Abstract
Almost 200 years of scientific inquiry were necessary to understand that the electric skate produced its powerful electrical discharge by summing the membrane depolarizations of the cells in each prism in series and having all the prisms in parallel. Cavendishs’ “battery” consisted of 40 Leyden jars, the only means for storing electricity at that time, made of especially thin glass and should have been capable of holding an appreciable charge.
“There seems, however, to be room in the fish for a battery of a sufficient size; for Mr. Hunter* has shown, that each of the prismatical columns of which the electrical organ is composed, is divided in a great number of partitions of fine membranes......and if the glass is five times as thin, which is perhaps not thinner than the membranes which form the partitions, it will contain five times as much electricity, or near fourteen times as much as my battery.”
From: An account of some attempts to imitate the effects of the torpedo by electricity: By the Hon. HENRY CAVENDISH, F.R.S. Philosophical Transactions for 1776, Vol. LXVI Part I pp. 196-225. Art. 437.
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Kado, R.T. (1989). Electrical Capacitance and Membrane Area. In: Nuccitelli, R., Cherr, G.N., Clark, W.H. (eds) Mechanisms of Egg Activation. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0881-3_6
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