# How did the ancients explain static electricity? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 7, 2001, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-ancients-explain-static-electricity/64666 "2001-05-07T17:16:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![No\_Me\_Ayudes\_Compadre](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/no_me_ayudes_compadre/32/5224_2.png) [@No\_Me\_Ayudes\_Compadre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/No_Me_Ayudes_Compadre)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2001, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-ancients-explain-static-electricity/64666/1 "2001-05-07T17:16:40Z")
Well, ancients or medievals or anyone in the proto-Bounce era? In the not-too-far-off past, a sneeze and other mundane events were thought to be symptomatic of demon infestation. Was this the case for household static electricity? Can’t imagine what would happen to the poor stocking-footed soul who gave an unwelcome jolt to the emperor, pope, etc. Or was this type of energy understood to be an environmental, and not diabolical, condition? ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2001, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-ancients-explain-static-electricity/64666/2 "2001-05-07T22:13:02Z")
> [@](#): > > _Harper’s Electricity Book for Boys_, Joseph H. Adams, 1907: > > We are living in the age of electricity, just as our fathers lived in the age of steam. Electricity is the worldpower, the most powerful and terrible of nature’s bidden forces. Yet, when man has learned how to harness its fiery energies, electricity becomes the most docile and useful of his servants. Unquestionably, electricity is to-day the most fascinating and the most profitable field for the investigator and the inventor. The best brains of the country are at work upon its problems. New discoveries are constantly being recorded, and no labor is thought too great if it but add its mite to the sum total of our knowledge. And yet, ridiculous as the statement may seem, we do not know what electricity is. We only know certain of its manifestations—what it can do. All we can say is that it does our bidding; it propels our trains, lights our houses and streets, warms us, cooks for us, and performs a thousand and one other tasks at the turn of a button or at the thrust of a switch. But _what_ it is, do not know. Electricity has no weight, no bulk, no color. No one has seen it; it cannot be classified, nor analyzed, nor resolved into its ultimate elements by any known process of science. We must content ourselves with describing it as one manifestation of the energy which fills the universe and appears in a variety of forms—such as heat, light, magnetism, chemical affinity, and mechanical motion. In all probability it is one of those phenomena of nature that are destined to remain forever secret. Thus it stands in line with gravitation, magnetism, the active principle of radium, and the perpetual motion of the solar system. >     Electricity was known to the early Greeks; indeed, it derives its name from the Greek word for amber (electron). For many centuries amber was credited with certain special or magical powers. When it was rubbed with a flannel cloth, “the bidden spirit” came out and laid hold of small detached objects, such as bits of paper, thread, chips, or pith-balls. No one could explain this phenomenon. It was looked upon with superstitious awe and the amber itself was regarded as possessing the special attributes of divinity. But as time went on, it was discovered that in various other substances this mysterious attractive power could be excited, at will, through the agency of friction. Rubbing a piece of glass rod with silk or leather generated an “electricity” identical with that of the amber; or the same result could be obtained by exciting hard rubber with catskin. The conclusion followed that electricity was not a property of the special materials employed to generate it, but that it came from without, from that great reservoir of energy, the atmosphere. Then came Franklin with his experiment of the kite, and the invention of the Leyden-jar and the chemical production of the electric fluid by means of batteries. It was shown that the properties of the new and strange force were the same, whether it was produced by the static (frictional) process or by the galvanic (chemical) method. Electrical science as a science, had begun. >     And yet, for many years, electricity was hardly more than a scientific toy. It was not supposed to possess any practical usefulness. The entertaining experiments with the static machine and the Leyden-jar were confined to the laboratory and the lecture hall. Electricity was an amusing display of unknown energy, but no one ever dreamed that it could ever be made to serve the practical ends of life. It was not until about 1850 that electrical science became anything more than a name. The galvanic and voltaic batteries opened the way for “current” electricity, which flowed continuously, instead of jumping and disappearing like the spark from a Leyden-jar. When the continuous current became an established fact, the telegraph and telephone headed the line of a long series of developments. Finally, the generation of electricity in greater volume, and cheaply, made possible the application of its power for heating, light, traction, and the other forms of activity in which it now does so large a share of the world’s work. > [@](#): > > _Romance of Reality: Electricity_, W. H. M[sup]c[/sup]Cormick, 1915: > > Although the science of electricity is of comparatively recent date, electricity itself has existed from the beginning of the world. There can be no doubt that man’s introduction to electricity was brought about through the medium of the thunderstorm, and from very early times come down to us records of the terror inspired by thunder and lightning, and of the ways in which the ancients tried to account for the phenomena. Even to-day, although we know what lightning is and how it is produced, a severe thunderstorm fills us with a certain amount of awe, if not fear; and we can understand what a terrifying experience it must have been to the ancients, who had none of our knowledge. >     These early people had simple minds, and from our point of view they had little intelligence; but they possessed a great deal of curiosity. They were just as anxious to explain things as we are, and so they were not content until they had invented an explanation of lightning and thunder. Their favourite way of accounting for anything they did not understand was to make up a sort of romance about it. They believed that the heavens were inhabited by various gods, who showed their pleasure or anger by signs, and so they naturally concluded that thunder was the voice of angry gods, and lightning the weapon with which they struck down those who had displeased them. Prayers and sacrifices were therefore offered to the gods, in the hope of appeasing their wrath. >     Greek and Roman mythology contains many references to thunder and lightning. For instance, we read about the great god Zeus, who wielded thunder-bolts which had been forged in underground furnaces by the giant Cyclops. There was no doubt that the thunder-bolts were made in this way, because one only had to visit a volcano in order to see the smoke from the furnace, and hear the rumbling echo of the far-off hammering. Then we are told the tragic story of Phaeton, son of the Sun-god. This youth, like many others since his time, was daring and venturesome, and imagined that he could do things quite as well as his father. On one occasion he tried to drive his father’s chariot, and, as might have been expected, it got beyond his control, and came dangerously near the Earth. The land was scorched, the oceans were dried up, and the whole Earth was threatened with utter destruction. In order to prevent such a frightful catastrophe, Jupiter, the mighty lord of the heavens, hurled a thunder-bolt at Phaeton, and struck him from the chariot into the river Po. A whole book could be written about these ancient legends concerning the thunderstorm, but, interesting as they are, they have no scientific value, and many centuries were to elapse before the real nature of lightning was understood. >     In order to trace the first glimmerings of electrical knowledge we must leave the thunderstorm and pass on to more trivial matters. On certain sea-coasts the ancients found a transparent yellow substance capable of taking a high polish, and much to be desired as an ornament; and about 600 years B.C. it was discovered that this substance, when rubbed, gained the power of drawing to it bits of straw, feathers, and other light bodies. This discovery is generally credited to a Greek philosopher named Thales, 941-563 B.C., and it must be regarded as the first step towards the foundation of electrical science. The yellow substance was amber. We now know it to be simply a sort of fossilized resin, but the Greeks gave it a much more romantic origin. When Phaeton’s rashness brought him to an untimely end, his sorrowing sisters, the Heliades, were changed into poplar trees, and their tears into amber. Amongst the names given to the Sun-god was Alector, which means the shining one, and so the tears of the Heliades came to have the name Electron, or the shining thing. Unlike most of the old legends, this story of the fate of the Sun-maidens is of great importance to us, for from the word “electron” we get the name Electricity. >     Thales and his contemporaries seem to have made no serious attempts to explain the attraction of the rubbed and indeed so little importance was attached to the discovery that it was completely forgotten. About 321 B.C. one Theophrastus found that a certain mineral called “lyncurium” gained attractive powers when rubbed, but again little attention was paid to the matter, and astonishing as it may seem, no further progress worth mention was made until towards the close of the sixteenth century, when Doctor Gilbert of Colchester began to experiment seriously.