Electrochemistry, a branch of chemistry, went through several changes during its evolution from early principles related to magnets in the early 16th and 17th centuries, to complex theories involving conductivity, electric charge and mathematical methods. The term electrochemistry was used to describe electrical phenomena in the late 19th and 20th centuries. In recent decades, electrochemistry has become an area of current research, including research in batteries and fuel cells, preventing corrosion of metals, the use of electrochemical cells to remove refractory organics and similar contaminants in wastewater electrocoagulation and improving techniques in refining chemicals with electrolysis and electrophoresis.

The 16th century marked the beginning of scientific understanding of electricity and magnetism that culminated with the production of electric power and the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century.

In the 1550s, English scientist William Gilbert spent 17 years experimenting with magnetism and, to a lesser extent, electricity. For his work on magnets, Gilbert became known as "The Father of Magnetism." His book De Magnete quickly became the standard work throughout Europe on electrical and magnetic phenomena, and made a clear distinction between magnetism and what was then called the "amber effect" (static electricity).

In 1663, German physicist Otto von Guericke created the first electrostatic generator, which produced static electricity by applying friction. The generator was made of a large sulfur ball inside a glass globe, mounted on a shaft. The ball was rotated by means of a crank and a static electric spark was produced when a pad was rubbed against the ball as it rotated. The globe could be removed and used as an electrical source for experiments with electricity. Von Guericke used his generator to show that like charges repelled each other.

In 1709, Francis Hauksbee at the Royal Society in London discovered that by putting a small amount of mercury in the glass of Von Guericke's generator and evacuating the air from it, it would glow whenever the ball built up a charge and his hand was touching the globe. He had created the first gas-discharge lamp.

Between 1729 and 1736, two English scientists, Stephen Gray and Jean Desaguliers, performed a series of experiments which showed that a cork or other object as far away as 800 or 900 feet (245–275 m) could be electrified by connecting it via a charged glass tube to materials such as metal wires or hempen string. They found that other materials, such as silk, would not convey the effect.

By the mid-18th century, French chemist Charles François de Cisternay Du Fay had discovered two forms of static electricity, and that like charges repel each other while unlike charges attract. Du Fay announced that electricity consisted of two fluids: vitreous (from the Latin for "glass"), or positive, electricity; and resinous, or negative, electricity. This was the "two-fluid theory" of electricity, which was opposed by Benjamin Franklin's "one-fluid theory" later in the century.

In 1745, Jean-Antoine Nollet developed a theory of electrical attraction and repulsion that supposed the existence of a continuous flow of electrical matter between charged bodies. Nollet's theory at first gained wide acceptance, but met resistance in 1752 with the translation of Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity into French. Franklin and Nollet debated the nature of electricity, with Franklin supporting action at a distance and two qualitatively opposing types of electricity, and Nollet advocating mechanical action and a single type of electrical fluid. Franklin's argument eventually won and Nollet's theory was abandoned.