Mr. Nicholson´s doubler: an 18th-Century programmable charge amplifier

Abraham Bennet, the inventor of the leaf electroscope, devised a three-plate procedure for doubling electric charge. Like so many other manual processes in the 18th century it was ripe for deskilling by mechanisation, and it was William Nicholson who mechanised it. Here, the author describes a replica of Nicholson´s doubler which he has constructed and the difficulties he encountered in making it perform in the manner described by Nicholon