electricity [M17th] The word electric seems to have come before electricity, having been first used by the scientist William Gilbert in a Latin treatise called De Magnete (1600). Gilbert, the man who discovered how to make magnets and coined the term magnetic pole, spelled it as electricus, with Francis Bacon using the English form before 1626. Electricity is first recorded in 1646, in the writings of the physician Sir Thomas Browne. Both were based on the Latin word electrum ‘amber’, the connection being that rubbing amber produces an electric charge which will attract light objects.