An EE "Whodunit" . . .

"The history of electricity begins with William Gilbert, a physician who served Queen Elizabeth the first of England. Before William Gilbert, all that was known about electricity and magnetism was that the lodestone possessed magnetic properties, and that rubbing amber and jet would attract bits of stuff to start sticking.

In 1600, William Gilbert published his treatise De magnete, Magneticisique Corporibus (On the Magnet). Printed in scholarly Latin, the book explained years of Gilbert's research and experiments on electricity and magnetism. Gilbert raised the interest in the new science greatly. It was Gilbert who coined the expression "electrica" in his famous book."

http://inventors.about.com/cs/inventorsalphabet/a/electricity.htm

I obviously did not read the entire book (it didn't completely download). While I saw many references to the equivalent of voltage and current, I missed any reference to power!

As the terms we now use were not yet developed, sending someone to search through Maxwell's retelling of Cavendish's notes is somewhat of a poorly defined scavenger hunt. Sorry about that.

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Your analysis is correct (even without the full download). Cavendish notes the direct proportional relationship between his description of voltage and his description of current..... constant resistance is assumed. V = I R

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If you are okay with the understood but unstated resistance being slipped in, then Cavendish can be given credit for elucidating P = I V (P = I E). This equation only differs from the one in the previous paragraph by multiplying both sides by the same variable, 'I'.

I did just a bit of independent searching, but could not come up with anything real. Since both electric light bulbs and motors were developed somewhat simultaneously during the 1800's, I suspect the concept of electric power developed around the same time. Of course Watt measured power in the second half of the previous century, but I don't believe he used electricity.

It looks like it'll take a real history buff to answer the OP!

What? You aren't buying into my assertion based on it being the same equation, merely with both sides of the equation multiplied by current?

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Yeah. Me either.

Isn't it P=I*V?

I'm still trying to figure out what it means to "elucidate electric power".

I'm retired now.

One of the first things I would give an apprentice was the OHM wheel as you've posted.

There's not a lot you can't sort out with it.

I was taught and still say "magic a$$hole"...that's the military for you.

Thanks for the insights -- more than I hoped for...

E? V? One for the record:

http://www.clarkcomponents.co.uk/useful/ohms_law.htm

Better now?

(stretch, yawn)

Nite, nite...

The "who" in the question fails to recognise the concept of collaborative effort. There is no "who", there is a "they" that includes all the people who built on each others work to come up with the result. It is like saying that Erricson/Columbus/Vaspuchi discovered America without any help from a few sailors, Armstrong got us to the moon because he was the first to step down, or Marconi invented radio just because a lot of text books say he did.

From Wikepedia:

The power dissipated by a linear resistor may be calculated from its resistance, and the voltage or current involved. The formula is a combination of Ohm's Law and Joule's law:

where:

P = power in watts

R = resistance in ohms

V = voltage across the resistor

I = current through the resistor in amps

Any number of people could have been the first to combine these terms. It could have been Ohm, Joule, or anybody mentioned and more. We probably will never know.