How Electricity Changed the World: The Surprising Story

Proteck'd EMF ApparelHealth & EMF Specialists

Published August 02, 2026·11 min read

How Did Ancient Civilizations First Discover Static Electricity?

The story begins around 600 BC with Thales of Miletus, a Greek philosopher who noticed something odd. Rubbing amber (called "elektron" in Greek, which is literally where the word "electricity" comes from) against animal fur made it attract lightweight objects like feathers and straw ^[1]. He didn't understand why it worked. He actually thought the amber might be alive. But he documented it, and that documentation survived for centuries.

Thales wasn't entirely alone in noticing electrical phenomena, though. Ancient Egyptians recorded encounters with electric catfish in the Nile around 2750 BC. Roman physician Scribonius Largus, writing around 46 AD, actually prescribed electric ray fish shocks as a treatment for headaches. Early electrotherapy, if you can believe it. These weren't systematic experiments, but they show that humans have been interacting with electrical charge for millennia.

The real gap in the story is what happened next. Or rather, what didn't happen. For over a thousand years, nobody did much with these observations. The Middle Ages weren't exactly a golden era for experimental science. It wasn't until around 1600 that English physician William Gilbert picked up where Thales left off.

Gilbert coined the Latin word "electricus" to describe the force produced by rubbing amber ^[1]. He also distinguished between magnetic attraction and the static electrical effect, which was a massive conceptual leap for the time. His book De Magnete, published in 1600, is considered one of the founding texts of electrical science. Think about that timeline for a second: roughly 2,200 years passed between Thales noticing static cling and anyone seriously studying it. If you've ever wondered about 12 Surprising Tech Facts You Didn't Know, this slow burn might be the most surprising of all.

Who Really Discovered Electricity: Franklin, Faraday, or Someone Else?

This is probably the most common question people ask when trying to block history of electricity facts into a clear story. The honest answer? Nobody "discovered" electricity the way Columbus supposedly discovered the Americas. It was more like a relay race across centuries, with each runner adding something new to what came before.

Benjamin Franklin's famous 1752 kite experiment is the moment most Americans learn about in school. Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm in Philadelphia, attached a metal key to the string, and observed electrical sparks when lightning charged the key. This proved that lightning was electrical in nature, not divine wrath or random fire from the sky ^[2]. He went on to invent the lightning rod, which saved countless buildings and lives. But Franklin didn't discover electricity itself. He proved something specific about it.

The 1700s were packed with breakthroughs from other researchers too. In 1745, Pieter van Musschenbroek at the University of Leiden invented the Leyden jar, the first device that could store an electric charge. The world's first capacitor. Meanwhile, Luigi Galvani in Italy discovered in 1780 that electric current made a dead frog's legs twitch. That work led his colleague Alessandro Volta to invent the voltaic pile in 1800, the first true battery. That's where the word "volt" comes from.

Then came Michael Faraday. Working at the Royal Institution in London, Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831 ^[3]. He showed that moving a magnet through a coil of wire generates electric current. This single discovery made electric generators and transformers possible. Without Faraday, there's no power grid. No electric motors. No modern civilization as we know it. If you're curious about how electromagnetic radiation works in the broader sense, check out these 15 Fascinating Facts About Electromagnetic Radiation.

What Was the War of Currents and Why Does It Still Matter?

The late 1800s gave us one of the greatest rivalries in tech history. Thomas Edison, backed by his General Electric company, championed direct current (DC) as the standard for electrical power distribution. Nikola Tesla, partnered with George Westinghouse, pushed alternating current (AC). The stakes were enormous. Whoever won would control the electrification of America.

Edison opened his Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan on September 4, 1882. It was the world's first commercial power plant, serving 85 customers and powering about 400 lamps ^[2]. The problem? DC couldn't travel far without losing power. You needed a generating station every mile or so, which made it expensive and impractical for anything beyond dense urban neighborhoods.

Tesla's AC system, which he patented in 1888, solved that problem beautifully. Alternating current could be "stepped up" to high voltages using transformers, transmitted over long distances with minimal loss, then "stepped down" again for household use. Westinghouse demonstrated AC power spectacularly at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, illuminating the entire fairground. The crowd was stunned. Edison fought back with a nasty PR campaign, publicly electrocuting animals to show how "dangerous" AC was. It didn't work. AC won. It's what flows through your walls right now.

This matters today because the electricity in our homes, offices, and cities creates electromagnetic fields all around us. Every wire, every appliance, every device. And as our world has become more electrified, questions about EMF exposure have grown louder. If you've ever wondered whether there's a practical way to reduce your exposure, Learn About EMF Protection to understand the science behind shielding technology.

In just 50 years, electricity went from powering 10% of American homes to reaching 99%. No other technology has transformed human civilization so completely or so quickly. And now, surrounded by the electromagnetic fields that transformation created, we're only beginning to ask the right questions about what it means for our bodies.

How Did James Clerk Maxwell Change Our Understanding of Electromagnetic Fields?

Before Maxwell, electricity and magnetism were thought to be related but separate things. In 1865, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell published "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field," a set of equations that unified electricity, magnetism, and light into a single framework ^[3]. It's considered one of the greatest intellectual achievements in history, right up there with Newton's laws and Einstein's relativity.

Maxwell's equations predicted that electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light. That led him to propose that light itself is an electromagnetic wave. German physicist Heinrich Hertz confirmed this experimentally in 1887 by generating and detecting radio waves in his laboratory at the University of Bonn. That confirmation opened the door to radio, television, radar, WiFi, and every wireless technology you use today.

Here's what gets me about Maxwell's work: he did it all with pen and paper. No computers, no oscilloscopes, no fancy lab equipment. Pure mathematics. And those equations are still used, unchanged, by electrical engineers in 2024. They're as accurate today as they were 160 years ago. Very few scientific theories have held up that well.

Understanding electromagnetic fields also means understanding that they interact with biological tissue. According to the World Health Organization's International EMF Project, launched in 1996, research into how electromagnetic fields affect human health is ongoing and has produced thousands of studies ^[4]. This is one reason why people are increasingly interested in Faraday cage principles for personal shielding. The Faraday Collection from Proteck'd uses exactly that principle, embedding conductive materials into clothing to reduce EMF exposure.

How Did Electricity Transform Communication and Daily Life?

It's easy to forget, but before electricity, long-distance communication moved at the speed of a horse. That was it. Samuel Morse's electric telegraph, first demonstrated in 1844, changed that forever. His famous message "What hath God wrought" traveled from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore in seconds. Within a few decades, telegraph wires connected continents. The first successful transatlantic telegraph cable was completed in 1866, linking Europe and North America.

Alexander Graham Bell's telephone followed in 1876. Then came radio in the early 1900s, television in the 1920s and 30s, and the internet in the 1960s and 70s. ARPANET, the Department of Defense project that started it all, first transmitted data on October 29, 1969. Every single one of these technologies runs on electricity. Every single one produces electromagnetic fields as a byproduct.

By the mid-20th century, electricity had reshaped every aspect of daily life. Refrigerators replaced iceboxes. Washing machines freed up hours of labor. Electric lighting extended productive hours well past sunset. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, by 1960 nearly 99% of American homes had electricity, up from about 10% in 1910. A complete transformation of civilization in just 50 years.

Today we carry more computing power in our pockets than existed in the entire world in 1969. Our bodies are constantly surrounded by the electromagnetic radiation those devices emit. Some people find that a little unsettling, and honestly, I get it. It's worth understanding both the history and the biology. If you're interested in how your body interacts with all these invisible forces, you might enjoy 12 Mind-Blowing Facts About How Your Body Works.

What Are Electromagnetic Fields and Should You Be Concerned?

So here we are, living in a world that Thales of Miletus couldn't have imagined. Electric current flows through our homes, our offices, our cars. Wireless signals bounce off cell towers, WiFi routers, Bluetooth devices, and satellites. All of these produce electromagnetic fields of varying frequencies and intensities.

The WHO classifies extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields, the kind produced by power lines and household wiring, as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" (Group 2B), based on limited epidemiological evidence ^[4]. That's the same category as pickled vegetables and talc-based body powder. It doesn't mean they're proven dangerous. It means the science is still being sorted out.

What is clear is that people today are exposed to far more electromagnetic radiation than any previous generation. A 2021 review published in the journal Environmental Research noted that ambient RF-EMF levels in urban environments have increased dramatically over the past two decades, driven primarily by the rollout of 4G and 5G cellular networks. Whether that increased exposure carries meaningful health risks remains an active area of research.

For people who want to take a proactive approach, making how to block history of electricity facts more than just an academic exercise is actually pretty straightforward: learn about Faraday cage shielding. Named after Michael Faraday himself, a Faraday cage is an enclosure made of conductive material that blocks external electromagnetic fields. It's the same principle used to protect sensitive electronics. Proteck'd EMF Protection applies this concept to wearable clothing, weaving silver and other conductive fibers into everyday apparel to reduce personal EMF exposure.

And speaking of the natural world, some creatures can actually perceive electromagnetic fields that we can't. Sharks detect electric fields through specialized organs called ampullae of Lorenzini, and migratory birds find their way using Earth's magnetic field. Learn more in How Animals See the World: The Abilities That Seem Like Superpowers.

What Does the Future of Electricity Look Like?

We're living through another electricity revolution right now, and most people don't realize it. According to the International Energy Agency's 2023 World Energy Outlook, renewable electricity generation surpassed coal power globally for the first time. Solar and wind accounted for over 30% of global electricity production. That's a seismic shift.

Electric vehicles are another front. Tesla (the company, named after you know who) delivered over 1.8 million vehicles in 2023 alone. Major automakers like Ford, GM, and Volkswagen have committed billions to EV development. The electric grid itself is getting smarter too, with IoT sensors and AI-driven load balancing making power distribution more efficient than Edison could have dreamed.

But more electrification also means more electromagnetic fields in our environment. Smart meters, EV charging stations, solar inverters, 5G small cells on every other streetlight. When you try to block history of electricity facts into practical knowledge, you realize the story isn't over. We're writing new chapters every year. The questions about how all this electrical energy interacts with our health are only going to become more relevant.

If you want to stay informed about the intersection of technology and health, take a look at 12 Fascinating Tech Facts That Sound Too Weird to Be True. And if you'd rather take action than just read about it, the Faraday Collection offers clothing designed with conductive shielding that puts 19th-century physics to work protecting your 21st-century life.

About the Author

Proteck'd EMF Apparel

Health & EMF Specialists

The Proteck'd team covers EMF protection, silver-fiber apparel, and practical ways to reduce everyday radiation exposure. Every piece Proteck'd ships is designed, tested, and worn by the people who build it.