But no one had ever before scientifically documented the connection between electricity and magnetism, Cadden-Zimansky said.

Ørsted's observation helped set the stage for the discovery of electromagnetic induction, whereby a changing magnetic field is used to produce an electric current and vice versa.

Hans Christian Ørsted: 21st-Century Man

Today Ørsted's fingerprints are on everything from medical scanners to your car's motor to theoretical invisibility devices.

Cadden-Zimansky compared Ørsted's contribution to science to that made by another European scientist who lived more than a century before."Isaac Newton showed that the same phenomenon"—gravity—"causes a ball thrown into the air to fall down and [also causes] the planets to orbit the sun," he said.Like electricity and magnetism, the different expressions of gravity "look like two different phenomena, but the same rules can describe them both. Ørsted's discovery was analogous."

I learned of this great man through Google changing their logo for a day! I feel a "Tesla" connection here