VOLTA THE FOUNDER OF ELECTRICAL SCIENCE. Up to the end of the eighteenth century, discoverers in electrical science had usually been students of science in other departments, whose attention to electricity had been attracted in passing as it were. Occasionally, indeed, they had been only interested amateurs, inquisitive as to the curious phenomena of magnetism. It is surprising how many of these pioneers in electricity were clergymen, though that fact is seldom realized. It can be seen very readily in my chapter on Clergymen Pioneers in Electricity, in Catholic Churchmen in Science (Second Series, Dolphin Press, Phila., 1909). With Volta's career, however, was initiated the story of the electrical scientists who devoted themselves almost exclusively to this department of physics, though more or less necessarily paying some attention to related subjects. Volta's discovery of a practical instrument for measuring electricity, as well as of comparatively simple apparatus producing a continuous current, changed the whole face of the science of electricity. After these inventions, regular work could be readily done in the investigation of problems in the science of electricity without discouragement or inadequate instruments, discontinuous electrical phenomena, disturbances of experiments by the weather, and other conditions which had been hitherto so unfavorable to electrical experimentation. Volta's invention of the pile, or battery, so deservedly called after him, caused electrical science to take on an entirely new aspect, and the modern development of electricity was assured. It has been well said that no other invention, not even the steam-engine, meant so much for the transformation of modern life as this new apparatus for the production of a continuous electric current. [Illustration: ALESSANDRO VOLTA] The man who worked this revolution in electrical science was no mere inventor who, by a happy chance, brought together practical factors that had been well known before but had never been combined. He was one of the greatest scientists of a period particularly rich in examples of original scientific genius of a high order. Before his death, he came to be acknowledged by the scientific world of his time as one of the greatest leaders of thought, not alone in electricity, but in all departments of the physical sciences. His life forms for this reason an important chapter in the history of science and scientific development.