Excerpt from A Chronological History of Electrical Development: From 600 B. C Whether Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, who lived in 600 rc, was the first to observe the electrical effect produced when amber is rubbed with a nonconducting substance, or whether this knowledge is of an earlier date, the fact remains that no practical consequences came from the discovery for more than twenty centuries. It was not until after the systems of reason ing, which the Greek successors of Thales imposed for so many ages upon the intellect of Europe, began to be displaced by habits of thought that recognized nature herself as teacher and no longer rested content with the mere dicta of authority that electricity passed beyond the stage of metaphysical speculation and entered that of physical investigation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.