Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-10-01
GULF STREAM CHART
How Many Americans Know That Ben
Franklin Made It?
How His Researches I'm This Direction
Aided the COlOnists Mt the Begin-
ming of the Revolution.
From the Boston Pilot.

-SlelCc d typography VI beHJdHiii
which gives complete account of the in
ventions and scientific discoveries made by
the versatile genius who is rightly called
1.-The brains of the American revolution"
Great as was Franklin as a diplomat and
the domain of physics. wherein he planted
seeds which bore fruit in his own time, and
again in our generation.
His pet study. electricity, which in. the
eighteenth century was a diversion of
schoolmen, has become a gigantic industry,
affcrding employment for nearly 100000
persons in the civilized parts of the earth.
To Franklin are we indebted for many
things which remained fallow in the science
of electricity. until Davy. Faraday, Edison,
Brush, Thomson and Tesla began to pick
up the threads which Franklin left in the
Lloom of life, when he was summoned from
earth. Within two years an expensive liti-
CATION between two joint stock companies
concerning the right to use certain sub
marine electric machine for blowing up
lodges and sunken wrecks was brought to
an end when evidence was introduced show
ing that Franklin used similar apparatus in
the Delaware river in 1877.
Many of his inventions have been patent
ed over and over again in our patent office,
where articles in daily use by the cave
jewellers may be patented by any person
foolish enough to consider United States
patent OF any value, and who does not
know that the 400 patents taken out by
Edison have been 'pirated'' under the pro-
lection of United States laws, which are
apparently made for the profit of infringers
Of patents and for the bankrupting Of in
ventors. Franklin's electrical inventions
number eighteen, all made when his intel
lectual faculties were brightest.
He Made Chart.
Next to electrical matters, in his own
estimation of the value of his inventions
and discoveries, he placed his wonderful
acute study of the gulf stream, of which he
made the first chart in ITO, from data OBJ
tanned from his mothers brother, Capt.
Fclger, a master mariner of the island of
Nantucket, Mass. who for many years
sailed in the whaling trade, and observed
that the Baloena mySticetuS, commonly
XII own as the right whale, never entered
the warm waters Of the gulf stream, but
swan along the edges Of the stream seeking
for food. Folger kept accounts of all whales
seen by him along the course of the stream
from 1854 to 1T6G, and from these logs
Franklin gathered sufficient knowledge of
the stream to make a chart. which in great
part Is used by photographers Of today.
Several corrections have ben added thereto
by Lieut.. Maury. U. S. N. who devoted a
lifetime of study to the gulf stream and
Japan currents.
The attention of Franklin was drawn for
a memorial which the board of customs at
Boston, Mass, had sent to the lords of the
treasury, stating that the royal PACKET
ships which conveyed passengers, letters
land, and Boston, Mass. were generally
fifteen to twenty-five days longer making
the voyage than the American-manned
common merchant vessels whichS piled
In transatlantic crossings was referred to
Franklin. He, in turn, consulted Capt
Folger, who said that the American sea
captains were acquainted with the gulf
service were not; so it was that by cross
ing the stream the heavy and deeply laden
American ships made short voyages, and
the royal packet ships of light build and
with great spread of sails kept in the
gulf stream, and were set back from sixty
to eighty miles every nautical day. Frank
lin made chart, had it engraved and
presented a copy thereof to the lords Of
the treasury, a fine set of fossilized numb
skulls. who never so much as thanked the
learned Bostonian for his pains.
Its Practical Value.
The packet captains pooh-poohed at
Franklin's theories of the speed of the
gulf stream, and continued to make slow
voyages, while the American ships kept
on making fast crossings, bringing in ad-
vance of the royal mail intelligence Of
what was going on among the counsello-s
of King George many days before the gov
ernors of the colony received official intel
ligence.
So much for the work of Franklin in
showing mariners how to traverse the
great ocean river which alone makes the
British Isles habitahle, and which clothes
ireland in mantle Of evergreen
grass. while Labrador, in the, very same
latitude, is bound in the icy letters of arc
tic winter. If the Isthmus of Panama
should subside two hundred feet or more,
and such subsidences have taken place in
geological times all over the world. the
equatorial current of the Atlantic would
flow into the Pacific, and England Scot
land, Ireland and part of France would
then become like Labrador.
In the whole world there is not so ma
jestic flow of water as the gulf stream,
the headwaters of which are in the Gulf Of
Mexico. Thence it flows northeast
erly along the shores of the United States
to the banks of Newfoundland; then it
rushes across the Atlantic ocean to the
British Isles, where 1t is divided into two
currents-one flowing norfnward to the
Arctic ocean. the ether southwark to the
Azores. The velocity Of the stream is
more rapid than that of the Mississippi at
New Orleans or the Amazon at 100 miles
above it's mouth. Although it's bed and
banks are cold water, yet the stream Is
very warm, and so great is the absence of
are they to mingle with each other, that
their line of junction is distinctly visible
to the eye; one-half of ship may be fire.
quently perceived floating in the cold
ocean, the other half in the warm and ce-
rulean water of the gulf stream.
Why the Heat is Retained.
The waters of this wonderful stream do
not, in any part of their course, touch the
bottom of the sea. They are defended at
bottom and sides by what, in expressive
language, we may term a trough of cold
water. one of the best non-conductors
Consequently, very little heat is lost, and
the warm water is carried thousands Of
miles. only losing four degrees of heat on
the journey from the Gulf of Mexico to the
British Isles. On winters day, say any
time from December Is to February L. the
temperature of the gulf stream at Cape
Hatteras on the coast of North Carolina
is from thirty to forty degrees higher than
the water of the ocean. With this temper
AZURE 1t crosses the fortieth degree of north
latitude, ard there, overlooking its liquid
banks, spreads itself out for thousands of
square miles over the cold waters of north
ern seas, dispensing its genial influence
wheresoever it goes, lika the soft south
ern winds and the blessed sunlight, which
the Lord Of the harvest sends to the SOW
ers of the earth.
While the gulf stream is ripening the
harvests Of Great Britain, ireland and
France, its influence is equally beneficial
il: the western world. The Caribbean sea
and Gulf Of Mexico are encompas sed on
one side by me cham of West India Is