Charles François de Cisternay DuFay, French scientist and
superintendent of the Jardin du Roi of Paris, made the important discovery
that there are two kinds of electricity, one produced by glass (vitreous)
and the other by resin (resinous). These terms were used for fifteen years
until they were replaced with positive and negative - coined independently
by William Watson and Benjamin Franklin.3 This discovery, along
with Dufay's other observations on electricity, were reported in a paper
written in December of 1733 and printed in Volume 38 of the Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society in the following year (see excerpt
Excerpt from "A Discourse concerning Electricity" from
François de Cisternay DuFay
Dufay's work clarified many of the unexplained phenomena
associated with electricity. His outstanding contributions to the knowledge
of electrical art include:
1) All bodies can be electrically charged by heating and
rubbing, except metals and soft /liquid bodies.
2) All bodies, including metal and liquid, can be charged by influence
3) The electrical properties of an object unique to color are affected by
the dye, not the color itself.
4) Glass is as satisfactory as silk as an insulator.
5) Thread conducts better wet than dry.
6) There are two states of electrification, Vitreous and Resinous.
7) Bodies electrified (charged) with vitreous electricity attract bodies
electrified with resinous electricity and repel other bodies electrified
with vitreous electricity.
Additional Excerpts from Dufay's "A Discourse