Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1873-05-29

| train of cars, on any railroad built by hui
man hands? Or who, being aboard, would
think of lying down to sleep, except un-
der the full meaning OF his childhood's
prayer, off / should die before wake?"
| Yet there is not mothers son or daugh
| ter of us who has not been riding at this
| tenfOld rate all our lives, and been going
to sleep, too, every night Of our Journey,
as quietly and trustfully as little children
do within reach of parents arm. 1t is
true, our road is very smooth and very
safe, never having experienced, during the
| last six thousand years, the first Jolt or lar.
| much less the first "run-Off' or collision
But the fact that our sO-called car is the
earth, and its great superintendent the
Almig hty Creator, does not in the least di-
minish the velocity with which we travel :;
nor need it diminish our wonder, though
we must admit that it adds vastly to our
sense of security.
The motion of the earth has been spoken
| of as if it were one only; but, of course,
no one can forget that it is twofold In
| its daily whirl upon its axis, all who live
at the equator are swept along at the rate
of twenty-five thousand miles in twenty
four hours, or upward Of one thousand
miles an hour Those who live in latitude
60 Q, move at exactly half the speed The
|
United States may therefore be set down
at about seven hundred miles the hour,
though it is really greater. But only to
seven hundred miles the hour-more
than double the velocity of sound or of a
| oannOn-balli
| And now what language shall we use in
speaking of that other motion of the earth
in which we all participate? We make a
yearly circuit round the sun Of above five
hundred and fifty million miles. To ac-
| complish this requires a velocity of one
| million five hundred thousand miles a
| day, or siXty-two thousand miles an hour,
which is upward of one Mouso7ad miles
ecery minute! This is speed which is
actually uncomfortable. Yet at this rate,
as was just now said, we travel without
| jolt, without collision, and even without
fear of evil. We sit comfortably in our
easy-going car, look complacently at the
stars, past which we so madly rush, then
| go to bed and sleep and dream, and awake
in the morning, and seldom think of the
grand equipage in which we are travelling
at the rate of sixteen mites q second.
Atthis point of our survey it might
seem the dictate Of reason to stop, since
we are already beyond the boundary of
the conceivable But, although past that
! boundary, we are far from having reached
the limits of the caLculab4e. The electric
| fluid, Shot along our telegraph wires, so
far outstrips the daily motion of the sun
that a cable dispatch dated London, five
O'Clock, p. m, of any day, is delivered in
Washington City about twelve O'Clock m
of the same day. The rapidity of its
transmission, though seemingly infinite
or, as we ordinarily say, instantaneous, is
not actually so. There is an appreciate
portion of time occupied in its transit,
and that time has been measured. The
distance by wire between Cambridge,
Massachusetts,, and San Francisco, Cali
fornia, is about thirty-six hundred miles
In an experiment undertaken for the pur-
pose Of testing its practical velocity, the
electric spark was sent and returned over
this distance in threefourths of a second
a rate sufficient TO carry it round the
earth in two seconds and a half, or to
complete the circuit Of the earth's orbit
in two hours and forty minutes, instead
Of three hundred and sixty five days.
We have but one more velocity to no.
tice. 1t is that of light. Until the year
1915, the passage of light was supposed
to be instantaneous, and the discovery of
the truth was the result almost of acct
dent The celebrated Romer had calcu-
lated with great precision the eclipses of
Jupiter's satellites when that planet and
the earth were on the same side of the
sun. To his surprise and perpleXity,
however, the eclipses took place sixteen
minutes too late, when Jupiter was on the
side of the sun opposite to the earth
Every observation and temperance of
these satellites took place exactly in the
order predicted, and at nearly the calcu-
LIT I'll
sixteen minutes behind time. The only
solution Of the phenomenon was to be had
in supposing that light requires sixteen
minutes to pass through the diameter of
the earth's orbit, j. e. one hundred and
eighty-tour million miles. This astound-
ing fact was soon cOrroborated by other
| testimony, until now there is scarcely any
fact in physical science more firmly es
| tablished than that light travels with the
enormous velocity of one hundred and
ninety-two thousand miles a second.
To form a conception, as near as posi-
bic, Of this degree of speed, let us put two
things together. Were the earth girdled
with a spcaking-tube capable Of convey
ing sound through all its length at the
rate of five miles a minute, message
around would occupy five thousand min
Htcs, or eighty-threc and tWothlrds hours,
| OF nearly tuIct anu Il nail ttA IoI us pas
sage; whereas light, if it could be sent
around on the same track, would cncircle
the earth eight times between each beat Of
d secOnd-mcasuring clock.
Here, now, We are compelled to stop.
There is no greater velocity in Nature
| known to man. The transmission OF gray
| itativc force is known to be greater, but it
| is given up that that must be lnstanta-
neous; for if not absolutely so, it must be
| $50 Laplacc calculated from reliable data
at least fifty million times greater than tia
Of tight. -Applet0n's Jourtol.
In numbers, the two sexes are very
nearly equal in the United States: males
| 10, 1856, females 19,064, SO6; but the dis
tribution is not even. The greatest excess
of males is found in Idaho 02, 1S4 to 2,S15
females) Montana Q6,.1 to 1924, Wy
oming &, 219 to $500, and Nevada C2,219
to 1O,112) Females are in excess in Ala
ban a (504, $50 to 4S2, 400, District of Col
umbia (61, 20. to "a 159), Georgia (60O,S6
to 572 1865. Louisiana 1876, 345 to 32S,143)
Maine (29O,600 to 2S7, 434), Maryland 300
246 to 342 $3.50, Massachusetts, (56s, $50 to
$50, 1852, New Hampshire 147,G9S to 140,-
991), New jersey (363 ,66S to 353,4S5), and
New York Il CAT PA to ,591,1 1922. Nir-
| ginia, Vermont, Tennessee both Carolinas,
Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and
New Mexico show a like excess of female
population. In Utah there are more
- n ~