The History and Present State of Electricity

"The History and Present State of Electricity" (1767), by eighteenth-century British polymath Joseph Priestley, is a survey of the study of electricity up until 1766 as well as a description of experiments by Priestley himself. [Priestley, Joseph. "The History and Present State of Electricity, with original experiments". London: Printed for J. Dodsley, J. Johnson and T. Cadell, 1767.]

Priestley became interested in electricity while he was teaching at Warrington Academy. Friends introduced him to the major British experimenters in the field: John Canton, William Watson, and Benjamin Franklin. These men encouraged Priestley to perform the experiments he was writing about in his history; they believed that he could better describe the experiments if he had performed them himself. In the process of replicating others' experiments, however, Priestley became intrigued by the still unanswered questions regarding electricity and was prompted to design and undertake his own experiments. [Schofield, 141–44; 152; Jackson, 64-66; Uglow 75–77; Thorpe, 61–65.]

The first half of the 700-page book is a history of the study of electricity and the second and more influential half is a description of contemporary theories about electricity and suggestions for future research. Priestley reported some of his own discoveries in the second section, such as the conductivity of charcoal. [Schofield, 144ff.] This discovery overturned what he termed "one of the earliest and universally received maxims of electricity," that only water and metals could conduct electricity. Such experiments demonstrate that Priestley was interested in the relationship between chemistry and electricity from the beginning of his scientific career. [Gibbs 28–31; see also Thorpe, 64.] In one of his more speculative moments, he "provided a mathematical quasi-demonstration of the inverse-square force law for electrical charges. It was the first respectable claim for that law, out of which came the development of a mathematical theory of static electricity." [Schofield, 150.]

Priestley's strength as a natural philosopher was qualitative rather than quantitative and his observation of "a current of real air" between two electrified points would later interest Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell as they investigated electromagnetism. Priestley's text became the standard history of electricity for over a century; Alessandro Volta (who would go on to invent the battery), William Herschel (who discovered infrared radiation), and Henry Cavendish (who discovered hydrogen) all relied upon it. Priestley wrote a popular version of the "History of Electricity" for the general public titled "A Familiar Introduction to the Study of Electricity" (1768). [Priestley, Joseph. "A familiar introduction to the study of electricity". London: Printed for J. Dodsley; T. Cadell; and J. Johnson, 1768.]

Notes

Bibliography

*Gibbs, F. W. "Joseph Priestley: Adventurer in Science and Champion of Truth". London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1965.
*Jackson, Joe, "A World on Fire: A Heretic, An Aristocrat And The Race to Discover Oxygen". New York: Viking, 2005. ISBN 0670034347.
*Schofield, Robert E. "The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A Study of his Life and Work from 1733 to 1773". University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. ISBN 0271016620.
*Thorpe, T.E. "Joseph Priestley". London: J. M. Dent, 1906.
*Uglow, Jenny. "The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World". New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. ISBN 0374194408.

External links

*Priestley, Joseph. "The History and Present State of Electricity, with original experiments". London: Printed for J. Dodsley, J. Johnson and T. Cadell, 1767. [http://books.google.com/books?id=20lkAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=history+electricity&lr=&as_brr=1#PPP7,M2 (Third edition, 1775)]