Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World

From the author of the bestselling E=MC2, comes a mesmerizing journey of discovery illuminating the wondrous yet unseen force that permeates our world and the scientists who've probed its secrets. Before 1790, when Alessandro Volta began the scientific investigation that spurred an explosion of knowledge and invention, electricity was perceived as little more than a property of certain substances that sparked when rubbed. Now we know that this formerly thought an inconsequential force is resp…