St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-09-28

| machines, Ice cream freeZerS, elevators,
etc., is almost general, and growing into
/! greater popularity. 1t is only ques-
ton OF time when, in some form or
other, electricity will be introduced into
| every household.
| The growing demand for electricity as
! means of propelling street cars is one
OF the signs of the times. The success
of the electric street car system has
been well eXemplified in st. Paul, and
here again the use of electricity is ad-
mittedly first on the threshold of still
greater discoveries. That electricity is
destined to entirely supersede steam is
the general opinion of all intelligent
people. AS soon as the storage of cleo
/ tricity is demonstrated the death knell
of the steam engine will be sounded,
and from recent inventions ana trials
| that day cannot be far distant.
The first knowledge of electricity
came from the fact that when amber was
| rubbed 1t attracted light particles, this
| is the original experiment, and has
| been handed down from the remotest
! antiquity. No doubt that great deal
| of the romance connected to this sub
| stance is due to this fact. The state
ment is made in early writings that
| WOrkmen engaged in polishing amber.
which was highly priced by the ancientS
/ as an ornamental gem. where seized
with violent tremors in their arms, an
| exaggerated account of what might
| have occurred from the substance. For
several centuries this suggestive eX-
! pertinent was forced to stand
alone without any attempt to in
vestigate. Electricity above all other
sciences, is wholly dependent upon
, experiment for its development. 1t is
| the product OF the laboratory and of the
! scholar, and is not due to the genius of
the inventor. Naturally then, it had to
| await the coming of the seventeenth
century, or rather the closing of the
sixteenth century, when Lord Bacon by
his philosophy and William Gilbert by
his work, awakened the time to the fact
that experimental research and induc-
tive methods were the true principles
OF philosophy. DR.. Gilbert, who was
! FIRST physician to Queen Elizabeth, can
be justly aScribed the creator. of cleo
tricity by virtue of the large number of
experiments he made and the conclu-
sions he arrived at. He found that
many substances other than amber pos
SesSed the power OF attracting light par
tlcleS when rubbed, such as glass, sui
Dhur, etc. The next two centuries saw
great strides in the development of this
new science, in which the philosophers
Of that time were all Interested To
Benjamin Franklin is due the first and
only really useful application to the
| affairs of everyday life of ali these
years of study and thought, and that
was his invention for protecting build
ings from damage by lightning.
AT the close of the eighteenth century
an Italian DlllOSODlpr saw in tba
| twitching of a frogs legs the opening of
new field in electricity, or, we might
say, modern electricity The we'll
established story goes that Galvani had
| been investigating the effect of cleo
| trlclty on the muscles of frogs, and
| some of these animals were hung on an
| iron railing by means of copper hooks,
and it was noticed that the muscles
| twitched when there was no electrical
disturbance apparent in their vicinity.
! Galvani, whose experiments hitherto
i'll this line were confined to an electri-
| cal machine, was led to believe that the
| frog itself was the source of the cleo
| tricity and that the pieces of iron and
| copper were only conductors. Galvan'S
| discovery attracted the attention of stu
| dents OF electricity IN all countries.
| volta, countryman of GalVani,
| found that two different metals were
essential i'll the production of the new
electricity, and he constructed his bat
terry, on file, which was composed of
silver coins and pieces of zinc, with
moiStened paper between them. With
this he found it possible to produce all
| the effects of electricity which were
produced by friction on glass and sui
! phur. The vOltaic pile was, however,
improved in very short time by Volta,
and instead of building it up simply
with two pieces of metal with moist
! ened paper between, the metal strips
were placed in cups of water in very
much the shape we find it to-day.
A great many other men began work
| ing in the same direction, and before
long it was discovered that the electric
current could decompose water, and
electric chemistry came up for its share
of attention. Sir Humphrey Davy was
| one of these eXperimenterS. He con-
Structed 1000 cells battery, which
was the source of the first flashes of the
electric arc. That was in 1910.
Soon the scientific minds of the day
| suspected that there must in some way
be a very intimate relation between
magnetism and electricity, and there
were many minds seeking after the
missing link. 1t was left to the son of
Danish apothecary to make the second
discovery that magnetic needle, when
placed parallel to conductor carrying
an electric current, would be detected
from its position to the right or to the
left, as the case might be. pointed out
an entirely new field. The fact that
current of electricity would affect a
magnet was forerunner of the electric
telegraph. On Michael Faraday, how
ever. largely rests a great deal of the
success attained III the study of cleo
trical science. He began his work in
1925. Faraday, knowing that magnet
ism was produced by electricity, at
tempted to produce electricity from
magnetism, and in his original expert
ment he used an iron ring on which was
wound Two separate coils of wire, to the
terminals of one coil he connected a
battery, and the terminals of the other
coil were connected to a galvanometer,
which will detect the presence of cur
rent of electricity. A coil of wire con-
sisting of a few turns, the ends of the
wire connected TO the rejecting galva-
nometer, illustrates what is meant by
| induction. Whenever the bar magnet