This seems to be a question not fully settled by sufficient authority.
It seems as if this term were incorrectly applied and that suction
would be a better name for the agency.
That bodies fall to the ground when dropped, or return when thrown or
shot into the air is nothing more than a stick of wood thrown into a
stream floats with the current and drifts to the bank.
Most people when asked which side of a fan you feel the air from, when
fanning yourself, naturally reply from the side toward you, but by
trying the experiment you will soon discover that the air comes after
the passage of the fan, only filling the space or vacuum the fan has
made.
It has often been asked why people trying to board a train in motion
are so apt to be drawn under the wheels, and legs and arms crushed. It
is the same reason as with the fan, a large vacuum is being produced
and proportionate suction occurs to fill it.
A man can stand alongside a train when motionless and lean against it,
or put his hand on it, as safely as on the depot, but when in motion of
thirty or forty miles an hour, it would be almost sure to cost him his
life. Attraction can hardly be possible except by affinity; iron can
be attracted by a magnet no more than wood, unless possessed of that
peculiar quality of being magnetic. Mr. Edison’s experiments have to be
confined entirely to such bodies of ore.
That attraction of affinity exists there can be no doubt, as exhibited
in plants, insects, birds and animals, both quadruped and biped,
otherwise courtship and marriage and all means of propagating species
would be for naught and neglected.
It is a general supposition that we derive our heat from the Sun
by direct rays, but it is doubtful if it comes only through its
innumerable rays of light through which the Earth and the planets
revolve, and here friction puts in one of its special works. The common
idea that noon-day is the time for the greatest heat is not always
justified, for other influences, such as friction in the atmosphere,
can make midnight warmer than noon.
The concentrated rays of the Sun at midday of course bring them so
closely together, and direct, that the Earth’s revolution comes
squarely across them, as can be demonstrated across the teeth of a
comb, thus showing a greater pressure than drawn obliquely.
That heat can come directly from the Sun seems an impossibility without
some medium of contact, which through the coldness and a barrenness of
space does not seem to exist.
As we arrive at certain altitudes in the mountains, we find perpetual
snow and ice, and the same class of atmosphere is encountered anywhere
else rising in a balloon to similar heights. It would be natural to
expect an increasing warmth as we get away from the Earth toward the
Sun, but the reverse being the case, it is hard to imagine what the
temperature of space 1,000 miles away must be.
The question is likely to be asked, if the Sun does not send out heat,
how is it obtained?
The answer will be in accordance with the first proposition in this
brief work. All heat is obtained by Friction, in absence of which there
can be no heat. The Earth gets its heat mostly by friction through its
atmosphere.
The mass of atmosphere surrounding our planet is like an ocean made up
of gases and elements that produce both water and land. The revolution
of the Earth through that atmosphere at the rate of 1,000 miles an
hour, seventeen miles a minute, or nearly four miles every second, is
something as incomprehensible to our minds as the distance to the Sun.
Only for this friction for a certain distance from the surface, the
same condition of cold would no doubt exist on the surface as on the
tops of the high ranges of mountains.
The Earth is producing its own warmth by friction in its atmosphere the
same as a wagon-wheel would do by being rapidly revolved inside of a
loose tire. The atmosphere is virtually a tire surrounding us, through
which the Earth revolves, and by Friction produces the warmth as really
as a man warms his hands by rubbing them together.
That the Sun can be an inconsumable body of fire, or that it can become
extinct is a most preposterous belief.
That the Sun is a vast body of earth and water hardly admits of a
doubt, and its warmth and light is due to the same influence largely
that the Earth and every other planet experiences.
There is not and cannot be a complete consumption of material in
the immutable affairs of Nature, as there must be an eternal and
exhaustless interchange of supply and demand. While our forest and
other fuel supply is being burned, another is growing and something
forming to keep up the balance.
In Nature nothing is lost, neither can there be increase; design is
limitless, and resources inexhaustible; duplicates are never known in
form, species, features, and thoughts; thus showing one of Nature’s
most positive laws, that mankind shall not accept one central thought,
creed, or purpose to be universally followed, as such an order of
things would entirely preclude the writing of the few hints herein
offered, as the encouragement of any new device for man’s benefit of
body or mind, thus leaving everything in a state of stagnation wherein
thrift, learning, and progress would be unknown.
Nature never repeats her works, and no two grains of sand or flakes of
snow have ever been exactly alike, or ever motionless. Motion causes
friction. Friction produces heat. Heat produces life.