1775
Capacitance and resistance
English chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish develops the concepts of capacitance and resistance, though most of his work with electricity is not published until the late nineteenth century.
1775
Making static electricity
Italian physicist Alessandro Volta invents a machine for generating static electricity, which he calls an electrophorus. The term also comes to be applied to the similar device created by Johannes Wilcke a decade earlier.1777
Lichtenberg figures
German professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg discovers that unusual patterns, which later come to be known as Lichtenberg figures, can be produced by electrifying fern spores or other fine powders and dusting them upon a surface that carries the opposite charge.
1778
Animal magnetism
Anton Mesmer, a German physician, establishes a magnetic healing practice based on his theories of animal magnetism in Paris after being accused of fraudulent activity in Vienna.
1781
State changes
Renowned chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier of France demonstrates that the conversion of liquids or solids into gases results in electrification.
1785
Torsion balance
French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb builds a torsion balance and offers quantitative proof of the inverse square laws of electric and magnetic forces theorized by Joseph Priestley 20 years earlier.1785
Powerful electrostatic generator
Martin Van Marum of Holland constructs a much more powerful electrostatic machine than had ever been built before and carries out a variety of experiments with electricity.
1787
Detecting and amplifying charge
Reverend Abraham Bennet discusses two important devices in Philosophical Transactions, one for detecting electricity (the gold leaf electroscope) and the other for amplifying a charge via induction (the electric doubler).1791
Animal electricity proposed
University of Bologna anatomy professor Luigi Galvani reports his observations made over the course of 11 years on the effect of metal probes on the leg muscles of dissected frogs in the essay Commentary on the Effect of Electricity on Muscular Motion. He mistakenly attributes the muscular contractions he witnesses to an innate force he dubs animal electricity.1796
Animal electricity debunked
When carrying out experiments with metals placed in his mouth similar to those of Johann Sulzer, Italian physicist Alessandro Volta first believes he is experiencing the effects of animal electricity, but then finds that he can produce a current in the absence of animal tissue by utilizing a piece of cardboard moistened with brine instead of his tongue. Accordingly, he infers that the effect is incited by touching dissimilar metals to a moist object.