CH. X. DISCOVERY OF ELECTRICITY. 77 



to make objects appear nearer and larger, but it is not certain 

 that he ever really made a telescope. 



Dr. Gilbert, the Founder of the Science of Electricity, 

 1540-1603, — It was about this time, while Baptiste Porta 

 was making experiments on light in Italy, that an English- 

 man named Gilbert made the first step in one of the most 

 wonderful and interesting of all the sciences, namely, that of 

 Electricity. So long ago as the time of the Greeks it was 

 already known that amber, when rubbed, will attract 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 

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

 substances will spring towards the sealing-wax and cling to 

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

 has been produced by rubbing the sealing-wax. 



Gilbert showed that amber, jet, diamond, crystal, sul- 

 phur, 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 



