Short answers, pulled from the story.
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that possesses an electric charge. It is related to magnetism, both being part of electromagnetism as described by Maxwell's equations. Common related phenomena include lightning, static electricity, electric heating, and electric discharges.
Hans Christian Orsted discovered electromagnetism in 1820 when he saw a current in a wire disturb a magnetic compass needle while preparing a lecture. He described it by saying the electric conflict acts in a revolving manner. Andre-Marie Ampere then showed that parallel current-carrying wires exert force on each other.
Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive research on electricity, even selling his possessions to fund his work. In June 1752 he is reputed to have flown a kite with a metal key in a storm, showing that lightning was electrical in nature. He also explained the Leyden jar by proposing that electricity consists of both positive and negative charges.
The first working transistor, a germanium-based point-contact device, was invented by John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain at Bell Labs in 1947. The bipolar junction transistor followed in 1948. A modern integrated circuit may contain many billions of miniaturised transistors in a region only a few centimetres square.
Electric potential is usually measured in volts and is defined as the energy required to bring a unit test charge from an infinite distance to a given point. One volt is the potential for which one joule of work must be expended to bring a charge of one coulomb from infinity. The term voltage is more common in everyday usage.
Rapid expansion in electrical technology in the late 19th century was the driving force behind the Second Industrial Revolution. Electrical engineers brought electricity into industrial and residential use by the century's end. A practical incandescent light bulb in the 1870s made lighting one of the first publicly available applications of electrical power.
Piezoelectricity is the generation of a potential difference across the faces of certain crystals, such as quartz or even sugar, when they are pressed. It was discovered in 1880 by Pierre and Jacques Curie. The effect is reciprocal, since a piezoelectric material changes size slightly when subjected to an electric field.