French physicist André-Marie Ampère discovered that passing a current through two parallel wires generated a force between them. The current definition of the ampere is based on this concept. However, the International Conference of Scinetists in 1908 decided on a different solution of the ampere: the amount of current that deposits 0.00118 grams of silver per second from a silver nitrate solution. The device used to measure the „international ampere“ was called a silver voltameter. This had to be calibrated, and scientists quickly found it wasn't accurate enough for their experiments. In 1948 the General Committee on Weights and Measures [...]

Each of us is a small power station. Our nervous system is an “electric circuit” that constantly sends millions of visual, tactile and auditory stimuli in the form of electrical impulses to our “central unit" - the brain. The brain then processes these electrical impulses so that we can see, hear, taste, smell and sense heat, cold and pain. In return, the brain transmits appropriate electrical impulses back to our body to control it. Thanks to electrical impulses our heart beats! We can consciously walk, run, paint, and jump. Whether we like it or not, our January hero – the [...]

The name of the unit, Ampere (A), comes from the name of the French scientist André-Marie Ampère. This way the great scientist was given an honour for his outstanding contribution to the development of electricity and magnetism. He conducted significant research in the field of mathematics, mechanics and physics. He is considered the founder of thermodynamics. His discovery that a wire that carries electrical current can attract or repel another adjacent wire also carrying electrical current was considered revolutionary. Ampere also formulated the Ampere's Law of electromagnetism, giving the best definition of electrical current of his time. [...]