Who Invented Electricity
If you were to step into a classroom of children, say about 10 years old or so and you asked them to tell you who invented electricity, they would probably shout out in chorus, “Benjamin Franklin.” Technically they would be correct since Ben Franklin is the person that is recognized as the prominent forefather of electricity but in reality he simply discovered what already existed.
Electricity is like gravity – it has always been here; it is just a natural part of how the world works. Lightning is no doubt the first evidence of electricity that was seen and electricity it certainly is; lightning is defined as the flow of electrons between the clouds and the ground. There were also electric eels and catfish that were known by early civilizations thousands of years ago.
So for centuries people have known about electricity; aside from lightning, the ancient societies including the Greeks and Romans, discovered static electricity when they realized that by rubbing amber on their clothes, they could make lightweight objects such as straw and feathers stick to them.
Thales of Miletos is one of the first recorded in history as mentioning his experimentations with electric properties and his observations particularly with static electricity from as early as 600 BC. Thales’ observations led him to incorrectly believe that it was friction that made amber magnetic and that was why light items would stick to it.
From as early as the 1600s until now, there have been many discoveries made in the field of electricity because of the contributions of many different people whose names are barely known including, Charles Coulomb, William Gilbert, Otto von Guericke, Alessandro Volta and Nikola Tesla.
There are two names that you will come across in almost every discussion about the origins of electricity, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison. Although they had nothing to do with the invention of electricity, their discoveries and contributions in the field have been invaluable and so their names will forever be remembered.
Benjamin Franklin did extensive work in the electrical field, selling his possessions as a means of funding his work and he was the first known person to realize that lightning was indeed a type of electricity while flying a kite in a lightning-filled sky. Franklin had attached a metal key to the end of the string that was in his hand when a bolt of lightning hit the kite causing sparks to fly off the key and onto the back of his hand.
Due to this experience, Franklin invented the lightning rod which is used on almost every house today to transfer lightning into the ground and prevent buildings getting struck and burning to the ground.
Thomas Edison is most popular for inventing the first commercially used light bulb; he was not the first to invent a light bulb, but his was the first that was practical enough to be commercialized and is the one that has been improved on to give us the bulbs that we use today.
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