Petrus Van Musschenbroek (1692 - 1761), Dutch mathematician and physicist.Musschenbroek developed a device for storing one or more charges of electricity, the Leyden bottle, the first electric capacitor. In 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. He had discovered the first electric battery or capacito