In 1746, the French abbot and physicist Jean-Antoine Nollet conducted a dramatic public demonstration of the Leyden jar before King Louis XV and a large court audience at the Convent of the Carthusians in Paris. He arranged 180 Royal Guards in a circle, had them hold hands, and then connected the first and last man to a Leyden jar, causing all 180 men to jump simultaneously when the circuit was completed. This spectacular event made electricity a topic of enormous public fascination across France and Europe.

Nollet's theatrical demonstration blurred the line between scientific experiment and public performance, establishing electricity as a form of popular entertainment that would influence literary culture for decades. The image of an invisible force passing instantaneously through a chain of connected bodies became a powerful literary metaphor for social and emotional connection. Voltaire, who was deeply interested in electrical science, referenced such demonstrations in his philosophical writings, and the spectacle entered the broader cultural imagination that fed Enlightenment-era French literature.