The First book of Electrical History - 1769
Joseph Priestley (1733 - 1804)

This is the first extensive history of electrical discovery and theory by the first historian of electricity and the man who discovered Oxygen .

The History of Electricity was easily the largest book on the subject up to that time, and "supplies an excellent account of previous work both treated historically and summarized systematically... In his History, he anticipated Henry Cavendish and Charles Augustin de Coulomb in the important suggestion that the law of electric attraction is that of the inverse square, deducing this from an an experiment suggested by Franklin. He found that an electrified body is discharged by the proximity of flame, that charcoal, blacklead, and red-hot glass are conductors; and satisfactorily explained the formation of rings (since known as Priestley's rings) when a discharge takes place on a metallic surface. He showed great insight by pointing out the need for the measure of electrical resistance, and proposed a method for measuring what is now called 'impedance', which at the time was not distinguished from resistance"¹¹.