… (Oxford University Press, 2002). The Dissenting minister and teacher Joseph Priestley wrote, in his History and Present State of Electricity (1769), that electrical experiments ‘furnish the most pleasing and surprising appearances for the … science for humanity and the sublime prospect of its unending progress. 11 . Joseph Priestley, The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments. 3rd ed., 2 vols. (London: C. Bathurst and T. Lowndes, 1775) 1, p. xii, … influence of the air pump and the electrical machine was turned against him, and he was driven into exile in the United States after his house in Birmingham was ransacked and burned by a loyalist mob. In this reactionary climate, attempts by …