WATSON, William, and others.

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Pamphlet volume on electricity. Nine tracts at the forefront of 18th-century electrical research, all first editions except one. Several of these pamphlets are among the only electrical works which Benjamin Franklin is known to have read during his own groundbreaking experiments in the late 1740s. This volume is from the celebrated library of the earls of Macclesfield. Three of the nine works are written by Sir William Watson, two by Benjamin Martin, and one apiece by John Theophilius Desaguliers, Benjamin Wilson, John Freke, and John Neale. These authors illustrate the wide range of figures contributing to electrical research in the mid-18th century: Watson was originally an apothecary and Wilson a prominent portrait artist, while Martin and Neale bridged the gap between scientific practitioner and commercial entertainer, dazzling audiences with displays of electric "fire". Desaguliers, Wilson, and Watson all won the Royal Society's prestigious Copley Medal, in large part for their work on electricity.Electricity was as prominent in the 18th century as the air pump and the microscope had been in the 17th. By mid-century, research had come to focus on questions of conductivity, insulation, and attraction, with the invention of the Leyden jar in 1745 introducing the first electrical capacitor. The Dissertation Concerning Electricity (1742) by Desaguliers, a former experimental assistant to Newton, encapsulates many of these concerns, positing that pure air consists of permanen

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