He coined the New Latin word electricus ("of amber" or "like amber", from ἤλεκτρον, elektron, the Greek word for "amber") to refer to the property of attracting small objects after being rubbed. īenjamin Franklin conducted extensive research on electricity in the 18th century, as documented by Joseph Priestley (1767) History and Present Status of Electricity, with whom Franklin carried on extended correspondence.Įlectricity would remain little more than an intellectual curiosity for millennia until 1600, when the English scientist William Gilbert wrote De Magnete, in which he made a careful study of electricity and magnetism, distinguishing the lodestone effect from static electricity produced by rubbing amber. According to a controversial theory, the Parthians may have had knowledge of electroplating, based on the 1936 discovery of the Baghdad Battery, which resembles a galvanic cell, though it is uncertain whether the artifact was electrical in nature. Thales was incorrect in believing the attraction was due to a magnetic effect, but later science would prove a link between magnetism and electricity.
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Thales of Miletus made a series of observations on static electricity around 600 BCE, from which he believed that friction rendered amber magnetic, in contrast to minerals such as magnetite, which needed no rubbing. Īncient cultures around the Mediterranean knew that certain objects, such as rods of amber, could be rubbed with cat's fur to attract light objects like feathers. Patients with ailments such as gout or headache were directed to touch electric fish in the hope that the powerful jolt might cure them. Several ancient writers, such as Pliny the Elder and Scribonius Largus, attested to the numbing effect of electric shocks delivered by electric catfish and electric rays, and knew that such shocks could travel along conducting objects. Electric fish were again reported millennia later by ancient Greek, Roman and Arabic naturalists and physicians. Ancient Egyptian texts dating from 2750 BCE referred to these fish as the "Thunderer of the Nile", and described them as the "protectors" of all other fish. Long before any knowledge of electricity existed, people were aware of shocks from electric fish. Electrical power is now the backbone of modern industrial society. Electricity's extraordinary versatility means it can be put to an almost limitless set of applications which include transport, heating, lighting, communications, and computation. The rapid expansion in electrical technology at this time transformed industry and society, becoming a driving force for the Second Industrial Revolution. The theory of electromagnetism was developed in the 19th century, and by the end of that century electricity was being put to industrial and residential use by electrical engineers. Electronics which deals with electrical circuits that involve active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies.Įlectrical phenomena have been studied since antiquity, though progress in theoretical understanding remained slow until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Electric power where electric current is used to energise equipment.Thus we can speak of electric potential at a certain point in space, which is equal to the work done by an external agent in carrying a unit of positive charge from an arbitrarily chosen reference point to that point without any acceleration and is typically measured in volts.Įlectricity is at the heart of many modern technologies, being used for: If the charge moves, the electric field would be doing work on the electric charge.
The magnitude of this force is given by Coulomb's law. When a charge is placed in a location with a non-zero electric field, a force will act on it.
The movement of electric charges is an electric current and produces a magnetic field. The presence of an electric charge, which can be either positive or negative, produces an electric field. Various common phenomena are related to electricity, including lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electric discharges and many others. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwell's equations. Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge.