Note 2 — Contributions from The Museum of History and Technology: Paper 38 The Earliest Electromagnetic Instruments

Some little-known but delightful observations in the prehistory of electromagnetism are described in a letter written by G. W. Schilling from London to the Berlin Academy on July 8, 1769, published as “Sur les phénomènes de l’Anguleil Tremblante” [Nouveaux Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres, 1770 (Berlin, 1772), pp. 68-74], translated to French from the original German. The letter recounts a multitude of experiments with various electric eels. The two observations of electromagnetic interest are that a piece of iron held by the hand in the eel’s tank could be felt quivering even when the fish was stationary several inches away, and a compass needle showed a deflection, both in the water near the fish, and outside the tank, also with the fish stationary.