French machinist, and “one who has a genius for invention,” is the
first to introduce a successful electric telegraph consisting of but
one wire. Of this the following account appears under date Oct. 16,
1787, in Arthur Young’s “Voyage Agronomique en France” (“Travels”),
fourth edition, Vol. I. p. 79: “You write two or three words on a
paper; he takes it with him into an adjoining room and turns a machine
in a cylinder case, on the top of which is an electrometer having a
pretty little ball of pith of a quill suspended by a silk thread; a
brass wire connects it to a similar cylinder and electrometer in a
distant apartment, and his wife, on observing the movements of the
corresponding ball, writes the words which it indicates. From this
it appears that he (Lomond) has made an alphabet of motions. As the
length of the brass wire makes no difference in the effect, you could
correspond with it at a great distance, as, for example, with a
besieged city or for objects of much more importance. Whatever be the
use that shall be made of it, the discovery is an admirable one.”
REFERENCES.--Ed. Highton, “Elec. Tel.,” 1852, p. 38; Sabine,
“Elec. Tel.,” pp. 10–11; Shaffner, “Manual,” pp. 132, 133;
Vail’s “History,” etc., p. 121; “Appleton’s Encycl.,” 1871, Vol.
XV. p. 335.
=A.D. 1787.=--Brard (Cyprien Prosper), French mineralogist, first
observes that some crystals of axinite (consisting mainly of silica,
alumina, lime and peroxide of iron) become electric by heat.
REFERENCES.--Gmelin, article “Electricity,” etc., Vol. I. p.
319; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. II. p. 1205; Thomas, “Dict.
of Biog.,” Vol. I. p. 429; “Enc. Brit.,” 8th ed., Vol. VIII. p.
530; Brard, “Manuel du Minéralogiste,” etc., Bordeaux Academy of
Sciences Report for 1829, p. 39, and for 1838, p. 84--the latter
containing M. Hatchett’s observations on one of M. Brard’s
meteorolites.
=A.D. 1787.=--Haüy (Le Père René Just), native of Picardie and member
of the Académie Royale des Sciences, publishes an abridgment of the
doctrines of Æpinus (at A.D. 1759) under the title of “Exposition
raisonnée de la Théorie de l’Électricité et du Magnétisme.” He was
doubtless the first to observe that in all minerals the pyro-electric
state has an important connection with the want of symmetry of
the crystals, and no proof of the extent to which he directed his
investigations in that line can more readily be had than by consulting
general “Encyclopædia” articles relative to the pyro-electricity of
boracite (borate of magnesia), of prehnite (silica, alumina and lime),
of mesotype (hydrated silicate of alumina and of lime or of soda), of
sphene (silica, titanic acid and lime), calamine (silicate of zinc) and
of Siberian topaz.
At pp. 480, 481 of his “Outline of the Sciences,” etc., London, 1830,
Dr. Thomas Thomson states:
“There is a hill of sulphate of lime, called Kalkberg, situated near
Lunebourg, in the duchy of Brunswick, in which small cubic crystals
are found. These cubes are white, have a specific gravity of 2·566,
and are composed of two atoms of boracic acid combined with one atom
of magnesia. They are distinguished among mineralogists by the name of
_boracite_. If we examine the cubic crystals of boracite, we shall find
that only four of the solid angles are complete, constituting alternate
angles placed at the extremity of two opposite diagonals at the upper
and lower surface of the cube. The other four solid angles are replaced
by small equilateral triangles. When the boracite is heated all the
perfect solid angles become charged with _negative_ electricity, while
all the angles replaced by equilateral triangles become charged with
_positive_ electricity. So that the boracite has eight poles: four
positive and four negative. Those are obviously the extremities of four
diagonals connecting the solid angles with each other. One extremity
of each of these diagonals is charged with positive and the other
extremity with negative electricity. In general, the electricity of
boracite is not so strong as that of the _tourmaline_.” This curious
law of the excitability of the boracite and of its eight poles was
discovered by Haüy in 1791 (Haüy’s “Minéralogie,” 260, second edition).
_Axinite_, _mesotype_, and the _silicate of zinc_ are also minerals
which become electric when heated, and which, like the _tourmaline_,
exhibit two opposite poles, the one positive, the other negative. It
is not every crystal of axinite and mesotype which possesses this
property, but such only as are unsymmetrical, that is to say, such as
have extremities of different shapes. No doubt this remark applies
also to the silicate of zinc; though as the crystals of that mineral
are usually acicular it is not so easy to determine by observation the
degree of symmetry which they may possess.
The _topaz_, _prehnite_, and the titaniferous mineral called _sphene_
are also capable of being excited by heat, and have two opposite poles
like those already mentioned.
Haüy also made the most extensive and accurate observations known
upon the development of electricity in minerals by friction. Detailed
lists of the different classes of minerals, as well as the conclusions
arrived at through various experiments, are given in the “Encyclopedia
Britannica,” Vol. VIII, 1855, pp. 538, 539, while at pp. 529 and 558
of the same work are to be found accounts of his observations on the
electricity of the _tourmaline_, as well as a description of the
different electroscopes employed in his many experiments.
REFERENCES.--Priestley, “History of Electricity,” 1767, pp.
314–326; Gmelin’s “Chemistry,” Vol. I. p. 319; Noad, “Manual,”
pp. 27–31; also article “Electricity” in “Library Useful
Knowledge,” pp. 3, 54, 56; M. Lister, “Collection Académique,”
Tome VI; “Société Philomathique,” An. V. p. 34; An. XII. p. 191;
“Mém. du Museum d’Hist. Nat.,” Vol. III; “Mém. de l’lnstitut,”
An. IV. tome i., “Sciences Math. et Phys.” p. 49; “Mém. de
l’Académie,” 1785, Mem. p. 206; _Philosophical Magazine_, Vols.
XX. p. 120; XXXVIII. p. 81; Thomas Thomson, “Hist. of the
Roy. Soc.,” London, 1812, pp. 180, etc.; Young’s “Lectures,”
London, 1807, Vol. II; Haüy, “Traité Élémentaire de Physique,”
Chap VII, “Magnetism”; Experiments of J. L. Treméry (author of
“Observations sur les Aimants Elliptiques,” recorded in _Journal
des Mines_, Vol. VI for 1797, also in _Jour. de Phys._, Vols.
XLVIII and LIV) and of M. De Nelis, some of whose observations
are given in the _Phil. Mag._, Vol. XLVIII. p. 127, and in the
_Jour. de Phys._, Vols. LXI. p. 45; LXII. p. 150; LXIII. p. 147;
LXIV. p. 130; LXVI. pp. 336, 456, as shown and illustrated at
pp. 153–162 of Delaunay’s “Manuel,” etc., of 1809; “Séances de
l’Acad. de Bordeaux” for 1835, giving M. Vallot’s report on the
difference existing between the chalcedony and the tourmaline.
Regarding the latter, consult S. Rinmann (“K. Schwed. Akad.
Abh.,” XXVIII. pp. 46, 114); C. Rammelsberg, “Die Zuzam ... und
Feldspaths”; Mr. Magellan’s edition of Cronstedt’s Mineralogy
for Steigliz’s tourmaline; Cesare G. Pozzi, on the tourmaline;
H. Von Meyer (“Archiv. ... Ges. Natural,” XIV. 3, p. 342); M.
Lechman (Berlin Academy Reports); Carl Von Linné (Linnæus),
“Flora Zeylanica,” Stockholm, 1747; M. Leymerie (Toulouse Acad.
Reports); Brewster, “Journal” I. p. 208; J. K. Wilcke (“Vetensk.
Akad. Handl.,” 1766 and 1768); Jos. Muller, “Schreiben ...
Tourmaline,” Wien, 1773; F. J. Muller von Reichenstein, “Nachr.
... an Born,” Wien, 1778; H. B. de Saussure (“Jour. de Paris”),
1784; Louis Delaunay’s letter on the tourmaline, 1782; D. G.
Fischer’s works, published at Mosk, 1813, 1818; J. D. Forbes
(“Edin. Trans.,” Vol. XIII), 1834.
=A.D. 1787.=--Charles (Jacques Alexandre César), a singularly able
French physicist and experimentalist, who became the Secretary of the
Académie des Sciences, relates many of his electrical experiments in
the thirtieth volume of the _Journal de Physique_.
He was one of the first to study and develop the theories of Franklin,
who, in company with Volta, frequently attended the brilliant lectures
which Charles was enabled to give in what was then considered the most
complete philosophical laboratory of Europe. In many of his experiments
on atmospherical electricity, Charles has been known to produce
thousands of sparks, beams or flashes, which exceeded 12 feet in length
and which made reports similar to those of fire-arms. The French
Academy endorsed the opinion given the Minister of War by Charles to
the effect that “a conductor will effectually protect a circular space
whose radius is twice the length of the rod.”
Charles invented the megascope and was the first to make an ascension
in a hydrogen balloon, which he did in company with M. Robert on
the 1st of December (not on the 2nd of August) 1783, ten days after
the first trip made by Pilatre de Rozier and Comte d’Arlandes in a
Montgolfière from the Paris Bois de Boulogne.
REFERENCES.--“Biographie Générale,” Vol. IX. pp. 929–933;
Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. III. p. 1020; _Journal de
Physique_ for 1791, p. 63; “Mémoires de l’Acad. des Sciences”
for 1828; George Adams, “Lectures on Nat. and Exp. Philosophy,”
London, 1799, Vol. III. pp. 462–464; Edin. Encycl., 1813,
article “Aeronautics,” Vol. I. p. 160, “Franklin in France,”
1888, Part II. pp. 256, 270, 276–280; M. Veau Delaunay,
Introduction to his “Manuel,” etc., Paris, 1809, pp. 19, 25 and
61–63; also pp. 23, 68, 92, 96, 122, 176 and 214.
=A.D. 1787.=--Mann (Théodore Augustin), Abbé, Flemish writer and
antiquary, becomes perpetual secretary of the Brussels Academy of
Sciences ten years after leaving the Nieuport Monastery (1777), and is
charged with the duty of making meteorological observations, which are
regularly transmitted to the Mannheim Academy officials, who receive
similar reports regularly from different parts of Europe and publish
them under the title of “Ephémérides Météorologiques.”
His many investigations made with electrical machines are embraced
in the last-named publication and are also alluded to in his “Marées
Aériennes,” etc., which appeared in Brussels during the year 1792.
REFERENCES.--“Biog. Générale,” Tome XXXIII. p. 231; Larousse,
“Dict. Universel,” Tome X. p. 1085; _Phil. Mag._, Vol. IV. p.
337; “Comm. Ac. Theod. Pal.,” 1790, Vol. VI. p. 82.
=A.D. 1787.=--Bennet (Rev. Abraham), F.R.S., first describes in
the _Philosophical Transactions_ for this year, pp. 26–32, the
gold-leaf electroscope which bears his name and which is considered
the most sensitive and the most important of all known instruments for
detecting the presence of electricity. It consists of a glass cylinder
which is covered with a projecting brass cap, made flat in order to
receive upon it whatever article or substance is to be electrified,
and having an opening for the insertion of wires and of a metallic
point to collect the electricity of the atmosphere. The interior of the
cap holds a tube which carries two strips of gold leaf in lieu of the
customary wires or threads, and upon two opposite sides of the interior
of the cylinder are pasted two pieces of tinfoil directly facing the
gold-leaf strips. The cap is turned around until the strips hang
parallel to the pieces of tinfoil, so that any electricity present will
cause the strips to diverge and make them strike the tinfoil, which
will carry the electricity through the support of the cylinder to the
ground.
This electroscope, says Wilkinson, possesses great sensibility, and
through the movable coatings introduced by Mr. Pepys, very small
portions of electricity are discernible. Another very excellent
electroscope is formed with either extremely fine silver thread,
prepared after the manner of Mr. Read, or with the minutest thread
found in a bundle of very fine flax, having a little isinglass glue
applied gently over it with the finger and thumb.
Of the numerous observations made by Bennet, the following interesting
extract relative to the phenomenon of evaporation is taken from the
_Philosophical Transactions_ for the year 1787. “If a metal
cup with a red hot coal in it be placed upon the cap of a gold leaf
electroscope, a spoonful of water thrown in electrifies the cup
resinously; and if a bent wire be placed in the cup with a piece of
paper fastened to it to increase its surface, the vitreous electricity
of the ascending column of vapour may be seen by introducing the paper
into it. The experiments on the evaporation of water may be tried
with more ease and certainty of success by heating the small end of a
tobacco pipe and pouring water into the head, which, running down to
the heated part, is suddenly expanded, and will show its electricity
when projected upon the cap of the electrometer more sensibly than any
other way that I have tried. If the pipe be fixed in a cloven stick and
placed in the cup of one electrometer while the steam is projected upon
another, it produces both electricities at once.”
Some of Mr. Bennet’s experiments with the electroscope on the
electricity of sifted powders, upon the electricity of the atmosphere,
etc., are recorded at pp. 564 and 566 of the “Britannica,” Vol. VIII,
and at p. 56 of “Library of Useful Knowledge.”
Mr. Bennet also invented the _electrical doubler_, designed to increase
small quantities of electricity by continually doubling them until
visible in sparks or until the common electrometer indicates their
presence and quality (_Phil. Trans._ for 1787, p. 288). It consists of
three plates of brass, illustrated and explained at Fig. 9, p. 20, Vol.
I of Prescott’s “Electricity and the Electric Telegraph,” 1885 edition,
wherein it is stated that in forty seconds the electricity can thus, by
continual duplication, be augmented five hundred thousand times. (See,
for doublers, C. B. Désormes and J. N. P. Hachette, in _Annales de
Chimie_, Vol. XLIX for 1804; J. Read (_Phil. Trans._ for 1794, p. 266);
Sir Francis Ronalds (Edin. “Phil. Journal,” Vol. IX. pp. 323–325).)
At p. 105 of his “Rudim. Magnetism,” Snow Harris mentions the fact
that, in some of his experiments, Mr. Bennet employed a magnetic
needle suspended by filaments of a spider’s web as a magnetometer.
In this connection, it may be said that, in the _Philosophical
Transactions_ for 1792, the assertion is made that a fine, and
weakly magnetic steel wire suspended from a spider’s thread of three
inches in length will admit of being twisted around eighteen thousand
times and yet continue to point accurately in the meridian, so little
is the thread sensible of torsion (Young’s “Course of Lectures,” 1807,
Vol. II. p. 445). The use of the spider’s line had, during the year
1775, been recommended as a substitute for wires by Gregorio Fontana,
who, it is said, obtained threads as fine as the eight-thousandth
part of a line. In a lecture delivered at Boston, Mass., during the
year 1884, Prof. Wood alluded to spiders’ threads estimated to be one
two-millionths of a hair in thickness.
REFERENCES.--Bennet, “New Experiments on Electricity,” etc.,
Derby, 1789, and “A New Suspension of the Magnetic Needle,”
etc., London, 1792; Introduction to “Electrical Researches,” by
Lord Henry Cavendish; _Sc. Am. Supplement_, No. 647, pp. 10,
327; Noad, “Manual,” p. 27; Cavallo, “Nat. Phil.,” 1825, Vol.
II. pp. 199, 216; _Phil. Trans._, Vol. LXXVII. pp. 26–31, 32–34,
288–296; also the abridgments by Hutton, Vol. XVI. pp. 173,
176, 282 and Vol. XVII. p. 142; _Sc. American_, Vol. LI. p. 19;
_Annales de Chimie_, Vol. XLIX. p. 45; Ezekiel Walker, _Phil.
Mag._ for 1813, Vol. XLI. p. 415 and Vol. XLII. pp. 161, 215,
217, 371, 476, 485; also Vol. XLIII. p. 364.
=A.D. 1788.=--Barthélémy (Jean Jacques), who, after completing his
studies in a French seminary of Jesuits, succeeded Gros de Boze as
keeper of the king’s cabinet of medals, publishes in four volumes,
at Paris, the first edition of his “Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis.”
In this well-known work, begun by him in 1757, and translated into
English under the title “Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece,”
Barthélémy alludes to the possibility of telegraphing by means of
clocks (_pendules_, not _horloges_), having hands similarly magnetized
in conjunction with artificial magnets. These were “presumed to be
so far improved that they could convey their directive power to a
distance, thus, by the sympathetic movements of the hands or needles in
connection with a dial alphabet, communications between distant friends
could be carried on.”
Writing to Mme. du Deffand in 1772, he observes:
“It is said that with two timepieces the hands of which are magnetic,
it is enough to move one of these hands to make the other take the
same direction, so that by causing one to strike twelve the other will
strike the same hour. Let us suppose that artificial magnets were
improved to the point that their virtue could communicate itself from
here to Paris; you have one of these timepieces, we another of them;
instead of hours we find the letters of the alphabet on the dial. Every
day at a certain hour we turn the hand, and M. Wiard [Mme. du Deffand’s
secretary] puts together the letters and reads.... This idea pleases
me immensely. It would soon be corrupted by applying it to spying in
armies and in politics, but it would be very agreeable in commerce and
in friendship.”
REFERENCES.--“Correspondance inédite de Mad. Du Deffand,” Vol.
II. p. 99; letter of J. MacGregor in _Journal Society of Arts_,
May 20, 1859, pp. 472, 473.
=A.D. 1789.=--Adriaan Paets Van Troostwÿk and Jean Rodolphe Deimann,
Dutch chemists, associated for the purpose of scientific research,
complete the experiments of Lord Cavendish and announce, in the
_Journal de Physique_, their discovery of the decomposition of water
through the electric spark, which latter is conveyed by means of very
fine gold wires. As is now well known, water is by this means resolved
into its two elements of oxygen and hydrogen, both of which assume
their gaseous form.
The electric machine they employed was a very powerful double-plate
one, of the Teylerian mode of construction, causing the Leyden jar to
discharge itself twenty-five times in fifteen revolutions.
REFERENCES.--“Mém. de la Soc. de Phys. Exp. Rotterdam,” Tome
VIII; _Journal de Physique_, Vol. XXXIII; Noad, “Manual,” p.
161; “Encyl. Brit.,” Vol. VIII, 1855, pp. 530, 565; “Biog.
Universelle,” Vol. X. p. 282; De La Rive, “Electricity,” Vol.
II. p. 443; Wm. Henry, “Elements of Experimental Chemistry,”
London, 1823, Vol. I. pp. 251, 252; Delaunay’s “Manuel,” etc.,
1809, pp. 180–183; “Verhandl. van het Genootsch te Rotterdam”
(“Mém. de la Soc. de Phys. Exp. de Rotterdam”) Vol. VIII;
Poggendorff, Vol. I. p. 1555; Dove, p. 243; G. Carradori
(Brugnatelli’s _Annali di chimica_, Vol. I. p. 1); John
Cuthbertson, “Beschreibung einer Elekt. ...” Leipzig, 1790.
=A.D. 1790.=--Reveroni--Saint-Cyr (Jacques Antoine, Baron de),
French Colonel and author, best known by his very interesting work,
“Mécanismes de la Guerre,” proposes an electric telegraph for the
purpose of announcing the drawings of lottery numbers; no satisfactory
information as to its construction, however, appears obtainable.
REFERENCES.--Fahie, “History,” etc., London, 1884, p. 96;
Etenaud, “La Télégraphie Electrique,” 1872, Vol. I. p. 27; _Sc.
Am. Supp._, No. 384, pp. 6, 126.
=A.D. 1790.=--Mr. Downie, master of his Majesty’s ship “Glory,”
makes a report on local attraction wherein he observes “that in all
latitudes, at any distance from the magnetic equator, the upper ends of
iron bolts acquire an opposite polarity to that of the latitude,” an
observation, Harris remarks, which accords with Marcel’s experiment (at
A.D. 1702).
“I am convinced,” says Mr. Downie, “that the quantity and vicinity of
iron, in most ships, has an effect in attracting the needle; for it
is found by experience that the needle will not always point in the
same direction when placed in different parts of a ship; also, it is
very easily found that two ships, steering the same course by their
respective compasses, will not go exactly parallel to each other;
yet when their compasses are on board the same ship they will agree
exactly.”
REFERENCES.--William Walker, “The Magnetism of Ships,” London,
1853, p. 20; J. Farrar, “Elements,” p. 376; Harris, “Rudim.
Magn.,” 1852, Part III. p. 161.
=A.D. 1790.=--Tralles (Johann Georg), a German scientist, is the
first to make known the negative electricity of cascades. This he
communicates through his “Uber d. Elektricität d. Staubbachs,”
published at Leipzig.
In the Report on Atmospheric Electricity of Francis J. F. Duprez,
translated from the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Brussels by Dr. L.
D. Gale, we read that one day while in the Alps, opposite the cascade
of Staubbach, near Lauterbrunnen, Tralles “presented his atmospheric
electrometer, not armed with the metallic wire, to the fine spray which
resulted from the dispersion of the water. He immediately obtained very
distinct signs of negative electricity. The same effect was exhibited
at the cascade of Reichenbach. Volta, a short time after, verified the
correctness of this observation, not only above the great cascades,
but also wherever a fall of water existed, however small, provided
the intervention of the wind caused the dispersion of the drops. The
electricity always appeared to him, as it did to Tralles, negative.
Schübler repeated the same experiments in his journey to the Alps in
1813. He observed farther, that this negative electricity was very
strong, since it became perceptible at a distance of 300 feet from the
cascade of Reichenbach; and at a distance of 100 feet his electrometer
indicated 400 and even 500 degrees.... Tralles attributed it at first
to the friction of the minute drops of water against the air; but soon
after he thought, with Volta, that the cause was to be found in the
evaporation which the same minute drops experience in falling....”
The Italian physicist, Giuseppe Belli, who published at Milan,
during 1836, “Sulla Elettricità negativa delle cascate,” entertains
an opinion contrary to that advanced by M. Becquerel, and believes
“that the electrical phenomenon of the water of cascades is owing to
the development of electricity by the induction which the positive
electricity of the atmosphere exercises on the water. The water, he
says, is by induction in the negative state, when the atmosphere is,
as it is ordinarily, charged with positive electricity. At the moment
when this water divides into thousands of minute drops, it cannot fail
to carry the electricity with which the electrical induction of the
atmosphere has impregnated it to all bodies which it meets.”
REFERENCES.--“Œuvres de Volta,” Vol. II. p. 239; Franz Samuel
Wilde, “Expériences sur l’électricité des cascades” (“Mémoires
de Lausanne,” Vol. III, “Histoire,” p. 13, 1790); “Bibliographie
Universelle,” N. S., 1836, Vol. VI. p. 148; Houzeau et
Lancaster, “Bibl. Générale,” Vol. II. p. 265; “Biblio. Ital.,”
LXXXIII. p. 32; Schweigger, _Journal f. Chemie u. Physik_, Vol.
IX. p. 358; Tralles, “Beyträge zur Lehre von der Electricität”;
L. W. Gilbert’s _Annalen der Physik und Chemie_, Vol. XXVIII
for 1808; F. A. C. Gren’s _Journal der Physik_, Vol. I. for
1790; Humboldt, “Cosmos,” London, 1849, Vol. I. p. 344, and the
reference to Gay-Lussac in _Ann. de chimie et de physique_, Vol.
VIII. p. 167.
=A.D. 1790.=--Eandi (Giuseppe Antonio Francesco Geronimo), an
able physicist, native of Saluces (1735–1799), reads, May 10, before
the Academy of Sciences of Turin, a Memoir upon Electricity _in
vacuo_ which is printed in the Collections of that Institution. He
studied for the priesthood and entered the Normal College of Turin,
where he followed protracted courses of literature under Bartoli and
of natural philosophy under Beccaria, becoming the assistant of the
latter, whom he finally replaced from 1776 to 1781. He afterward became
Professor of Natural Philosophy at the College of Fine Arts, where he
gave particular attention to electrical studies, and published several
papers on that science, as well as upon natural philosophy generally.
He bequeathed all his possessions to his nephew Vassalli, upon
condition of the latter’s taking the name of Eandi.
Besides the above, he wrote: “Memorie istorische,” etc., or “Historical
Memoir upon the Studies of Father Beccaria,” Turin, 1783, which is
dedicated to Count Balbi and gives the new theories of electricity,
also an “Essay upon the Errors of Several Physicists in Regard to
Electricity,” Turin, 1788.
REFERENCES.--“Notice sur la vie ... d’ Eandi par
Vassalli-Eandi,” Turin, 1804; “Biographie Générale,” Vol. XV.
p. 589; Larousse, “Dict. Universel,” Vol. VII. p. 5; the Turin
Academy Memoirs for the years 1802–1804; Eandi e Vassalli-Eandi,
“Physicæ Experimentalis,” etc., Turin, 1793–1794.
=A.D. 1790.=--Vassalli-Eandi (Antonio Maria), Italian savant
(1761–1825), nephew of G. A. F. G. Eandi, who was, like his uncle, a
pupil of Beccaria, publishes his views concerning the electricity of
bodies and regarding other investigations, as well as a report upon
experiments relative to the electricity of water and of ice, which
appear respectively in L. V. Brugnatelli’s _Annali di Chimica_,
Vol. I. p. 53, in the “Bibl. Fis. d’Europa,” Vol. XVII. p. 144, and in
the third volume of “Mem. della Soc. Italiana.”
He was one of the most prolific of Italian writers, his more important
essays, which number 160, being written in Italian, Latin and French,
and covering almost every leading branch of physical science. One of
his biographers tells us, _Il a embrassé, pour ainsi dire, l’ensemble
des connaissances humaines_, and that he is one of whom his country
may justly be proud.
In his investigations concerning aerolites, which appeared in
1786 (“Memoria ... sopra ... bolidi in generale”), he explains
the movements of those bodies much more satisfactorily than had
previously been done by any scientist. Essays published by him during
the same year, as well as in 1789 and 1791, treat of the effect of
electricity upon vegetables; then follow his papers relative to
Bertholon’s “Electricité des Météores,” to Haüy’s theories and to the
meteorological observations of Senebier, De Saussure, Toaldo and Monge,
up to 1792, when Vassalli was made Professor of Natural Philosophy at
the Turin University. He had also in the meantime carefully looked
into the scientific knowledge possessed by the ancients, and was led
to believe, as shown in his “Conghietture sopra l’arte,” etc., that
they had the means of attracting and directing thunder and lightning.
The latter fact has been alluded to in this “Bibliographical History,”
under the B.C. 600 entry. (See J. Bouillet, “De l’état des
connaissances,” etc., Saint Etienne, 1862.)
He was after this made perpetual secretary of the Royal Academy of
Sciences of Turin, then became Director of the Museum of Natural
History, as well as of the Observatory situated in the last-named city,
which position he held at the time of his death.
His other essays treat more particularly of animal electricity, the
electricity of fishes, the effects of electricity upon recently
decapitated bodies, the application of electricity and of galvanism to
medicine, and cover very extended observations on meteorology. He was
the editor of both the “Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences of Turin,
from 1792 to 1809,” and of the “Annals of the Turin Observatory, from
1809 to 1818” (Larousse, “Dictionnaire Universel,” Vol. XV. p. 801);
was likewise editor of the “Bibliothèque Italienne,” in conjunction
with Giulio Gioberti and Francesco Rossi, and is said to have devised
an electrometer superior to that of Volta.
REFERENCES.--Vassalli-Eandi, Giulio (or Julio) e Rossi, “Rapport
présenté,” etc., Turin, 1802, or “Transunto del Rapporto,” etc.,
Milano, 1803 (“Opusc. Scelti,” Vol. XXII. p. 51), translated
into English, London, 1803 (_Phil. Mag._, Vol. XV. p. 38); also
Vassalli-Eandi, F. Rossi et V. Michelotti, “Précis de nouvelles
expériences galvaniques,” Turin, 1809 (“Mém. de Turin,” Années,
1805–1808, p. 160). See likewise, S. Berrutti, “Elogio,” etc.,
1839; “Saggio sulla vita ... Vassalli-Eandi,” Torino, 1825;
“Notizie biografiche ... Vassalli Eandi” (“Mem. di Torino,”
Vol. XXX. p. 19); “Elogio, scritto dal Berrutti” (“Mem. of the
Ital. Soc.,” Vol. XXII. p. liv); _Phil. Mag._, Vol. XV. p.
319; _Journal de Physique_, An. VII. p. 336 and Vols. XLIX,
L; “Ital. Soc. Mem.,” Vols. VIII. p. 516; X. p. 802; XIII.
p. 85; XVII. p. 230; XIX. p. 347; “Mémoires de Turin,” Vols.
X-XIII; “Mem. dell’ Acad. di Torino,” Vols. VI, X, XXII, XXIV,
XXVI, XXVII, XXIX; “Mem. della Soc. Agrar. di Torino,” Vol.
I; “Opuscoli Scelti,” Vols. XIX. pp. 215, etc.; XXII. p. 76;
“Nuova Scelta d’Opuscoli,” Vol. I. p. 167; “Opuscoli Scelti
di Milano,” quarto, Vol. XIV; “Mem. Soc. Ital.,” Vols. IV.
p. 263; X. p. 733; “Biblioteca Oltramontana”; Brugnatelli’s
_Annali di Chimica_; “Giornale Scientifico ... di Torino,”
Vols. I, III; “Giornale Fis. Med.,” Vol. II. p. 110; “Biblioteca
Italiana”--“Bibliothèque Italienne,” Vols. I. p. 128; II. p. 25;
“Recueil périodique ... de Sédillot,” Vol. II. p. 266.
=A.D. 1790–1800.=--Morozzo--Morotius--(Carlo Luigi, Comte de), Italian
savant, who studied mathematics under Lagrange, and was President of
the Turin Academy of Sciences, publishes numerous scientific memoirs
in French through the reports of the last-named institution, in one
of which he is said to have described an experiment suggesting the
electro-magnet.
REFERENCES.--Biography in Larousse, “Dictionnaire Universel,”
Tome XI. p. 577, and in the “Biographie Générale,” Tome XXXVI.
p. 643.
=A.D. 1791.=--Leslie (Sir John), an able English scientist (April
1766–Nov. 1832), who, upon the death of Prof. John Playfair, was called
to the Chair of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh,
writes a very interesting paper entitled “Observations on Electric
Theories,” which is read the following year at the meeting of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh, and is published at the latter place during 1824.
According to Carnevale Antonio Arella, “Storia dell’ Elettricità,”
Alessandria, 1839, Vol. I. p. 130, Sir John Leslie is the author
of quite an interesting treatise on the inefficacy of lightning
conductors, and the “English Cyclopædia” (Biography), Vol. III. p.
866, gives a list of many of the numerous contributions he made
to the leading publications of his day, more particularly in the
“Edinburgh Philos. Transactions,” the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” the
“Edinburgh Review,” and “Nicholson’s Philos. Journal.” The reviewer
adds, what will surprise many readers, that, although some papers by
Sir John Leslie treating of physical subjects were also read before
the Royal Society of London, none were ever printed in their “Philos.
Transactions.”
Professor John Playfair above alluded to (1748–1819), became, during
1785, Joint Professor of Mathematics with Dr. Adam Ferguson in
the University of Edinburgh and, in 1805, exchanged this for the
Professorship of Natural Philosophy in the same university.
REFERENCES.--Macvey Napier, “Memoir of Sir John Leslie,” 1838,
which appeared in seventh edition of “Encycl. Britan.,” Vol.
XIII; “Engl. Cycl.” (Biography); Rose, “New Gen. Biogr.”; Hœfer,
“Nouv. Biogr. Gen.,” Paris, 1862, Vol. XXX. pp. 949–952 (giving
full account of his works); “Encycl. Britan.,” ninth edition,
Edinburgh, 1882, Vol. XIV. pp. 476–477; Sidney Lee, “Dict. Nat.
Biogr.,” Vol. XXXIII. pp. 105–107 and Vol. XLVIII. pp. 413–414;
Pierre Larousse, “Grand Dict. Univ.,” Vol. X. pp. 406–407;
“Caledonian Mercury,” article of Prof. Napier summarized in the
“Gentleman’s Magazine” for 1833, Vol. I. pp. 85–86. Consult also
A.D. 1751 at Adanson; “Dove,” p. 256; _Philosophical Magazine_,
Vols. XL and XLII.
=A.D. 1791.=--At p. 353, Chap. III of the first volume of Gmelin’s
“Handbook of Chemistry,” it is stated that during 1791 James Keir
(Kier) first showed, by immersing iron in a solution of nitrate of
silver or fuming nitric acid, that many metals can be made to pass from
their ordinary _active_ state into a _passive_ or electro-negative
state and lose either wholly or in part their tendency to decompose
acids and metallic oxides.
At pp. 167–170, Sixth Memoir, of Wm. Sturgeon’s “Scientific Researches”
(Bury, 1850), treating of the application of electro-chemistry to the
dissolution of simple metals in fluids, reference is made to the long
line of investigations carried on by both Bergman and Keir, the last
named having demonstrated that iron “acquires that _altered_
state by the action of nitric acid which Sir John Herschel met with
in his experiments, and has called _prepared_ state, and that
Schönbein and others call the _peculiar_ or the _inactive_
state” (Noad’s “Manual of Electricity,” London, 1859, p. 534). The iron
which is active in nitric acid was called by Keir “fresh iron,” while
that which became inactive he designated as “altered iron” (Sturgeon’s
“Annals of Electricity,” Vol. V. p. 439).
Some remarkable phenomena in the display of which but one individual
piece of metal is used, as first shown by Keir, remain, Sturgeon says,
“without even an attempt at explanation by any of the philosophers
under whose notice they have appeared.” Sir John Herschel pronounces
them as of an “extraordinary character”; Prof. Andrews, after giving
some very satisfactory explanations of several phenomena, acknowledges
that he “can offer no explanation of most of the particular facts which
have been described,” and Professor Schönbein “has not made public any
conclusive explanation of them whatever” (_Phil. Mag._ for October
1837, p. 333, and for April 1838, p. 311).
This same James Keir, called by Watt “a mighty chemist” (1735–1820),
has strangely by some been confounded with Robert Kerr, also a
Scotchman, who was an able scientific writer and lived at about the
same period (1755–1813). Kerr made valuable translations from Lavoisier
and Linnæus which, during 1805, won for him a fellowship in the
Edinburgh Royal Society. (Consult Sidney Lee, “Dict. of Nat. Biogr.,”
London, 1892, Vol. XXI. p. 64, also the references therein given;
and the article “Faraday” in the “Encycl. Britan.,” ninth edition,
Edinburgh, 1879, Vol. IX. p. 30.)
REFERENCES.--Mrs. Amelia Moillet, “Sketch of the Life of
James Keir,” 1859; Sidney Lee, “Dict. of Nat. Biog.,” London,
1892, Vol. XXX. pp. 313–314; _Annales de Chimie_ for October
1837; _Phil. Trans._ for 1790, p. 353, as well as Hutton’s
abridgment of the same, Vol. XVI. p. 694; Sturgeon’s “Annals of
Electricity,” Vol. V. p. 427; Gmelin’s Chemistry, pp. 367, 370.
=A.D. 1791.=--Shaw (George), English naturalist, who became a Fellow of
the Royal Society during the year 1789, communicates to the latter body
a paper on the _Scolopendra electrica_ and _Scolopendra subterranea_
(“Linn. Soc. Trans.” I. pp. 103–111). This was afterward translated
into Italian and appeared in Vol. IX. p. 26, of Brugnatelli’s _Annali
di Chimica_. Mr. James Wilson, F.R.S.E., in his “Encycl. Brit.” article
on _Myriapoda_, alludes to the _Scolopendra electrica_ as figured
by Frisch and described by Geoffroy in his “Histoire des Insectes,”
Vol. II. p. 676, n. 5. Shaw also treats of the _Trichiurus Indicus_,
which Sir David Brewster believes to be the same as the _trichiurus
electricus_, known to inhabit the Indian Seas and to have the power of
giving electric shocks.
Five years before the above date (1786), the _Phil. Trans._ contained
(p. 382) the description of the _tetraodon electricus_, which
Lieutenant William Paterson discovered in the cavities of the coral
rocks of one of the Canary Islands and which he found to possess the
properties of other electrical fishes. (See Hutton’s abridgments, Vol.
XVI. p. 134.)
REFERENCES.--“Biographie Générale,” Vol. XLIII. p. 922;
“Gentleman’s Magazine,” Vol. LXXXIII; Poggendorff, Vol. II. p.
918; “Cat. Royal Society Sc. Papers,” Vol. V. p. 674; Dr. Thomas
Young, “Course of Lectures,” London, 1807, Vol. II. p. 436, for
the _Trichiurus Indicus_....
Having thus far called attention to the most important varieties of
the electrical fishes, notably at the articles Adanson (A.D. 1751),
Bancroft (A.D. 1769), Walsh, also Hunter (A.D. 1773), the following
original list of additional references will prove interesting:
_Raia Torpedo._--Stephani Lorenzini, “Osservazioni ...” Firenze,
1678; R. A. F. de Réaumur, “Des Effets ...” Paris, 1714;
Templeman, in “Nouvelliste,” 1759; Ingen-housz (_Phil. Trans._,
1775); Cavendish (_Phil. Trans._, 1776, Vol. LXI. p. 584, Vol.
LXVI. p. 196, also Hutton’s abridgments, Vol. II. p. 485; Vol.
XIII. p. 223; Vol. XIV. p. 23); F. Soave (“Scelta di Opuscoli,”
Vol. XV), Milano, 1776; J. A. Garn, “De Torpedine ...” Witteb.,
1778; R. M. de Termeyer (Raccolta Ferr. di Op. Sc. ... Vol.
VIII), Venice, 1781; L. Spallanzani (“Goth. Mag.,” V. i. 41;
“Opusc. Scelti,” VI. 73), Milano, 1783; Girardi and Walter
(“Mem. Soc. Ital.,” III. 553), Verona, 1786; W. Bryant (“Tr.
Amer. Phil. Soc.,” II. 166, O. S.), Philad., 1786; J. W. Linck,
“De Raja Torpedine,” Lips., 1788; Vassalli-Eandi (_Journal de
Physique_, Vol. XLIX. p. 69); Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (“Annal.
du Mus.,” An. XI. Vol. I., No. 5, and _Phil. Mag._, Vol. XV.
p. 126), 1803; J. F. M. Olfers, “Die Gattung Torpedo ...”
Berlin, 1831; Linari-Santi in “Bibl. Univ.,” Ser. II., Geneva,
1837–1838, and in “Bibl. Ital.,” Vol. XCII. p. 258, Milan,
1839; C. Matteucci, “Recherches ...” Genève, 1837 (“Royal Soc.
Catalogue of Sc. Papers,” Vol. IV. pp. 285–293); also Delle
Chiaje, “On the Organs ...” and P. Savi, “Etudes ...” Paris,
1844; G. Pianciani (“Mem. Soc. Ital.,” XXII. 7); F. Zantedeschi
(“Bull. Acad. Brux.,” VIII. 1841); A. Fusinieri (“Ann. del
Reg. Lomb.-Veneto,” VIII. 239), Padova, 1838; A. F. J. C.
Mayer, “Spicilegium ...” Bonnæ, 1843; L. Calamai, “Osservazioni
...” 1845; C. Robin, “Recherches ...” Paris, 1847; Krünitz,
“Abhandl.,” XVII; _Nicholson’s Journal_, Vol. I. p. 355;
Rozier, IV. p. 205; “Acad. Brux.,” 111; “Phil. Hist. and Mem.
of the Roy. Acad. of Sc. Paris,” 1742, Vol. V. pp. 58–73; John
Ewing, at A.D. 1795; Dr. Godef. Will. Schilling (in original
Latin, also the French translation), “Biblioth. Britannique,”
Vol. XL. pp. 263–272; Dr. Jan Ingen-housz in _Phil. Tr._ Vol.
LXV. p. 1; Vol. LXVIII. pp. 1022, 1027; Vol. LXIX. pp. 537,
661; also Hutton’s abridgments, Vol. XIII. p. 575; Vol. XIV.
pp. 462, 463, 589, 598; “Journal des Sçavans,” Vol. LXXVIII.
for January-April, 1726, p. 58; “The System of Natural History,
written by M. De Buffon,” Edinburgh, 1800, Vol. II. pp. 24–25.
M. R. A. F. De Réaumur, mentioned above, has communicated the
results of his investigations relative to the _torpedo_ in
“Mém. de Paris” for 1714, following it up more particularly with
another article in the issue for year 1723 on magnetization,
which is also alluded to in “Journal des Sçavans,” Vol. LXXXII.
for 1727, p. 4.
_Silurus Electricus._--Ranzi, on the discovery of the discharge
of this animal; P. Forskal “Beobachtungen ...” 1775; F. Pacini,
“Sopra l’ Organo ...” Bologna, 1846; Abd-Allatif, Relation de
l’Egypte, p. 167, quoted at p. 250; Note XI. vol. i. of Libri’s
“Hist. des Mathém.”; C. Maspero, “The Dawn of Civilization,”
New York, 1894, p. 36, wherein it is said that the silurus was
the _nârû_ of the ancient Egyptians, as described by Isidore
Geoffroy de St. Hilaire in his “Histoire Naturelle des Poissons
du Nil.”
_Gymnotus Electricus._--T. Richer, “Observations ...” Paris,
1679 (“Hist. et Mém. de l’Acad. Roy. des Sciences,” Vols. I.
p. 116; VII. i. pt. 2, p. 92); “Edinburgh Review,” Vol. XVI.
pp. 249–250; John Ewing at A.D. 1795; P. Sue, aîné “Histoire
du Galvanisme,” Paris, An. X, 1802, Vol. II. pp. 94–97; A. Van
Berkel, “Reise nach Rio ...” Memming, 1789, for the observations
made in 1680–1689; J. B. Duhamel (“Hist. Acad. Sc.,” 168); J.
N. Allamand, “On the Surinam Eel ... by S’Gravesande,” Haarlem,
1757; Gronov-Gronovius (“Acta Helvetica ...” IV. 26, Basle,
1760; _Phil. Trans._, Vol. LXV. part i. p. 94, 102, and part
ii. p. 395); P. V. Musschenbroek (“Hist. et Méms. de l’Acad.
des Sc.,” 1760); G. W. Schilling, “Diatribe de Morbo ...” 1770,
treating of the torpedo as well as of the _magnetism_ of the
Gymnotus (which latter was observed by him in 1764, and is
alluded to besides by Jan Ingen-housz in his “Nouv. Exper.,”
Paris, 1785); “Mem. of Berlin Acad. of Sc.,” Bonnefoy, “De
l’app. de l’élect ...” 1782–1783, p. 48; Ferdinando Elice,
“Saggio sull’ Elettricità,” p. 26; H. Williamson, Alexander
Garden and John Hunter in the _Phil. Trans._ for 1775, p. 94,
102, 105, 395, and in Hutton’s abridgments, Vol. XIII. pp.
597–600; R. M. de Termeyer (“Opus. Scelti,” IV. 324, for 1781);
H. C. Flagg (“Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc.,” O. S., Vol. II. p. 170);
Samuel Fahlberg, “Beskrifning ofver elektriska alen Gymnotus
electricus,” Stockholm, 1801; (See Fahlberg at A.D. 1769, and
in “Vet Acad. Nyr. Handl.”; Gilbert, _Annalen_, XIV. p. 416);
Humboldt, “Observations ... anguille elect ...” Paris, 1806;
“Versuche ... elec. fische,” Jena, 1806; also in the _Annales
de Chimie et de Physique_, Vol. XI for 1819, and at p. 256 of
the “Harmonies of Nature,” by Dr. G. Hartwig, London, 1866,
will be found a picture showing mode of capture of the Electric
Eel; F. S. Guisan, “De Gymnoto ...” Tübingen, 1819, Carl
Palmstedt (“Skand. Naturf. motets Forhand,” 1842); H. Letheby
(“Proceedings London El. Soc.,” Aug. 16, 1842, and June 17,
1843); M. Vanderlot’s work, alluded to by Humboldt at p. 88 of
his “Voyage ...”; F. Steindachner, “Die Gymnotidie ...” Wien,
1868.
Consult likewise, for reputed magnetic powers of the _echeneis_,
or sucking-fish, Gaudentius Merula, “Memorabilium,” 1556,
p. 209; Fracastorio, “De Sympathia,” lib. 1, cap. 8; W.
Charleton, “Physiologia,” 1654, p. 375; Cornelius Gemma,
“De Naturæ Divinis,” 1575, lib. 1, cap. 7, p. 123; and, for
electrical fishes generally, Rozier, Intr., II. p. 432; Bloch,
“Naturgeschichte ...” Berlin, 1786; A. De la Rive, “Traité
de l’électricité,” Paris, 1858, Vol. III. pp. 61–82; Rozier,
Vol. XXVII. pp. 139–143; “Works of Michael de Montaigne,” by
W. Hazlitt, New York, 1872, Vol. II. pp. 158–159; R. J. Haüy,
“Traité de Physique,” p. 41; Geoffroy Saint-Hilare (_Journal de
Physique_, LVI. 242; _Phil. Mag._ XV. 126–136, 261; “B. Soc.
Phil.” N. 70; Gilbert, _Annalen_, XIV. 397; “Ann. du Mus.”
for 1803); M. Schultze, “Zur Kentniss ... elect ... fische,”
Halle, 1858 and 1859; Jobert (de Lamballe) “Des Appareils ...”
Paris, 1858; W. Keferstein and D. Kupffer (Henle u. Pfeuffer’s
“Zeitschr. f. rat. Med. Newe Folgc,” III. 1858) and Keferstein’s
“Beitrag ... elekt. fische,” Göttingen, 1859; “Annual of Sc.
Discovery” for 1863, giving, at pp. 115–116, the views of
Sir John Herschel, of Charles Robin and of M. Moreau on the
electrical organs of fishes.
=A.D. 1792.=--Berlinghieri (Francesco Vacca, and not Vacca Leopold
nor Andrea Vacca), Italian surgeon and anatomical writer, communicates
to M. De La Méthérie the result of the extensive experiments made by
him in concert with M. Pignotti and his brother. After describing his
investigations with frogs, he remarks that the same movements and
contractions can be produced on animals with hot blood, but that the
latter require a peculiar process. He says that after having dissected
the crural or any other considerable nerve, and cut it at a certain
height to separate it from its superior part, it should have a piece of
tinfoil wrapped around its summit, and the communication should be made
in the usual way by touching the coating with one of the extremities of
the exciting arc and the muscles in which the nerve is distributed with
the other extremity.
Many other investigations of Berlinghieri were, later on, communicated
to the Société Philomathique, by whom they were successfully renewed,
and, during the year 1810, a translation of his paper on the method of
imparting magnetism to a bar of iron without a magnet appeared at p.
157, Vol. XXXV. of the _Philosophical Magazine_.
REFERENCES.--Rozier, XL. p. 133, and XLI. p. 314; “Giorn. di
Med. Prac. di Brera,” IX. pp. 171–298; L. B. Phillips, “Dict. of
Biog. Ref.,” 1871, p. 137; Tipaldo, “Biografia ...” 1834.
=A.D. 1792.=--Lalande (Joseph Jérome le Français de), a distinguished
scientist, and, doubtless, the best known of all French astronomers,
who had previously communicated (1761) observations on the loadstone
to the “Mémoires de Paris,” and had likewise written upon meteoric
displays (1771), addresses to the _Journal des Sçavans_ of Nov. 1792
a treatise entitled “Une Notice sur la découverte du Galvanisme,”
justifying his claim to being the first introducer of galvanism into
France, which he had before made through the columns of the _Journal de
Paris_ of the 17 Pluviôse, An. VII.
REFERENCES.--Lalande, “Abrégé de l’Astronomie,” pp. 101, etc.;
“Biog. Générale,” Vol. XXVIII. p. 948; “Biog. Universelle,” Vol.
XXII. pp. 603–613; Ninth “Enc. Britannica,” Vol. XIV. p. 225; P.
Sue, aîné, “Hist. du Galv.,” Paris, An. X (1802), Vol. I. p. 1.
=A.D. 1792.=--Chappe (Claude), a French mechanician (1763–1805),
introduces the _sémaphore_, which he at first called a _tachygraphe_,
from two Greek words meaning to write fast, but to which M. Miot,
chief of one of the divisions of the War Department, gave the name of
telegraph during the year 1793. Chappe had not long before devised a
contrivance somewhat like that alluded to by Barthélémy (A.D. 1788),
but it was not apparently brought into use.
His _sémaphore_ consisted of a vertical wooden pillar 15 feet or 16
feet high, bearing a transverse beam 11 feet or 12 feet long, which
turned upon its centre and held at each extremity pivoted arms so
worked by cords or levers as to admit of 256 distinct signals. The
semaphores were placed upon high towers, about four miles apart, on
level ground, and even as much as ten miles apart upon intervening
elevations. This system of signals was presented by Chappe to the
Assemblée Législative, and was originally erected during the month of
August 1794 upon stations between Paris and Lille (Lisle), a distance
of about 148 miles. One of the first sentences conveyed between the two
places by the Committee of Public Safety consumed 13 minutes and 40
seconds, but it was not long before dispatches could be conveyed in two
minutes’ time, and it was through Chappe’s apparatus that the news of
the recapture of the city of Condé was conveyed to the Assembly shortly
after the entry of the troops of the Republic.
It is not now believed that Claude Chappe was acquainted with the
devices of either Robert Hooke (at A.D. 1684) or of Guillaume Amontons
(at A.D. 1704), as was at the time claimed by many of his jealous
contemporaries. No doubt exists that he is justly entitled to the
credit of having, with the assistance of other members of his family,
developed an entirely new system of signals as well as the mechanism
by which they were operated. The histories of telegraphy written by
I. U. J. Chappe (Paris, 1824; Le Mans, 1840) review Claude Chappe’s
investigations and the difficulties he encountered, besides making
reference to the false magnetic telegraphs of A. T. Paracelsus
(A.D. 1490–1541), William Maxwell (A.D. 1679), and F. Santanelli
(“Philosophiæ reconditæ ...” Coloniæ, 1723) alluded to in the
“Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales.”
Claude Chappe’s uncle, L’Abbé Jean Chappe d’Auteroche (1722–1769),
French astronomer, who succeeded N. L. de la Caille at the Paris
Observatory as assistant to Cassini de Thury and edited a translation
of the works of Dr. Halley, is the author of several memoirs upon the
declination and inclination and upon lightning, meteors, etc., alluded
to in J. B. J. Delambre’s “Hist. de l’Astron. au 18^e siècle,” in J. C.
Poggendorff’s “Biog.-Liter. Hand.,” Vol. I. p. 420, and in the “Mém. de
Paris,” 1767, _Mém._ p. 344.
REFERENCES.--English Encycl., “Arts and Sciences,” Vol. VIII.
p. 65; “Johnson’s Encycl.,” Vol. IV. p. 757; “Penny Ency.,”
Vol. XXIV. p. 146; Shaffner, “Manual,” pp. 27, 45 and 48; “Le
Cosmos,” Paris, Feb. 4, 1905, p. 128; Nicholson’s “Journ. of
Nat. Phil.,” Vol. VIII. p. 164, note; _Sc. American Supplement_,
No. 475, p. 7579; “Emporium of Arts and Sciences,” Vol. I. p.
292; Rozier, XXXIV. p. 370, and XL. p. 329; “Bull. des Sc. de la
Société Philomathique,” March 1793, No. 21, for an account of
the experiments of Galvani and of Valli repeated for the Society
by C. Chappe, M. Robillard and A. F. de Silvestre.
=A.D. 1792.=--Valli (Eusebius), Italian physician of Pisa,
corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Turin,
publishes his “Experiments on Animal Electricity” the results of which
were communicated to the French Academy of Sciences and found to be of
such great importance that a committee composed of Messrs. Le Roy, Vicq
d’Azyr, Coulomb and Fourcroy, was directed to repeat them. The most
important were repeated in Fourcroy’s laboratory on the 12th of July
1792.
Valli was the first to demonstrate that when an arc of two metals,
plumber’s lead and silver, is employed upon an animal, the most violent
contractions are produced while the lead is applied to the nerves and
the silver to the muscles. He also showed that of all metals, zinc,
when applied to the nerves, has the most remarkable power of exciting
contractions; and he found that when a frog had lost its sensibility to
the passage of a current, it regained it by repose.
These experiments were also repeated before the French Royal Society
of Medicine. M. Mauduyt, who was present, deduced from the results
obtained by Valli that the metals were charged with a different
quantity of the electric fluid, in so much that when they were brought
in contact with each other a discharge ensued. And, secondly, that the
animal body, by which the electric fluid is rendered perceptible, is a
more delicate electrometer than any one heretofore discovered.
Many new and very interesting investigations were afterward made by
Valli upon different animals, the results of which were given to
the public through the columns of the _Journal de Physique_ as
shown below. These embrace thirteen experiments upon animals rendered
insensible by means of opium and powdered tobacco, showing electricity
to be independent of their vitality, as well as others to show that the
electric fluid is necessary to man and animals. He fully established
the identity of the nervous and the electric fluids, and proved that
the convulsions took place by merely bringing the muscles themselves
into contact with the nerves, without the intervention of any metal
whatever. In answer to the inquiry of M. Vicq d’Azyr, member of the
late French Academy of Sciences, he supported by nineteen experiments
the assertion that however the blood vessels may be, as they assuredly
are, conductors of electricity, the nerves alone prove capable of
exciting muscular movements in consequence of the mode in which they
are disposed.
REFERENCES.--Brugnatelli, _Annali di Chimica_, Vol. VII. pp.
40, 213, 228 (and pp. 138, 159, 186, 208 for Caldani); also
the “Giornale Fis. Med. di Brugnatelli,” Vol. I. p. 264; Sue,
“Histoire du Galvanisme,” Paris, An. X-1802, Vol. I. p. 45;
“Société Philomathique,” Vol. I. pp. 27, 31, 43; _Journal de
Physique_, Vol. XLI. pp. 66, 72, 185, 189, 193, 197, 200, 435;
Vol. XLII. pp. 74, 238, the last named containing the “Lettre
sur l’Electricité Animale” (“De animalis electricæ theoriæ
...” Mutinæ, 1792) sent by Valli to MM. De La Méthérie and
Desgenettes; Report of MM. Chappe, Robillard and Silvestre on
Valli’s and Galvani’s experiments (“Soc. Phil.” for March 1793,
No. 21); Report of Messrs. Le Roy, Vicq d’Azyr and Coulomb in
“Médecine éclairée par les Sciences Physiques,” Tome IV. p. 66;
“Epitome of Electricity and Magnetism,” Philad., 1809, p. 133;
“Versuche ... animal, electricität” of Karl Friedrich Kielmayer
(Kielmaier) of the Tübingen University (Poggendorff, Vol. I. p.
1253; F. A. C. Gren, _Journal der Physik_, Vol. VIII for 1794);
Floriano Caldani’s works, 1792–1795, and those of Leopoldo
Marc-Antonio Caldani, 1757–1823; Junoblowiskiana Society,
1793–1795.
=A.D. 1793.=--Fontana (Felice), distinguished Italian experimental
philosopher and physiologist, gives in his “Lettere sopra l’
Elettricità Animale,” the result of further extensive investigations
carried on by him to ascertain more especially all the features of
galvanic irritability and the peculiar actions of the several organs
in cases of death by electricity. Some of his previous observations
in the same line had already been made known through his “Di Moti
dell’ Iride,” 1765, and “Richerche filosofiche,” 1775, all which led
to an active correspondence in after years with the Italian Giochino
Carradori, as will be seen by consulting the volumes of Luigi Valentino
Brugnatelli’s well-known “Giomale Fisico-Medico” (Cuvier, in “Biog.
Univ.,” Vol. XV. p. 8, par. 1816; “Giornale Fisico-Medico,” Vol. IV. p.
116).
Fontana (Gregorio), younger brother of Felice Fontana, likewise an
able natural philosopher, succeeded the celebrated Ruggiero Giuseppe
Boscovich in the Chair of Higher Mathematics at the University of
Padua, and is the author of “Disquisitiones physico-mathematicæ,”
Papiæ, 1780, as well as of many papers in the “Mem. della Soc. It.
delle Scienze,” wherein he gives detailed accounts of many very
interesting electrical observations. Mention of Gregorio Fontana’s name
has already been made under Bennet, A.D. 1787.
REFERENCES.--Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. I. part i.
p. 334, and, for R. G. Boscovich, “The Edinburgh Encyclopædia,”
1830, Vol. III. pp. 744–749.
=A.D. 1793.=--Aldini (Giovanni), nephew of Luigi Galvani and one
of the most active members of the National Institute of Italy, who
succeeded his former instructor, M. Canterzani, in the Chair of Physics
at the Bologna University, established in the last-named Institution a
scientific society whose open object was to combat all of Volta’s works
and which became very hostile to the organization already formed in the
University of Pavia by Felice Fontana, Bassiano Carminati and Gioachino
Carradori against the followers of Galvani. Similar societies espousing
the cause of Volta were subsequently organized in England, at the
suggestion of Cavallo and others, and during five years, the scientists
of Europe were divided between the two discoverers, without, however,
any material benefit accruing therefrom to either faction.
Aldini proved to be an indefatigable investigator, as shown by the
numerous Memoirs sent by him to the publications named below, up to
the month of October 1802, when he experimented before the Galvani
Society of Paris. An account of these experiments is given in his
“Essai théorique,” etc., where, among other results, attention is
called to the curious fact that contractions can be excited in a
prepared frog by holding it in the hand and plunging its nerves into
the interior of a wound made in the muscle of a living animal (Figuier,
“Exposition,” etc., Vol. IV. p. 308). His interesting investigations
of the artificial piles of muscle and brain, first made by M. La Grave
and shown to the French Galvani Society, are alluded to in _Nicholson’s
Journal_, Vol. X. p. 30, in the _Journal de Physique_, An. XI. pp. 140,
159, 233, 472, and in Sturgeon’s “Scientific Researches,” Bury, 1850,
p. 195.
Nearly all of Aldini’s experiments were successfully repeated in
London at Mr. Wilson’s Anatomical Theatre, where Mr. Cuthbertson
assisted Prof. Aldini in arranging the apparatus, and where a student,
by the name of Hutchins, furnished the anatomical preparations, but
the demonstration, of all others, which attracted most attention was
doubtless the one made in London on the 17th of January 1803. The
murderer Forster had just been executed and, after his body lay for
one hour exposed in the cold at Newgate, it was handed over to Mr.
Koate, President of the London College of Surgeons, who, with Aldini,
made upon it numerous important observations to ascertain the precise
effects of galvanism with a voltaic column of one hundred and twenty
copper and zinc couples. The extraordinary results obtained, which
cannot properly be enumerated here, are to be found in the “Essai
Théorique,” etc., already alluded to. They led Aldini to believe
he could, by the galvanic agency, bring back those in whom life was
not totally extinct, such as in cases of the recently drowned or
asphyxiated. (Consult M. Bonnejoy’s method of proving death by ...
Faradization, Paris, 1866, and Georgio Anselmo, “Effets du Galvanisme
...” Turin, 1803; S. T. Sömmering, “On the application of Galvanism to
ascertain the reality of death,” Ludwig scripter nevrolog., III. 23;
Ure, “Exper. on the body of a criminal ...” “Journal of Sc. and Arts,”
No. XII; _Phil. Mag._, Vol. LIII. p. 56; Jean Janin de Combe Blanche,
“Sur les causes,” etc., Paris, 1773 (hanging); C. W. Hufeland, 1783,
for the app. of Elec. in cases of asphyxia; T. Kerner, for the app.
of Galv. and Magn. as restoratives, Cannstadt, 1858; Wm. Henley, for
electricity as a stimulant ... drowned or ... suffocated, “Trans. of
the Humane Society,” Vol. I. p. 63.)
Another of Aldini’s curious experiments was the production of very
powerful muscular contractions upon the heads of oxen and other
animals recently decapitated, by introducing into one of the ears a
wire connecting with one of the battery poles and into the nostrils
or tongue a wire communicating with the other pole. Thus were the
eyes made repeatedly to open and roll in their orbits while the ears
would shake, the tongue move and the nostrils dilate very perceptibly
(De la Rive, “A Treatise on Electricity,” 1856, Vol. II. p. 489, and
1858, Vol. III. p. 588; Pepper, “Voltaic Electricity,” 1869, pp. 287,
288). In the experiments which Aldini made during 1804 upon corpses,
the body became violently agitated and even raised itself as if about
to walk, the arms alternately rose and fell and the forearm was made
to hold a weight of several pounds, while the fists clenched and beat
violently the table upon which the body lay. Natural respiration was
also artificially re-established and, through pressure exerted against
the ribs, a lighted candle placed before the mouth was several times
extinguished.
For the experiments of the eminent French physiologist and anatomist
Marie François Xavier Bichat, of Vassalli-Eandi, Giulio, Rossi, Nysten,
Hallé, Mezzini, Klein, Bonnet, Pajot-Laforest, Dudoyon, Berlinghieri,
Fontana, Petit-Radel, Alizeau, Lamartillière, Guillotin, Nauche
and others upon animals and men recently decapitated, see Bichat’s
“Recherches Physiologiques sur la vie et la mort,” Paris, 1805;
Francesco Rossi’s “Rapport des expériences,” etc., Turin, 1803; P. H.
Nysten’s “Nouvelles Expériences Galvaniques,” etc., Paris, 1811, and
also the latter’s “Expériences faites ... le 14 Brumaire, An. XI.”
(Consult likewise, J. R. P. Bardenot, “Les Recherches ... refutées,”
Paris, 1824, and, for an account of Bichat consult F. R. Buisson,
“Précis historique ...” Paris, 1802; Larousse, Vol. II. pp. 703, 704;
“Biog. Univ.,” Vol. XI. pp. 2–19.)
In Aldini’s “Account of Galvanism,” printed for Cuthell and Martin,
London, 1803, it is said (p. 218) that, on the 27th of February 1803,
he transmitted current through a battery of eighty silver and zinc
plates from the West Mole of Calais harbour to Fort Rouge, by means of
a wire supported on the masts of boats, and made it return through two
hundred feet of intervening water.
REFERENCES.--J. B. Van Mons’ treatise on animal electricity in
Tome III of the sixth year of the “Magasin Encyclopédique”;
Fowler, in “Bibl. Britannica,” May 1796; Giulio e Rossi (“Gior.
Fis. Med. di Brugnatelli,” 1793, Vol. I. p. 82); P. Sue, ainé,
“Hist. du Galvanisme,” Paris, An. X, 1802, Vol. I. pp. 31, 67,
73; Vol. II. p. 268; Brugnatelli, _Annali di Chimica_, Vols.
XIII. p. 135; XIV. p. 174; XIX. pp. 29, 158; “Opuscoli Scelti,”
Vols. XVII. p. 231; XIX. p. 217; XX. p. 73; XXI. p. 412; “Mem.
Soc. Ital.,” Vol. XIV. p. 239; Poggendorff, Vol. I. p. 27;
“Bibl. Britan.,” Vol. XXII. 1803, pp. 249–266; “Galvanische und
elektrische ... Körpern,” 4to, Frankfort, 1804; “Bull. des Sc.
de la Soc. Philom.,” No. 68; J. C. Carpue, “Bibl. Britannica,”
Nos. 207, 208, p. 373; _Phil. Mag._, Vols. XIV. pp. 88, 191,
288, 364; XV. pp. 40, 93; Cassius Larcher, M. Daubancourt et
M. Zanetti, ainé (_Ann. de Chimie_, Vol. XLV. p. 195); also
Larcher, Daubancourt et M. de Saintiot (Précis succinct, etc.,
Paris, 1803); W. Sturgeon, “Scientific Researches,” Bury, 1850,
p. 194; M. Kilian, “Versuche über restitution ...” Giessen,
1857; Gilbert, IV. 246; J. Tourdes (“Décade Philos.” No. 3,
An. X. p. 118); Francesco Rossi (“Bibl. Ital.,” Vol. I. p.
106; _Phil. Mag._, Vol. XVIII. p. 131; and in the “Mémoires
de Turin”); J. J. Sue, “Recherches Physiol.,” etc., 1803, p.
77; Vassalli-Eandi (“Expériences sur les décapités ...” Turin,
1802 and “Recueil ... de Sédillot,” Vol. II. p. 266); C. H.
Wilkinson, “Elements of Galvanism,” etc., London, 1804, 2
Vols. _passim_; Report of MM. Chappe, Robillard and Silvestre
(“Bull. des Sciences de la Soc. Philom.,” No. 21 for March
1793; also _Jour. de Phys._, Vol. XLII. p. 289); M. Payssé
(“Jour. de la Soc. de Pharm.,” first year, p. 100); Dr. Crichton
(“Rec. Périod. de Litt. Méd. Etrangère,” Tome II. p. 342);
J. Louis Gauthier, “Dissertatio,” etc., Hales, 1793 (“Com.
de Leipzig,” Tome XXXVI. p. 473); Gardiner’s “Observ. on the
animal œconomy”; Humboldt (“Soc. Philom.,” Vol. I. p. 92); Alex.
Monro’s “Experiments,” etc., Edin., 1793, 1794 (“Trans. Edin.
Roy. Soc.,” Vol. III); Felice Fontana, “Lettere ...” 1793;
Joseph Izarn, “Manuel du Galvanisme,” Paris, An. XII, 1804,
pp. 97, 138, 141, 160, 163, 285; Louis Figuier, “Exposition et
Histoire,” Vol. IV. pp. 307–308, 358, 360–363, 365, 366, 370,
371.
=A.D. 1793.=--Fowler (Richard), a very ingenious physician, of
Salisbury, makes known in Edinburgh his “Experiments and Observations
relative to the influence lately discovered by Galvani and commonly
called Animal Electricity,” of which a very complete review is made by
Dr. G. Gregory at pp. 374–381, Vol. I of his “Economy of Nature,” etc.,
third edition, published in London during the year 1804.
Dr. Fowler observed that the contractions in a frog are excited by
making the metals touch under water even at the distance of an inch
from the divided spine of the animal. He succeeded in causing the heart
to contract, but could not produce the same effect upon the stomach
and intestines. He also found, as did Prof. John Robison, of Edinburgh,
at the same period, that the senses of touch and smell are unaffected
by the metals, but that when these are applied to the eye, or, what is
better, when they are thrust up between the teeth and the lips, and
then made to touch, a flash of light is rendered visible. This is the
case also when the metals are placed between the gums and the upper and
lower lips, as proven by the experiments of Dr. Rutherford and of Mr.
George Hunter, of York. Fowler likewise observed that all pure metals
prove excellent conductors of the galvanic influence and that living
vegetables afford it a ready passage, but that stones and oils seem to
be possessed of no conducting power whatsoever.
In conjunction with Mr. Alexander Munro, Fowler published a work
on animal electricity (translated into German under the title of
“Abhandlung ueber thierische elekt.” etc.), while, in the “Bibliotheca
Britannica” for May 1796, mention will be found of the observations of
Dr. Fowler respecting the muscular irritability excited by electricity,
as well as on the reproduction of the nervous substance, on the action
of poisons, on the phenomena of muscular contraction, etc. etc.
REFERENCES.--“Essays and Observations,” etc., Edinburgh, 1793,
in Library of the Royal Institution; Gilbert Blane’s paper read
to the English Royal Society, of which an extract can be found
in Bacher’s “Medical Journal,” Vol. XC. p. 127; Figuier, “Exp.
et Hist. des Princip. Déc.,” Vol. IV. p. 309; C. H. Wilkinson,
“Elements of Galvanism,” London, 1804, Chap. VI. _et passim_;
eighth “Encyc. Brit.,” Vol. XXI. p. 634.
=A.D. 1793.=--Dalton (John), LL.D., F.R.S. (1766–1844), a very
able English natural philosopher and the illustrious author of
the “Atomic Theory of Chemistry and of the Constitution of Mixed
Gases,” gives in his earliest separate publication, “Meteorological
Observations and Essays,” the result of many experiments upon the
electricity of the atmosphere, made by him at Kendal and at Keswick
during the seven years ending May 1793.
He proved, as Sir David Brewster expresses it, that the aurora
exercises an irregular action on the magnetic needle, that the luminous
beams of the aurora borealis are parallel to the dipping needle; that
the rainbow-like arches cross the magnetic meridian at right angles;
that the broad arch of the horizontal light is bisected by the magnetic
meridian; and that the boundary of a limited aurora is half the
circumference of a great circle crossing the magnetic meridian at right
angles, the beams perpendicular to the horizon being only those on the
magnetic meridian.
In the eighth “Encyclopædia Britannica” (Vol. IV. p. 246), treating of
the height of polar lights, reference is made to the extraordinary
aurora borealis observed by Dalton on the 29th of March 1826, and of
which a description is given in a paper read before the Royal Society,
April 17, 1828 (_Phil. Mag. or Annals_, Vol. IV. p. 418; _Philosophical
Transactions_ for 1828, Part II; James Hoy in _Phil. Mag._, Vol. LI. p.
422; J. Farquharson in _Phil. Trans._ for 1839, p. 267). This aurora
was seen in places one hundred and seventy miles apart and covered an
area of 7000 to 8000 square miles. In Vol. XIV of the same Encyclopædia
will be found (p. 15), an account of another aurora observed at Kendal,
February 12, 1793, while at p. 12 are given Dalton’s views as to the
connection between the heat and magnetism of the earth, and, at p.
66, his conclusions as to the cause of the aurora and its magnetic
influence.
REFERENCES.--“Memoirs of Dalton’s Life,” by Dr. W. C. Henry,
London, 1854; “Life and Discoveries of Dalton,” in _British
Quarterly Review_, No. 1; _Pharmaceutical Journal_, London,
October 1841; Thomson’s “History of Chemistry,” Vol. II; Young’s
“Course of Lectures,” London, 1807, Vol. I. pp. 706–709, 753,
and Vol. II. pp. 466–470; Noad, “Manual,” etc., London, 1859,
pp. 226, 269, 534; article, “Aurora Borealis,” immediately
following A.D. 1683; Sir H. Davy, “Bakerian Lectures,” London,
1840, pp. 322, 323, 328–330; “Dict. of Nat. Biog.,” Vol. XIII.
pp. 428–434, as well as the numerous references therein cited.
Consult also, for theories, investigations, observations,
records, etc., of the Aurora Borealis: Georg. Kruger, 1700; J.
J. Scheuchzer, 1710–1712, 1728–1730; L. Feuillée, 1719; J. L.
Rost, 1721; J. C. Spidberg, 1724; W. Derham, 1728, 1729–1730;
F. C. Mayer--Meyer, 1726; J. F. Weidler, 1729, 1730, 1735; J.
Lulolfs, 1731; M. Kelsch, 1734; F. M. Zanotti, 1737, 1738; also
Zanotti and P. Matteucci, 1739; B. Zendrini, J. Poleni, F. M.
Serra, E. Sguario and D. Revillas in 1738; G. Bianchi, 1738 and
1740; J. M. Serantoni, 1740; G. C. Cilano de Maternus, 1743; S.
von Trienwald, 1744; G. Guadagni, 1744; J. F. Ramus, 1745; C.
Nocetus, 1747; P. Matteucci, 1747; Jno. Huxham, 1749–1750; G. W.
Krafft, 1750; P. Kahm--Kalm, 1752; G. Reyger, 1756; A. Hellant,
1756, 1777; Jos. Stepling, 1761; H. Hamilton, 1767, 1777; M. A.
Pictet, 1769; J. E. Silberschlag, 1770; C. E. Mirus, 1770; J. E.
B. Wiedeburg, 1771; Max. Hell, 1776; Mr. Hall, J. H. Helmuth,
1777; E. H. de Ratte, W. L. Krafft, 1778; J. E. Helfenzrieder,
1778; G. S. Poli, 1778–1779; Marcorelle and Darguier, 1782; L.
Cotte, 1783; J. A. Cramer, 1785; D. Galizi, in A. Calogera’s
“Nuova Raccolta ...” Vol. XXXIX. p. 64; J. L. Boeckmann, in
“Mem. de Berlin” for the year 1780; H. Ussher, 1788; G. Savioli,
1789, 1790; J. J. Hemmer, 1790; P. A. Bondoli, 1790, 1792, 1802;
A. Prieto, 1794; J. D. Reuss’s works published in Göttingen;
Jacopo Penada, 1807–1808; M. Le Prince, “Nouvelle Théorie
...”; W. Dobbie, 1820, 1823; Col. Gustavson, in _Phil. Mag._
for 1821, p. 312; M. Dutertre, 1822; J. L. Späth, 1822; Chr.
Hansteen, 1827, 1855; L. F. Kaemtz, 1828, 1831; G. W. Muncke,
1828; J. Farquharson, 1829; D. Angelstrom, Rob. Hare, 1836; Ant.
Colla, 1836, 1837; L. Pacinotti, 1837; G. F. Parrot, 1838; J.
H. Lefroy, 1850, 1852; Don M. Rico-y-Sinobas, 1853; A. A. de La
Rive, 1854; A. Boué (_Katalog_), 1856, 1857; C. J. H. E. Braun,
1858; E. Matzenauer, 1861; F. Dobelli, 1867; F. Denza, 1869.
=A.D. 1793–1797.=--Robison (John), a very distinguished English
natural philosopher, completes what are without question the most
important of all his scientific publications. These are to be found
throughout the eighteen volumes and two supplements to the third
“Encyclopædia Britannica,” where they cover such subjects as Physics,
Electricity, Magnetism, Thunder, Variation, etc. etc. Taken together,
“they exhibited,” according to Dr. Thomas Young, “a more complete view
of the modern improvements of physical science than had previously been
in the possession of the British public.”
It was after his retirement from the navy that Robison devoted himself
to scientific studies, becoming the successor of Dr. Black in the
lectureship of chemistry at the University of Glasgow during 1766,
and accepting, seven years later (1773), the Professorship of Natural
Philosophy at Edinburgh, where he taught all branches of physics
and of the higher mathematics. In 1783 he was made Secretary of the
Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, received the degree of Doctor of
Laws, 1798–1799, and was elected foreign member of the Saint Petersburg
Academy of Sciences in 1800. Of him, Mr. James Watt wrote, Feb. 7,
1805: “He was a man of the clearest head and the most science of
anybody I have known” (Arago’s “Eloge of Jas. Watt,” London, 1839, p.
81).
It was while acting as midshipman under Admiral Saunders that Robison
himself observed the effect of the aurora borealis on the compass,
which had been remarked by Hiörter, Wargentin, and Mairan several years
before, but which was not then generally known. The aurora borealis,
he afterwards wrote, “is observed in Europe to disturb the needle
exceedingly, sometimes drawing it several degrees from its position. It
is always observed to increase its rate of deviation from the meridian;
that is an aurora borealis makes the needle point more westerly. This
disturbance sometimes amounts to six or seven degrees, and is generally
observed to be greatest when the aurora borealis is most remarkable....
Van Swinden says he seldom or never failed to observe aurora borealis
immediately after any anomalous motion of the needle, and concluded
that there had been one at the time, though he could not see it....
This should farther incite us to observe the circumstance formerly
mentioned, viz., that the South end of the dipping needle points to
that part of the heavens where the rays of the aurora borealis appear
to converge....”
The experiments of J. H. Lambert (at A.D. 1766–1776) upon the
laws of magnetic action were carefully repeated by Robison, who, in
1769 or 1770, tried various methods and made numerous investigations
from which he deduced that the force is inversely as the square of
the distance. When he observed, however, some years afterward, that
Æpinus had in 1777 conceived the force to vary inversely as the simple
distance, he carefully again repeated the experiments and added others
made with the same magnet and with the same needle placed at one side
of the magnet instead of above it. By this simple arrangement the
result was still more satisfactory, and the inverse law of the square
of the distance was well established.
Throughout his numerous investigations, Prof. Robison found that when
a good magnet was struck for three-quarters of an hour, and allowed in
the meantime to ring, its efficacy was destroyed, although the same
operation had little effect when the ringing was impeded; so that the
continued exertion of the cohesive and repulsive powers appears to
favour the transmission of the magnetic as well as of the electric
fluid. The internal agitation, produced in bending a magnetic wire
around a cylinder, also destroys its polarity, and, it is said, the
operation on a file has the same effect. M. Cavallo found that brass
becomes generally much more capable of being attracted when it has been
hammered, even between two flints; and that this property is again
diminished by fire: in this case, Dr. Thomas Young remarks, it may
be conjectured that hammering increases the conducting power of the
iron contained in the brass, and thus renders it more susceptible of
magnetic action.
Of his other very important observations in the same line it would
be difficult to select the most interesting, and it may suffice to
call attention merely to such as are noted throughout Prof. Alfred M.
Mayer’s valuable contributions on “The Magnet, Magnetism,” etc., in
Johnson’s “New Universal Encyclopædia,” as well as in his “Practical
Experiments in Magnetism,” etc., published through the columns of the
_Scientific American Supplement_.
Prof. Robison’s electrical investigations are scarcely less
interesting. In the theories advanced by Æpinus and Cavendish it
was shown that the action of the electrical fluid diminished with
the distance, while M. Coulomb proved, by a series of elaborate
experiments, that it varied like gravity in the inverse ratio of the
square of the distance. Robison had previously determined that in the
mutual repulsion of two similarly electrified spheres the law was
slightly in excess of the inverse duplicate ratio of the distance,
while in the attraction of oppositely electrified spheres the deviation
from that ratio was in defect; and he therefore arrived at the same
conclusion formed by Lord Stanhope, that the law of electrical
attraction is similar to that of gravity.
At the close of Richard Fowler’s “Experiments and Observations,” etc.,
Edinburgh, 1793, is a letter from Prof. Robison, wherein he gives the
following results of many curious investigations, mostly made upon
himself, to ascertain the effects of the galvanic influence. He found
the latter influence well defined on applying one of two metallic
substances to a wound which he had accidentally received; discovered
by their tastes the solders in gold and silver trinkets; and showed
that the galvanic sensation can be felt when the metallic substances
are placed at a distance from each other. He proved the last-named fact
by placing a piece of zinc between one of the cheeks and the gums,
and a piece of silver on the opposite side within the other cheek. He
next introduced a zinc rod between the piece of zinc and the cheek
on the one side, and a silver rod between the silver and the cheek
on the other, and when he afterward carefully brought into contact
the extremities of the rods outside the mouth a flash appeared and a
powerful sensation was noticeable in the gums. He experienced the same
sensation when he again separated the rods and brought them to a short
distance from each other, but he could perceive no galvanic effect
when he placed the rods (or wires) in such manner that the silver rod
should touch the zinc or the zinc rod touch the piece of silver. He
also ascribed to galvanic effect the well-known fact that the drinking
of porter out of a pewter pot produces a more brisk sensation than when
it is taken out of a glass vessel. In this instance, he says there is
a combination of one metal and of two dissimilar fluids. In the act of
drinking, one side of the pewter pot is exposed to the saliva and the
humidity of the mouth, while the other metallic side is in contact with
the porter. In completing the circuit, in the act of drinking, a brisk
and lively sensation arises, which imparts an agreeable relish to the
liquid. He likewise observed that the conducting power of silk thread
depends greatly on its colour, or rather on the nature of its dye. When
of a brilliant white, or a black, its conducting power is the greatest;
while either a high golden yellow or a nut-brown renders it the best
insulator. Human hair, when completely freed from everything that water
could wash out of it, and then dried by lime and coated with lac, was
equal to silk.
Robison’s last publication was made in 1804, one year before his death,
and constituted the first part of a series which was to appear under
the head of “Elements of Mechanical Philosophy.” This portion, together
with some MSS. intended for the second part, and his principal articles
contributed to the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” were collected in 1822 by
Sir David Brewster, and published with notes in 4 vols. under the title
of “System of Mechanical Philosophy.”
REFERENCES.--Playfair in “Transactions of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh,” Vol. VII. p. 495; Stark’s “Biographia Scotica”;
_Philosophical Magazine_, Vol. XIII. pp. 386–394 (Biogr.
Memoir); Aikin’s “General Biography,” London, 1813, Vol.
VIII; Dr. Gleig in _Anti-Jacobin Magazine_ for 1802, Vol. XI;
Chalmer’s “Biographical Dictionary,” London, 1816, Vol. XXV; Dr.
Thomas Young, “Course of Lectures,” London, 1807, Vol. II. pp.
438, 444.
=A.D. 1793.=--Prof. Georg. Fred. Hildebrandt of Erlangen (1764–1816),
makes important observations relative to the influence of form and
of substance upon the electric spark. He finds, among other results,
that an obtuse cone with an angle of fifty-two degrees gives a much
more luminous spark than one with an angle of only thirty-six degrees;
that the greatest sparks are given by conical pieces of regulus of
antimony and the least by tempered steel; also, that when the spark
is _white_ by taking it with a metallic body, it will, under the same
circumstances, be _violet_ if taken with the finger; that if the spark
is taken with ice or water, or a green plant, its light will be red,
and, if it is taken with an imperfect conductor, such as wood, the
light will be emitted in faint red streams.
REFERENCES.--Biography in fifth ed. of “Lehrbuch der Physiologie
des Mens. Koerpers,” Erlangen, 1817; “Encyl. Britannica,” Vol.
VIII, 1855, pp. 544, 545; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. XXIV. pp.
671–672; Ersch und Gruber, “Allgem. Encyklopædie.”
=A.D. 1794.=--Read (John), mathematical instrument maker, at the
Quadrant, in Kingsbridge, Hyde Park, gives, in his “Summary View of the
Spontaneous Electricity of the Earth and Atmosphere,” the result of a
very elaborate series of observations, which he continued almost hourly
between the years 1791 and 1792. Of 987 trials, he found that 664 gave
indications of positive electricity, and out of 404 trials made during
twelve months, the air was positively electrical in 241, negatively
in 156, and insensible in only seven observations. He also found the
vapour near the ground, in the act of condensing into dew, always
highly electric.
He made many observations upon the electricity of vegetable bodies,
which were afterward developed by M. Pouillet, and it was also Mr. Read
who introduced a new hand-exploring instrument as well as an improved
fixed thunder rod for collecting atmospherical electricity. These are
described at p. 608 of the eighth volume of the 1855 “Encyclopædia
Britannica.”
According to Mr. Wilkinson (“Elements of Galvanism,” etc., London,
1804, Vol. II. p. 344), Mr. Read was the first to apply the apparatus
called the condenser to the electroscope in order that it should evince
small intensities of electricity. He says: “The very minute portion
of the fluid given out by the single contact of two different metals,
does not produce any disturbance of the gold leaves; but when several
minute portions are accumulated, a separation of the leaves takes
place. The electroscope, in its simple state, will be as much charged
the first time as if the contact had been made a thousand times, and
cannot therefore acquire a greater quantity of the fluid than suffices
to place it _in equilibrio_ with the metallic plates. This portion
being inadequate to the production of any divergency of the leaves,
Mr. Read applied the principle of the electrical doubler to the above
instrument, by which means he was enabled to charge an intervening
plate of air. By thus accumulating every minute portion of the fluid
imparted through the metallic plate, and by apparently condensing and
increasing its intensity, he ultimately succeeded in producing marked
signs of disturbance.”
REFERENCES.--_Philosophical Transactions_ for 1791, p. 185; for
1792, p. 225; for 1794, pp. 185, 266: also Hutton’s abridgments,
Vol. XVII. pp. 52, 207, 423; “Bibl. Britan.,” Vol. II, 1796,
p. 209; Vol. III, 1796, p. 272; Vol. X, an. vii. p. 283;
Cavallo, “Nat. Phil.,” 1825, Vol. II. p. 226; Young’s “Course of
Lectures,” Vol. I. p. 714; Ed. Peart, “On Electric Atmospheres
...” Gainsboro’, 1793; “Eng. Ency.,” “Arts and Sciences,” Vol.
III. p. 805; Thomas Thomson, “Outline of the Sciences,” 1830, p.
446; _Journal de Physique_ for 1794, Vol. XLV. p. 468.
=A.D. 1794.=--Chladni (Ernst Florens Friedrich), founder of the
theory of acoustics, publishes “The Iron Mass of Pallas,” etc. (“Ueber
den Ursprung der von Pallas ...”), giving a list of recorded cases of
the fall of meteorites or aerolites and all the important accounts of
such that he was able to collect. As Prof. Alexander Herschel informs
us, in his lecture, delivered (1867) before the British Association at
Dundee, Chladni conceived that a class of cosmical bodies exists in all
parts of the solar system, each forming by itself a peculiar concourse
of atoms, and that the earth from time to time encounters them, moving
with a velocity as great as its own, and doubtless in orbits of very
various eccentricity around the sun. Prof. Muirhead says that through
their exceeding great velocity, which is increased by the attraction
of the earth and the violent friction of the atmosphere, a strong
electricity and heat must necessarily be excited, by which means they
are reduced to a flaming and melted condition, and great quantities of
vapour and different kinds of gases are thus disengaged, which distend
the liquid mass to a monstrous size, until, by still further expansion
of these elastic fluids, they must at length explode (Chladni’s
hypothesis in “Enc. Brit.,” article “Meteorolite”).
Humboldt gives (“Cosmos,” London, 1849, Vol. I. p. 104, note) the
following upon the same subject, taken from Biot’s “Traité d’Astronomie
Physique,” third edition, 1841, Vol. I. pp. 149, 177, 238, 312: “My
lamented friend Poisson endeavoured in a singular manner to solve the
difficulty attending an assumption of the spontaneous ignition of
meteoric stones at an elevation where the density of the atmosphere is
almost null. These are his words: ‘It is difficult to attribute, as
is usually done, the incandescence of aerolites to friction against
the molecules of the atmosphere, at an elevation above the earth
where the density of the air is almost null. May we not suppose
that the electric fluid, in a neutral condition, forms a kind of
atmosphere, extending far beyond the mass of our own atmosphere, yet
subject to terrestrial attraction, although physically imponderable,
and consequently following our globe in its motion?’ According to
his hypothesis, the bodies of which we have been speaking would, on
entering this imponderable atmosphere, decompose the neutral fluid by
their unequal action on the two electricities, and they would thus
be heated, and in a state of incandescence, by becoming electrified”
(Poisson, “Rech. sur la Probabilité des Jugements,” 1837, p. 6).
The theories advanced by Chladni were confirmed four years later by
Brandes and Benzenberg at Göttingen, and, during the month of April
1809, he inserted a “Catalogue of Meteors” in the “Bulletin de la
Société Philomathique,” which was followed by a paper on “Fiery
Meteors” published at Vienna during 1819.
In his “Traité d’Acoustique,” Chladni treats of the line of experiments
to which he was led, as well by the discovery of Lichtenberg’s
electrical figures (see A.D. 1777, and Tyndall, “Sound,”
Lecture IV), an account of which latter appeared in the “Mémoires de
la Société Royale de Göttingen,” as through the suggestions made him
by Lichtenberg himself during the year 1792 relative to the origin of
meteors. The results of Chladni’s researches concerning the last named
appeared in a Memoir published at Leipzig during 1794, translated by M.
Eugène Coquebert Mombret for Vol. V of the _Journal des Mines_.
It may here be properly added that, in one of the editions of his
“Lectures on Sound,” Prof. Tyndall gives a portrait of Chladni and
quotes a letter received from Prof. Weber wherein he says: “I knew
Chladni personally. From my youth up he was my leader and model as a
man of science, and I cannot too thankfully acknowledge the influence
which his stimulating encouragement during the last years of his life
had upon my own scientific labours.”
REFERENCES.--Quetelet (Lambert A. J.) in “Cat. Sc. Pap. Roy.
Soc.,” Vols. V, VI, VIII; “Mém. de l’Acad. Roy. de Brux.,”
1830–1842; “Annali” of Ambroglio Fusinieri for 1854; “Phil.
Mag.,” 1851; Secchi (Angelo) in “Cat. Sc. Pap. Roy. Soc.,”
Vols. V, VIII; “Bull. Meteor. dell Osservat.,” 1862, 1866,
1867; Humboldt’s “Cosmos,” London, 1849, Vol. I. p. 104 (M.
Schreiber), pp. 113, 114 (M. Capocci), also pp. 105, 108, 110,
121, and the entire “Review of Natural Phenomena,” with all
the important references and notes thereunto attached. See
likewise Peter Simon Pallas (_Phil. Trans._ for 1776 and “Act.
Acad. Petrop.,” I for 1778); Chladni’s “Uber ... elektricität
einer Katze,” Jena, 1797; J. Acton and Capel Lofft, in _Phil.
Mag._, Vol. LI. pp. 109, 203; A Seguin, _Phil. Mag._, Vol.
XLIV. p. 212; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. pp.
714, 762, for étoiles, filantes et météorites; F. B. Albinus,
“Specimen,” etc., 1740; Voigt’s “Magaz.,” I, 1797; Schweigger’s
_Journal_, XLIII, 1825; H. Atkinson, “On Hypotheses,” etc.
(_Phil. Mag._, Vol. LIV. p. 336); Karstner, _Archiven_, Vol.
IV; F. C. Von Petersdorff in “Great Divide”; Pierre Prevost
and others in Poggendorff’s _Annalen_, Vols. II, VI and VII;
Arago, “Annuaire pour 1826”; “The fall of Meteorites in Ancient
and Modern Times” (“Sc. Progress,” Vol. II. N.S., pp. 349–370:
numerous references given by Prof. H. A. Miers; “A Century of
the Study of Meteorites,” by Dr. Oliver C. Farrington in “Pop.
Sc. Monthly,” Feb. 1901, or the Report of Smiths. Instit.
for 1901, pp. 193–197; _Phil. Mag._, Vol. IV. p. 332; “Cat.
Sc. Papers ... Roy. Soc.,” Vol. I. pp. 916–918; D. Avelloni
“Lettera,” etc., Venezia, 1760; Martin H. Klaproth’s different
memoirs published at Berlin 1795–1809; Joseph Izarn, “Lithologie
Atmosphérique”; J. Murray (_Phil. Mag._, Vol. LIV. p. 39);
beside Chladni’s works in conjunction with Karl F. Anton von
Schreibers, Wien, 1819 and 1820, and with Messrs. Steininger
and Næggerath, London, 1827 (Schweigger’s _Journal_, N.R., XVI.
385, and _Phil. Mag._, Vol. II. p. 41, also Vol. IV. p. 332).
For a very interesting account, see “A description of the great
Meteor which was seen on the 6th of March 1715–1716, sent in a
letter ... to R. Danuye ...” London, 1723 (_Phil. Trans._ for
1720–1721, Vol. XXXI), by Roger Cotes (1682–1716), of whom Sir
Isaac Newton entertained so high an opinion as to frequently
remark: “_If Mr. Cotes had lived, we had known something_”
(“Biographia Philosophica,” pp. 512–516; English Encycl.,
“Biography,” Vol. II. p. 401). Other exceedingly interesting
accounts of aerolites are to be found, more particularly in
Frederic Petit’s works, published at Toulouse, in Bigot de
Morogue’s “Catalogue,” London, 1814, and in the _Phil. Mag._,
Vols., XVII, XX, XXVIII, XXXII, XXXVI, XLIII, XLVI, XLVIII, L,
LIII, LIV, LVI-LIX, LXII. While treating of this subject, it
may be well to add here that up to the year 1887 diamonds were
not known to exist in meteorites. In a very remarkable paper by
Prof. A. E. Foote, read before the Geological section of the
Am. Asso. Adv. Sci., at its meeting in Washington, he described
having, during the month of June 1891, explored Crater Mountain
(Cañon Diablo), 185 miles north of Tucson, Ariz., where he
found some extraordinary specimens. The extreme hardness of one
of these attracted particular attention, and upon carefully
examining it he discovered in some of the cavities many small
black diamonds as well as a white diamond one-fiftieth of an
inch in diameter. This is said to be the most extensive find of
the kind yet made.
=A.D. 1794.=--Mr. J. Churchman publishes his improved “Magnetic
Atlas or Variation Charts of the whole terraqueous globe,” etc., which
Sir John Leslie subsequently pronounced the most accurate and complete
hitherto made. The charts preceding it worthy of note were those of Dr.
Halley (see A.D. 1683), of Mountaine and Dodson, in 1744 and
in 1756, of Wilcke, in 1772, and of Lambert, in 1779. In his charts,
Churchman refers variation lines to two poles, one of which he places,
for the year 1800, in lat. 58° N. and long. 134° W. of Greenwich, while
the other pole is in lat. 58° S. and long. 165° E. of Greenwich. He
supposes the northern pole to revolve in 1096 years and the southern
one in 2289 years (“Ency. Brit.,” 1857, Vol. XIV. p. 49).
REFERENCES.--Churchman’s letters to Cassini, Phila., 1788, and
his “Explanation of the Magn. Atlas ...” 1790; Harris, “Rudim.
Mag.,” Part III. p. 101; “Bibl. Britan.,” Vol. II. 1796, p. 325
(atlas); Becquerel, “Traité d’Electr. et de Magn.,” Paris, 1856,
III. p. 140.
=A.D. 1794.=--M. Reusser Reiser, of Geneva, addresses a letter
to the “Magazin für das Neueste aus der Physik” of Johann Heinrich
Voigt (Vol. IX. part i. p. 183), describing the construction of “a new
species of electric letter post” (“Schreiben an den herausgeber”) in
the following words: “... on an ordinary table is fixed, in an upright
position, a square board, to which a glass plate is fastened. On this
plate are glued little squares of tinfoil, cut after the fashion of
luminous panes, and each standing for a letter of the alphabet. From
one side of these little squares extend long wires, enclosed in glass
tubes, which go underground to the place whither the despatch is to be
transmitted. The distant ends are there connected to tinfoil strips,
similar ... to the first, and, like them, each marked by a letter
of the alphabet; the free ends of all the strips are connected to
one return wire, which goes to the transmitting table. If, now, one
touches the outer coating of a Leyden jar with the return wire, and
connects the inner coating with the free end of that piece of tinfoil
which corresponds to the letter required to be indicated, sparks will
be produced, as well at the near as at the distant tinfoil, and the
correspondent there watching will write down the letter....”
Reusser also suggested calling the attention of the correspondent by
firing an electrical pistol through the spark; to him, therefore,
belongs the credit of having first clearly indicated the use of a
special call for the telegraph.
REFERENCES.--Vail’s “History,” p. 121; Voigt’s “Magazin ...”
Vol. VII. part ii. p. 57; Shaffner, “Manual,” pp. 133, 134;
Forster’s “Bauzeitung,” 1848, p. 238; Ed. Highton, p. 38;
Sabine, p. 11; “Appleton’s Encycl.,” 1871, Vol. XV. p. 335;
Reiser, “Der El. Würfel,” Gotha, 1791; _Comptes Rendus_, Tome
VII for 1838, p. 80.
=A.D. 1794.=--Prof. Boeckmann improves upon Reusser’s idea, and does
away with the thirty-six plates and the seventy-two wires which the
latter is believed to have employed. As Dr. Schellen expresses it, he
used “the sparks passing at the distant station, employing only two
wires, through which first one and then, after certain intervals, more
sparks are combinedly grouped” in a way to indicate particular letters.
Like Reusser, he made use of the pistol as a call signal.
REFERENCES.--Zetzsche, “Geschichte der Elektrischen
Telegraphie,” p. 32; Boeckmann, “Versuch über Telegraphie und
Telegraphen,” Carlsruhe, 1794, p. 17; “El. Magn. Teleg.,” 1850,
p. 46; Gren’s _Journal der Physik_, Vol. I for 1790; “Neue
Abhandl. der Bairischen Akad. Philos.,” Vol. III.
=A.D. 1794.=--Edgeworth (Richard Lovell), an able English
mechanical philosopher, better known as the father and literary
associate of Maria Edgeworth, introduces his _tellograph_
(contraction of the word _telelograph_), “a machine describing
words at a distance,” which originated in a wager relative to the
prompt transmission of racing news from Newmarket to London. It
consisted merely of four pointers, in the form of wedges or isosceles
triangles, placed upon four portable vertical posts and the different
positions of which were arranged to represent letters and numbers.
Edgeworth claimed to have made experiments, as early as 1767, with
an ordinary windmill, the arms and sails of which were arranged in
different positions to indicate the several letters of the alphabet.
REFERENCES.--Edgeworth’s Letter to Lord Charlemont on the
Tellograph, also his “Essay on the Art of Conveying Secret and
Swift Intelligence,” Dublin, 1797, republished in Vol. VI of the
_Trans. of the Royal Irish Academy_; “Appleton’s Encycl.,” 1871,
Vol. XV. p. 334.
A.D. 1795.--Lord George Murray, of England, submits to the
Admiralty his six-shutter telegraph, an improvement upon Chappe’s
original plan. Each of the six octagonal shutters was made to turn
inside of two frames at different angles upon its own axis, thus
affording sixty-three separate and distinct signals. By its means,
information was transmitted from London to Dover in seven minutes, and
it answered nearly all the requirements of the Admiralty up to the year
1816, when it was superseded by the semaphore of Rear Admiral Popham.
Murray’s method was, however, useless during foggy weather, when relays
of horses had to be employed for conveying the news.
REFERENCES.--English Encyclopædia, “Arts and Sciences,” Vol.
VIII. p. 66; Tomlinson’s “Telegraph”; Turnbull, _El. Mag. Tel._,
1853, p. 18; “Penny Ency.,” Vol. XXIV. p. 147.
=A.D. 1795.=--Salvá (Don Francisco), a distinguished Spanish
physician, reads a memoir, before the Academy of Sciences of Barcelona,
from which the following is extracted: “... with twenty-two letters,
and even with only eighteen, we can express with sufficient precision
every word in the language, and, thus with forty-four wires from Mataro
to Barcelona, twenty-two men there, each to take hold of a pair of
wires, and twenty-two charged Leyden jars here, we could speak with
Mataro, each man there representing a letter of the alphabet and
giving notice when he felt the shock.... It is not necessary to keep
twenty-two men at Mataro nor twenty-two Leyden jars at Barcelona,
if we fix the ends of each pair of the wires in such a way that one
or two men may be able to discriminate the signals. In this way six
or eight jars at each end would suffice for intercommunication, for
Mataro can as easily speak with Barcelona as Barcelona with Mataro ...
or the wires can be rolled together in one strong cable ... laid in
subterranean tubes, which, for greater insulation, should be covered
with one or two coats of resin.”
He is said to have approved of the use of luminous panes as indicated
by Reusser; to have also suggested, as early as December 16, 1795,
the idea of a _submarine telegraphic cable_ carrying several
conductors, and to have proposed, at the same period, the laying of a
cable between Barcelona and Palma in the island of Majorca.
In 1798, Salvá constructed a single wire telegraphic line between
Madrid and Aranjuez, a distance of twenty-six miles, through which
the signals were transmitted in the shape of sparks from Leyden jars.
This is the line which is credited to Augustin de Bétancourt, a French
engineer, by Alexander Von Humboldt, in a note at p. 14 of Gauss and
Weber’s _Resultate_, etc., for the year 1837.
On the 14th of May 1800, and on the 22nd of February 1804, Salvá
communicated to the Academy of Sciences at Barcelona two papers on
galvanism applied to electricity, wherein he shows that a cheaper
motive power is produced by the electricity of a number of frogs,
and proposes a telegraphic apparatus in conjunction with the voltaic
column which is illustrated and described at pp. 224 and 225 of Fahie’s
“History of Telegraphy.” From the latter the following is taken: “This
illustrious Spanish physician (Salvá) was therefore the first person
who attempted to apply electricity dynamically for the purpose of
telegraphing. It is, says Saavedra, not without reason, I must confess,
notwithstanding my cosmopolitan opinions on scientific questions,
that _the Catalans hold Salvá to be the inventor of electric
telegraphy_. With documents as authentic as those which I have
seen with my own eyes in the very hand writing of this distinguished
professor (which documents are at this present moment to be found in
the library of the Academy of Sciences of Barcelona) it is impossible
for any author to henceforth deny, even if others did precede Salvá in
telegraphic experiments with static electricity, that no one preceded
him in the application of the docile electro-dynamic fluid to distant
communications.”
REFERENCES.--_Comptes Rendus_, séance, 1838; Memorial of Joseph
Henry, 1880, p. 224; Ed. Highton, the _El. Tel._, 1852, pp.
38 and 43; “Appleton’s Encyclopædia,” 1871, Vol. XV. p. 335;
_De Bow’s Review_, Vol. XXV. p. 551; Voigt’s _Magazin_, etc.,
Vol. XI. part iv. p. 61; _Sc. Am. Supp._, No. 547, p. 8735, and
No. 384, p. 6127; Biography in Saavedra’s _Revista_, etc., for
1876; Noad’s _Manual_, pp. 747 and 748; Shaffner, _Manual_,
p. 135; Turnbull, _El. Mag. Tel._, 1853, pp. 21, 22, 220; Du
Moncel, _Exposé_, Vol. III; “Edinburgh Encyclopædia,” London,
1830, Vol. VIII. p. 535; “Gazette de Madrid” of November 25,
1796; “Mémoires de l’Institut,” Vol. III and “Bulletin de la
Soc. Philom.,” An. VI for the new telegraph of MM. Bréguet and
Bétancourt, and for the Report made thereon by MM. Lagrange,
Laplace and others.
=A.D. 1795.=--Ewing (John), D.D., Provost of the University of
Pennsylvania and one of the founders of the American Philosophical
Society, makes a compilation of his course of lectures on natural
experimental philosophy, which is subsequently revised for the press by
Prof. Robert Patterson.
He devotes much attention to atmospheric electricity, detailing the
Franklinian theory, and, besides reporting upon the hypotheses advanced
by Henry Eales (at A.D. 1755), as well as treating of the attraction of
magnetism, he gives a very interesting account of experiments with the
_torpedo_ and the _gymnotus electricus_. He says that Mr. Walsh found
the _torpedo_ “possessed of the power of shocking only in two parts of
its body, directly opposite to each other and near to the head. A spot
on the back and another on the belly opposite to the former being of a
different colour led him to make the experiment, and he found that the
electrical virtue was confined to these, and that any other part of the
fish might be handled, without receiving a shock, while it was out of
the water. Either of these places separately might be handled without
the shock being received until a communication between them was formed.
This makes it appear probable that the same may also be the case with
the Guiana eel. One of these spots must therefore be always in the
positive and the other in the negative state; or, rather, they are both
generally in the natural state, until, by an effort of the fish’s will,
they are suddenly put into different states, as we frequently found
that the hand might be in the water, which formed the communication,
without receiving any shock. This cannot be the case with the Leyden
bottle when charged, which suddenly discharges itself upon forming the
communication. Whether there be any electric atmosphere round these
spots in the _torpedo_ we cannot tell, as we had no opportunity of
examining this matter in the eel, nor have we heard whether Mr. Walsh
made any experiments for ascertaining this.”
ELECTRICITY OF THE ATMOSPHERE
The investigations of John Ewing concerning atmospheric electricity
were in reality quite extensive. He not only repeated the experiments
of Franklin, but he examined thoroughly those of other scientists in
the same channel, especially the investigations of Henry Eeles, which
will be found detailed in the latter’s “Trinity College Lectures” as
well as in his “Philosophical Essays,” London, 1771.
For a very interesting historical review of theories as to the origin
of atmospherical electricity, it would be well to consult M. A. B.
Chauveau’s article in “Ciel et Terre,” Bruxelles, March 1, 1903, and
also Humboldt’s “Cosmos,” London, 1849, Vol. I. pp. 342–346. In the
last-named work are cited: Arago, “Annuaire,” 1838, pp. 246, 249–266,
268–279, 388–391; Becquerel, “Traité de l’Electricité,” Vol. IV. p.
107; De la Rive, “Essai Historique,” p. 140; Duprez, “Sur l’électricité
de l’air,” Bruxelles, 1844, pp. 56–61; Gay-Lussac, “Ann. de Ch. et de
Phys.,” Vol. VIII. p. 167; Peltierin, “Ann. de Chimie,” Vol. LXV. p.
330, also in “Comptes Rendus,” Vol. XII. p. 307; Pouillet, “Ann. de
Chimie,” Vol. XXXV. p. 405.
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
| | |
Date | Name | Experiments | References
| | |
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1751 |Franklin |Effects of lightning |Phil. Trans., xlvii. p. 289
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1751 |Mazeas |Kite experiments independently |Phil. Trans., 1751–1753
| | of Franklin |
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1752 |Nollet |Theory of Electricity |Recher. sur les causes,
| | | 1749–1754
| | |Lettres sur l’élect., 1753,
| | | 1760, 1767, 1770
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1752 |Watson |Electricity of clouds |Phil. Trans., 1751, 1752
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1752 |De Lor and Buffon|Iron pole 99 ft. high, mounted |Letter of Abbé Mazeas,
| | on a cake of resin 2 ft. sq.,| dated St. Germain,
| | 3 in. high, Estrapade, May | May 20, 1742
| | 18, 1752 |
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1752 |D’Alibard |Sparks from thunder clouds, 40 |Mem. l’Acad., r. des
| | ft. pole in garden at Marly, | Sci., May 13, 1762
| | also wooden pole 30 ft. high,| Hist. Abrégée, 1776
| | at Hôtel de Noailles |
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1752 |Le Monnier |Observations of air charge |Mém. de Paris, 1752,
| | | pp. 8, 233
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1752 |De Romas |Observations of air charge; |Mém. Sav. Etrangers,
| | kite experiments | 1752, and Mém. de
| | | Math., 1755, 1763
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1752 |Mylius, Ch. |Observations of air charge |“Nachrichten,” Berlin, 1752
| | |
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1752 |Kinnersley |Observations of air charge |Franklin’s Letters, Phil.
| | | Trans., 1763, 1773
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1752 |Ludolf and Mylius|Observations of air charge |Letter to Watson
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1753 |Richman |Electrical gnomon |Phil. Trans., 1753
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1753 |Canton |Electricity of clouds |Franklin’s letters and
| | | Phil. Trans., 1753
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1753 |Beccaria, C.B. |Systematic observations with |Lett. dell’ Elet. Bologna,
| | an electroscope | 1758
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1753 |Wilson |Experiments |Phil. Trans., 1753, p. 347
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1754 |Lining |Kite experiments |Letter to Chas. Pinckney
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1755 |Le Roy |Experiments |Mém. de Paris, 1755
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1756 |Van Musschenbroek|Kite experiments |Intro. ad Phil. Nat., 1762
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1759 |Hartmann |Origin of electricity |Verbesseter ... Blitzes
| | | (_Hamb. Mag._ vol. xxiv.)
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1769 |Cotte |Memoirs on meteorology |Journ. Phys., xxiii., 1783
| | | Mém. Paris, 1769–1772
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1772 |Ronayne |Fog observations |Phil. Trans., 1772, p. 137
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1772 |Henley |Quadrant electrometer |Phil. Trans., 1772–1774
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1775 |Cavallo |Fogs, snow, clouds and rain; |Treatise on Elect., 1777
| | kite experiments |
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1784 |De Saussure |Observations |“Voyages dans les Alpes,”
| | | Geneva, 1779–1796
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1786–7|Mann |Daily observations with an |Ephémer. Météorol. of the
| | electrical machine, timing | Mannheim Society,
| | the revolutions to produce a | 1786–1792
| | given spark with a record of |
| | the weather |
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1788 |Volta |New electroscope |Lettere Sulla Meteor,
| | | 1788–1790
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1788 |Crosse |Experiments with collectors |Gilb. Ann., Bd. 41, s. 60
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1791 |Read |Insulation and conductors |Phil. Trans., 1791 and
| | | Summary, 1793
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1792 |Von Heller |Observations |Gren, “_Neues Journ. der
| | | Phys._,” vol. ii. 1795
| | | and vol. iv. 1797
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
1792 |Schubler |Observations with weather rod |J. de Phys., lxxxiii. 184
------+-----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------
An attractive table, which we are permitted to rearrange and reproduce
here, giving a _résumé_ of references to some of the most noted
experiments of the chief investigators from the time of Franklin to
the end of the eighteenth century, was made up by Mr. Alex. McAdie and
first appeared in the “Amer. Meteor. Journal.” Mr. McAdie says that a
detailed history of most of Franklin’s co-labourers will be found in
the accounts given by Exner,[53] Hoppe,[54] Mendenhall,[55] Elster and
Geitel[56] as well as by himself,[57] and that in making up this table
he has passed over Peter Collinson, of London, who introduced to the
notice of the Royal Society the experiments of Franklin, and the three
less-known workers--J. H. Winkler, who wrote in 1746 on the electrical
origin of the weather lights; Maffei, 1747; and Barberet, 1750.
=A.D. 1795.=--The telegraphs of the Rev. J. Gamble, Chaplain to the
Duke of York, consisted either of five boards placed one above the
other or of arms pivoted at the top of a post upon one axis and
capable of producing as many signals as there are permutations in the
number five, all of the combinations being possible at equal angles of
forty-five degrees. His doubts as to the practicability of employing
electricity “as the vehicle of information” are fully expressed at p.
73 of his “Essay on the Different Modes of Communicating by Signal,”
etc., London, 1797.
REFERENCES.--J. Gamble, “Observations on Telegraphic
Experiments,” etc.; Article “Telegraph” in Tomlinson’s “Encyl.
of Useful Arts”; “Penny Ency.,” Vol. XXIV. pp. 147 and 148;
“English Cyclopædia,” “Arts and Sciences,” Vol. VIII. p. 66.
=A.D. 1795.=--Garnet (John), proposes a telegraph consisting of only
one bar moving about the centre of a circle, upon which latter the
letters and figures are inscribed. On placing corresponding divisions,
by means of wires, before the object glass of the telescope the
coincidence of the two radii or of the arm would point out the letter
intended to be repeated. As this plan proved impracticable for long
distances, it did not come into general use (“Emporium of Arts and
Sciences,” Phila., 1812, Vol. I. p. 293).
=A.D. 1795.=--Wells (Charles William), a physician, native of South
Carolina but practising in England and a F.R.S., publishes in the
_Phil. Trans._ a paper on the influence which incites the muscles
of animals to contract in Galvani’s experiments. Therein he was the
first to demonstrate that voltaic action is produced through charcoal
combined with another substance of different conducting power, and
this he did by causing noticeable convulsions in a frog through the
combination of charcoal and zinc. (See “Ency. Met.,” Vol. IV. pp. 220,
221, for the experiments of both Dr. Wells and Dr. Fowler.) Fahie
states that Davy subsequently constructed a pile which consisted of
a series of eight glasses containing well-burned charcoal and zinc,
using a red sulphate of iron solution as the liquid conductor. It is
said this series gave sensible shocks and rapidly decomposed water and
that, compared with an equal and similar series of silver and zinc,
its effects were much stronger. (See Priestley’s discovery of the
electrical conductibility of charcoal at A.D. 1767, and the description
of Davy’s charcoal battery in “Jour. Roy. Inst.” and _Nicholson’s
Journal_, N. S., Vol. I. p. 144.)
His biographer, in the “Eng. Cyclop.,” says (Vol. VI. pp. 631–632) that
his last work and the one upon which his reputation as a philosopher
must rest, is his “Essay upon Dew,” published in 1814 (“Journal des
Savants” for Sept. 1817), whilst J. F. W. Herschel remarks at p. 122 of
his “Prel. Disc ... Nat. Phil.,” 1855: “We have purposely selected this
theory of dew, first developed by the late Dr. Wells, as one of the
most beautiful specimens we can call to mind of inductive experimental
inquiry lying within a moderate compass....”
REFERENCES.--Wells’ biography in the “English Cyclopædia,”
Vol. VI. p. 631; _Phil. Trans._ for 1795, p. 246; Hutton’s
abridgments of the _Phil. Trans._, Vol. XVII. p. 548; Fahie’s
“History,” etc., pp. 201 and 202; “Aristotle on Dew”
(Poggendorff, _Geschichte der Phys._, 1879, p. 42); Luke
Howard, “On the Modification of Clouds ...” London, 1803; C. H.
Wilkinson, “Elements of Galvanism,” etc., London, 1804, Vol. I.
pp. 162–165 and Vol. II. p. 329.
=A.D. 1796.=--Gregory (George), D.D., F.R.S., Vicar of Westham,
a miscellaneous writer of Scotch origin, for many years editor of the
“New Annual Register,” is the author of “Economy of Nature,” etc., of
which the second and third editions, considerably enlarged, appeared
respectively in 1798 and 1804.
In the first volume of the last-named edition (Book I. chap. vi. pp.
35–54) he treats of natural and artificial magnets and of magnetic
powers and theories of magnetism, while the whole of Book IV. (chaps.
i.-viii. pp. 299–386) is devoted to the history of and discoveries
relative to electricity, its principles and theories, as well as to
electrical apparatus and electrical phenomena and to galvanism or
animal electricity.
Gregory is also the author of “Popular Lectures on Experimental
Philosophy, Astronomy and Chemistry; Intended Chiefly for the Use
of Students and Young Persons,” 2 vols., 12 mo, published in London
1808–1809, one year after Gregory’s death.
It was the perusal of the latter work which led Joseph Henry to
embrace a scientific career, just as the reading of “Mrs. Marcet’s
Conversations on Chemistry” had induced Michael Faraday to enter the
field in which he afterward became so highly distinguished. Prof. Asa
Gray, in his Biographical Memoir of Henry, says that Gregory’s work
alluded to is an unpretending volume but a sensible one, and that it
begins by asking three or four questions, such as these: “You throw a
stone, or shoot an arrow into the air; why does it not go forward in
the line or direction that you give it? Why does it stop at a certain
distance and then return to you?... On the contrary, why does flame
or smoke always mount upward, though no force is used to send them in
that direction? And why should not the flame of a candle drop toward
the floor when you reverse it, or hold it downward, instead of turning
up and ascending into the air?... Again, you look into a clear well
of water and see your own face and figure as if painted there? Why is
this? You are told that it is done by reflection of light. But what is
reflection of light?” As Prof. Gray remarks, young Henry’s mind was
aroused by these apt questions, and allured by the explanations. He now
took in a sense of what knowledge was. The door to knowledge opened to
him, that door which it thence became the passion of his life to open
wider. The above-named volume is preserved in Prof. Henry’s library,
and bears upon a fly-leaf the following entry:
“This book, although by no means a profound work, has, under
Providence, exerted a remarkable influence upon my life. It
accidentally fell into my hands when I was about sixteen years old, and
was the first work I ever read with attention. It opened to me a new
world of thought and enjoyment; invested things before almost unnoticed
with the highest interest; fixed my mind on the study of nature,
and caused me to resolve at the time of reading it, that I would
immediately commence to devote my life to the acquisition of knowledge.
J. H.” (See Prof. A. M. Mayer, “Eulogy of Joseph Henry,” Salem, 1880,
pp. 29–30; “Smithsonian Report,” 1878, pp. 145, 146.)
REFERENCES.--_Gentleman’s Magazine_, Vol. LXVII. p. 415; Beloe’s
“Sexag.,” II. 128; “Living Authors” (1798), I. p. 225.
=A.D. 1797.=--Bressy (Joseph), French physician and able chemist,
remarks, in his “Essai sur l’électricité de l’eau,” that the electric
fluid is composed of three beams (_rayons_, i. e. rays, gleams,
or sparks), vitreous, resinous and vital; that three principal agents
exist in nature, viz. the air, isolating body; the water, conducting
body, and movement, determining action; that vapours resolve themselves
into clouds merely because friction enables the electric fluid to
seize upon the aqueous molecules, and that, in water, the hydrogen is
maintained in the form of gas by the electric fluid, while the oxygen
becomes gaseous under influence of the caloric.
REFERENCES.--Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. II. p. 1236;
Delaunay, “Manuel,” etc., 1809, pp. 15, 16.
=A.D. 1797.=--Treméry (Jean Louis), a French mining engineer,
communicates his observations on elliptic magnets through Bulletin No.
6 of the “Société Philomathique” as well as through the sixth volume of
the _Journal des Mines_.
His observations on conductors of electricity and on the emission of
the electric fluid appear at p. 168 Vol. XLVIII of the _Jour. de
Phys._, and in “Bull. de la Soc. Philom.,” No. 19, while his views
in opposition to the two-fluid theory are to be found in Bulletin No.
63 of the last-named publication as well as in _Jour. de Phys._,
Vol. LIV. p. 357.
REFERENCES.--Poggendorff, Vol. II. p. 1131; John Farrar, “Elem.
of Elec.,” etc., p. 120.
=A.D. 1797.=--Pearson (George), English physician and chemist,
communicates to the Royal Society a very interesting paper entitled,
“Experiments and Observations made with the view of ascertaining the
nature of the gas produced by passing electric discharges through
water; with a description of the apparatus for these experiments.”
An abstract of the above appears in the _Phil. Trans._ for 1797, and
a full transcript of it is to be found in _Nicholson’s Journal_, 4to,
Vol. I. pp. 241–248, 299–305, and 349–355.
As Mr. Wilkinson has it, “Dr. Pearson supposes the decomposition of
water by electricity to be effected by the interposition of the dense
electric fire, between the constituent elements of the water, which he
places beyond the sphere of attraction for each other, each ultimate
particle of oxygen and hydrogen uniting with a determinate quantity
of the electric fire to bestow on them their gaseous form. Hence the
doctor supposes that the electric fire, after effecting the disunion,
assumes the state of caloric.
“On the reproduction of water by the passage of an electric spark
through a proportionate quantity of oxygen and hydrogen gases, Dr.
Pearson ingeniously conjectures that by the influence of the electric
flame the ultimate particles of these gases, the nearest to the flame,
are driven from it in all directions, so as to be brought within the
sphere of each other’s attractions. In one of these cases Dr. Pearson
supposes that the caloric destroys the attraction, which in the other
instance it occasions.
“It is with diffidence that I take on me to controvert the opinions of
this very respectable physician; but I presume that the whole of the
phenomena of the synthesis and analysis of water are more readily to be
explained on the principles I have laid down than by the adoption of
the mysterious terms of attraction and repulsion. By the operation of
galvanism, water is more rapidly decomposed than by common electricity.
In this operation there is no evolution of dense electrical fire, but
merely a current of a small intensity of electricity acting permanently
and incessantly. To reproduce water, a flame must be generated
sufficient to kindle the contiguous portion of the hydrogen gas, then
the next portion, and so on, the combustion being preserved by the
presence of the oxygen gas. As these processes proceed with immense
rapidity as soon as the gases are intermixed, so as to appear like one
sudden explosion, the caloric of each of them being thus disengaged,
their bases unite and constitute water.”
Dr. Pearson also made many interesting experiments to ascertain the
effect of the application of galvanic electricity for the treatment of
diseases, and Noad, who describes one of his successful operations,
also details (“Manual,” pp. 343–349) the observations of many others
in the same line, notably those of Drs. Apjohn, Majendie, Grapengieser
and of Wilson Philip, Petrequin, Pravaz, Prevost and Dumas (_Jour.
de Physiol._, Tome III. p. 207), as well as of Sarlandière and Dr.
Golding Bird, besides giving the very important conclusions arrived at
by Stefano Marianini.
REFERENCES.--“Some Account of George Pearson,” M.D., F.R.S.
(_Phil. Mag._, Vol. XV for 1803, p. 274); letter of Humboldt
to M. Loder (“Bibl. Germ.,” Vol. IV, Messidor, An. VIII. p.
301); William Van Barneveld, “Med. Elektricität,” Leipzig,
1787; C. H. Wilkinson, “Elements of Galvanism,” London, 1804,
2 vols. _passim_; Paragraph No. 328 of Faraday’s “Experimental
Researches,” J. N. Hallé, “Journal de Médecine de Corvisart,”
etc., Tome I, Nivose, An. IX. p. 351; “Annales de l’Electricité
Médicale” _passim_; H. Baker (_Phil. Trans._, Vol. XLV. p. 270);
“Jour. de la Soc. Philom.,” Messidor, An. IX; J. F. N. Jadelot,
“Expériences,” etc., 1799; M. Butet (“Bull. des Sc. de la Soc.
Philom.,” No. 43, Vendémiaire, An. IX); M. Oppermanno, “Diss.
Phys. Med.” (see J. G. Krunitz “Verzeichnis,” etc.); Andrieux,
“Mémoire ... maladies,” Paris, 1824; Lebouyer-Desmortiers
(Sue, “Hist. du Galv.,” Vol. II. p. 420, and _Jour. de Phys._,
Prairial, An. IX, 1801, p. 467); C. J. C. Grapengieser,
“Versuche den Galvanismus,” etc., Berlin, 1801 and 1802;
the works of J. Althaus, published in London and Berlin in
1859–1870; C. A. Struve’s works, published in Hanover and
Breslau, 1797–1805; F. L. Augustin’s works, published in Berlin,
1801–1803; Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer (Kielmaier), works published
at Tübingen (Poggendorff, Vol. I. p. 1253); Einhoff (Gilbert,
XII. p. 230); Francesco Rossi’s treatises on the application
of galvanism, published in 1809; Gilb. “Ann.,” Vol. XII. p.
450; _Jour. de Phys._, Vol. LII. pp. 391 and 467; Cuthbertson’s
letter in _Phil. Mag._, Vol. XVIII. p. 358; J. G. Anglade,
“Essai sur le Galvanisme,” etc. (Sue, “Hist. du Galv.,” Vol.
III. p. 73); Jacques Nauche, in _Phil. Mag._, Vol. XV. p. 368,
as well as in Poggendorff, Vol. II. p. 256, and throughout the
“Journal du Galvanisme.”
=A.D. 1797.=--In No. CCXXII of the _Reichsanzeiger_, a German
publication, it is said that a certain person having an artificial
magnet suspended from the wall of his study with a piece of iron
adhering to it, remarked, for several years, that the flies in the
room, though they frequently placed themselves on other iron articles,
never settled upon the artificial magnet.
REFERENCES.--Cavallo, “Experimental Philosophy,” 1803, Vol. III.
p. 560, or the 1825 Philad. ed., Vol. II. p. 286.
=A.D. 1797–1798.=--Reinhold (Johann Christoph Leopold), while Bachelor
of Medicine in Magdeburg, tendered for his theses, on the 16th of
December 1797 and on the 11th of March 1798, two Latin dissertations
on galvanism, one of which was offered concurrently with J. William
Schlegel, then a medical student.
Numerous extracts from both the above very important papers, which
treat extensively of galvanic experiments upon animals, vegetables,
metals, etc., will be found at pp. 123–195, Vol. I of Sue’s “Histoire
du Galvanisme,” Paris, 1802. Both dissertations review galvanism from
its origin and make mention of many works which had not up to that time
appeared in print.
In the first volume of his “Elements of Galvanism,” London, 1804,
Mr. C. H. Wilkinson devotes the entire Chap. VIII (pp. 188–260) to
Reinhold’s able review of galvanism, wherein are first cited Gardiner
(author of “Observations on the Animal Economy”), Lughi, Klugel and
Gardini as “anterior to the discovery of the doctrine of animal
electricity.” Then follow accounts of their writings, as well as of
those of Galvani and of Volta, “the Prince of Italian naturalists,”
after which due mention is made, in their proper order, of the
observations of Aldini, Valli, Fontana, Berlinghieri, Monro, Fowler,
Corradori, Robison, Cavallo, Wells, Havgk, Colsmann, Creve, Hermestædt,
Klein, Pfaff, Ackermann, Humboldt (letters to Blumenbach, Crell, Pictet
and M. de Mons), Eschenmeyer, Achard, Grapengieser, Gren, Michaelis,
Caldani, Schmuck, Mezzini, Behrends, Giulio, Ludwig, Webster, Vasco,
Hebenstreit and others.
The subject of the eighth and last section of Reinhold’s Dissertations,
as Wilkinson expresses it, consists of the exposition of the hypotheses
of different authors on the galvanic fluid. These hypotheses he brings
into two classes, as they relate to the seat which is assigned to the
cause of the phenomena. The first of these classes belongs to the
animal which is to be galvanized, and the second to the substance
applied to its body, or to the arc. As the galvanic phenomena are
ascribed by several physiologists to electricity, Reinhold makes a
new division, relatively to the opinion of those who assert that
the galvanic and electric fluids are the same, and of those who are
persuaded that the former differs from the latter. Under the first head
or division he ranges Galvani, Aldini, Valli, Carradori, Volta, in the
early time of the discovery; then Schmuck, Voigt, and Hufeland; while
under the second come Fowler and Humboldt. Of the latter division he
makes subdivisions, in the first of which he comprehends Volta, Pfaff,
Wells, Yelin and Monro, the second embracing Creve and Fabbroni. The
other authors, not having openly avowed their opinion, he passes over
in silence.
Reinhold is likewise the author of “Versuche um die eigentliche,”
etc. (Gilb. “Annal.,” X, 1802, pp. 301–355), “Untersuchungen über die
natur.,” etc. (Gilb. “Annal.,” X, 1802, pp. 450–481, and XII, 1803,
pp. 34–48); “Galvanisch-elektrische Versuche,” etc. (Gilb. “Annal.,”
XI, 1802, pp. 375–387); “Geschichte des Galvanismus,” Leipzig, 1803;
“Versuch einer skizzirten,” etc. (Reil. “Archiv.,” VIII, 1807–1808, pp.
305–354); “Ueber Davy’s Versuche” (Gilb. “Annal.,” XXVIII, 1808, pp.
484–485).
REFERENCES.--Schlegel, “De Galvanismo”; Figuier, “Exp. et Hist.
des Principales Découvertes,” Vol. IV. pp. 310, 433; J. W.
Ritter, “Beweis ... in dem Thierreich ...” Weimar, 1796; G. R.
Treviranus, “Einfluss ... thier, Reizbarkeit,” Leipzig, 1801,
and Gilbert’s “Annalen,” Vol. VIII for the latter year.
=A.D. 1798.=--Perkins (Benjamin D.), is given an English patent
for a process enabling him to cure aches, pains and diseases in the
human body by drawing electrified metals over the parts affected. His
metallic tractors, originally introduced from America and consisting
of an alloy of different metals, awakened much curiosity both in
England and on the Continent, and were successfully used by Dr.
Haygarth and others, as related in the article “Somnambulism,” of the
“Encyclopædia Britannica.”
In the Repert. II. ii. 179, it is said that one of the tractors
was made of zinc, copper and gold, and the other of iron, platina
and silver. M. V. Burq, in his “Métallo-thérapie,” makes a review
of the successful cures of nervous complaints effected by metallic
applications.
REFERENCES.--_Jour. de Phys._, Vol. XLIX. p. 232; Mr.
Langworthy, “View of the Perkinian Electricity,” 1798; T. G.
Fessenden, “Poetical petition against ... the Perkinistic
Institution ...” London, 1803; B. D. Perkins, “The Influence
of Metallic Tractors on the Human Body ...” London, 1798–1799;
“Bibl. Britan.,” Vol. XXI, 1802, pp. 49–89; “Recherches sur le
Perkinisme,” etc. (“Annales de la Soc. de Méd. de Montpellier,”
Vol. XXIX. p. 274); “Sur les tracteurs de Perkins” (“Mém. des
Soc. Savantes et Lit.,” Vol. II. p. 237); P. Sue, aîné, “Hist.
du Galv.,” IV. p. 286 and “Hist du Perkinisme,” Paris, 1805; J.
D. Reuss, “De re electrica,” Vol. XII. p. 20; J. Krziwaneck, “De
electricitate ...” Prag., 1839.
=A.D. 1798.=--In a long letter written to Thomas Jefferson, President
of the American Philosophical Society, and read before the latter body
on the 4th of May 1798, the Rev. James Madison, then President of
William and Mary College, details several experiments made by him to
ascertain the effect of a magnet upon the Torricellian vacuum, and to
explain the phenomena exhibited by magnets in proximity to iron filings.
He says: “Many ingenious men have supposed that the arrangement of the
filings clearly indicated the passage of a magnetic fluid or effluvia
in curved lines from one pole to another of a different denomination,”
but that the experiments which he relates prove the attractive force
of the magnets, at either pole, to be the real cause of the phenomena
which the filings exhibit, and that the action of the magnet upon the
filings, when they approach within a certain distance, renders them
magnetic. In every magnet, says he, there is at least one line, called
the equator, from which, in the direction of both poles, the attractive
power increases so that the filings will “incline toward them, forming
angles which appear to be such as the resolution of two forces, one
lateral and the other polar, would necessarily produce.”
Thomas Jefferson, above named, succeeded Benjamin Franklin as
United States Minister Plenipotentiary to Paris, 1784–1789, became
Vice-President of the United States in 1796, and was sworn in as the
successor of John Adams to the Presidency on the 4th of March 1801. The
Rev. James Madison, D.D., second cousin of the fourth President of the
United States bearing the same name, became President of William and
Mary College in 1777, and was consecrated first Bishop of Virginia by
the Archbishop of Canterbury in Lambeth Palace, Sept. 19, 1790.
REFERENCES.--“Transactions of the Am. Phil. Soc.,” Vol. IV for
1799, O.S. No. 39, pp. 323–328.
=A.D. 1798.=--Monge (Gaspar), Comte de Peluse, a very able French
scientist, called “the inventor of descriptive geometry,” and from
whom, it is said, that science received greater accessions than had
before been given it since the days of Euclid and Archimedes, erects a
telegraph upon the “Palais des Tuileries” in Paris. Of this, however,
no reliable details are on record.
He also makes many experiments on the effects of optics and
electricity, and, likewise, many useful observations on the production
of water by inflammable air, independently of those carried on by Lord
Cavendish.
REFERENCES.--Biography in Charles Dupin’s “Essai Historique,”
etc., and in “English Cycl.,” Vol. IV. pp. 296, 297; Memoir at
p. 175 of Vol. LV, _Phil. Mag._ for 1820; G. Monge, “Sur l’effet
des étincelles ...” Paris, 1786, and “Précis des leçons,” Paris,
1805; _Sci. Am. Supp._, No. 621, p. 9916, and the note at foot
of p. 701 of “Fifth Dissert.” eighth ed. of “Encyclopædia
Britannica,” Vol. I; as well as “Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences,”
1786.
=A.D. 1798.=--Berton (Henri Montan), a prominent French composer
and Professor of Harmony at the Paris “Conservatoire de Musique,” also
a member of the “Académie des Beaux-Arts,” devises a novel electric
telegraph which is merely alluded to, under the heading of “Note
historique sur le télégraphe électrique,” at p. 80 of the seventh
volume of the _Comptes Rendus_ for July 1838, as well as in Julia
Fontenelle’s “Manuel de l’électricité.”
=A.D. 1799.=--Fabbroni--Fabroni--(Giovanni Valentino M.),
Professor of Chemistry at Florence, communicates to the _Journal
de Physique_ (9th series, Tome VI, Cahier de Brumaire, An. VIII),
an amplification of his able memoir, “Sur l’action chimique,” etc.
(“Dell’azione chimica ...”), which was first presented by him during
1792 to the Florentine Academy and duly analyzed by Brugnatelli in his
“Giornale physico-medico.” Therein is made the first known suggestion
as to the chemical origin of voltaic electricity, inquiring whether
the phenomenon of galvanism is not solely due to chemical affinities
of which electricity may be one of the concomitant effects, and also
ascribing the violent convulsions in a frog to a chemical change which
is produced by the contact of one of the metals with some liquid matter
on the animal’s body, the latter decomposing and allowing its oxygen to
combine with the metal.
REFERENCES.--“Elogio ... A. Lombardi” (“Mem. Soc. Ital.,” Vol.
XX); _Cornhill Magazine_, Vol. II for 1860, p. 68; “Biog.
Univ.,” Vol. XIII. p. 311; “Encycl. Met.,” “Galvanism,”
Vol. IV. p. 215; _Journal de Physique_, Vol. XLIX. p. 348;
“Chambers’ Ency.,” 1868, Vol. IV. p. 593; “Mem. Soc. Ital.,”
Vol. XX. pp. 1 and 26; P. Sue, aîné, “Histoire du Galvanisme,”
Paris, An. X-1802, Vol. I. pp. 229–232; _Phil. Mag._, Vol.
V. p. 270; _Nicholson’s Journal_, quarto, Vol. IV. p. 120;
Sir Humphry Davy, “Bakerian Lectures,” London, 1840, p. 49;
Young’s “Lectures,” Vol. I. p. 752; W. Sturgeon, “Scientific
Researches,” Bury, 1850, p. 156; “Giornale di fisica” for 1810;
“Giornale dell’ Ital. Lettera ...” IX. p. 97; “Atti della Reg.
Soc. Economica di Firenze,” XX. p. 26; Brugnatelli, _Annali
di chimica_, II. p. 316 and XXI. p. 277; C. Henri Boissier,
“Mémoire sur la décomp. de l’eau, etc.,” Paris, 1801 (_Journal
de Physique_, Prairial, An. IX).
=A.D. 1799.=--Jadelot (J. F. N.), French physician, translates
Humboldt’s work on “Galvanism,” wherein he reviews the investigations
of the great German scientist and treats of the application of the
Galvanic fluid in medical practice. The observations of a friend of
Humboldt, Dr. C. J. C. Grapengieser, are especially detailed and a
complete account is given of all the noted physicians who have recorded
experiments in the same line.
REFERENCES.--For the medical applications of Galvanism: _Journal
de Physique_, Vol. LII. pp. 391, 467; Gilbert’s “Annalen,” XI.
354, 488 and XII. 230, 450; “An. of Sc. Disc.” for 1865, p. 123;
Larrey, 1793, 1840; L. Desmortiers, 1801; Legrave, 1803; F. J.
Double, 1803; J. Nauche, 1803; “Galv. Soc.” (_Phil. Mag._, Vol.
XV. p. 281); Laverine, 1803; Mongiardini and Lando, 1803; F.
Rossi, 1803–1827; J. Schaub, 1802–1805; B. Burkhardt, 1802; M.
Butet, 1801; J. Le Roy d’Etiolle, “Sur l’emploi du Galv....”;
P. L. Geiger, 1802–1803; J. D. Reuss in “De Re Electrica”; M.
Buccio, 1812; La Beaume, 1820–1848; P. A. Castberg (Sue, “Hist.
du Galv.,” IV. 264); Fabré-Palaprat and La Beaume, 1828; Rafn’s
“Nyt. Bibl.,” IV; C. C. Person, 1830–1853; S. G. Marianini,
1841; C. Usiglio, 1844; F. Hollick, 1847; G. Stambio, 1847; Du
Fresnel, 1847; H. de Lacy, 1849; M. Récamier, J. Massé, 1851;
R. M. Lawrance, Robt. Barnes, and Crimotel de Tolloy, 1853; M.
Middeldorpf, 1854; R. Remak, 1856, 1860, 1865; J. Seiler, 1860;
V. Von Bruns, 1870.
=A.D. 1799.=--Humboldt (Friedrich Heinrich Alexander, Baron Von)
(1769–1859), native of Berlin, is the author of “Cosmos” so frequently
alluded to in these pages, and, in the words of one of his biographers,
“will be remembered in future times as perhaps, all in all, the
greatest descriptive naturalist of his age, the man whose observations
have been most numerous and of the widest range, and the creator of
several new branches of natural sciences.”
The French translation of his work on “Galvanism” (“Expériences sur le
Galvanisme ... traduit de l’allemand par J. F. N. Jadelot”) appeared
in Paris during the year 1799, before which date, Noad remarks, no one
had applied the galvanic arc, as he did, to so many animals in various
parts of their bodies. Among other results, he discovered the action of
the electric current upon the pulsation of the heart, the secretions
from wounds, etc., and he proved upon himself that its action was not
limited to the sole instants of the commencement and end of its passage.
In the first volume of his very interesting work on “Galvanism”
(pp. 166–174, 261–310, 407–434) Wilkinson reviews the above-named
publication which M. Vassalli-Eandi, in 1799, pronounced “the most
complete that has hitherto appeared.” The following sectional extracts
are mainly taken from Mr. Wilkinson’s book, Chap. IX. part ii.
Humboldt’s first experiments were made with the aid of M. Venturi,
Professor of Natural Philosophy at Modena, and they were followed
quite assiduously for a while, but it was not until he learned of the
important observations made by Fowler, Hunter and Pfaff on animal
electricity and irritability, that he was spurred on to still further
extended investigations, which were carried on more particularly in
presence of Jurine, Pictet, Scarpa, Tralles and Volta. Humboldt’s work
is divided into ten sections, as follows:
Sect. I treats of the relation between galvanic irritation and
incitability.
Sect. II deals with the galvanic irritation produced without a coating,
or metallic or charcoal substances (repeating the investigations of M.
Cotugno, which led to the experiments of Vassalli during 1789).
Sect. III treats of the excitement produced by a simple metallic
substance, or by homogeneous metallic parts (detailing the experiments
of Aldini, Galvani, Berlinghieri, Lind, Pfaff and Volta).
Sect. IV discourses on heterogeneous metals. During his experiments
in this line, which were aided by his elder brother, chance led him
to a very interesting discovery. He found that the coatings of the
nerve and muscle being homogeneous, the contractions may be produced
when the degree of excitability is extremely feeble, provided the
coatings of this nature are united by exciting substances, among which
there is a heterogeneous one, having one of its surfaces covered by
a fluid in a state of vapour. This observation, which was originally
made at the commencement of 1796, surprised Humboldt so much that he
instantly communicated it to Sömmering, Blumenbach, Hertz and Goethe.
He had not as yet found recorded in the published works on galvanism
any experiment the result of which had the smallest analogy with his
discovery; and it was not until after the publication of the works of
Pfaff on animal electricity that he became acquainted with any one
similar to his own. There were, however, some differences, as he proves
by several passages cited from the above author.
Sect. V relates to the classification of active substances into
_exciters_ and _conductors_ of the galvanic fluid.
Sect. VI treats of experiments on the comparative effects of animal and
vegetable substances employed in the galvanic chain.
Sect. VII describes, in a tabular form, the conducting substances, and
those by which the galvanic fluid is insulated. In the employment of
very long conductors, it was not possible for Humboldt to remark any
interval between the instant when the muscle contracts and the moment
the contact of the conductor takes place, the muscle and nerve being
from two hundred to three hundred feet distant from each other. This
announces a celerity of twelve hundred feet per second. The effect
would be the same, should the conductors even be from ten thousand
to twenty thousand feet in length. Thus Haller, in his physiology,
ascribes to the nervous fluid a swiftness sufficient to enable it to
run over a space of nine thousand feet a second. The calculation of
Sauvages is carried to thirty-two thousand four hundred feet in the
same space of time; and what is still infinitely more surprising, its
celerity is estimated by the author of the essays on the mechanism of
the muscles at five hundred and seventy-six millions of feet (upward
of one hundred thousand miles) in the above space of a second of
time. It ought here to be noticed that the great differences in these
calculations arise from the different kinds of experiments on which
they are founded.
Sect. VIII proves that the nerve which is intended to excite
contractions in a muscle should be organically united with it, and it
deals with the effects of galvanism upon vegetables, aquatic worms,
insects and fishes.
Sect. IX describes the effects of galvanism upon amphibious animals,
referring to the observations of Nollet, Rosel, Haller, Spallanzani, P.
Michaelis and Herembstads.
Sect. X treats of the all-important effects of galvanism upon man, and
makes allusion to the experiments of Hunter, Pfaff, Fowler, Munro,
Robison, Hecker, Carradori, Achard, Grapengieser, Schmuck, Ludwig,
Creve, Webster and Volta. In speaking of the observations made by the
last named upon the tongue, he observes that some idea of them had been
given thirty years before, in Sulzer’s work entitled “The New Theory of
Pleasures,” published in 1767; and that if, at the above period, the
consideration of the superficial situation of the nerves of the tongue
had led to the artificial discovery of a nerve, the important discovery
of metallic irritation would have been made in the time of Haller,
Franklin, Trembley, Camper, and Buffon. How great a progress would not
this revelation have made if the above philosophers had transmitted to
us, thirty years ago, the theory and experiments which we leave to our
successors?
Volta having singled out the differences, in point of savour, which
result from galvanic experiments on the tongue according to the nature
and disposition of the coatings, Humboldt repeated these experiments
and added to them several of his own, with a nearly similar result. His
different trials, however, having failed to produce any contraction
of the tongue, appear to have established the truth of the ancient
assertion of Galen, confirmed by Scarpa, namely, that the nerve with
which the tongue is supplied by the third branch of the fifth pair is
exclusively devoted to the sense of tasting, and that the ninth pair
are exclusively destined for the motion of the tongue. This has been
evidently proved by the galvanic experiments on the nerve in question.
The termination, in the pituitous membrane, of the nerves belonging
to the organ of smelling, which originate in the first pair and in
the first two branches of the fifth, together with the observation of
the innumerable phenomena of sympathy between the organs of sight and
those of smell and taste, had led to a presumption that, by galvanizing
the nostrils, the smell would be affected. This supposition has not,
however, been confirmed by any experiment.
The eleventh chapter of Wilkinson’s work contains the analysis of
the report drawn up by Mr. J. N. Hallé in behalf of the commission
appointed by the French National Institute. This commission, which was
organized to look into (_examiner et vérifier_) the different
galvanic experiments which had been made and to ascertain their effects
and results, was composed of such distinguished French physiologists as
Coulomb, Fourcroy, Vauquelin, Charles, Sabathier, Hallé, Pelletan and
Guyton de Morveau, who were afterward joined by both Humboldt and the
celebrated Prof. Venturi, of Modena.
Humboldt’s observations respecting the application of galvanism to
medicine are embodied in his well-known letter to M. Loder, inserted
in “La Bibliothèque Germanique,” Vol. IV, Messidor, An. VIII. p. 301,
and are likewise detailed by Wilkinson (Chap. XIII) where references
are made, more particularly, to the experiments of Hufeland, Behrends,
Creve, Hymly, Pfaff and Anschell.
Between the years 1799 and 1804 Von Humboldt made observations upon
the magnetic intensity of the earth, of which an account will be found
in Vol. XV of the _Annalen der Physik_. These were made upon the
American Continent during the course of his well-known journey, the
equal of which latter, says Petersen, has not been seen since the days
when Alexander the Great fitted out an extensive scientific expedition
for Aristotle.