In 1743, the French physicist Jean-Antoine Nollet published "Essai sur l'electricite des corps" in Paris, one of the first comprehensive textbooks on electricity. The work systematically summarized all known electrical phenomena, described Nollet's own experiments with Leyden jars and electrical conduction, and proposed a theory of electrical effluence and affluence to explain attraction and repulsion. Published in Paris at the height of the Enlightenment, this textbook helped standardize electrical education across Europe and made Nollet the leading electrical authority in France.

Nollet's textbook represented a new kind of scientific literature, the specialized monograph aimed at both experts and educated amateurs, a format that paralleled the development of literary genres like the critical essay and the philosophical dialogue in Enlightenment France. His accessible writing style and systematic organization of knowledge influenced Denis Diderot's approach to the "Encyclopedie," the great publishing project that itself transformed how scientific and literary knowledge were transmitted in eighteenth-century European culture.