Storytelling in general is a communal act. Throughout human history people would gather around whether by the fire or at a tavern and tell stories. One person would chime in then another maybe someone would repeat a story they heard already but with a different spin. It's a collective process.
Measurements of the specific ionization of both the positive and negative particles by counting the number of droplets per unit length along the tracks showed the great majority of both the positive and negative particles to possess unit electric charge.