system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
We encounter static electricity all the time and it's not shocking (sorry) because we know what's going on, but what on earth did people think was happening before we understood electricity?
gpt
The scientific community (including Ben Franklin) thought of electric current as some sort of invisible fluid. "Positive" objects possessed a surplus of this fluid and negative bodies didn't posses "enough fluid" to be "balanced."