John Read was a British physicist and inventor.
He developed a rotating doubler electrostatic generator, used to produce static electricity, which he called a 'spectacle doubler' because it involved discs of glass.
He made observations of the atmospheric electric field, which he observed behaved differently in different air quality conditions, in 1791 and 1792.
[1][2] This phenomenon is now understood as originating from the global electric circuit.
Richard Lovett was the first British academic to publish Read's letters after his death.