07/22/2023
It may surprise you, but stun guns have been around in some capacity since the 1700s. Pieter van Musschenbroek, a Dutch Physicist, and German inventor Ewald Georg von Kleist created the Leyden jar independently from each other. Kleist invented it in 1745, and Musschenbroek created his version in 1746.
It was a glass jar partially filled with water and corked. The cork was penetrated by a nail or wire that dipped into the water. You charged the jar by contacting the exposed end of the nail or wire with some type of friction device that created static electricity. You could demonstrate a charge by touching the nail or wire with your hand and break the contact, which would shock you.
Many early electrical experiments were conducted using the Leyden jar, which was fundamentally important to the study of electrostatics. This invention was the first way to collect and preserve electrical charges in large quantities that scientists could discharge at their will. The Leyden jar overcame the previous limitations to early research and study of electrical conduction.
We may never have had stun guns in the future without the early electrical studies the Leyden jar allowed. Fast forward hundreds of years later to the cattle prod, the first product that used electricity as a non-lethal means of using electric shock to control animals. Many ranchers still use cattle prods today to move livestock.
The first actual version of the stun gun was the stun glove, where electricity ran into a glove through a tube. It was invented sometime in the 1930s but didn’t become widely used. The TASER® was invented in the 1960s when stun guns became a popular self-defense weapon. U.S. Marshals used the early TASERs® to subdue out-of-control prisoners on airplane flights.
Since then, the original TASER® was invented; its modern counterparts have become the most popular self-defense weapons anywhere because they are affordable, effective, and non-lethal.
