Background
Cavendish was the youngest son of William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devonshire and Rachel Russell. On 9 January 1727, Lord Charles Cavendish married Lady Ann Grey (died 20 September 1733), daughter of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent.
Cavendish was the youngest son of William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devonshire and Rachel Russell. On 9 January 1727, Lord Charles Cavendish married Lady Ann Grey (died 20 September 1733), daughter of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent.
Charles Cavendish was also one of the early experimenters with the electrical storage device, the Leyden Jar, which came to England in 1746. Henry Cavendish was even better known than his father for electrical experiments, and also for other discoveries in physics, including the famous torsion-balance measurement of the mass of the earth. One of Charles Cavendish"s experiments with electricity appears to have been an attempt to replicate the plasma glow seen during the early Francis Hauksbee experiment with a semi-vacuum in the friction-generator"s glass globe.
A recent thesis on plasma arcs mentions Priestley"s account of a replication of this by the experimenter Benjamin Wilson (1721-1788):
In 1759, when Wilson repeated experiments “first contrived by Lord Charles Cavendish,” he observed a “singular appearance of light upon one of the surfaces of the quicksilver,” (from The History and Present State of Electricity, J Priestly (1775) volunteer
I, p. 355). The quicksilver (mercury) was part of the evacuation scheme, and it is not clear, but possible, that Wilson was referring to a cathode spot on mercury.
Royal Society.