E L E 
ELK 
407 
eleElrk. A mixed metal.—Change (liver plate or veffels. 
into the compound fluff, being a kind of filver clcclrc, 
and turn the reft into coin. Bacon. 
E LEC'TRESS, f The wife or widow of a German 
elector.—The eleElrcfs Palatine has fent me fix wild boars’ 
heads. Chrjlerfield. —The ad of parliament fettled the 
crown on tiie cleSlrefs Sophia and her defeendants, being 
proteftants. Burke. 
ELEC'TRIC, or Electrical, ad]. [dcElrum , Lai.] 
Attradive by a peculiar property, fuppofed once to be¬ 
long chiefly to amber.—An eleElric body can by fridion 
efnit an exhalation fo fubtle, and yet fo potent, as by its 
emiflion to caufe no fenfible diminution of the weight of 
the cleElric body, and to be expanded through a fphere, 
whofe diameter is above two feet, and yet to' be able to 
carry up lead, copper, or leaf-gold, at the diftance of 
aboVe a foot from the eleclric body. Newton. —Produced 
by an eledric body.—If that attradion were not rather 
cleSlrical than magnetical, it was wonderous what Kel- 
mont delivereth concerning a glafs, wherein the magiflery 
of loadftone was prepared, which retained an attradive 
quality. Brown. 
ELEC'TRIC, y. the globe, cylinder, or barrel, of an 
eledrical machine. This terra is alfo applied to all fub- 
flances in which the eledric fluid can be excited and accu¬ 
mulated, without tranfmitting it; and which are therefore 
called non-conduElors. They are alfo called original ele&rics, 
and elctlrics per fc. To the clafs of non-condudors be- 
long glafs, and ill vitrifications, even of metals ; all gems, 
of which the mod tranfpareut are the beft; all refins, 
and relinous compofitions ; alfo fulpluir, baked wood, all 
bituminous fubftances, wax, (ilk, cotton, all dry animal 
fubftances, as feathers, wool, hair, &c. ; alfo paper, 
white fuga!*, and fugar-candy ; likewife air, oils, choco¬ 
late, calces of metals, the afhes of animal and vegetable 
fubftances, thte ruft of metals, all dry vegetable fub¬ 
ftances, and (tones, of which the hardeft are the beft. 
ELEC'TRICA, f. with phyficians. Medicines which 
have the quality of drawing. 
ELEC'TRTCALNESS, f. The quality of being 
eledrical. Scott. 
ELECTRICITY, f. [from yMy.reov, amber, as having 
the power to excite, or attraEl.] The fcience which invel- 
ti gates and explains the nature and properties of that ac¬ 
tive and fubtile matter,, which philofophers have agreed 
to call eleclric fluid ; or that exceedingly elaftic principle, 
which when excited by fridion, is found to refide more 
or lei's in all bodies or fubftances with which we are ac¬ 
quainted. No one branch of natural philofophy, per¬ 
haps, hath attended more attention than the dodrine of 
-electricity ; and indeed there are few which feem more 
worthy of inveftigation. When we confider the diftin- 
guifhed part which eledricity apparently performs in 
the grand operations of nature ; the aftonifhing, and, on 
the fir ft view, the inexplicable efleds produced by its 
power, fo different from thofe of any other; and its fe- 
cretand concealed mode of adion, which the raoft acute 
obfervers have not hitherto been able fully to penetrate ; 
it will not appear furpnfing that both the learned and the 
unlearned fftould, with unabated zeal, have employed 
their attention on this phenomenon, as important to fpe- 
■culstive philofophy, as by its medical influence it is in- 
terefting to fociety. 
The property of excitation which amber poflefles, cer¬ 
tainly furniflied the firft idea of eledricity. Thales, 
fix hundred years before Chrift, and Theophraftus, three 
hundred years before the fame era, recorded this eledri¬ 
cal property in amber. Sde the article Amber, vol. i. 
p. 39S. It was afterwards noticed by Pliny, and other 
later naturalifts, particularly Gaffendus, Kenelm Digby, 
and fir Thomas Brown. But it was generally imagined 
that this quality was peculiar to amber and jet, and per¬ 
haps agate, till W. Gilbert, a native of Colchefter, and a 
phyfician in London, publifiied his treatife De Magnete, 
in the year xCoot Dr. Gilbert made many confiderable 
experiments and difeoveries, confidering tIre then infant 
(fate of the fcience. He greatly enlarged the lift of elec¬ 
trics, and of the bodies on which they ad : he remarked, 
that a dry air was mod favourable to eledrical pheno¬ 
mena, whilft a moift air almoft annihilates the eledric 
principle: he alfo obferved the conical figure affirmed 
by eledrified drops of water : he confidered eledrical at¬ 
tradion feparately from repulfion, which he thought had ‘ 
no place in eledricity, as a phenomenon (imilar to-the 
attradion of cohefion ; and, he imagined, that eledrics 
were brought into contad witlr the bodies on which they 
ad by their effluvia, excited by fridion. 
The ingenious Mr. Boyle alfo added to the catalogue 
of eledric fubftances ; but he thought that glafs po[~ 
feffed this power in a very low degree: he found, that 
the eledricity of all bodies, in which it might be ex¬ 
cited, was increafed by wiping and warming them ; that 
an excited eledric was ailed upon by other bodies as 
ftrongly as it ailed upon them; that diamonds rubbed 
agdinft any kind of fluff, emitted light in the dark; and 
that feathers would cling to the fingers, and to other fub¬ 
ftances, after they had been attraded by eledrics. He 
accounted for eledrical attradion, by fuppofing a gluti¬ 
nous effluvia emitted from eledrics, which laid hold of 
(mail bodies, in its way, and carried them back to the 
body from which it proceeded. 
Otto Guericke, the celebrated inventor of theair-pump, 
lived about the fame time. This ingenious philofopher 
difeovered, by means of a globe of fulphnr, that a body 
once attraded by an eledric, was next repelled, and con¬ 
tinued in this date of repulfion till it fftould be touched 
by fome other body : he alio obferved the found and light 
produced by the excitation of the tube ; and that bodies 
intmerged in eledrical atmofpheres are themfelves elec¬ 
trified with an eledricity oppofite to that of the atmo- 
fphere.. 
The light emitted by eledrical bodies was, not long 
after, obferved to much greater advantage by Dr. Wall, 
who aferibes to light the eledrical property which they 
poffefs ; and he fuggefted a fimilarity between the erfeds 
of eledricity and lightning. Sir Ifaac Newton was not 
inattentive to tills fubjed : he obferved that glafs attrads 
light bodies on the fide oppofite to that on which it is 
rubbed ; and he aferibes the adion of eledric bodies to 
an elaftic fluid, which freely penetrates glafs, and the 
emiflion of it to the vibratory motions of the parts of 
excited bodies. 
Mr. Hawkfbee wrote copioufly on this fubjed in 1709, 
when a new era commenced in the hiftory of eledricity. 
He firft took notice of the great eledrical power of glafs, 
and light proceeding form it; though others had before 
obferved the light proceeding from other eledrified fub¬ 
ftances : he alfo noted the noife occafioned by it, with a 
variety of phenomena relating to eledrical attradion and 
repulfion. He firft introduced a glafs globe into the elec¬ 
trical machine, to which circumftance it was that many 
of his important difeoveries were owing. After his time 
there was an interval of near twenty years in the progrefs 
of this fcience, until the experiments and writings of 
Mr. Stephen Grey gave new vigour to this interefting 
inquiry. To him we owe the capital difebvery of com¬ 
municating the power of native eledrics to other bodies, 
in which it cannot be excited, by fupporting them on 
filken lines, hair lines, cakes of refin or glafs; and a 
more accurate diftindion than had hitherto been obtained 
between eledrics and non-eledrics : he alfo (hewed the 
etfed of eledricity on water much more obvioufly than 
Gilbert had done in the infancy of the fcience. 
The experiments of Mr. Grey were repeated by M. du 
Faye, member of the academy of fciences at Paris, to 
which he added many new experiments and difeoveries 
of his own. He obferved, that eledrical operations are 
obftruded by great heat, as well as by a moift air ; that 
all bodies, both (olid and fluid, would receive eledricity, 
w hen placed on warm or dry glafs, or fealmg-wax ; that 
t • ~ thofe 
