Jabarkan Sajarah Listrik dari Listrik dalam bahasa sunda

Cenah barang-barang anu tangtu kawas kai tangkal ambar umpama di gosok kana bulu ucing bisa narik barang-barang anu hampang saperti buuk jeung bulu-bulu lianna, ieu geus dipikawanoh ku bangsa Yunani kuna, Fenisia, Parthia, jeung Mésopotamia. Thales of Miletos  ngalaksanakeun. Sababaraha uji coba dina taun 600 SM, hayang nyaho naha kunaon lamun ngagosok tangkal ambar jadi mibanda sipat magnetis, béda jeung mineral magnetit anu henteu perlu digosok heula. Thales salah dina mibanda rasa percaya yén ayana daya tarik ieu alatan ayana éfék magnetic, tapi élmu pangaweruh kadieunakeun baris ngabuktikeun ayana hubungan antara magnetisme jeung listrik.

A controversial claim is made that the Parthians and Mesopotamians had some knowledge of electroplating, based on the 1936 discovery of the Baghdad Battery, which resembles a galvanic cell, though this claims lacks evidence supporting the exact nature of the artefact, and whether it was electrical in nature.

Electricity would remain little more than an intellectual curiosity for over two millennia until 1600, when the English physician William Gilbert made a careful study of magnetism, distinguishing the lodestone effect from the static electricity produced by rubbing amber. He coined the New Latin word electricus ("of amber" or "like amber", from ηλεκτρον [elektron], the Greek word for "amber") to refer to the property of attracting small objects after being rubbed. This association gave rise to the English words "electric" and "electricity", which made their first appéarance in print in Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646.

Further work was conducted by Otto von Guericke, Robert Boyle, Stephen Gray and C. F. du Fay. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive reséarch in electricity to develop his théories on the relationship between lightning and static electricity. In an experiment of June 1752, he attached a metal key to the bottom of a dampened kite string and flew the kite in a storm-thréatened sky. He observed a succession of sparks jumping from the key to the back of his hand that showed him that lightning was indeed electrical in nature. This famous experiment lit the interest of later scientists whose work provided the basis for modérn electrical technology. In 1783 Luigi Galvani discovered bioelectricity, demonstrating that electricity was the medium by which nerve cells passed signals to the muscles. Alessandro Volta's battery, or voltaic pile, of 1800, made from alternating layers of zinc and copper, provided scientists with a reliable source of electrical energy. André-Marie Ampére discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism in 1820; Michael Faraday invented the electric motor in 1821, and Georg Ohm mathematically analysed the electrical circuit in 1827.

While it had been the éarly nineteenth century that had seen rapid progress in electrical science, the late nineteenth century would see the gréatest progress in electrical engineering. Through such giants as Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Werner von Siemens, Alexander Graham Bell and Lord Kelvin, electricity was turned from a scientific curiosity into an essential tool for modérn life, becoming a driving force for the Second Industrial Revolution.