Enter the maze

A Storm in a Bell Jar

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London

Sketch of Frankenstein's Monster: copyright www.istockphoto.com 10641336

Ada Lovelace was close friends with John Crosse, and knew his father Andrew: the 'real Frankenstein'. Andrew Crosse apparently created insect life from electricity, stone and water...

Andrew Crosse was a 'gentleman scientist' doing science for his own amusement including work improving giant versions of the first batteries called 'voltaic piles'. He was given the nickname 'the thunder and lightning man' because of the way he used the batteries to do giant discharges of electricity with bangs as loud as canons. He hit the headlines when he appeared to create life from electricity, Frankenstein-like. This was an unexpected result of his experiments using electricity to make crystals. He was passing a current through water containing dissolved limestone over a period of weeks. In one experiment, about a month in, a perfect insect appeared apparently from no-where, and soon after starting to move. More and more insects then appeared over time. He mentioned it to friends, which led to a story in a local paper. It was then picked up nationally. Some of the stories said he had created the insects, and this led to outrage and death threats over his apparent blasphemy of trying to take the position of God. (Does this start to sound like a modern social networking storm, trolls and all?) In fact he appears to have believed, and others agreed, that the mineral samples he was using must have been contaminated with tiny insect eggs, that just naturally hatched. Scientific results are only accepted if they can be replicated. Others, who took care to avoid contamination couldn't get the same result. The secret of creating life had not been found.

Sadly perhaps, for the story’s sake, while Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, did know Crosse, he can’t have been the inspiration for Frankenstein as has been suggested, given she wrote it decades earlier!