Sir Isaac Newton also engaged in similar electrical experiments, and gave an account of them to the Royal Society in 1675. Mr. Hauksbee, whose writings are dated 1709, distinguished himself by experiments and discoveries in electrical attraction, and repulsion, and electric light. He constructed an electrical machine, adopting the glass, instead of the sulphur globe. He experimented upon the subtilty and copiousness of the electric light, and likewise upon the sound and shocks produced by the fluid. After the death of Mr. Hauksbee, the science of electricity made but slow progress, and few experiments were made for twenty years. In the year 1728, Mr. Stephen Grey, a pensioner at the Charter House, commenced his experiments with an excited glass tube. He and his friend, Mr. Wheeler, made a great variety of experiments in which they demonstrated, that electricity may be communicated from one body to another, even without being in contact, and in this way, may be conducted to a great distance. Mr. Grey afterwards found, that, by suspending rods of iron by silk or hair lines, and bringing an excited tube under them, sparks might be drawn, and a light perceived at the extremities in the dark. He electrified a boy suspended by hair lines; and communicated electricity to a soap bubble blown from a tobacco pipe. He electrified water, contained in a dish, placed upon a cake of rosin, and also a tube of water. He made some curious experiments upon a small cup of water, over which, at the distance of an inch, he held the excited tube. He observed the water to rise in a conical shape, from which proceeded a light; small particles of water were thrown off from the cone, and the tube moistened. Mr. Du Fay, intendant of the French king’s gardens, repeated the experiments of Mr. Grey in 1733. He found that by wetting the pack-thread he succeeded better with the experiment of communicating the electric virtue through a line 1256 feet in length. He made the discovery of two kinds of electricity, which he called _vitreous_ and _resinous_; the former produced by rubbing glass, and the latter from excited sulphur, sealing wax, &c. But this he afterwards gave up as erroneous. Mr. Grey, in 1734, experimented upon iron rods and gave rise to the term _metallic conductors_. He gave the name _pencil_ of _electric light_ to the stream of electricity, such as is seen to issue from an electric point. He suggested the idea that the electric virtue of the excited tube was similar to that of thunder and lightning, and that it could be accumulated.