When I was researching my ‘jewish invention myth’ article debunking the claim that jews invented the field of electrophysiology and procedure known as the electrocardiogram (ECG) (1) I came across the claim by Petra Kuijpers that a jew from France named Gabriel Lippmann had created the electrometer.
She writes:
‘Augustus Desiré Waller (1856-1922) was born in Paris to the famous physiologist Augustus Volney Waller. A.D. Waller was a pupil of Carl Ludwig, and worked for years in Scotland before going to the University of London where he became director of the physiology laboratory, studying mainly the electrical aspects of the heart. The electrometer was devised in 1873 by Gabriel Lippman (1845-1921) and in 1887, Waller recorded the first ECG from a human body using the Lippman capillary electrometer and electrode strapped to the front and back of the chest. The Waller ECG consisted of only two reflections: ventricular re- and depolarisation and the P-wave could not be seen. Einthoven witnessed this event. In 1888, Waller recorded an ECG while putting the extremities of his subject in saline jars.’ (2)
This however is nonsense because the electrometer comes from another similar invention called the ‘electroscope’ which is ‘an instrument for detecting differences of electric potential and hence electrification’ (3) and was invented by the early English physicist William Gilbert (alternatively William Gilberd) around 1600 as the ‘Versorium’. (4)
Gilbert’s ‘electroscope’ then was improved upon by the English astronomer Stephen Gray in 1731 (5) and then further by the English physicist John Canton in 1754 as the ‘pith-ball electroscope’ (6) while Canton’s scientific colleague and Church of England clergyman Abraham Bennet invented the ‘gold-leaf electroscope’ in 1787. (7)
While the first electrometer was the ‘quadrant electrometer’ circa 1770 which is invented nearly simultaneously and independently by English physicist William Henley and the Swiss physicists Horace Benedict de Saussure which was in turn based on the earlier work of legendary British physicist William Thomson (aka Lord Kelvin). (8)
There are various different forms of other electometers being invented around this time (9) but you get the point in so far as Lippman’s electrometer that he created in 1872/1873 while at the University of Heidelberg was a modification of the designs and works of others that had stretched back all the way to William Gilbert in 1600.
So put another way: Gabriel Lippman did not invent the electrometer and thus the electrometer cannot be said to be a ‘jewish invention’ in any way, shape or form.
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-electrophysiologythe
(2) https://www.escardio.org/Journals/E-Journal-of-Cardiology-Practice/Volume-21/history-in-medicine-the-road-to-clinical-electrophysiology
(3) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Electroscope
(4) Ibid.
(5) Brian Baigrie, 2006, ‘Electricity and Magnetism: A Historical Perspective’, 1st Edition, Greenwood Press: Westport, p. 33
(6) Thomas Derry, Trevor Williams, 1993, (1960), ‘A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900’, 1st Edition, Dover: New York, p. 609
(7) Ibid.
(8) Baigrie, Op. Cit., p. 33
(9) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Electrometer