They were discovered about a decade after Ben Franklin was credited with the kite experiment, not any record AFAIK what the natives called them before then, but the word Electric was commonly used to describe objects with electrostatic charge since at least a century earlier, making the Electric Eels name fittingly more akin to the shock they give than any actual unit of conductivity or charge they hold.
They were discovered about a decade after Ben Franklin was credited with the kite experiment, not any record AFAIK what the natives called them before then, but the word Electric was commonly used to describe objects with electrostatic charge since at least a century earlier, making the Electric Eels name fittingly more akin to the shock they give than any actual unit of conductivity or charge they hold.