He built a laboratory in his father's house inLondon, where he worked for nearly fifty years, but he only published about 20 scientific papers. Even so, he is regarded as one of the greatestscientists of his time.
Cavendish claimed that the force between the two electrical objects gets smaller as they get further apart. If the distance between them doubled, the force would be one quarter what it was before. This was the basis of theinverse-square law. He explained theconcept ofelectric potential, which he called "the degree of electrification". He developed the thought of all points on a good conductor's surface have the same potential energy beside a common reference point. Having no way to measure electric current, he used his body as a machine which measures strength of electric current. All Cavendish's explorations in his notebook was found and confirmed byJames Clerk Maxwell.
Cavendish’s electrical papers from thePhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London have been reprinted, together with most of his electrical manuscripts, inThe Scientific Papers of the Honourable Henry Cavendish, F.R.S. (1921).
