History of Electricity

This concept emerged during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, closely associated with magnetism. It soon became important within the development of matter theory and the treatment of occult qualities. William Gilbert (1544–1603) is often credited as the founder of the science of electricity. He was the first to use the term electricity, which he derived from the Greek word for the attractive properties of amber. Gilbert’s key contribution consists of the experimental discovery of many “electric” substances—beyond the
already known amber—that caused the attraction and repulsion of a variety of substances when rubbed.
Rejecting medieval and Renaissance “sympathies” and seeking instead a material mode of interaction, he explained the electric phenomena by combining concepts taken from alchemy and Aristotelian viscosity and cohesion. Without providing many details, he claimed that emanations of electical vapor, or effluvia, were the vehicle of the attraction. Niccolò Cabeo (1585–1650), a leading Jesuit mathematician and natural philosopher, challenged Gilbert’s presentation of both magnetism and electricity. Implementing the Jesuit program aimed at achieving intellectual supremacy, Cabeo first established himself as an authority in electricity through the finding of many new phenomena and electric substances and then replaced Gilbert’s effluvia, explaining electrical attraction through emitted streams that displace the surrounding air, forming a wind that can either attract or repel bodies.
In the second quarter of the century, mechanical philosophers offered another explanation for electrical phenomena. Noting that not all of the electric substances emit effluvia, René Descartes (1596–1650) proposed invisible elastic particles. Also trying to rationally explain directly unintelligible powers, Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) compared the action of these particles to the movement of the chameleon’s tongue. In England, electrical experiments became popular in the Royal Society; Robert Boyle (1627–1691) intervened in the debate in 1675 with a book entitled Experiments and Notes About the Mechanical Origin and Production of Electricity, in which hecountered Cabeo’s and the Cartesian theories and proposed an explanation based upon emission and refraction of effluvia. Within the Royal Society are found the major subsequent developments in both electric theory and experimentation. On the Continent, Otto von Guericke (1602–1686) carried out important experimental work.