The English & Electricity

In the last years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, English doctor William Gilbert studied electricity and magnetism. He made a distinction between the lodestone effect (magnetism) and the static electricity created by rubbing amber. (I talked about the static electricity created from rubbing amber rods last week.)

Gilbert is the one who coined the word electricus (New Latin) meaning of amber or like amber to describe the characteristic of attracting small objects after being rubbed, what we know as static electricity. Eventually, from this, the English words electric and electricity were born. These two words were first seen in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

As in most scientific advances, it took the combined work of many people in many countries to add to the wealth of knowledge that led to breakthroughs and discoveries.