Today quantum computers don’t really do anything too exciting apart from offer up a potential that human kind has never had before as these will be the first practical quantum machines which may start a revolution of technology not seen since the invention of fire, steel, electricity and the transistor.

As new information comes out about quantum computing let’s have a look at how we got here through the scientific revolution of electromagnetism, relativity, quantum mechanics and computing.

Ancient and Early Electricity and Magnetism

The journey starts, like all history, in Ancient Greece first with the god Zeus who controlled the world through thunder, and more importantly lightening. We start the story back here as the power of electricity which produces light, fire, and noise from the heavens has been fundamental to human kind since we looked the skys. We have always been fascinated by the light from the sky (we’ll come back to lightening in a bit).

Our next step forward in history stays in the Greek mythology with a shepherd called Magnes. According to myth Magnes was out in northern Greece in a place called Magnesia tending to his sheep when he suddenly became stuck to a hill. His sandals which had metal studs for grip and his crook, with a metal end had stuck to this rock and he couldn’t move. Taking off his shoes he dug down to discover a stone called the lodestone a naturally occurring magnetic rock. From this possibly totally made up story we have our first recognition of magnets and magnetism and the word magnet.

We’re still not done with Ancient Greece but at least away from the gods and mythology we enter the first modern thinkers – the Seven Sages of Greece. The Seven Sages, appearing a little bit like an ancient thinkers boy band, where seen as experts in thinking and being overall very clever. One of these thinkers was. One these sages was Thales of Miletus (626 – 548 BCE) who has two claims to fame in our story to quantum computing. The first one is Thales is seen as the first Greek philosopher who sought truth through logical discussion and reason and hypothesis (thought experiment) rather than blaming the gods and moving on. The second one is his experiments with electricity and magnetism.

In the field of electricity Thales noticed that if you rubbed a piece of amber (fossilised tree sap) with animal fur then the amber will attract light things to it like a feather [those Sages had a lot time on their hands with random materials hanging around]. The Greek didn’t call amber amber but elektron which may have meant ‘shining light’ as light can travel through amber (there wasn’t any glass back then). We have our first reference to static electricity just like Zeus and his lightening bolt.

As for magnetism Thales discovered that lodestone (the stone the shepherd got stuck on) attracted small particles of iron from small distances in the same way the amber did. Thales applied his logical reasoning and created the first electromagnetic motor. Only kidding he concluded that both had soul and some sort of life force was creating the attraction.

Magnets where used as very practical navigation instruments across the world for sailors to know where North was via a compass. Electricity remained a party trick for another 1700 years.

Man Made Magnets

Things go very quite after Thales and his soul stones. We skip nearly 2000 years forward to England and Cambridge where we meet William Gilbert who was not only personal physician to first Queen Elizabeth the First but also very interested in magnets so much that Gilbert published a book called De Magnete in 1600 (all science, medicine, writing in general was in Latin).

In this ground breaking book (it was the first every work of experimental physics) Gilbert puts forward the idea that not only is there magnetic lodestone on Earth but that the Earth itself was a massive lodestone/magnet and that is how iron needles would point North or towards a magnet if close enough. Gilbert also pointed out that this magnetism was the cause of the Earth spinning and that the tip of a compass needle was proportional to where on Earth the needle was – nearer the poles the greater the dip. This as detection of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Gilbert’s practical experiments with instruments led him to also point out that metals could be made magnetic when they are both made through aligning sheets of iron and through magnetising a metal with a magnet in the same way amber could be electrified with animal fur. Both were man made and so temporary.

With the knowledge and ideas of working at the scale of planets and mysterious forces that could not be seen scientist like Issac Newton put forward ideas on motion, inertia, and momentum that would be the basis of classical physics or mechanics. Newton’s work was genius not only in setting laws of physics, the invention of mathematical calculus but also in the philosophical space of gravity which put forward a set of ideas that would shape the world and solar system for the next three hundred years.

Gilbert’s De Magnete also contain work on electricity.

Gilbert did loads more and this article makes this clear: William Gilbert: forgotten genius.

1675 – Robert William Boyle – production on electricity

1752 – Benjamin Franklin – lightning is electrical. Franklin stored electricity (electrical charge) in Leyden jars that he called a battery of Leyden jars or battery of electricity. These jars were not batteries but capacitors as they stored a static potential difference that was not really stored for a long time.

1799 – Alessandro Volta (1745 – 1827) invents the voltaic pile (from which we get the Volt) later to be called an electrical battery fro Franklin’s electrical storage devices. The voltatic pile was a game changing invention as it was a collection of stored static electricity but a chemical storage of electricity through the separation of two metals

1820 – Hans Christian Oersted – electricity and magnetism. Oersted discovered that electric currents in wires create magnetic fields (from which we get the Ohms)