The time period that the novel, Frankenstein, was written in was the early 1800’s, so I will cover technology and discoveries from the 1750’s to the early 1800’s. Luigi Aloisio Galvani (1737-98) played a major part in the scientific discoveries behind bioelectromagnetisim, that is, the electric, magnetic or electromagnetic fields produced by living cells and organisms. This plays a major part in the novel, as this is how Frankenstein’s monster is ‘woken.’ In the mid-18th century, many of Europe’s leading scientists had jumped onto the bandwagon that was electricity. At the University of Bologna, Italy, Galvani was studying the effects of electricity on animals. On the 26th January, 1781, while dissecting a frog next to a machine that used