Useful electricity was not born suddenly into a world that had never heard of electricity. People had been playing with electrical toys and scientific equipment

Useful electricity was not born suddenly into a world that had never heard of electricity. People had been playing with electrical toys and scientific equipment for generations before advances made industrial electricity possible. Electricity may have earned any number of different cultural reputations for its associations with aristocrats, magicians and quacks. Just yesterday I rewatched James Burke’s Connections, episode 3, Distant Voices, which vividly illustrates some of the ways people tried using electricity.