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Thales, a Greek found that when amber was rubbed with silk it attracted feathers and other light objects. He had discovered static electricity.
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William Gilbert, scientist and physician to Queen Elizabeth I, invented the term electricity. He was the first person to describe the earth magnetic field and to realise that there is a relationship between magnetism and electricity.
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The Wimshurst machine was invented. It was used to produce static electricity easily and reliably. Two parallel plates are rotated in opposite directions, which produces a charge around the edges of the plates. This charge is collected using a system of combs. Voltages as high as 50 000 can be produced, depending on humidity and other conditions, and can produce sparks up to 4 inches long.
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Francis Hauskbee created electrical effects by putting some mercury into a glass globe, pumping out the air and then spinning it. When he did this in the dark, and then rubbed the globe with his bare hand, it glowed.
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Benjamin Franklin, the famous U.S. politician, flew a kite with a metal tip into a thunderstorm to prove that lightning is a form of electricity.
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Volta created the first simple battery. He used pure zinc and silver discs, sandwiched between muslin damped in a salt solution.
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Sir Humphry Davy discovered that when he passed an electric current through some substances they decomposed. This process later became known as electrolysis. This led to the discovery of a number of elements including magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium.
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Hans Christian Oersted of Denmark found that when electricity flows through a wire, it produces a magnetic field that affects the needle of a nearby compass.
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Thomas Johann Seebeck found that when the junction of certain metals is heated electricity flows in thermo-electricity.
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Andre Ampere published his theories about electricity and magnetism. He was the first person to explain the electro-dynamic theory. The unit of electric current was named after him.
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German college teacher George Ohm published his complete mathematical theory of electricity. The unit of electrical resistance was later named after him.
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Michael Faraday demonstrated electromagnetic induction by passing a magnet through a coil of wire.
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Charles Wheatstone and William Fothergill Cooke created the first telegram machine.
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Charles Wheatstone used a revolving mirror and 4 miles of wire to measure the velocity of electricity.
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At an exhibition in New York, Samuel Morse demonstrated sending 10 words a minute by his new telegraph machine. He used the system of dots and dashes, which later became standard throughout the world as morse code.
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Thomas Edison built a DC (direct current) electric generator in America. He later provided all of New York's electricity.
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Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, used electricity to transmit speech for the first time.
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Joseph Swan, a British Scientist demonstrated the first electric light with a carbon filament lamp. A few months later, Thomas Edison made the same discovery in America.