Stephen Gray (December 1666 – February 1736) was an English dyer and astronomer who was the first to systematically experiment with electrical conduction. Until his work in 1729 the emphasis had been on the simple generation of static charges and investigations of the static phenomena (electric shocks, plasma glows, etc.). Gray showed that electricity can be conducted through metals and that it appeared on the surfaces of insulators.
Early life Gray was born in Canterbury, Kent, and after some basic schooling, he was apprenticed to his father (and later his elder brother) in the cloth-dyeing trade. His interests lay with natural science and particularly with astronomy; he managed to educate himself in these developing disciplines, mainly through wealthy friends in the district, who gave him access to their libraries and scientific instruments. Science was very much a rich man's hobby at this time. He ground his own lenses and constructed his own telescope, and with this instrument he made a number of minor discoveries (mainly in the area of sunspots), gaining a reputation for accuracy in his observations. Some of his reports were published by the Royal Society through the agency of a friend, Henry Hunt, who was a member of the Society's secretarial staff.
Introduction to Flamsteed Some of Gray's output came to the notice of John Flamsteed, a relative of some Kent friends of Gray and the first English Astronomer Royal, who was building the new Royal Greenwich Observatory. Flamsteed was attempting to construct a detailed and accurate star-map of the heavens, in the hope that this would eventually solve the problem of longitude determination for ocean navigators. Gray helped him with many of the observations and calculations (possibly without being paid). Gray worked for a while on the second English observatory, being built at Cambridge, but it was badly managed by Newton's friend and associate, Roger Cotes; the project finally collapsed, leaving Gray with little option but to return to his dyeing trade in Canterbury. Suffering from ill health, before long he was in London assisting John Theophilus Desaguliers, an acolyte of Isaac Newton and occasionally one of the Royal Society's demonstrators. Desaguliers acted as a scientific consultant, giving lectures around the country and on the Continent about new scientific discoveries; he also ran a boarding house for visiting gentlemen with scientific interests. Gray was not paid by Desaguliers but provided with accommodation in exchange for his ability to discuss scientific subjects with the boarders. Desaguliers' boarding house was demolished to make way for Westminster Bridge, and poverty intervened for Gray. In 1720, through the efforts of John Flamsteed and Sir Hans Sloane (later President of the Royal Society) he managed to obtain a pensioned position at the Charterhouse, a home for destitute gentlemen who had served their country, also linked to a boys' school. During this time he began experimenting with static electricity again, using a glass tube as a friction generator.
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