This phenomenon was first discovered by Dorn in 1879. He observed that a vertical electric field had developed in a suspension of glass beads in water, as the beads were settling. This was the origin of sedimentation potential, which is often referred to as the Dorn effect.
Smoluchowski built the first models to calculate the potential in the early 1900s. Booth created a general theory on sedimentation potential in 1954 based on Overbeeks 1943 theory on electrophoresis. In 1980, Stigter extended Booths model to allow for higher surface potentials. Ohshima created a model based on OBrien and White s 1978 model used to analyze the sedimentation velocity of a single charged sphere and the sedimentation potential of a dilute suspension.