A Century of Development in Applied Electrostatics [History]

This paper discussed the development and detailing history of applied electrostatics which give advantages and disadvantages. Most electrical engineers, the term electrostatics brings to mind some hazy visions of early electrical experimentation involving an ancient Greek, a dead cat, and a piece of amber. Many of us recreated this quaint demonstration of triboelectric charging and its subsequent attraction in high school physics class. Perhaps some, in more enlightened schools, substituted modern materials such as plastics and synthetic fibers. In university electrical engineering programs, electrostatics is usually ignored or relegated to mathematical simplifications involving quasi-electrostatic approximations of important applications in electromagnetics. Meanwhile, a serious work involves the state-of-the-art study of topics such as electrodynamics and digital electronics. These fields have dominated so many important advances in the 20th century.