ABSTRACT
The major developments of the Romantic period in electrical science are the unification of electricity and chemistry, and the discovery of electromagnetism. Electricity had seemed something to do with thunderstorms and parlour tricks; Sir Humphry Davy made it central to our understanding of the processes of nature, a force as important as gravity. The less spectacular, but more durable contribution of electricity to scientific progress in the Romantic period, in the field of electrochemistry, can be assessed by reviewing the work of Davy, the first professional scientist in Britain, and one of the most famous men in the country. Davy's contribution to a 'dynamical chemistry' explains the experiments with galvanism that caught the imagination of the general public. Hans Christian Oersted held that all natural phenomena like light, heat, electricity, and magnetism would be found to be manifestations of the same principle and his major achievement, the discovery of electromagnetism.
