Bacon believed that deferring to ancient authority was an obstacle to knowledge. He maintained that the road to knowledge should be paved with the systematic observation of nature and experimentation. This was an unusual point of view at a time when "philosopher scientists" maintained that science was useful only as an aid in elucidating man's relationship with God. They frowned on alchemists who were driven solely by financial motives in their quest to turn lead into gold. But Bacon retorted with an analogy. Alchemy, he said, may be compared to the man who told his sons of gold buried somewhere in the vineyard. They dug and dug and of course found no gold but by turning the soil they got rid of the mold about the roots of their vines and procured a plentiful vintage. Similarly, the alchemists' search for gold may bring many useful inventions and instructive experiments to light. Bacon was obsessed by this idea of using science to bear fruit and he believed it was his role to help humanity by discovering truths.
In 1626 he wrote The New Atlantis in which he talked about an imaginary society where the government organized teams of scientists to conduct research and use the results to improve peoples' lot. He even proposed the construction of a "House of Solomon" in which the wonders of science and technology would be presented to the people so they could learn by exploring light, sound and smells. Sounds like the original idea for a science museum! Bacon maintained that the goal of science was to endow human life with new inventions and powers, and he urged that all science be based on facts that could be used to develop a hypothesis. He thus formulated the gold standard of science, “The Scientific Method.” And he lived by this method. Unfortunately, he also died by it.
One day, he sat looking out the window of his carriage when a rare snowfall had blanketed the English countryside. He began to wonder if packing some of the white stuff into a chicken would retard the putrefaction process. In order to test the hypothesis, he jumped out of his carriage to gather some snow and found that the chicken was indeed preserved. Unfortunately, he caught a chill and as is claimed in many books, died of bronchitis a month later at the age of 65. His legacy includes the oft-quoted quip: "if we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, we shall end in certainties." All scientists would do well to remember this dictum. Especially those who claim that Bacon died of bronchitis by catching a chill while trying to catch a chicken. A chill does not cause bronchitis which is due to a bacterial or viral infection.
The Bacon chicken story may be apocryphal, but there is at least one well documented case in which a cold chicken did have a decided health effect. In Lausanne, Switzerland, a middle-aged woman was caught shoplifting after she stuffed a frozen chicken into her bra and then fainted from the cold. A nurse discovered the truth when she unhooked the bra to allow the woman to breathe better. The lady recovered uneventfully but she did give whole new meaning to the phrase "chicken out."
Francis Bacon would have really liked Thomas Edison. Here was a man who was totally focused on the practical aspects of science. Edison was interested only in inventing things that people could use and had no patience for esoteric theoretical musings. Electricity, though, was practical. So, on September 2, 1882, Thomas Edison pulled a handle at the Pearl Street power station and 400 light bulbs lit up 85 houses, shops and offices in New York's Wall Street district. The age of electricity had begun! Edison had designed and built a whole electrical distribution system, from generator to distribution wires to switches and light bulbs. The Pearl Street station burned coal in order to boil water and the steam produced turned large dynamos which generated electricity. Edison was convinced that electricity could eventually be delivered to every home and also wanted to break the monopoly of the gas companies who were supplying gas for home lighting.
Edison was a businessman. He reportedly often said that if an invention could not be sold, he was not interested in it. But electricity could be sold! However, there was the question of how to charge for it. How could its use be monitored? Edison's ingenuity again came to the fore. He was very much aware of the process of electrolysis, whereby the passage of electricity through a solution can cause substances from solution to plate out on an electrode. So, he designed an electric meter which consisted of two copper plates dipped into a solution of copper sulphate. Edison's direct current passed through the solution, meaning that one of the copper plates served as the positive electrode, the other as the negative. This meant that positive copper ions from solution were attracted to the negative electrode (cathode) and plated out. At the same time, copper from the positive electrode (anode) dissolved in the solution. The net result was a change in the weight of the plates in proportion to the amount of electricity that passed through the solution.
Meter readers would then periodically come, switch off the power and remove the copper plates, replacing them with new ones. The used plates were be taken away and weighed. On the basis of the change in weight, the customer would be charged for the electricity used. The electric meters were often located in unheated basements and there was a chance that the solution would freeze. Edison solved the problem neatly. He incorporated a lightbulb into the meter which would produce enough heat to warm up the solution. The bulbs of course were to be bought from Edison's company. Edison, like Bacon, was a clever man.
