Written by Lightning: A short story of lightning recorders: ceraunographs, electrographs, klydonographs Part 1 From Becaria's Ceraunograph to Gergely Palatin's Detector

摘要

Foreword: Since the mid-18th century atmospheric electricity both in fair weather and during thunderstorms was detected and measured with a series of instruments such as spark gaps, electric chimes, electroscopes, electrometers and later galvanometers, which were generally connected with an aerial. Lightning recording devices were mainly developed in the framework of wireless technology, between the very end of the 19th and first years of the 20th century, but their origins go back to the ceraunographs proposed in the 1780s. In this article in two parts I will retrace the history of the instruments which allowed to register directly (on paper, resin, photographic film, etc.) lightning strikes or sudden variations of atmospheric electricity field during a thunderstorm.