Is it true that it's Franklin who in 1747 discovered the plus & minus of el. charge?

Geir19

Is it true that it's Benjamin Franklin who in 1747 discovered the plus and minus of electrical charge?!?

Is the year 1747 of any significance for the discovery of electricity at all?!

Evo

You've already been warned not to post your numerology nonsense, so if that's where you are headed, don't go there.

Janus

And to answer the question: Franklin invented the convention of labeling batteries (in his case, Leyden jars) with the symbols + and -, as he was of the opinion that electricity was a flow from a surplus to a deficit. Of exactly what this surplus consisted of or what actual direction it flowed, he didn't know. Given a fifty-fifty chance, he guessed.

It wasn't until over a 100 years later that the idea of electricity being the a charge was introduced. and almost 150 until the term "electron" was coined for the elementary charge of electricity.

At the end of the 19th century a negatively charged particle that fit the bill was discovered and was named the electron.