The story of electricity

The history of electricity refers to the study of human use and electricity, to the discovery of its
laws as a physical phenomenon and the invention of devices for practical use.

The phenomenon itself, apart from its relation to the human observer, has no history; and if it is
considered as part of the natural history, would such as time, space, matter and energy. As also
called electricity to the branch of science that studies the phenomenon and the branch of
technology that applies the history of electricity is the branch of the history of science and the
history of technology that deals their emergence and evolution.

One of its early milestones can be placed about the year 600. BC when the Greek philosopher
Thales observed that rubbing a rod of amber with wool or fur, small loads (triboelectric effect)
attracting small objects were obtained, and rubbing a long time could cause the appearance of a
spark. Near the ancient Greek city of Magnesia Magnesia called stones, including magnetite were.
The ancient Greeks observed that pieces of this material are attracted to each other, and also
small iron objects. Words magneto (Spanish equivalent to magnet) and magnetism derived from
the place name.

Electricity historically evolved from simple perception of the phenomenon, its scientific treatment,
would not systematic until the eighteenth century. Were recorded along the Old Age and Media
other isolated and simple observations speculation and medical intuitions (use of electric fish in
diseases such as gout and headache) reported by authors such as Pliny the Elder and Escribonio
Long, 1 or questionable interpretation of archaeological objects, such as the Baghdad Battery, 2 an
object found in Iraq in 1938, dated to about 250 BC. C., which is similar to an electrochemical cell.
No documents found demonstrating their use, although there are other anachronistic descriptions
of electrical devices in walls and ancient Egyptian writings.

These speculations and fragmentary records are almost exclusive treatment (with the notable
exception of the use of magnetism to the compass) there from Antiquity to the Scientific
Revolution of the seventeenth century; but still then becomes little more than a show to display in
the halls. The first contributions that can be understood as successive approximations to the
electrical phenomena were conducted by researchers as systematic William Gilbert, Otto von
Guericke, Du Fay, Pieter van Musschenbroek (Leyden jar) and William Watson. Observations
submitted to scientific method begin to bear fruit with Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, Charles-
Augustin de Coulomb or Benjamin Franklin, being continued in the early nineteenth century by
Andr-Marie Ampere, Michael Faraday and Georg Ohm. The names of these pioneers ended today
baptizing units used in the measurement of the different magnitudes of the phenomenon. The
final understanding of electricity was achieved recently with its unification with magnetism in a
unique electromagnetic