Musschenbroek inventing the Leyden jar, 1746. Dutch mathematician and physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692-1761) developed a device for storing electrical charge, the Leyden bottle or jar, the first electric capacitor. On 20 April 1746 he set up an experiment involving a gun barrel hung on silk threads. At one end it received static electricity from a glass globe rapidly turning on its axis and rubbed with the hands. At the other end a glass bottle containing some water was suspended with a brass wire hanging in it. He was trying to draw electric sparks from the gun barrel. When he held the bottle in one hand and touched the gun barrel with the other the circuit was closed and the charge stored in the bottle was discharged giving Musschenbroek an electric shock. Artwork published in 1867.