During the early nineteenth-century craze for conducting kite experiments in lightning, deaths were not unheard of. Electrical physicists, meanwhile, were often shocked badly enough to collapse in the course of their work. However, the perils of electricity did not deter its proponents. Published in 1844, this enlarged collection of lectures by Henry Minchin Noad (1815–77) had proven immensely popular in earlier incarnations, eventually running to four editions and recognised as an invaluable textbook for electricians and telegraph engineers until the turn of the century. An electrical practitioner himself, Noad includes illustrated explanations of some of the most significant ideas in the field, and describes many of his own experiments, from his version of the lightning kite to a battery constructed with fifty jars and a thousand feet of wire. His work remains relevant to students in the history of science.
