Ever since antiquity, people had observed that rubbed amber attracted light objects placed near it. But it was not until 1600 that William Gilbert clearly distinguished between magnetic phenomena, generated by magnets, and electrical phenomena, produced by rubbed substances such as amber and sulfur. Until the early nineteenth century, the study of electricity was confined to electrostatics, which focuses on the phenomena pertaining to the distribution of electrical charges in equilibrium.

Research in this field of experimental physics expanded dramatically from the early eighteenth century onward. The construction of ever more powerful electrostatic machines, the invention of the first condenser (known as the Leyden jar) in 1745, the observation of surprising and spectacular phenomena such as sparks, glow discharges, and vacuum discharges—all these developments helped not only to attract the attention of specialists, but also to arouse the curiosity of the educated classes, for whom electrical experiments were a source of entertainment and wonder. In the eighteenth century, many theories were formulated about the existence of one or more elusive electrical fluids. The closing decades of the century witnessed the invention of increasingly sophisticated instruments such as electroscopes and electrometers, which served to reveal and measure electrical charges. The electrometric researches of Alessandro Volta and the comprehensive study of electrostatic forces by Charles Coulomb paved the way for the definition and mathematical description of the fundamental laws of electrostatics.