Alessandro Volta invents the first primitive battery, discovering that electricity can be generated through chemical processes; scientists quickly seize on the new tool to invent electric lighting. Meanwhile, a profound insight into the...

Magnetic core memory was developed in the late 1940s and 1950s, and remained the primary way in which early computers read, wrote and stored data until RAM came along in the 1970s. (Java tutorial)

Named in honor of Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted, Denmark's first satellite has been observing and mapping the magnetic field of the Earth.

A discovery by Hans Christian Orsted forever changed the way scientists think about electricity and magnetism. While preparing to perform an experiment during a lecture at the University of Copenhagen, he found that the magnetized needle...

Walther Meissner discovered while working with Robert Ochsenfeld that superconductors expel relatively weak magnetic fields from their interior and are strongly diamagnetic. This phenomenon, commonly known as the Meissner effect or the...

The first telegraphs are constructed and Michael Faraday produces much of his brilliant and enduring research into electricity and magnetism, inventing the first primitive transformer and generator.

Aided by tools such as static electricity machines and Leyden jars, scientists continue their experiments into the fundamentals of magnetism and electricity.

Computers evolve into PCs, researchers discover one new subatomic particle after another and the space age gives our psyches and science a new context.

The Scientific Revolution takes hold, facilitating the groundbreaking work of luminaries such as William Gilbert, who took the first truly scientific approach to the study of magnetism and electricity and wrote extensively of his findings.

The telephone and first practical incandescent light bulb are invented while the word "electron" enters the scientific lexicon.

The Industrial Revolution is in full force, Gramme invents his dynamo and James Clerk Maxwell formulates his series of equations on electrodynamics.

The legendary Faraday forges on with his prolific research and the telegraph reaches a milestone when a message is sent between Washington, DC, and Baltimore, MD.

Hans Christian Orsted's accidental discovery that an electrical current moves a compass needle rocks the scientific world; a spate of experiments follows, immediately leading to the first electromagnet and electric motor.

Defense-related research leads to the computer, the world enters the atomic age and TV conquers America.

New tools such as special microscopes and the cyclotron take research to higher levels, while average citizens enjoy novel amenities such as the FM radio.

Albert Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity and his theory on the quantum nature of light, which he identified as both a particle and a wave. With ever new appliances, electricity begins to transform everyday life.

This gallery takes readers from the 1880s and the pioneering work of German physicist August Kundt, up to recent advances in technology, including interlayer exchange coupling (IEC) and giant magnetoresistance (GMR).

The history of electricity and magnetism starts with this special mineral possessing amazing, and still mysterious, properties.

Peter Debye carried out pioneering studies of molecular dipole moments, formulated theories of magnetic cooling and of electrolytic dissociation, and developed an X-ray diffraction technique for use with powdered, rather than...

At the turn of the 19th century, scientists were beginning to gain a rudimentary understanding of electricity and magnetism, but they knew almost nothing about the relationship between the two. Baltic German physicist Heinrich Lenz took...

Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison duke it out over the best way to transmit electricity and Heinrich Hertz is the first person (unbeknownst to him) to broadcast and receive radio waves.

Scientists' understanding of the structure of the atom and of its component particles grows, the phone and radio become common, and the modern television is born.

Spurred by Hans Christian Orsted's discovery of a relationship between electricity and magnetism, German chemist Julian Schweigger immediately began tinkering and soon came up with a very early galvanometer known as the Schweigger...

Although he was not the first person to observe a connection between electricity and magnetism, Andre-Marie Ampere was the first scientist to attempt to theoretically explain and mathematically describe the phenomenon. His contributions...