commonly made, also has high electrical resistance. Gold and copper would work, but it would be difficult to convince people in the past to use what was effectively money to create something like wire.
I mean, would you chop up some dollar bills to make strips of cloth that are part of a machine you’ve never heard of from some guy claiming to be a time traveler?
I’d let that person earn a few bucks. Also gold and copper wire did exist in those times, but it was commonly used as part of jewelry. Well depending on where you are. Ideally you’re in an urban environment with administrative rule. The new languages will be difficult to learn but any Egyptian or Mesopotamian society is going to value someone who can do arithmetic in their head. Earning money from that to buy equipment is going to be the key.
If you can melt it back down into money after trying it, sure.
There are plenty of examples of gold and copper jewelry at the time, so people (at least somewhat wealthy people) would be no strangers to using it for ‘frivolous’ purposes sometimes.
While every metal is conductive, there is a lot of variability in how well they conduct. IIRC lead is a pretty terrible conductor and would have possibly been common enough in ye olden times.
BUT - Doesn’t whatever is in the windings have to have some magnetic interactivity too? Like, I know copper doesn’t attach to magnets the way iron does, but it still interacts in other ways (like a magnet falls very slowly through a copper pipe, for example). Do all (or most) metals do this too and I’m just not aware because we typically use copper for all these types of things? Or does it not matter because the conductors are making an electromagnetic field and the base magnetic properties of the windings don’t matter as long as they conduct? (is how much they interact with magnetic fields related at all to how good of a conductor the material is?? Are you an Electrical Engineer or some type of materials scientist that can answer all of my random questions??? lol)
Nope! The coil windings don’t need to have any intrinsic magnetic properties at all. A magnetic field moving over any conductor will induce electric current. Doesn’t even actually need to be made of metal. You could technically do it with anything conductive – say, a hose full of salt water.
In fact, a lot of modern generators/motors don’t have any magnetic parts inside them. Instead of rotating a permanent magnet, you can rotate an electromagnet, which is just more copper coils with a current passed through them. And that can work as your magnet to create electricity with. That approach, though, requires some startup power to energize the electromagnet, so it’s not really suitable when you’re trying to bootstrap the very first production of electricity.
Yes to all of those. To put it in a (perhaps overly) simplified way: Electrons in any and every material are ‘grabbed’ by magnetic fields. When the magnetic field moves (relative to the material the electrons are in), the electrons want to move with the field. (Each electron is, itself, a tiny electromagnet.) The more conductive the material is, the more easily the electrons will be able to move along with that magnetic field. And moving electrons is what we call ‘electricity’. In a poorly conductive or non-conductive material, the electrons can’t move easily – they stay stuck where they are in the material and electricity doesn’t flow well.
(Electrons flow well in metals because the way metal atoms bond together with each other causes them to share outer shell electrons with each other. In a solid piece of metal, all the atoms are sharing some of their electrons with each other, leaving the electrons freely able to hop around from atom to atom anywhere through the material. Fun fact: this is also why most metals are reflective and shiny (when not oxidized/corroded) – incoming photons of light hit this swarm of freely moving electrons and get bounced right back out.)
Science fiction writer, mainly, lol! But it does mean I spend a lot of time getting into the weeds of how such things work.
Did actually take one semester of engineering classes once, before deciding to go a different direction.
The slowing down is a function of conductivity. Electromagnetism means the magnet induces current resulting in magnetism pushing back. Ferromagnetism on the other hand is a somewhat rare property of some metals where all of their atoms can be pushed into the same magnetic orientation.
Disclaimer I’m an engineer half remembering this stuff
Then somehow out of your hands, the time machine takes you to the time of ea-nasir, and you wind up learning the language just to write a strongly worded tablet.
Me, in my failed electricity shop: “What the hell is with all of this damned, low-quality copper?”
Except you end up before the Bronze Age with people asking “what is this metal you speak of?”, in whatever language you definitely would not know.
Well, yeah. In any case, the language barrier will have to be overcome first. No matter who you are or what you’re trying to do, if you go more than a few hundred years in the past, you’re probably going to need to learn a new language before you can communicate anything to anyone. Even if you know a very old language, it was probably spoken very differently in antiquity than the way people speak it now.
Classical latin education ftw. But fr that’s the best odds you’re going to get. Classical Latin is often taught as it was in the late republic/Julian dynasty, unless you got ecclesiastical Latin in which case, you’ve got a decent area and you better hope you’re in the middle ages in europe and want to talk to the clergy.
But yeah, in general ancient languages as we currently understand them are really the languages of the educated, elites, merchants, and clergy. You have exceptions for highly literate societies like Rome where we have plenty of graffiti teaching us vulgar words like irrumatio. But for the most part writing was for records and official communication for a long time.
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The copper age did precede the bronze age