Illustration of Gray's "Flying Boy" experiment demonstrating the electrical induction (creating an electrical charge in a suspended object without contact). Stephen Gray (December 1666 - February 7, 1736) was an English astronomer who was the first to systematically experiment with electrical conduction. His demonstrations in the 1730s were celebrated around Europe: a boy was suspended on silk cords and charged with static electricity via a close to the boy's feet, but without touching. Gray showed that the boy's face and hands (conducting) still attracted objects (electrostatic). Until his work in 1729 the emphasis had been on the simple generation of static charges and investigations of the static phenomena. He also made the distinction between conduction and insulation, and discovered the action-at-a-distance phenomenon of electrostatic induction. This image has been color-enhanced.