Contact Electricity and Electrolysis According to Father Boscovich

Abstract

YESTERDAY evening, in the Royal Institution, I spoke of an ideal one-fluid electricity subject to attractions of solid substance, to account for contact electricity of metals; and I said that before the end of our meeting I might speak of it further and might have to reverse the conventional language I was using as to positive and negative, and call resinous electricity positive, and vitreous negative. My allotted hour was woefully overpast, and half an hour more gone, before I could return to the subject; and I felt bound to stop. What I wished to say may be said in the columns of NATURE in fewer words than I could have found, to make it intelligible, last night.