Electricity. The investigation of electricity was popular in the mid eighteenth century. In 1753 British colonist Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) developed the lightning rod in Philadelphia to prevent damage from lightning strikes. In 1780 Italian scientist Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), a professor of anatomy in Bologna, noticed that frogs' legs contracted if an electrical spark was applied, a phenomenon he called "animal electricity." His interest was shared by Alessandro Volta (1745- 1827), a physics professor at Pavia, who around 1795 proved that it was possible to generate electricity by connecting two different types of metal, later producing the first electrical-current battery in 1800. In England, electrical currents were run through substances such as alkalis or salts to examine their chemical composition. In 1800 engineer William Nicholson (1753-1815) was the first person to use electricity to break water into its constituent elements, oxygen and hydrogen. In 1807, using the...