Inventions in the Century

CHAPTER IX.

ELECTRICITY

In 1900 the real nature of electricity appears to be as unknown as it was in 1800.

Franklin in the eighteenth century defined electricity as consisting of particles of matter incomparably more subtle than air, and which pervaded all bodies. At the close of the nineteenth century electricity defined as "simply a form of energy which imparts to material substances a peculiar state or condition, and that all such substances partake more or less of this condition."

These theories and the late discovery of Hertz that electrical energy manifests itself in the form of waves, oscillations or vibrations, similar to light, but not so rapid as the vibrations of light, constitute about all that is known about the nature of this force.

Franklin believed it was a single fluid, but others taught that there were two kinds of electricity, positive and negative, that the like kinds were repulsive and the unlike kinds attractive, and that when generated it flowed in currents.

Such terms are not now regarded as representing actual varieties of this force, but are retained as convenient modes of expression, for want of better ones, as expressing the conditions or states of electricity when produced.

Electricity produced by friction, that is, developed upon the surface of a body by rubbing it with a dissimilar body, and called frictional or static electricity, was the only kind produced artificially in the days of Franklin. What is known as galvanism, or animal electricity, also takes its date in the 18th century, to which further reference will be made. Since 1799 there have been discovered additional sources, among which are voltaic electricity, or electricity produced by chemical action, such as is manifested when two dissimilar metals are brought near each other or together, and electrical manifestations produced by a decomposing action, one upon the other through a suitable medium; inductive electricity, or electricity developed or induced in one body by its proximity to another body through which a current is flowing; magnetic electricity, the conversion of the power of a magnet into electric force, and the reverse of this, the production of magnetic force by a current of electricity; and thermal electricity, or that generated by heat. Electricity developed by these, or other means in contra-distinction to that produced by friction, has been called dynamic; but all electric force is now regarded as dynamic, in the sense that forces are always in motion and never at rest.

Many of the manifestations and experiments in later day fields which, by reason of their production by different means, have been given the names of discovery and invention, had become known to Franklin and others, by means of the old methods in frictional electricity. They are all, however, but different routes leading to the same goal. In the midst of the brilliant discoveries of modern times confronting us on every side we should not forget the honourable efforts of the fathers of the science.

We need not dwell on what the ancients produced in this line. It was a single fact only: – The Greeks discovered that amber, a resinous substance, when rubbed would attract lighter bodies to it.

In 1600 appeared the father of modern electricity – Dr. Gilbert of Colchester, physician to Queen Elizabeth. He revived the one experiment of antiquity, and added to it the further fact that many substances besides amber, when rubbed, would manifest the same electric condition, such as sulphur, sapphire, wax, glass and other bodies. And thus he opened the field of electrodes. He was the first to use the terms, electricity, electric and electrode, which he derived from the word elektron, the Greek name for amber. He observed the actions of magnets, and conjectured the fundamental identity of magnetism and electricity. He arranged an electrometer, consisting of an iron needle poised on a pivot, by which to note the action of the magnet. This was about the time that Otto von Guericke of Magdeburg, Germany, was born. He became a "natural" philosopher, and for thirty-five years was burgomaster of his native town. He invented the air-pump, and he it was who illustrated the force of atmospheric pressure by fitting together two hollow brass hemispheres which, after the air within them had been exhausted, could not be pulled apart. He also invented a barometer, and as an astronomer suggested that the return of comets might be calculated. He invented and constructed the first machine for generating electricity. It consisted of a ball of sulphur rotated on an axis, and which was electrified by friction of the hand, the ball receiving negative electricity while the positive flowed through the person to the earth. With this machine "he heard the first sound and saw the first light in artificially excited electricity." The machine was improved by Sir Isaac Newton and others, and before the close of that century was put into substantially its present form of a round glass plate rotated between insulated leather cushions coated with an amalgam of tin and zinc, the positive or vitreous electricity thus developed being accumulated on two large hollow brass cylinders with globular ends, supported on glass pillars. Gray in 1729 discovered the conductive power of certain substances, and that the electrical influence could be conveyed to a distance by means of an insulated wire. This was the first step towards the electric telegraph.

Dufay, the French philosopher and author, who in 1733-1737 wrote the Memoirs of the French Academy, was, it seems, the first to observe electrical attractions and repulsions; that electrified resinous substances repelled like substances while they attracted bodies electrified by contact with glass; and he, therefore, to the latter applied the term vitreous electricity and to the former the term resinous electricity. In 1745 Prof. Muschenbroeck of Leyden University developed the celebrated Leyden jar. This is a glass jar coated both inside and outside with tinfoil for about four-fifths of its height. Its mouth is closed with a cork through which is passed a metallic rod, terminating above in a knob and connected below with the inner coating by a chain or a piece of tinfoil. If the inner coating be connected with an electrical machine and the outer coating with the earth, a current of electricity is established, and the inner coating receives what is called a positive and the outer coating a negative charge. On connecting the two surfaces by means of a metallic discharger having a non-conducting handle a spark is obtained. Thus the Leyden jar is both a collector and a condenser of electricity. On arranging a series of such jars and joining their outer and inner surfaces, and connecting the series with an electrical machine, a battery is obtained of greater or less power according to the number of jars employed and the extent of supply from the machine.

The principle of the Leyden jar was discovered by accident. Cuneus, a pupil of Muschenbroeck, was one day trying to charge some water in a glass bottle with electricity by connecting it with a chain to the sparking knob of an electrical machine. Holding the bottle in one hand he arranged the chain with the other, and received a violent shock. His teacher then tried the experiment himself, with a still livelier and more convincing result, whereupon he declared that he would not repeat the trial for the whole Kingdom of France.

When the science of static electricity was thus far developed, with a machine for generating it and a collector to receive it, many experiments followed. Charles Morrison in 1753, in the Scots Magazine, proposed a telegraph system of insulated wires with a corresponding number of characters to be signalled between two stations. Other schemes were proposed at different times down to the close of the century.

Franklin records among several other experiments with frictional electricity accumulated by the Leyden jar battery the following results, produced chiefly by himself: The existence of an attractive and a repulsive action of electricity; the restoration of the equilibrium of electrical force between electrified and non-electrified bodies, or between bodies differently supplied with the force; the electroscope, a body charged with electricity and used to indicate the presence and condition of electricity in another body; the production of work, as the turning of wheels, by which it was proposed a spit for roasting meat might be formed, and the ringing of chimes by a wheel, which was done; the firing of gunpowder, the firing of wood, resin and spirits; the drawing off a charge from electrified bodies at a near distance by pointed rods; the heating and melting of metals; the production of light; the magnetising of needles and of bars of iron, giving rise to the analogy of magnetism and electricity.

Franklin, who had gone thus far, and who also had drawn the lightning from the clouds, identified it as electricity, and taught the mode of its subjection, felt chagrined that more had not been done with this subtle agent in the service of man. He believed, however, that the day-spring of science was opening, and he seemed to have caught some reflection of its coming light. Observing the return to life and activity of some flies long imprisoned in a bottle of Madeira wine and which he restored by exposure to the sun and air, he wrote that he should like to be immersed at death with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, to be recalled to life a hundred years thence to observe the state of his country. It would not have been necessary for him to have been embalmed that length of time to have witnessed some great developments of his favorite science. He died in 1790, and it has been said that there was more real progress in this science in the first decade of the nineteenth century than in all previous centuries put together.

Before opening the door of the 19th century, let us glance at one more experiment in the 18th:

While the aged Franklin was dying, Dr Luigi Galvani of Bologna, an Italian physician, medical lecturer, and learned author, was preparing for publication his celebrated work, De viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius, in which he described his discovery made a few years before of the action of the electric current on the legs and spinal column of a frog hung on a copper nail. This discovery at once excited the attention of scientists, but in the absence of any immediate practical results the multitude dubbed him the "frog philosopher." He proceeded with his experiments on animals and animal matter, and developed the doctrine and theories of what is known as animal or galvanic electricity. His fellow countryman and contemporary, Prof. Volta of Pavia, took decided issue with Galvani and maintained that the pretended animal electricity was nothing but electricity developed by the contact of two different metals. Subsequent investigations and discoveries have established the fact that both theories have truth for their basis, and that electricity is developed both by muscular and nervous energy as well as by chemical action. In 1799 Volta invented his celebrated pile, consisting of alternate disks of copper and zinc separated by a cloth moistened with a dilute acid; and soon after an arrangement of cups – each containing a dilute acid and a copper and a zinc plate placed a little distance apart, and thus dispensing with the cloth. In both instances he connected the end plate of one kind with the opposite end plate of the other kind by a wire, and in both arrangements produced a current of electricity. To the discoveries, experiments, and disputes of Galvani and Volta and to those of their respective adherents, the way was opened to the splendid electrical inventions of the century, and the discovery of a new world of light, heat, speech and power. The discoveries of Galvani and Volta at once set leading scientists at work. Fabroni of Florence, and Sir Humphry Davy and Wollaston of England, commenced interesting experiments, showing that rapid oxidation and chemical decomposition of the metals took place in the voltaic pile.

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