The discovery of electricity brought enormous changes to the human civilization, but true medical advantages were only gained in the eighteenth century when the first relationship was made between electricity and nerves. Since then, knowledge on muscle stimulation, discoveries on the connection between electricity and magnetism, and creation of first electric generator and later electric oscillators, stimulators, and amplifiers for neuropsychological studies in the early twentieth century led the way to modern electrical stimulation and its use in the urological field.

The first report on bladder treatment with the use of electrical stimulation is dated from the year 1878. Interestingly, it was urinary retention that the Danish surgeon Saxtorph MH treated by using a metal electrode and placing it transurethrally into the bladder. Ancient reports on urinary incontinence hardly exist in contrast to frequent diseases like bladder stones, urinary retention, and fistulas. Reports on surgical treatments of urinary incontinence can be found in the nineteenth century, while other modern techniques were introduced much later, in the second half of the twentieth century.

Real interest in the use of electrical stimulation for control of bladder function started in the 1950s and 1960s with the stimulation of the pelvic floor, the detrusor, the spinal cord, or the pelvic and sacral nerves.