CH. X. DISCOVERY OF ELECTRICITY. 75 



or draw towards it bits of straw and other light bodies, and 

 it is from the Greek word electron amber, that our word 

 electricity is taken. 



Until the sixteenth century, however, no one had made 

 any careful experiments upon this curious fact, and it was Dr. 

 Gilbert, a physician of Colchester, who first discovered that 

 other bodies besides amber, will when rubbed, attract straws, 

 thin shavings of metals, and other substances. You can 

 easily try this for yourself by rubbing the end of a stick of 

 common sealing-wax on a piece of dry flannel, and then 

 holding the rubbed end near to some small pieces of light 

 papers, or some feathers or bran. You will find that these 

 substances will spring towards the sealing-wax and cling to 

 it for a short time, being held there by the electricity which 

 has been produced by rubbing the sealing-wax. 



Gilbert showed that amber, jet, diamond, crystal, sulphur, 

 sealing-wax, alum, and many other substances, have this 

 power of attraction when they are rubbed, and he also proved 

 that the attraction was stronger when the air is dry and cold 

 than when it is warm and moist. This may seem very little 

 to have discovered compared to the wonderful facts which 

 we now know about electricity ; but it was the first step, 

 and Gilbert's book on ' Magnetism ' (as he called it), which 

 was published in 1600, must be remembered as the earliest 

 beginning of the study of electricity. 



Tycho Brahe, Astronomer, 1546-1601. We must 

 now return to Astronomy, in which during the next eighty 

 years wonderful discoveries were made by three celebrated 

 men, Tycho Brahe the Dane, Galileo the Italian, and 

 Kepler the German. 



Tycho Brahe was born in the year 1546, at Helsin- 

 borg, a town in Sweden, which at that time belonged to the 

 Danes. When he was only fourteen he was so much 



