Electricity Without Magnets: What Works, What Doesn’t Scale

Can You Make Electricity Without Magnets?

simple battery made from copper and zinc plates in saltwater on wooden table close up

Yes. Magnets are one way to produce electricity—an extremely scalable, industry-friendly way—but they’re not the definition of electricity.

If all you want is charges moving and a measurable voltage, you can get there with chemistry, friction, heat differences, or pressure. The catch is that most of those routes give you either:

high voltage, tiny current (good for sparks and demonstrations), or
low voltage, limited power (good for experiments, not for running machines).

That tradeoff is the whole story.

The Magnet Myth: Why People Think Magnets = Electricity

Modern life trains us to associate electricity with generators: turbines, spinning coils, big magnets, power plants. That’s fair—electromagnetic induction is the best-known method for producing large amounts of electrical power reliably.

But the underlying phenomenon—electrons moving because there’s an electric potential—doesn’t care whether a magnet was involved.

Magnets are not required for electricity.

They’re required for cheap, continuous, high-power electricity at scale.

Those are different things.

Ways to Produce Electricity Without Magnets

1) Static electricity (triboelectric effect)

Rub two different materials together, and electrons transfer.

Classic examples: amber + fur, rubber + hair
Outcome: high voltage, vanishingly small current

You can make sparks. You can shock yourself. You can prove the concept. You cannot run anything meaningful with it.

Static electricity is the “look, electricity exists” method—not the “power my workshop” method.

2) Chemical electricity (primitive batteries)

This is the realistic workhorse.

Basic idea: two different metals + an electrolyte = a battery.

Metals: copper + iron, copper + zinc (if available), various scrap combinations
Electrolytes: saltwater, vinegar, wine, acidic or fermented liquids

This is essentially the principle behind the voltaic pile: stack cells to build voltage.

What you get:

roughly ~1V per cell (ballpark)
low-to-moderate currents depending on materials and surface area
something you can actually use for small-scale work: sparks, electrochemistry, plating experiments

If someone is trying to make electricity “from nothing,” chemistry is where reality starts cooperating.

3) Heat-to-electricity (thermoelectric / Seebeck effect)

A temperature difference across certain materials creates a voltage.

Fire on one side, cool air or water on the other: conceptually simple.

But the realism problem is brutal: you typically need specific thermoelectric materials (not just “any two metals in a campfire”). Without the right stuff, you can’t get useful output.

So: real phenomenon, impractical fabrication in primitive conditions.

4) Pressure and impact (piezoelectricity)

Certain crystals generate voltage when squeezed or struck.

This is how lighter sparkers work.

The problem isn’t the physics—it’s the supply chain. Unless you happen to have appropriate piezoelectric materials already, it’s not a “build it from scratch” option in most settings.

5) Solar (photovoltaic)

Solar cells use light to free electrons. No magnets involved.

But you also can’t just “make a solar panel” with a campfire and good intentions. Photovoltaics depend on refined materials and manufacturing processes well outside preindustrial capabilities.

Solar is viable only if scavenged, not fabricated.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Real Bottleneck Isn’t “No Magnets.” It’s “No Scale.”

Here’s the blunt version:

Without magnets (and the industrial base that makes generators viable), you can still produce electricity.
But you’ll mostly be living in the world of small, fragile currents and demo-scale power.

Magnets + motion gave humanity the route to continuous, scalable electricity. The alternatives are real, but they don’t naturally balloon into power grids.

Now the Fun Question: What If You’re a Time Traveler in the Roman Empire?

Electricity? Yes.

“Industrialise a campsite with electricity”? No—and the reason isn’t that Romans were dumb or that magnets are magical. It’s that electricity is not the first domino. It’s a later reward.

What Romans do have going for them

A Roman-era time traveler could lean on:

strong metallurgy (copper, iron, bronze, lead)
skilled artisans
glassmaking
plumbing and hydraulics
big labor systems and logistics (if you can tap into them)

That’s enough to build crude electrical experiments and devices.

What they don’t have (and what kills the “electric industrial revolution” fantasy)

To make electricity useful as power, you need an ecosystem:

consistent wire production and insulation
precision machining (bearings, tolerances, repeatable parts)
controllable rotation and mechanical efficiency
materials that don’t rot, crack, melt, or corrode instantly under electrical and thermal stress

Even if you personally know the theory, you can’t brute-force a supply chain.

So yes: you can build batteries. You can do electrochemistry. You can make electricity real.

But turning that into “camp-based industry” is where reality bites.

What Electricity Can Actually Do for a Roman Time Traveler

Electricity becomes a leverage tool, not a power source.

With chemical cells you can plausibly reach:

electroplating (coatings, corrosion resistance, prestige items)
electrolysis experiments (gases, reactions, a door into chemistry)
repeatable demonstrations that impress patrons and buy you support

That’s not nothing. In a world where authority often follows spectacle and utility, controlled “invisible force” experiments can be a serious social weapon.

But it won’t run your mills.

If You Want to Industrialise a Camp in Roman Times, Don’t Start With Electricity

This is the part people don’t like, but it’s the honest map:

Mechanical power comes first.

If you’re trying to bootstrap industry, you aim for:

water wheels (already known)
wind power (conceptually simple even if not widespread everywhere)
gearing and transmission
better furnaces and fuel handling
tool-making capacity (the real unlock)
repeatability, measurement, standardization—boring stuff that changes everything

Electricity becomes viable when you already have precision, insulation, and production capacity. That’s why the idea that electricity causes industrialization