Electricity is so deeply part of everyday life, most of us don’t think twice about it. Flip a switch, plug in your phone, hit the garage door opener—it just works.  

So, who can we thank for our lights, tools, appliances, and everything else that runs on power? Spoiler alert, there’s no single “Father of Electricity,” but rather a set of “founding fathers”.  

You’ve probably heard of Edison or Tesla, but they weren’t working in isolation. There are a handful of  brilliant minds behind the scenes when it comes to electricity and today we’re going to cover a few. 

André-Marie Ampère 

You’ve probably heard of the unit “amp” (short for ampere), but you may not know much about the man behind the name. André-Marie Ampère was a French physicist and mathematician working in the early 1800s. His biggest contribution was discovering the relationship between electricity and magnetism—something that now forms the basis of electromagnetism. 

Ampère figured out that electric currents create magnetic fields, and he developed the first mathematical laws to describe how those currents behave. His work helped shape what’s now called Ampère’s Law, which is still used in physics and engineering to understand how current flows and how it's affected by nearby magnetic materials. 

He didn’t invent any commercial devices or electrical systems, but his theories were crucial in helping others (like Faraday) move forward with practical applications of electricity. Ampère was one of the first people to look at electricity as a science with structure and rules, rather than just a strange phenomenon. 

Michael Faraday 

Michael Faraday isn’t as famous as Tesla or Franklin, but in the world of electricity, his impact is huge. In the early 1800s, Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction—which is the principle behind electric generators and transformers. That’s the tech that allows mechanical energy (like spinning a turbine) to be converted into electrical energy. In simple terms: without Faraday, we wouldn’t have a way to generate electricity at scale. 

He also came up with basic ideas behind electric fields and magnetic forces—concepts that electrical engineers still use every day. What made Faraday unique is that he wasn’t a trained scientist. He taught himself, worked his way up through a lab assistant job, and became one of the most important experimental physicists of his time. 

Faraday didn’t just make discoveries—he helped explain how electricity and magnetism are connected, laying the foundation for many of the electrical systems we rely on today. 

James Clerk Maxwell 

While Ampère and Faraday were experimenting and discovering how electricity and magnetism behave, James Clerk Maxwell did something equally important: he explained why. 

Maxwell was a Scottish physicist who, in the mid-1800s, developed a set of equations—now known as Maxwell’s Equations—that describe how electric and magnetic fields are generated and how they interact. These four equations are the foundation of classical electromagnetism, and they unified electricity, magnetism, and light into a single theory. 

What’s remarkable is that Maxwell didn’t just describe observations—he created a model that predicted things no one had seen yet, like electromagnetic waves. His work paved the way for everything from radio and radar to the way we understand wireless communication today. 

Maxwell isn’t a household name, but ask any physicist or engineer, and they’ll tell you his contributions are monumental. 

The Founding Fathers of Electricity 

Electricity wasn’t a one-person achievement, but rather a result of curiosity, trial and error, and brilliant minds asking the right questions. Understanding where it all started helps us appreciate how far we’ve come. Whether you’re installing LED lights, wiring up a smart home, or just flipping a switch, these are the people who helped make it all possible. 

Curious about modern lighting solutions built on these foundations? Head over to Sunco.com and see how far electrical innovation has come.