Actually, electricity was thought about before atoms. In about 600 B.C. Thales of Miletus discovered that a piece of amber, after it is rubbed with fur, attracts bits of hair and feathers and other light objects. He suggested that this mysterious force came from the amber. Thales, however, did not connect this force with any atomic particle.
It wasn't until about 460 B.C., that a Greek philosopher, Democritus, developed the idea of atoms. The question he asked was this: If a piece of matter is broken in half, and then broken in half again, how many breaks will you have to make before you can break it no further? Democritus thought that there was an end point, a smallest possible bit of matter. He called these basic particles, atoms.
