Cavendish

Henry Cavendish (173I-1810) made the first measurements of electrical capacity, and he also determined very exactly the electrical conductivity of a number of different substances. Cavendish was an eccentric recluse who made little attempt to publish his findings and most of his work had to be rediscovered forty or fifty years afterwards, with result that others received the credit. An example of this was his discovery of the fundamental law of electrical flow in 1781 which had to be subsequently rediscovered by Ohm forty-six years later. He also enumerated all the laws of the division of electric currents between circuits in parallel (1776); and he determined the law according to which electric force varies as the distance. Sir Ambrose Fleming, in a masterly summary of electrical history, ⁽²⁶⁾ justly describes Cavendish as the Kelvin of the 18th Century.