Electric has been popular for many years. It was written by Steven M. Rubin in the early 1980s (the earliest internal memo on Electric is dated November 19, 1982). For some time after that, Electric was distributed to universities and research institutions, and found widespread international use.
In the mid 1980s, Electric was sold commercially by Applicon, under the name "Bravo3VLSI".
In 1988, Electric Editor Incorporated was founded, and sold the system commercially. The company released Electric through the Free Software Foundation (GNU) in 1998.
In 1999, Electric development was moved to Sun Microsystems.
In 2000, Static Free Software was created (by Steven Rubin). The company manages the free distribution of Electric.
In September, 2003 the "C" version of Electric was abandoned, and a translation was begun to the Java language. The work was completed in June, 2005. Although the C code is still available, it is no longer developed or supported.
In 2004, Static Free Software became a division of RuLabinsky Enterprises, Incorporated. The new corporation continues its dedication to free software.
In 2010, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems and continued to support Electric development until the end of 2016.
In 2017, Electric development ceased, but support and bug fixes continue. The code is now available at the Free Software Foundation.