It was first credited toPieter van Musschenbroek (1692-1761) professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Leyden in Holland. He was working with a glass globe friction machine and had run a wire from the machine to a jar of water. His assistent Cuneaus was holding the jar and concerned that the machine was not producing sparks he touched the wire and was jolted by the electricity that had been stored in the jar. Musschenbroek tried to duplicate what his assistent had done and described the jolt as "a shock of such violence that my whole body was shaken as by a lightning stroke." As he was the first to publish his findings, the jar was named the Leyden Jar aftet the town in which he lived.

However, independently, Ewald G. Von Kleist, an amateur investigator of electricity and dean of the cathedral at Cammin in Pomerania, while doing an experiment of his own received a shock from a nail inserted into a medicine bottle. After further tests, he develped a device to store an electric shock, that consisted of a neil driven into a wooden spool around which a wire was wound. This was then inserted into a glass flask containing mercury or alcohol. when the nail was electrified a flaming shaft of light shot forth and could continue for several seconds. Although he wrote about his findings to several people, including Johann H. Winkler (who drew the diagram on charging a Leyden Jar) this was not generally known until later, so some sources will say that Kleist designed the jar and others that Musschenbroek did.

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