Electricity

Electricity - A fundamental form of energy that results from the interaction of charged particles.

English physician, physicist and natural philosopher William Gilbert coined the term 'electricity" to describe phenomena arising from the presence and flow of an electric charge. In his book De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magenete Tellure (On the Magnet and Magnetic bodies and on the Great Magnet the Earth) published in 1600, Gilbert drew  the English term from the Greek word Electron and the latin word electricus, meaning amber, as the ancients were known to have produced an electrical phenomenon by rubbing a piece of amber. What those ancient and Gilbert after them had observed was caused by charges producing electromagnetic fields that have an effect on other charges. The electric charge, in turn arises from properties and interactions of subatomic particles.

Observations of naturally occurring electricity are recorded in texts of ancient Egypt, Arabia, Greece and Rome but quantifying and harnessing the power of electricity did not commence until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By 1821, Michael Faraday had designed the electric motor and in 1827 Georg Ohm successfully analyzed the properties of the electrical circuit. What followed was a burst of scientific discussion and clever innovation.

Pioneering inventors and scientist, such as Nicola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Joseph Swan, George Westinghouse, Alexander Graham Bell and Lord Kelvin, adapted scientific discoveries to the tasks and necessities of daily life. Advances in medicine, electric lighting , stoves, home computers, washing machines, radios, televisions and electrically driven transport were all the result of their labors. Without the demand for electric products and the convenience of life supported by electricity, the Second Industrial Revolution would never have occurred and life as we live it would be very different.