Before we understood it, we feared it. The story of the mad scientists who tamed the lightning.

For thousands of years, lightning was a weapon of the gods. Then, in the 18th century, a few brave (and perhaps crazy) experimenters decided to catch it in a bottle. In Part 1 of our History of Electricity series, we travel from Benjamin Franklin's kite to the creepy frog experiments that inspired Frankenstein.

Discover how the Leyden Jar gave electricity a "memory," why early batteries were dang...