How could an underwater civilization develop electricity?
Electricity pervades our daily lives, and makes possible a lot of technological achievements. Harnessing it helps the development of any civilization. The thing is, water - especially sea water - is a great conductor of electricity.
I'd like to add electricity to an underwater civilization I'm working on, but I have two problems to deal with.
- How would the civilization discover electricity?
- How could the civilization use electricity (without electrocuting themselves)?
Some details about the civilization:
- They are octopus-like, insofar as they have tentacles for manipulation of objects.
- They have gills.
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They don't have fire - although I'll possibly address that in a future question.They might. I'm addressing this in How could an underwater civilization develop fire?. - The technological level is somewhere around that of the 1700s in Europe, if that helps.
1 answer
How would the civilization discover electricity?
That one is easy: There are animals in the sea that use electricity, like the electric eel. The underwater civilization would certainly be curious about how that works.
How could the civilization use electricity (without electrocuting themselves)?
The first use of electricity will probably be as weapon "” after all, that's the use they know about from the animals. Initially they probably would use captured electric eels. Assuming they know metals, they probably will find out that metals can be used to protect from electric eels (Faraday cage!). They will probably also find out that there are materials which shield you from electricity, like stone (note that since the complete water around them is conducting, it suffices to keep the distance the electricity has to travel to reach you large enough). As people learn more, they'll probably find how to make it yourself (using electrochemical processes) and that they can be used to create metals from water (by electrolysis of the salts). It will probably be quite some time until they manage to properly insulate it, so that it can be transported to specific places, and be used without too much danger.
However it will probably never become a common household item, as you cannot have a simple plug (meaning uninsulated electricity being exposed), and any defect in the insulation means huge danger. So it will probably be used only in a professional setting and by the military.
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