[Sidenote: Experimental and Applied Science]
The brilliance of Sir Isaac Newton's individual achievement should not
obscure the fame of a host of other justly celebrated scientists and
inventors. One of Newton's contemporaries, the German philosopher
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1646-1716), elaborated a new and
valuable branch of mathematics, the differential calculus, [Footnote:
The credit for this achievement was also claimed by Newton.] which has
proved to be of immense service in modern engineering. At the same
time, the first experiments were being made with the mysterious
potencies of electricity: the electrical researches of Benjamin
Franklin (1706-1790), his discovery that flashes of lightning are
merely electrical phenomena and his invention of the lightning rod are
too familiar to need repeating; the work of Luigi Galvani (1737-1798)
and of Count Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), two famous Italian
physicists, is less well known, but their labors contributed much to
the development of physical science, and their memory is perpetuated
whenever the modern electrician refers to a "voltaic cell" or when the
tinsmith speaks of "galvanized" iron.
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