HISTORY moves in funny ways. Watching a BBC programme on the Power of Science, I learnt that a retired British East India Company servant called John Walsh financed a naval expedition in 1772 to discover whether the torpedo fish, which stuns its victims by electricity, was producing the same electricity as those generated by lightning discovered by Benjamin Franklin?
The dissection of the cells of torpedo fish into their negative and positive charges gave the inspiration for the creation of the first battery by the Italian scientist Alexander Volta in 1800. The storage of electricity created electro-magnetic power and later telegraphy, which together with the invention of the steam engine, launched the industrial and telecommunication technology revolution in the West.
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