1700?-1748

German physicist remembered for inventing the condenser or Kleist vial (1745). A similar device was later devised and better explained by Pieter von Musschenbroek in Leiden, Holland, thus its more common name, the Leyden jar. Attempts to explain the electric shocks Kleist and Musschenbroek received from these devices and subsequent experimental work of others indicated that the traditional view of electrical "atmospheres" was fundamentally mistaken. This led to increased efforts to quantify electrical phenomena.