Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics

Through the study of electricity and the scientists who investigated it in the 17th and 18th centuries, this highly regarded book in effect recounts the rise of early modern physics. Based on years of prodigious research, peppered with wit and buttressed with thousands of footnotes, the work surveys concepts, practitioners and educational institutions; gives detailed explanations of all relevant hypotheses and experimental achievements, and describes the stages leading to, and the formulation of, the quantitative laws of electrostatics. More specifically, Professor Heilbron analyzes the investigations of virtually all electrical scientists active between 1600 and 1790, treating in detail the great electrical discoveries, including the revolutionary change introduced with the Leyden jar, the significance of Franklin, the rise of electrical quantification, and ending with Volta's discovery of the pile, the instrumentalism of Coulomb, and the French school of mathematical physicists. Supplemented with a 1600 item bibliography, this is one of the most important books in the history of science to appear in the second half of the twentieth century. It is "a work of great, indeed of delightful, learning. (It brings) the history of science to life as a part of history...and is a required reference for students of the era."