Around the year 1600, a British physician William Gilbert invented the first scientific electroscope that was a pivoted needle called the versorium. A British inventor, John Canton in the year 1754 invented a pith-ball electroscope. In 1787, Abraham Bennet who was a British physicist and clergyman developed the gold-leaf electroscope. To identify the presence and magnitude of electric charge on a body the electroscope is used.