The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1890-12-19
ELECTRlCITY'S NAME.
FOR MORE THAN 1000 YEARS
1T WAS NAMELESS.
First Discovered In Pieces Of Amber-Ths Seien.
tife World Of the Time was Puzzled
And the Full Mystery b
Still unexplained

any light bodies, writes Parke Ben
jamin. What did the rubbing have to
do with this singular property? The
amber looked just the same after rub
bling as it did before. No one could
see that it was different in any respect
at one time than at another; and yet
something had most certainly happen
ed to it The rubbing surely gave it
this mysterious power; but how?
MEANWHILE; and perhaps even long
before these puzzling questions were
asked, there existed a tradition that
once on the slope of Mount Ida a
black rock had torn the iron crook
from the hand of the Shepherd
Magnes, and had held it despite all
his efforts to pull it away; and later
travellers from the far Lydian terri
tory, Magnesia, had brought back to
Greece bits of stone which gathered
to themselves particles of iron. These
stones, some say from the shepherd of
Mount Ida, others from the Lydian
country, were called ''magnes." nova
days changed to ''magnets."
"Ah!" said the wise men. foreseeing
at last relief from centuries of head
aches over a wearing problem and q
chance to prove their superior knowl-
edge, ''now we have got it. OF course
amber is not magnet. and a magnet,
Jou know, attracts things because of
its Inherent magnetism" They might
just as we'll have said. "because it
does;" but the longer words have a
more scientific and abstruse appear
ance, and, after all, fail to explain the
matter just rs clearly as the shorter
ones.
But there were skeptical people who
laughed at this and who pointed out
some very marked differences between
the behavior of the amber and that OF
the magnet; such, for instance, as that
the amber would not attract anything
unless it were rubbed, while the mag
net needed no rubbing; and that the
amber would draw to itself any light
body, while no amount of rubbing
could pers uade the magnet to attract
anything but iron.
So the wise men proceeded to re-
consider the matter. The years rolled
along. More wise men were born and
lived and died. and their wise sons and
grandsons after them, and the years
grew into centuries; and still the
amber kept gathering its dust and no.
body could give any reason. and 50
far as we know, nobody even tried to
do so. At last there oame time.
about 600 years before Christ, when
an exceedingly wise man, ono of the
seven wise men of all Greece, Thales
by name, announced that ne had solv-
the puzzle. The amber, he said, was
alive, and it had q soul, and the rub
bling woke it up. Thales never ex-
planned why he thought all this He
just thought it. made it up" as the
children say. ''out of his own head"
and having thought it, told other. peo-
pie.
Somehow the world liked the ex-
PLANTATION, which seemed reasonable
or rather sounded so-very much like
some other later explanations to be
found in "Alice in Wonderland"
and it never troubled itself about any
other for 1900 years. Probably no
other explanation of the many which
scientific persons have produced ever
had such 6ne wearing quality.
The times were changing then and
mems minds with them. People were
growing disconnected with what the
philosophers thought ought to be true
and were gradually awaking to tho
idea of asking nature herself what
was true. The great awakening of
literature, art and science which glo-
rified the reign of Elizabeth of Eng
land came at last. There in her court,
her own body physician, far better
known in these days than he was then.
was the man who, striving to draw
from nature the secrets of the magnet
found himself face to face with the
problem of the amber. For twenty
two centuries the world had never
thought to ask Of nature herself the
obvious question which William Gill
bert propounded to her. Is there any
thing else other than amber which.
when rubbed. will attract light bodies?
Having asked that he proceeded to ex-
periment-a remarkable performance
in world where everybody regarded
guessing as much higher use of the
human mind. And then he found tina,
the amber had many a rival-for glass
and sulphur and the diamond
and resin would all act in just
the same way and 50 would some six
teen other su INSTANCES. And when the
air was dry this curious attractive