Early Electrical America.Rhonda Tintle reviewed these works:

A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America

by JamesDelbourgo.

Electricity and Magnetism A Historical Perspective by

Brian S. Baigrie.

Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries A Study of Early Modern Physics

by J. L. Heilbron.

Science and Technology in Colonial America by

William E. Burns.

The First Scientific American Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius

by Joyce E. Chaplin. __________________________________________________________________________ Early American electricity history is part of the current debate about the history of science in general. Traditionally trained historians accuse scientists of producing poorly written presentist histories. Scientists accuse historians of getting the science wrong and beingtechnologically incompetent to write the history of science. This debate is actually progress; ithas replaced the previous debate about whether or not there was any science in early America atall. Historians of early American (colonial) history tended to write the era as proto-revolutionhistory, thereby de-centering the actual history of early America. Those historians ignoredimportant topics, such as electricity, in favor of the politics that led to 1776. Now AtlanticHistory has arrived and placed Colonial America in the wide context of the Americas, Europe,and Africa. Many Atlantic histories are comparative; others examine the relationship of ColonialAmerica to Europe, especially Britain; and further reaching stories of Atlantic History are worldhistory. The history of colonial electricity falls into this final category."Electricity led the way,” declares Heilbron, who claims

that during the ScientificRevolution of the 17th and 18th century’s different cultures, nations, and people embraced many

different sciences, however, electricity was the most important.

Electricity in the 17th and 18thCenturies

is a 600 plus page study of early American electricity that catalogs and classifies previous scholarship from a variety of disciplines and integrates archival sources. Heilbron’sstated goal is to provide a “synthetic history of early modern science that meets contemporarystandards of scope and scholarship" until, he says, someone comes along to write a morecomplete synthesis.

(That event has not yet occurred). Besides the closely written, fact-fillednarrative, there are thousands of notes and bibliographic entries, making this book (published in1979) the definitive work on early American electricity. At the outset, it is worth noting thatHeilbron has two degrees in physics and that Thomas Kuhn was the committee chair for Heilbron’s PhD in History of Science at UC Berkeley.Heilbron offers in depth explanations about experiments, as well as experimenters andtheir devices. Diagrams and illustrations from the period accompany many of these descriptions.A large part of this book is a complex treatment of the most popular form of early electricityexperiments, those involving static electricity. The actors in his book run the gamut fromAristotle to Newton, and include Ben Franklin.Heilbron explains how during the 1600s scientists conceived of electricity as effluvia.

During the 1730s and 1740s electricity research advanced and electrical experimentation waswidespread in Europe and the American colonies. In the 1740s, the scientific communityredefined electricity as something akin to fire. As experimenters around the world (Europe, theAmericas, China, Japan, South America, the Caribbean, and Africa) failed to replicateexperiments they had read about in other places, different parts of the world became classified ashaving electrical atmospheres. America had a very electrical atmosphere. This explanation of 2

electrical atmospheres by Heilbron provides the basis for James Delbourgo’s recent treatment of electricity history and its relationship to American exceptionalism.

Heilbron features all of the most important early theories, people, equipment, anddemonstrations including lightning, Ben Franklin, and the lightening rod. Heilbron explicateselectric fish, eels, and bugs as well as animal magnetism.

Furthermore, he carefully chroniclesthe popularity of the Leyden jar and Venus Electrificata.

Besides all of this, Heilbrondocuments the far ranging demography of early electricians.

They were amateur experimenters, official academicians, independent researchers, philosophers, and leaders from avariety of religious sects. Heilbron devotes many pages to physicists' salaries and inventions.Enmity, jealousy, and ego shaped the field. The picture presented is one of schools of thoughtsquaring off against each other, attempting to control the direction of experiments, as well as thedevelopment and marketing of scientific equipment. Lectures needed to lure paying publicaudiences to their demonstrations. Originally, audiences were all male, but Heilbron documentsa shift in mid-eighteenth century to all female audiences. The sheer number of peopleexperimenting around Europe, the Americas, and Japan and the variety of ways they conceivedtheir experiments was extreme.Some of Heilbron's conclusions are problematic for contemporary historians. He waswriting on the verge of the social history explosion and makes claims that would make modernhistorians balk. For example, one of Heilbron's conclusions is that the reason electricity was so pervasive and popular during this period is because it was theologically and cosmologicallyneutral. This aside, Heilbron deserves credit for including much information on common people,the poor and abused, underpaid academicians who are so often are ignored in historical biographies. This book is a must read for Arts & Science, Letters, and Social Science oriented3