The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-10-03
ITALY H0NORS
 ELECTRICAL
 INVESTIGATOR

While the Italians have achieved greater fame in the arts than in the sciences, the part they have played in the great scientific developments of the last two centuries has been by no means inconsiderable. It is in the domain of electricity that Italian sa- wants and inventors have accomplished most. To the names of Beccaria, Galvani, Volta and other celebrated Italian investigators of electrical phe- nomena has lately been added that of Marconi, the hero of one of the great est of latter day scientific adventures.
 Italian scientific men will celebrate to-day the 200th anniversary of the father of Italy's electrical investiga- tors, Giovanni Battista Beccaria, who was born at Mondovi in Oct 8, 1716. He was mathematician, chemist and astronomer, and taught successively in the universities of Rome, Palermo and Turin. Beccaria was one of the noble group of scientists who, in all lands, were then engaged in studying the phenomena of electricity. In 1753 he published treatise on natural and ar tificial electricity which was eagerly read by the scientists of other coun- tries. His subsequent and more im- portant work, "Dell' elettricismo arti- fziale," was translated into English by Benjamin Franklin. In 1758 he published an account of his research es on atmospheric electricity.
 Beccaria showed that water is a very imperfect conductor of electricity, that its conducting power is proportional to its quantity, and that small quan- tity of water opposes a powerful re- sistance to the passage of electricity. Beccaria also demonstrated that air adjacent to an electrified body gradu- ally acquires the same electricity, that the electricity of the body is dimin- ished by that of the afr, and that the air parts with its electricity very slow ly.
 Beccaria died at Turin in 17S1, but the great work of discovery he had commenced was carried on in Italy by two men whose names have been in- corporated in the nomenclature of electrical science-Luigi Galvani and Count Alessandro Volta. Galvani was a physiologist and anatomist by pro- fession. One day he skinned the legs his wife, who was in delicate health He used a scalped which had been laid near an electrical machine, and observed that this caused the frog legs to contract violently. This led Ito researches which he described in his celebrated treatise on animal elec- tricity, published in 1791.
 Galvani united the lumbar nerves nf a dead frnp with fc by metallic circuit, and came to the erroneous conclusion that animal electricity existed in the nerves and muscles of the frogs, ignoring the con- meeting wire. His contemporary, Count Volta, gave attention to this, and found the contraction of the limbs more energetic when the connecting arc is made of two metals instead of one. Volta inferred that the metals took the active part in producing the and the electricity was due to their contact, while the animal parts constituted only conductor. He published these views in 1793, and in 1900 first described and constructed what has since been called after him the voltaic pile. Volta invented the electriphorus, electroscope, electrical condenser and electrical pistol. His name, like Galvani's, is perpetuated in a large number of electrical terms, the best known of these being the noun volt" the unit of electromotive force or difference of potential.
 Since the days of Beccaria, Galvani and Volta hundreds of Italians have contributed to the practical adaption of oIaotricitv fo 1ltjlitarian ends a I'll one of the crowning achievements of all, wireless telegraphy, is the in- yention of an Italian Marconi.