Chronological History of Electrical Development

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Whether Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, who lived in 600 rc, was the first to observe the electrical effect produced when amber is rubbed with a nonconducting substance, or whether this knowledge is of an earlier date, the fact remains that no practical consequences came from the discovery for more than twenty centuries. It was not until after the systems of reason ing, which the Greek successors of Thales imposed for so many ages upon the intellect of Europe, began to be displaced by habits of thought that recognized nature herself as teacher and no longer rested content with the mere dicta of authority that electricity passed beyond the stage of metaphysical speculation and entered that of physical investigation.