ABSTRACT
The fuller exploration of the phenomena, and their theoretical interpretation, may be regarded as the greatest achievement of nineteenth-century physics. The remarkable development of electrical science which had continued throughout the course of the eighteenth century culminated towards its close in the determination of the precise law of force between electric charges. If two charged conductors are placed in communication, electricity will flow between them until the pressure is everywhere the same, when their “degrees of electrification” will be equal. The real investigation of contact electricity arose from the chance observation that a freshly prepared frog’s leg was thrown into convulsions whenever an electrical discharge occurred in its neighbourhood while it was in conducting communication with the earth. The greatest achievement of the eighteenth century in magnetism was the determination by Coulomb of the law according to which the force of a magnetic pole varies with distance.
