Who Invented the Electric Current?

Electricity was not invented by any one person, but its modern day use is the result of the work of inventors, scientists, and researchers, who toiled over the subject for millennia. Electricity is a natural phenomenon and so it was not 'invented' but "discovered". The discovery took place since ancient times, from the lightnings though the experiments were premitive.

In the Seventeenth Century the English physician William Gilbert made a careful study of electricity and magnetism, coined a new Latin name for the phenomenon which finall gave rise to the English Words "electric" and "electricity". These Words made their first appearance in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646.

Further work was conducted by Otto von Guericke, Robert Boyle, Stephen Gray and C. F. du Fay. These were studies in Static electricity. Then in the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive research in electricity, from natural lightning. Luigi Galvani subsequently published his discovery of bioelectricity, demonstrating that electricity was the medium by which nerve cells passed signals to the muscles.

Alessandro Volta's battery, or Voltaic pile, made in the nineteenth century from alternating layers of zinc and copper, provided scientists with a more reliable source of electrical energy than the electrostatic machines previously used.

The recognition of electromagnetism, the unity of electric and magnetic phenomena, is due to Hans Christian Ørsted and André-Marie Ampère in 1819-1820; Michael Faraday invented the electric motor in 1821, and Georg Ohm mathematically analysed the electrical circuit in 1827.

The invention of the alternant current generators by Nikola Tesla set the stardarts for the current we use now. He also made the Hydroelectric power station built on the Niagara Falls in the mid 1890's.