Here are some of the people who worked with and helped us learn more about electricity. You can click on their names to go directly to them, and click on "top" to return to the index here.

In 1550, a man named Girolamo Cardan from Italy found out that amber attracts small objects because it contained a fatty fluid. Small dry substances, which had a desire to absorb this fluid, were attracted to the amber. He lived from 1501 to 1576, and was a mathematician, physician and an astrologer. When we say "turn on the juice," we are talking about his theory that electricity is a fluid like juice!
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Thomas Edison was born in February, 1847 and he made many inventions before he died in 1931. His family was poor. When Edison was young, he was homeschooled because he had frail health. When he finally did go to school, his teacher thought he was stupid for asking too many questions. When his mother decided that school wasn't the best thing for Edison, she pulled him out. At age 12, he started to make a living as a news boy on a train. When Edison was 16, a bottle of phosphorus dropped from its perch, and started a fire on the train. The conductor threw him off the train after boxing his ears, causing him to become almost completely deaf. He worked by the known laws of science, and studied them so that he was able to make real the visions in his head. He set up a lab in Newark, New Jersey. Among other inventions, such as the phonograph, he made the first practical electrical light bulb in the year 1879. In the same year, he passed an electric current through a carbon filament so that it glowed. (Light bulbs now have tungsten filaments that heat up to 5,500°F.) Edison was a very important inventor in history. Without him, we might have been sitting with a candle, wondering when someone would invent better lighting.
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Ben Franklin was born on January 17, 1706 in Boston. He died at the age of 84 on April 17, 1790. He was a scientist, an inventor, a statesman, a printer, a philosopher, a musician, an economist and had 16 siblings. Franklin was an important man, because he signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. In 1747 he started to play around with electricity. Franklin discovered that electricity consists of electrical fluid made up of positive and negative charges. In 1752, to prove that lightning was electrical, he performed the famous kite experiment. During a thunderstorm he flew a kite and on the string he tied a key. Electricity from the thunderclouds flowed down the string, which was wet, and he got shocked. Trying this experiment killed other people, so he was lucky to have escaped injury or death. top

Luigi Galvani was born in Italy, worked as a university professor and was partners with Alessandro Volta. Once, he placed a dead frog's leg on an iron plate and touched the plate with a brass hook. Every time the brass hit the plate, the frog's leg twitched violently. He reasoned that there must be electricity in the frog's leg, but Volta disagreed. This event led Volta to make the voltaic pile, so you have Galvani to thank for the battery as well as Volta. top

During the 1500s, an English scientist named William Gilbert, a physician to Queen Elizabeth, found out that amber was not the only substance that attracted light objects. Diamonds, sapphires, glass, sulfur, resin and many more substances could also attract objects. This discovery is known as static electricity. Gilbert lived from 1540 to 1603. He named electricity vis electrica.
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In the year 1670, Otto Von Guericke, a scientist, invented the first machine that produced electricity in large amounts. The essential part of the machine was a ball of sulfur, which was made to rotate while Von Guericke held his hand on it, against the way the ball was turning, charging the ball with electricity. Other people used this machine. Isaac Newton used a ball of glass instead of the sulfur. Later the glass ball was replaced with a cylinder and finally, a glass plate. This discovery was a very important invention in the world's history. Without him, we might not have had all the electric powered objects that we have now.
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Georg Simon Ohm was a German physicist who lived from 1787-1854. An amount of electicity called an Ohm is named after Georg Ohm. Ohm's law is that 1 ohm of resistance makes a potential difference of 1 volt produce a current of 1 ampere.
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In 1887 Nikola Tesla was born in Croatia in 1856, but he moved to America. He invented a system that transmitted alternating current (AC). It was better then his former boss' (Thomas Edison) direct current system. They would have been awarded a joint Nobel Prize in 1912, but Tesla didn't want anything to do with Edison. Neither of them received a prize as a result. In 1888, Tesla invented the induction motor. He also made the Tesla motor that produces high frequency signals that are used in radios and TVs. Tesla died in 1943. top

Thales of Greece in 600 BCE rubbed amber with a piece of fur and the amber could pick up light objects like straw. We don't know if that was the first discovery of static electricity. The word electricity comes from the Greek word elektron, which means amber. Thales was one of the 7 Sages of Greece. He lived from 640 BCE to 546 BCE.
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Alessandro Volta was born in Como, Italy. He lived from 1745 to 1827. He was a university professor as well as Galvani. Volta disagreed with Galvani's hypothesis. He reasoned that there must be salt water in the frog and when the metal touched it, electricity was produced. That discovery led him to make the first battery in 1800. It was called the voltaic pile. Volta made it out of zinc, copper and blotter paper soaked with salt water. He touched both ends and received a shock from the voltaic pile.
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