ABSTRACT
With the exception of lightning, frictional electrification of material objects is probably the earliest electrophysical phenomenon known to people from their direct experience. Yet in contemporary electrical sci ence, engineering, and modern society at large, electrostatics and its appli cations attract relatively little attention. It is not difficult to indicate sev eral reasons for such an apparent neglect of electrostatics:
(1) Almost all modern technology and the entire society relies on elec tricity in its, so to say, electrodynamical form. Production, distribution, and utilization of electric power along with many industries related to electronics (computing, musical entertainment equipment, radio and cable communication systems including TV and VCR technologies) employ the lion’s share of all electrically related professionals. On the background of these populous occupations and trades, those few who are professionally engaged into electrostatics are almost unnoticeable.
