Czech inventors

Prokop Diviš

(1698-1765)

Prokop DivišProkop DivišProkop Diviš (by his own name Václav Divíšek), Premonstratensian priest, natural scientist, researcher in physics, particularly in electricity, and the constructor of the lightning rod, was born on 26th March 1698 in Helvíkovice near Žamberk. Diviš began his studies in 1716; being provided for by the famous Premonstratensian Monastery in Louka near Znojmo. He finished his studies in 1719, and a year later he took his monastic vows at the Louka Monastery and adopted the monastic name Prokop. As a Premonstratensian, he studied philosophy and theology at the church school. Having successfully sustained his doctorate dissertation, the University of Salzburg appointed Diviš Doctor of Theology in 1733. In the same year he became sub-prior of the Louka Monastery, and in 1736 he took over for the first time the administration of the parish in Přímětice near Znojmo. There he stayed till 1741, when the Abbot of the Louka Monastery, Antonín Nolbek, appointed him Prior of the Monastery on the 7th April. During the time of Nolbek's internment in Prussia in spring 1742, he paid a high ransom to the Prussians, which the Abbot disliked, and that is why, on 10th July of the same year, he was sent back to the parish house at Přímětice. There he stayed, carrying out his priest's activities, till the end of his life (he died on 25th December 1765), and there also the period of his research work began.

The administration of parochial farm made Diviš turn his attention first to hydro-technical works, and in the years 1742-1744 he built several water-conduits. Then his attention was drawn to the field of constructing musical instruments, which was related to monastic musical culture. This interest was crowned by the construction of a unique cabinet-like musical instrument with metal strings, called "Denisdor" (Denis d'or - Golden Diviš) that imitated the sound of various musical instruments (it is unequivocally attested to the year 1753). After 1748, under the influence of the current wave of general interest, Diviš developed his experiments with electricity. He used frictional electricity and Leyden jars of his own production, and he was able to work successfully with basic electrostatic phenomena. He even had an opportunity to demonstrate them before the Imperial Court in Vienna. The news on the death of Georg Wilhelm Richmann, professor in St. Petersburg, who was killed by a lightning in 1753 during his attempt at measuring the intensity of electric field in the atmosphere, caused Diviš to become interested in atmospheric electricity, and to the decision to construct a "weather-machine" at Přímětice.

Its basis was a metal cross, horizontally laid on a 15-metre (later 41.5-metre) high pole, with the ends of the cross intercrossed with shorter metal bars lying in a right angle. The 12 bar ends were equipped with 12 metal boxes, filled with metal filings and penetrated with some 400 sharp metal spikes. The whole construction was grounded to the earth using three conductive chains. Under the influence of the ideas of his time, Diviš conceived the function of metal boxes as Leyden jars in which the electricity "sucked" from the atmosphere was to be collected. This was supposed to prevent lighting discharges and the occurrence of storms themselves. Even though the function ascribed by Diviš to his "weather-machine" principally differed from that of a lightning rod, it basically was a lightning rod by its construction. Diviš erected it for the first time in June 1754; however, having been considered the cause of a big drought in 1759, the Louka Monastery had it removed. Diviš had a second construction placed onto the spire of the Přímětice church after 1761.

Another field of Diviš's research was the effect of electricity on living bodies and consequently also electrotherapy; Diviš was intensely involved in this subject from 1754. He generalised his findings in the theoretical paper Magia Naturalis (Natural Sorcery), published in German translation in at Tübingen (1765), and in Frankfurt-am-Main (1768). The publication significantly influenced the circle of German pietistic philosophers and evangelical theologists around Friedrich Christoph Oetinger.

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