as it should be, we do wrong if we regard it as an infant force. However
much new knowledge may do with electricity in the laboratory, in the
factory, or in the exchange, some of its best work is already done. It
is not likely ever to perform a greater feat than placing all mankind
within ear-shot of each other. Were electricity unmastered there could
be no democratic government of the United States. To-day the drama of
national affairs is more directly in view of every American citizen
than, a century ago, the public business of Delaware could be to the men
of that little State. And when on the broader stage of international
politics misunderstandings arise, let us note how the telegraph has
modified the hard-and-fast rules of old-time diplomacy. To-day, through
the columns of the press, the facts in controversy are instantly
published throughout the world, and thus so speedily give rise to
authoritative comment that a severe strain is put upon negotiators whose
tradition it is to be both secret and slow.
Railroads, with all they mean for civilization, could not have extended
themselves without the telegraph to control them. And railroads and
telegraphs are the sinews and nerves of national life, the prime
agencies in welding the diverse and widely separated States and
Territories of the Union. A Boston merchant builds a cotton-mill in
Georgia; a New York capitalist opens a copper-mine in Arizona. The
telegraph which informs them day by day how their investments prosper
tells idle men where they can find work, where work can seek idle men.
Chicago is laid in ashes, Charleston topples in earthquake, Johnstown is
whelmed in flood, and instantly a continent springs to their relief. And
what benefits issue in the strictly commercial uses of the telegraph!
At its click both locomotive and steamship speed to the relief of famine
in any quarter of the globe. In times of plenty or of dearth the markets
of the globe are merged and are brought to every man's door. Not less
striking is the neighbourhood guild of science, born, too, of the
telegraph. The day after Roentgen announced his X rays, physicists on
every continent were repeating his experiments--were applying his
discovery to the healing of the wounded and diseased. Let an anti-toxin
for diphtheria, consumption, or yellow fever be proposed, and a hundred
investigators the world over bend their skill to confirm or disprove, as
if the suggester dwelt next door.
On a stage less dramatic, or rather not dramatic at all, electricity
works equal good. Its motor freeing us from dependence on the horse is
spreading our towns and cities into their adjoining country. Field and
garden compete with airless streets. The sunny cottage is in active
rivalry with the odious tenement-house. It is found that transportation
within the gates of a metropolis has an importance second only to the
means of transit which links one city with another. The engineer is at
last filling the gap which too long existed between the traction of
horses and that of steam. In point of speed, cleanliness, and comfort
such an electric subway as that of South London leaves nothing to be
desired. Throughout America electric roads, at first suburban, are now
fast joining town to town and city to city, while, as auxiliaries to
steam railroads, they place sparsely settled communities in the arterial
current of the world, and build up a ready market for the dairyman and
the fruit-grower. In its saving of what Mr. Oscar T. Crosby has called
"man-hours" the third-rail system is beginning to oust steam as a motive
power from trunk-lines. Already shrewd railroad managers are granting
partnerships to the electricians who might otherwise encroach upon their
dividends. A service at first restricted to passengers has now extended
itself to the carriage of letters and parcels, and begins to reach out
for common freight. We may soon see the farmer's cry for good roads
satisfied by good electric lines that will take his crops to market much
more cheaply and quickly than horses and macadam ever did. In cities,
electromobile cabs and vans steadily increase in numbers, furthering the
quiet and cleanliness introduced by the trolley car.
A word has been said about the blessings which electricity promises to
country folk, yet greater are the boons it stands ready to bestow in the
hives of population. Until a few decades ago the water-supply of cities
was a matter not of municipal but of individual enterprise; water was
drawn in large part from wells here and there, from lines of piping laid
in favoured localities, and always insufficient. Many an epidemic of
typhoid fever was due to the contamination of a spring by a cesspool a
few yards away. To-day a supply such as that of New York is abundant
and cheap because it enters every house. Let a centralized electrical
service enjoy a like privilege, and it will offer a current which is
heat, light, chemical energy, or motive power, and all at a wage lower
than that of any other servant. Unwittingly, then, the electrical
engineer is a political reformer of high degree, for he puts a new
premium upon ability and justice at the City Hall. His sole condition is
that electricity shall be under control at once competent and honest.
Let us hope that his plea, joined to others as weighty, may quicken the
spirit of civic righteousness so that some of the richest fruits ever
borne in the garden of science and art may not be proffered in vain.
Flame, the old-time servant, is individual; electricity, its successor
and heir, is collective. Flame sits upon the hearth and draws a family
together; electricity, welling from a public source, may bind into a
unit all the families of a vast city, because it makes the benefit of
each the interest of all.
But not every promise brought forward in the name of the electrician has
his assent or sanction. So much has been done by electricity, and so
much more is plainly feasible, that a reflection of its triumphs has
gilded many a baseless dream. One of these is that the cheap electric
motor, by supply power at home, will break up the factory system, and
bring back the domestic manufacturing of old days. But if this power
cost nothing at all the gift would leave the factory unassailed; for we
must remember that power is being steadily reduced in cost from year to
year, so that in many industries it has but a minor place among the
expenses of production. The strength and profit of the factory system
lie in its assembling a wide variety of machines, the first delivering
its product to the second for another step toward completion, and so on
until a finished article is sent to the ware-room. It is this minute
subdivision of labour, together with the saving and efficiency that
inure to a business conducted on an immense scale under a single
manager, that bids us believe that the factory has come to stay. To be
sure, a weaver, a potter, or a lens-grinder of peculiar skill may thrive
at his loom or wheel at home; but such a man is far from typical in
modern manufacture. Besides, it is very questionable whether the
lamentations over the home industries of the past do not ignore evil
concomitants such as still linger in the home industries of the
present--those of the sweater's den, for example.
This rapid survey of what electricity has done and may yet do--futile
expectation dismissed--has shown it the creator of a thousand material
resources, the perfector of that communication of things, of power, of
thought, which in every prior stage of advancement has marked the
successive lifts of humanity. It was much when the savage loaded a pack
upon a horse or an ox instead of upon his own back; it was yet more when
he could make a beacon-flare give news or warning to a whole
country-side, instead of being limited to the messages which might be
read in his waving hands. All that the modern engineer was able to do
with steam for locomotion is raised to a higher plane by the advent of
his new power, while the long-distance transmission of electrical energy
is contracting the dimensions of the planet to a scale upon which its
cataracts in the wilderness drive the spindles and looms of the factory
town, or illuminate the thoroughfares of cities. Beyond and above all
such services as these, electricity is the corner-stone of physical
generalization, a revealer of truths impenetrable by any other ray.
The subjugation of fire has done much in giving man a new independence
of nature, a mighty armoury against evil. In curtailing the most arduous
and brutalizing forms of toil, electricity, that subtler kind of fire,
carries this emancipation a long step further, and, meanwhile, bestows
upon the poor many a luxury which but lately was the exclusive
possession of the rich. In more closely binding up the good of the bee
with the welfare of the hive, it is an educator and confirmer of every
social bond. In so far as it proffers new help in the war on pain and
disease it strengthens the confidence of man in an Order of Right and
Happiness which for so many dreary ages has been a matter rather of hope
than of vision. Are we not, then, justified in holding electricity to be
a multiplier of faculty and insight, a means of dignifying mind and
soul, unexampled since man first kindled fire and rejoiced?
We have traced how dexterity rose to fire-making, how fire-making led to
the subjugation of electricity. Much of the most telling work of fire
can be better done by its great successor, while electricity performs
many tasks possible only to itself. Unwitting truth there was in the
simple fable of the captive who let down a spider's film, that drew up a
thread, which in turn brought up a rope--and freedom. It was in 1800 on
the threshold of the nineteenth century, that Volta devised the first
electric battery. In a hundred years the force then liberated has
vitally interwoven itself with every art and science, bearing fruit not
to be imagined even by men of the stature of Watt, Lavoisier, or
Humboldt. Compare this rapid march of conquest with the slow adaptation,
through age after age, of fire to cooking, smelting, tempering. Yet it
was partly, perhaps mainly, because the use of fire had drawn out man's
intelligence and cultivated his skill that he was ready in the fulness
of time so quickly to seize upon electricity and subdue it.
Electricity is as legitimately the offspring of fire as fire of the
simple knack in which one savage in ten thousand was richer than his
fellows. The principle of permutation, suggested in both victories,
interprets not only how vast empire is won by a new weapon of prime
dignity; it explains why such empires are brought under rule with
ever-accelerated pace. Every talent only pioneers the way for the
richer talents which are born from it.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Permutations are the various ways in which two or more different
things may be arranged in a row, all the things appearing in each row.
Permutations are readily illustrated with squares or cubes of different
colours, with numbers, or letters.
Permutations of two elements, 1 and 2, are (1 x 2) two; 1, 2; 2, 1; or
_a_, _b_; _b_, _a_. Of three elements the permutations are (1 x 2 x 3)
six; 1, 2, 3; 1, 3, 2; 2, 1, 3; 2, 3, 1; 3, 1, 2; 3, 2, 1; or _a_, _b_,
_c_; _a_, _c_, _b_; _b_, _a_, _c_; _b_, _c_, _a_; _c_, _a_, _b_; _c_,
_b_, _a_. Of four elements the permutations are (1 x 2 x 3 x 4)
twenty-four; of five elements, one hundred and twenty, and so on. A new
element or permutator multiplies by an increasing figure all the
permutations it finds.
[6] Some years ago I sent an outline of this argument to Herbert
Spencer, who replied: "I recognize a novelty and value in your inference
that the law implies an increasing width of gap between lower and higher
types as evolution advances."
COUNT RUMFORD IDENTIFIES HEAT WITH MOTION.
[Benjamin Thompson, who received the title of Count Rumford from
the Elector of Bavaria, was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1753.
When thirty-one years of age he settled in Munich, where he devoted
his remarkable abilities to the public service. Twelve years
afterward he removed to England; in 1800 he founded the Royal
Institution of London, since famous as the theatre of the labours
of Davy, Faraday, Tyndall, and Dewar. He bequeathed to Harvard
University a fund to endow a professorship of the application of
science to the art of living: he instituted a prize to be awarded
by the American Academy of Sciences for the most important
discoveries and improvements relating to heat and light. In 1804 he
married the widow of the illustrious chemist Lavoisier: he died in
1814. Count Rumford on January 25, 1798, read a paper before the
Royal Society entitled "An Enquiry Concerning the Source of Heat
Which Is Excited by Friction." The experiments therein detailed
proved that heat is identical with motion, as against the notion
that heat is matter. He thus laid the corner-stone of the modern
theory that heat light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action,
and all other forms of energy are in essence motion, are
convertible into one another, and as motion are indestructible. The
following abstract of Count Rumford's paper is taken from "Heat as
a Mode of Motion," by Professor John Tyndall, published by D.
Appleton & Co., New York. This work and "The Correlation and
Conservation of Forces," edited by Dr. E. L. Youmans, published by
the same house, will serve as a capital introduction to the modern
theory that energy is motion which, however varied in its forms, is
changeless in its quantity.]
Being engaged in superintending the boring of cannon in the workshops of
the military arsenal at Munich, Count Rumford was struck with the very
considerable degree of heat which a brass gun acquires, in a short time,
in being bored, and with the still more intense heat (much greater than
that of boiling water) of the metallic chips separated from it by the
borer, he proposed to himself the following questions:
"Whence comes the heat actually produced in the mechanical operations
above mentioned?
"Is it furnished by the metallic chips which are separated from the
metal?"
If this were the case, then the _capacity for heat_ of the parts of the
metal so reduced to chips ought not only to be changed, but the change
undergone by them should be sufficiently great to account for _all_ the
heat produced. No such change, however, had taken place, for the chips
were found to have the same capacity as slices of the same metal cut by
a fine saw, where heating was avoided. Hence, it is evident, that the
heat produced could not possibly have been furnished at the expense of
the latent heat of the metallic chips. Rumford describes these
experiments at length, and they are conclusive.
He then designed a cylinder for the express purpose of generating heat
by friction, by having a blunt borer forced against its solid bottom,
while the cylinder was turned around its axis by the force of horses. To
measure the heat developed, a small round hole was bored in the
cylinder for the purpose of introducing a small mercurial thermometer.
The weight of the cylinder was 113.13 pounds avoirdupois.
The borer was a flat piece of hardened steel, 0.63 of an inch thick,
four inches long, and nearly as wide as the cavity of the bore of the
cylinder, namely, three and one-half inches. The area of the surface by
which its end was in contact with the bottom of the bore was nearly two
and one-half inches. At the beginning of the experiment the temperature
of the air in the shade, and also that of the cylinder, was 60 deg. Fahr. At
the end of thirty minutes, and after the cylinder had made 960
revolutions round its axis, the temperature was found to be 130 deg..
Having taken away the borer, he now removed the metallic dust, or rather
scaly matter, which had been detached from the bottom of the cylinder by
the blunt steel borer, and found its weight to be 837 grains troy. "Is
it possible," he exclaims, "that the very considerable quantity of heat
produced in this experiment--a quantity which actually raised the
temperature of above 113 pounds of gun-metal at least 70 deg. of
Fahrenheit's thermometer--could have been furnished by so inconsiderable
a quantity of metallic dust and this merely in consequence of a _change_
in its capacity of heat?"
"But without insisting on the improbability of this supposition, we have
only to recollect that from the results of actual and decisive
experiments, made for the express purpose of ascertaining that fact,
the capacity for heat for the metal of which great guns are cast is _not
sensibly changed_ by being reduced to the form of metallic chips, and
there does not seem to be any reason to think that it can be much
changed, if it be changed at all, in being reduced to much smaller
pieces by a borer which is less sharp."
He next surrounded his cylinder by an oblong deal-box, in such a manner
that the cylinder could turn water-tight in the centre of the box, while
the borer was pressed against the bottom of the cylinder. The box was
filled with water until the entire cylinder was covered, and then the
apparatus was set in action. The temperature of the water on commencing
was 60 deg..
"The result of this beautiful experiment," writes Rumford, "was very
striking, and the pleasure it afforded me amply repaid me for all the
trouble I had had in contriving and arranging the complicated machinery
used in making it. The cylinder had been in motion but a short time,
when I perceived, by putting my hand into the water, and touching the
outside of the cylinder, that heat was generated.
"At the end of one hour the fluid, which weighed 18.77 pounds, or two
and one-half gallons, had its temperature raised forty-seven degrees,
being now 107 deg..
"In thirty minutes more, or one hour and thirty minutes after the
machinery had been set in motion, the heat of the water was 142 deg..
"At the end of two hours from the beginning, the temperature was 178 deg..
"At two hours and twenty minutes it was 200 deg., and at two hours and
thirty minutes it _actually boiled_!"
"It would be difficult to describe the surprise and astonishment
expressed in the countenances of the bystanders on seeing so large a
quantity of water heated, and actually made to boil, without any fire.
Though, there was nothing that could be considered very surprising in
this matter, yet I acknowledge fairly that it afforded me a degree of
childish pleasure which, were I ambitious of the reputation of a grave
philosopher, I ought most certainly rather to hide than to discover."
He then carefully estimates the quantity of heat possessed by each
portion of his apparatus at the conclusion of the experiment, and,
adding all together, finds a total sufficient to raise 26.58 pounds of
ice-cold water to its boiling point, or through 180 deg. Fahrenheit. By
careful calculation, he finds this heat equal to that given out by the
combustion of 2,303.8 grains (equal to four and eight-tenths ounces
troy) of wax.
He then determines the "_celerity_" with which the heat was generated,
summing up thus: "From the results of these computations, it appears
that the quantity of heat produced equably, or in a continuous stream,
if I may use the expression, by the friction of the blunt steel borer
against the bottom of the hollow metallic cylinder, was _greater_ than
that produced in the combustion of nine _wax-candles_, each
three-quarters of an inch in diameter, all burning together with clear
bright flames.
"One horse would have been equal to the work performed, though two were
actually employed. Heat may thus be produced merely by the strength of a
horse, and, in a case of necessity, this heat might be used in cooking
victuals. But no circumstances could be imagined in which this method of
procuring heat would be advantageous, for more heat might be obtained by
using the fodder necessary for the support of a horse as fuel."
[This is an extremely significant passage, intimating as it does, that
Rumford saw clearly that the force of animals was derived from the food;
_no creation of force_ taking place in the animal body.]
"By meditating on the results of all these experiments, we are naturally
brought to that great question which has so often been the subject of
speculation among philosophers, namely, What is heat--is there any such
thing as an _igneous fluid_? Is there anything that, with propriety, can
be called caloric?
"We have seen that a very considerable quantity of heat may be excited
by the friction of two metallic surfaces, and given off in a constant
stream or flux _in all directions_, without interruption or
intermission, and without any signs of _diminution_ or _exhaustion_. In
reasoning on this subject we must not forget _that most remarkable
circumstance_, that the source of the heat generated by friction in
these experiments appeared evidently to be _inexhaustible_. [The italics
are Rumford's.] It is hardly necessary to add, that anything which any
_insulated_ body or system of bodies can continue to furnish _without
limitation_ cannot possibly be a _material substance_; and it appears to
me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any
distinct idea of anything capable of being excited and communicated in
those experiments, except it be MOTION."
When the history of the dynamical theory of heat is written, the man
who, in opposition to the scientific belief of his time, could
experiment and reason upon experiment, as Rumford did in the
investigation here referred to, cannot be lightly passed over. Hardly
anything more powerful against the materiality of heat has been since
adduced, hardly anything more conclusive in the way of establishing that
heat is, what Rumford considered it to be, _Motion_.
VICTORY OF THE "ROCKET" LOCOMOTIVE.
[Part of Chapter XII. Part II, of "The Life of George Stephenson
and of His Son, Robert Stephenson," by Samuel Smiles New York,
Harper & Brothers, 1868.]
The works of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway were now approaching
completion. But, strange to say, the directors had not yet decided as to
the tractive power to be employed in working the line when open for
traffic. The differences of opinion among them were so great as
apparently to be irreconcilable. It was necessary, however, that they
should, come to some decision without further loss of time, and many
board meetings were accordingly held to discuss the subject. The
old-fashioned and well-tried system of horse-haulage was not without its
advocates; but, looking at the large amount of traffic which there was
to be conveyed, and at the probable delay in the transit from station to
station if this method were adopted, the directors, after a visit made
by them to the Northumberland and Durham railways in 1828, came to the
conclusion that the employment of horse-power was inadmissible.
Fixed engines had many advocates; the locomotive very few: it stood as
yet almost in a minority of one--George Stephenson....
In the meantime the discussion proceeded as to the kind of power to be
permanently employed for the working of the railway. The directors were
inundated with schemes of all sorts for facilitating locomotion. The
projectors of England, France, and America seemed to be let loose upon
them. There were plans for working the waggons along the line by
water-power. Some proposed hydrogen, and others carbonic acid gas.
Atmospheric pressure had its eager advocates. And various kinds of fixed
and locomotive steam-power were suggested. Thomas Gray urged his plan of
a greased road with cog-rails; and Messrs. Vignolles and Ericsson
recommended the adoption of a central friction-rail, against which two
horizontal rollers under the locomotive, pressing upon the sides of this
rail, were to afford the means of ascending the inclined planes....
The two best practical engineers of the day concurred in reporting
substantially in favour of the employment of fixed engines. Not a single
professional man of eminence could be found to coincide with the
engineer of the railway in his preference for locomotive over fixed
engine power. He had scarcely a supporter, and the locomotive system
seemed on the eve of being abandoned. Still he did not despair. With the
profession against him, and public opinion against him--for the most
frightful stories went abroad respecting the dangers, the unsightliness,
and the nuisance which the locomotive would create--Stephenson held to
his purpose. Even in this, apparently the darkest hour of the
locomotive, he did not hesitate to declare that locomotive railroads
would, before many years had passed, be "the great highways of the
world."