How electricity was envinted?

Answer 1

Electricity wasn't so much 'invented' as 'discovered', if you will. Electricity has been around since, well, forever. Many scientists in the late 18th century, from Ben Franklin to Joseph Priestley, to the Italian Guiseppe Volta and the Scot James Watt, all played with electricity and attempted to define its properties and behavior. Many of them performed experiments with it, and it became quite a parlor trick to generate a hunk of static electricity with a wheel and some silk string, and then shock the bejeezus out of your snooty neighbors. Gradually, science realized that electricity was a "two way street", so to speak, and during the 19th Century more and more was found out about it, until the two greatest electricians of their time, Edison and Tesla, pretty much defined what the excitement was all about. Did you know that Tom E. not only invented the light bulb and the phonograph, but also the electric chair?...