Who Invented Electricity And When?
From the writings of Thales of Miletus it appears that Westerners knew as long ago as 600 B.C. that amber becomes charged by rubbing. There was little real progress until the English scientist William Gilbert in 1600 described the electrification of many substances and coined the term electricity from the Greek word for amber. As a result, Gilbert is called the father of modern electricity. In 1660 Otto von Guericke invented a crude machine for producing static electricity. It was a ball of sulfur, rotated by a crank with one hand and rubbed with the other. Successors, such as Francis Hauksbee, made improvements that provided experimenters with a ready source of static electricity. Today’s highly developed descendant of these early machines is the Van de Graaf generator, which is sometimes used as a particle accelerator. Robert Boyle realized that attraction and repulsion were mutual and that electric force was transmitted through a vacuum.
From the writings of Thales of Miletus it appears that Westerners knew as long ago as 600 B.C. that amber becomes charged by rubbing. There was little real progress until the English scientist William Gilbert in 1600 described the electrification of many substances and coined the term electricity from the Greek word for amber. As a result, Gilbert is called the father of modern electricity. In 1660 Otto von Guericke invented a crude machine for producing static electricity. It was a ball of sulfur, rotated by a crank with one hand and rubbed with the other. Successors, such as Francis Hauksbee, made improvements that provided experimenters with a ready source of static electricity. Today’s highly developed descendant of these early machines is the Van de Graaf generator, which is sometimes used as a particle accelerator. Robert Boyle realized that attraction and repulsion were mutual and that electric force was transmitted through a vacuum. Stephen Gray distinguished between conductors
To most people, the most common name that comes to mind when considering who discovered electricity is Benjamin Franklin. In actual fact, while his work was far more extensive than previous scientists, the records of observations about electricity go much further back. The Ancient Egyptians made references to the ‘Thunderer of the Nile’, the electric fish. These fish were reported millennia later by the Ancient Greeks. Writers mentioned numbing effects felt from electric shocks given by fish and patients who suffered with gout or headaches were advised to touch them for a jolt. The earliest identification of lightening can be attributed to the Arabs, who had a word that referred to the ‘electric ray’. Ancient Mediterranean cultures knew that by rubbing certain objects, such as rods of amber, against cat’s fur would make it attract lighter objects. This lead to Thales of Miletos making a series of observations about static electricity in 600 BC. Some believe that the Pathians may have h
