who came up with positive and negative charges
Michael Faraday
title: Charles François de Cisternay du Fay text: Charles François de Cisternay du Fay Charles François de Cisternay du Fay (14 September 1698 – 16 July 1739) was a French chemist and superintendent of the Jardin du Roi. He discovered the existence of two types of electricity and named them "vitreous" and "resinous" (later known as positive and negative charge respectively). He noted the difference between conductors and insulators, calling them 'electrics' and 'non-electrics' for their ability to produce contact electrification. He also discovered that alike-charged objects would repel each other and that unlike-charged objects attract. He also disproved certain misconceptions regarding electric charge, such as that of title: History of electromagnetic theory text: friction and that neutralize each other when combined. This picture of electricity was also supported by Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein in his theoretical and experimental works. The two-fluid theory would later give rise to the concept of "positive" and "negative" electrical charges devised by Benjamin Franklin. The Leyden jar, a type of capacitor for electrical energy in large quantities, was invented independently by Ewald Georg von Kleist on 11 October 1744 and by Pieter van Musschenbroek in 1745—1746 at Leiden University (the latter location giving the device its name). William Watson, when experimenting with the Leyden jar, discovered in 1747 that title: Electrostatic induction text: Electrostatic induction Electrostatic induction, also known as "electrostatic influence" or simply "influence" in Europe and Latin America, is a redistribution of electrical charge in an object, caused by the influence of nearby charges. In the presence of a charged body, an insulated conductor develops a positive charge on one end and a negative charge on the other end. Induction was discovered by British scientist John Canton in 1753 and Swedish professor Johan Carl Wilcke in 1762. Electrostatic generators, such as the Wimshurst machine, the Van de Graaff generator and the electrophorus, use this principle. Due to induction, the electrostatic potential title: Positron text: In 1928, Paul Dirac published a paper proposing that electrons can have both a positive and negative charge. This paper introduced the Dirac equation, a unification of quantum mechanics, special relativity, and the then-new concept of electron spin to explain the Zeeman effect. The paper did not explicitly predict a new particle but did allow for electrons having either positive or negative energy as solutions. Hermann Weyl then published a paper discussing the mathematical implications of the negative energy solution. The positive-energy solution explained experimental results, but Dirac was puzzled by the equally valid negative-energy solution that the mathematical model title: Electron text: was governed by the inverse square law. After studying the phenomenon of electrolysis in 1874, Irish physicist George Johnstone Stoney suggested that there existed a "single definite quantity of electricity", the charge of a monovalent ion. He was able to estimate the value of this elementary charge "e" by means of Faraday's laws of electrolysis. However, Stoney believed these charges were permanently attached to atoms and could not be removed. In 1881, German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz argued that both positive and negative charges were divided into elementary parts, each of which "behaves like atoms of electricity". Stoney initially coined