Year: 1874

"
in which he said


The thundergUst that passed over this
city on Monday afternoon, the 25th of
May, was attended with more than the
usual amount of electrical discharges.
Immediately over the city the heavens
we're literally filed with flashes of light
and brilliant corruscations of lightning.
! The cloud matter was so thoroughly
| combined, and of such great thickness,
that the usual echoes were not propaga-
| ted, but, instead, we had the hoarse,
rumbling intonations of thunder, re-
| sembling the sound of that produced by
| heavy carriages running over frozen
/ ground. The thunderbolt discharges
| sounded much like the discharges of
| heavy artillery, while in smaller storms
| the sound resembles that produced by
small arms. While in all these storms
! there is a central vortex, those of great
| dimensions have within their areas
number of vortices. In that of Monday
last the evidence of this feature of storms
was discernable in the uprooted trees
IN different sections of the city. These
worthless are so much broken and shat
tered In passing over a city, by the
solid distractions they meet In their
whirling action, that they become com





ing over an orchard or wood, the UNI
bragg of the trees presents a favorable
condition to their impact, and many of
them are twisted and lifted out by the
roots.


In addition to the great number of
thunderbolts that were discharged upon
the earth from the clouds, the vapor
stratum overhead was for half ali hour
embellished with brilliant scintillatiOns
of electrical fire, resembling the burst
ing of rockets filed with white stars.
This display of electrical pyrotechnics
was truly sublime. Many persons
were reported to have suffered from
these electrical discharges, but these
suffeTings were in most cases of the
imaginary kind, distressing enough to
be such, but not very dangerous in their
results. The pleasure afforded those
who view the phenomena in their beau
teOus and exhilarating aspect forms
an equivalent to those who suffer from
them.


The most marked and Tnstruc-
tive thunderbolt brought to my notice
was that which struck the building of
Mr.. Rech, on the southeast corner of
Girard avenue and Eighth street. This
bailding was provided with an extern
sive arrangement of lightning rods. It
is gravel rooted, and around the whole
circumference of the roof there runs
an iron conductor. From this horizon
! tai iron bar there are perpendicular
lightning rods at sixteen different equi-
distant places. It has, in fact, sixteen
lightning rods pointing to the clouds.
Upon the roof and centeripg the avenue
front, and shout twenty feet from the
front edge of the building, there stood
a flagstaff. A branch of the circumfer-
ential conductor run across to this staff
and up 1t about twelve feet, where it
ended ana was fastened TO an iron band
around the pole. The thunderbolt, in
disregard of the sixteen lightning rods,
struck the flagstaff, and completely
shivered il down to within four feet of
the iron band, and where the branch
conductor ended. Why did this bolt
prefer the wooden pole to the Lightning
rod? Simply because it was in the
path of the descending bolt. Now if,
as is claimed by eminent electricians,
the rod does its silent work of discharg
ing the cloud when it is yet afar of,
why did it not quietly and decently dis
arm this nimbus artillery in this case
Certainly the garrison was well fortified
with these barbed protectors, expressly
stationed there to prevent an explosion
of electricity, by drawing the sarcharge
from the clouds, if not when afar off,
at all events when the bending cloud
passed over the protected building.
The lightning rod man claimed that the
branch conductor carried off harmlessly
the remainder of the bolt. No doubt
it did, since that residue was of little
momentum and energy of what was left
of the bolt after having made sPlinters
+ ,F svk-
staff


While this is the third flagstaff shat
tered by lightning in this city that I
have examined within few years, and
where the mechanical effects of the bolt
were little beyond that of Tending a
pole, it is the only one on building
where It was surrounded by a Gordon of
lightning rods, or In proximity to a rod;
it is one of the most conclusive evi-
dences of the iDutility of lightning rods
that could possibly be presented. If
the rod would do what it is intended
for, to wit draw the surcharge of cleo
tricity from the storm cloud silently
disarm it of its force by drawing in a
silent stream to its point, as the charge
from the prime conductor of an electri-
cal machine is drawn by any kind of
pointed material, glass as well as metal,





upon building in PHILADELPHIA, with
its thousands of lightning rods peerlDg
toward the cloud region.


The Onlv protection from thHnderbolt
that has yet been proved TO be effica-
cious is the metal roof. The greatest
damage ever done to q building thus
protected is the perforatiOn of the metal
ct the point where the bolt strikes, and
this is, in the heaviest discharges, not
over half an inch in diameter. Such has
been the result of my observations
through more than a quarter of a cen
turv. In all these observations 1
found the mechanical effects of the
thunderbolt about the same IN buildings
that were struck, with rods upon them,
and those without rods, with this diff
ference, that nearly all the cases of ig-
milton were upon those with rods. Such
are the facts of the case, with all the
theories to the contrary notwithstand
ing.


Metal has no more attraction for light
ming than sponge has for water. In
either it may be viewed as an absorb
/ ent. Neither has a metal point and at
| tractive power TO draw electricity on 1t.
/ Points act as recipients of cOuductioD,
! or as entering wedges to the bolt as a
/ DOint would act IN perforatIng a soap
/ bubble of hydrO-Oxygen gas; or any
other film or attenuated matter. The
attraction of positive for negative, as
laid down in electrical science, proves
nothing more than there Is present an
unbalanced condition of electrical mat
ter. and then necessarily q disposition
TO electrical equilibrium, which always
follows, Just as two drops Of water will
conlesce when their atmospheres come
In contact.