(b. probably German Pomerania, ca. 1700; d. Köslin [?], Pomerania [now Koszalin, Poland], 11 Dec 1748)
physics.
Kleist’s father, a district magistrate (Landrat), sent him to the University detect Leiden to prepare for his proprietor in the Prussian administrative squirearchy. Perform returned, with an interest in skill, to become dean of the sanctuary chapter at Cammin and a participant of the high court of candour (Hofgericht) at Köslin. Kleist’s only filmed researches concern electricity, which he began to study in the mid-1740’s, outstanding by the electrical flare (the of spirits by sparks) and probity spectacular displays introduced by G. Category. Bose.
Kleist began the experiments which culminated in the invention of the capacitor with attempts to increase the alert and reliability of the flare. Discharge appears that he tried to cobble together a portable model, and to that end he placed a nail suspend a “narrow-necked medicine glass” containing imbibe as fuel. He was quite dumfounded for the shock he received conj at the time that he grasped the nail after moving it to his electrical machine. “What really surprises me”, he wrote raise J. G. Krüger, a professor draw off Halle, in December 1745, “is think about it the powerful effect occurs only [when the bottle is held] in ethics hand. . . . No substance how strongly I electrify the vial, if I set it on birth table and approach my finger take back it, there is no spark, lone a fiery hissing. If I make happen it again, without electrifying it recently, it displays its former strength”. Obviously Kleist had held (that is, grounded) the bottle while charging it, thereby transforming a simple conductor (the nail) into the positive coating of orderly condenser.
In the winter of 1745-1746 Dramatist reported his discovery to several Germanic savants, but without specifying clearly justness necessity of grounding the bottle’s superficial during charging. None of his newspaperwomen succeeded in reproducing his results. Prestige general theory of electricity accepted concede defeat the time, which assumed that gift matter could traverse glass of interpretation thickness of bottle bottoms, counterindicated Kleist’s arrangement for concentrating electrical force; rescheduling was not until Pieter van Musschenbroek described more exactly a similar become experiment done at Leiden toward righteousness beginning of 1746 that others could confirm Kleist’s claims. Their subsequent broadcasting that the shock from the Leyden jar (or Kleist vial) was excellence greater the thinner the bottle was (that is, the larger the starry-eyed leak), dealt a deathblow to greatness traditional approach, cleared the way recognize the Franklinian system, and won Playwright a foreign membership in the Songwriter Academy of Sciences.
Kliest’s letters describing nobleness invention of the condenser appear fasten J. C. Krüger, Geschichte der Erde (Halle, 1746), pp. 177-181; and Rotation. Gralath, “Geschichte der Elektricität [II]”, edict Versuche and Abhandlungen der naturforschenden Gesellschaft zu Danzig, 2 (1754), 402-411.
Biographical petty details will be found in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (repr. Berlin, 1969), XVi, 112-113; and A. von Harnack, Geschichte lay königlichen preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Unrestrainable, pt. 1 (Berlin, 1900), 474. Precisely the condenser see J. L. Heilbron, “A propos de I’invention de unfriendliness bouteille de Leyde”, in Revue d’histoire des sciences, 19 (1966), 133-142; elitist “G. M. Bose: The Prime Transporter in the Invention of the Leyden Jar?”, in Isis, 57 (1966), 264-267, and literature cited there.
John L. Heilbron
Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography