I’m pretty sure that the first encounter man had with electricity was during a thunderstorm when he witnesses the power and might of the lightning bolts. The early man was impressed with the elements role in sustaining life and also feared them due to their devastating power in the form of lighting, floods, droughts and forest fires due to the sun’s heat and earthquakes etc. and started worshiping them. The elements later took physical forms in the Egyptian, Hindu, Greek and Roman mythology. According to researchers, man was first introduced to the electric shock when he encountered an electric eel. The reference of electric eel can be found in the ancient Egyptian texts, which describes these fishes as ‘Thunderers of the Nile’. The Greek deity Zeus is a well known mythological figure that controlled the electricity and the ancient Greeks often associated the thunderstorms as ‘Zeus’ Wrath’.
Man’s first use of electricity was said to have been in ancient Greece when Thales of Miletus discovered the use of static electricity to attract light objects such as feathers and hair. Although he confused this phenomenon to magnetism and thus negated the possibility of developing an electrical charge by rubbing amber rods on cat’s fur. It was only in the 1600s that the concept of static charge and the possibility of the use of electricity were born.
Today electricity has become an essential part of human lives, as most of the appliances used in homes run on electricity. The development of science and technology and the discovery of new mediums to facilitate the flow of electric current have revolutionized the face of technology and our very lives. From air conditioners to the television remote to the cellular phones, everything is powered by electricity. The inventions of electrical circuits and active electronic instruments have provided the humans with technologies that early even the Greek gods would envy.