THE ODOMETER OR DIVINING-RING.—How come upon by the author—His first
experiments—The phenomena an objective proof of the reality of the
Od-force.
“Qualis ab incepto” shall be the motto of this twelfth letter, the
materials of which were undreamt of by me, when some three months ago I
remitted the new and corrected edition of “the Letters” to England. The
occasion which led me to the knowledge of the facts I have to mention,
and their bearing, tally curiously with what has gone before.
For it is again winter, with its long, solitary evenings, against the
tedium of which I had to seek a resource; and I bethought me, this
time, of occupying myself with looking into the higher mathematics.
Accordingly I sent to Herr Caspari, professor of mathematics in the
gymnasium at Boppard, to solicit him to give me the instruction and
assistance which I needed. And he obligingly came, in the evening
of the 31st of December, to sit by my side and converse with me.
And I went over preliminarily my schoolboy recollections of the
elements of mathematics, and was pleased at finding the remembered
difficulties vanish before the explanations of my well-informed tutor.
And I learned, to my vast delight, that the inability under which
asymptotes labour to touch hyperbolas is a purely arbitrary one, like
the legislative prohibition not to marry with one’s deceased wife’s
sister; but that, unlike the latter, it can be evaded; inasmuch as
an asymptote, by changing its name and forfeiting its properties,
may at any time unite itself with the object to which it had before
been infinitely near. Again, I found my boyish distrust and disbelief
in sines and cosines replaced by an intelligent and well-satisfied
acquaintance with them. And I even obtained a glimpse of the higher
analysis itself, pointing with its unerring finger to the exact height,
else unmeasurable, at which my candle should stand in the centre of my
round table, to shed upon it its maximum of illumination.
A liberal hour being over, and my dolphin-like recreation ended, my new
friend entered into desultory chat, and asked me, among other things,
if I had not written something on the divining-rod. I replied to his
question by giving him the copy I had of “the Letters;” and promised,
as a New-Year’s gift for the morrow, to present him with the implement
itself. And I lent him Von Reichenbach’s book on Od, with which he was
unacquainted. Then he told me that there were two or three experiments,
possibly akin to trials with the divining-rod, with which he had been
familiar for years, and which he had shown to many without receiving an
explanation of them. He said that as far as he knew they were original
and his own; and that he would willingly show them to me. He wanted
only for that purpose a piece of silver, a gold ring, and a bit of
silk. These were easily found. And he attached the silk to the ring,
which he then held suspended by the silk over a silver spoon, at a
distance of half an inch.
Shortly the ring shaped its first vague movements into regular
oscillations in a direction to and fro, or towards and from, Herr
Caspari. I will call such oscillations _longitudinal_. It was evident
to me, that this phenomenon must be akin to the motion of the
divining-rod.
Then, at Herr Caspari’s suggestion, I summoned the maid, who was
directed to place her hand in Herr Caspari’s disengaged hand. On
her doing so, the oscillations of the ring became _transverse_. How
pregnant was this fact! An Od-current had been established between the
two experimenters; and the apparent influence of the two metals on each
other had been modified.
Herr Caspari told me that, as far as he knew, these experiments would
only succeed when made with silver and gold, and a bit of silk. But he
said that he had still another experiment to show me, which he did the
following day. He said he had a little pea-like bit of something, which
he had been told was _schwefel-kies_, that exhibited another motion:
when held suspended by silk over either of the fingers, it rotated one
way; when held suspended over the thumb, it rotated in the contrary
direction.
Herr Caspari left me, after agreeing to assist me in the further
examination of these phenomena; and the New Year coming in found me
in busy thought how to elicit, through variations of Herr Caspari’s
experiments, some important physical evidence as to the reality and
agency of Von Reichenbach’s Od-force.
In ten days we have succeeded in disentangling the confused results
which attended our first experiments; and as I see no likelihood of
extending them at present in any new direction, I present them to
the reader now, as complete as I can at present render them. I have
used the term “divining-ring,” partly because I have a vague idea of
having seen Herr Caspari’s first facts adverted to in some publication
under that name; partly because it is really thus far deserved:—If you
place a piece of silver on a table, and lay over the table and it an
unfolded silk pocket-handkerchief, you can discover where the silver
lies by trying with the suspended ring each part of the surface. The
ring will only oscillate when held over the silver. But now I have to
substitute another name for the sake of precision.
A fragment of any thing, of any shape, suspended either by silk or
cotton thread, the other end of which is wound round the first joint
either of the forefinger or of the thumb, I will call an _Odometer_.
The length of the thread does not matter. It must be sufficient to
allow the ring, or whatever it is, to reach to about half an inch from
the table, against which you rest your arm or elbow to steady your
hand. If there be nothing on the table, the ring or its equivalent soon
becomes stationary. Then you test the powers of the odometer by placing
upon the table under it what substances you please. These I would call
_Od-subjects_.
To obtain uniform results with the Odometer, it is important to attach
the sustaining thread always to the same finger of the same hand,—best
to the forefinger of the right hand. It is evident that this rule
is not to prevent the experimenter, when he has succeeded in thus
obtaining a series of consistent results, from trying what will come of
substituting his other digits for that first employed.
I have armed the odometer with gold, silver, lead, zinc, iron, copper;
with coal, bone, horn, dry wood, charcoal, cinder, glass, soap, wax,
sealing-wax, shell-lac, sulphur, earthenware. As Od-subjects I have
likewise tried most of the substances above enumerated. All do not go
equally well, or perform exactly the same feats, with each odometer.
For example, an odometer of dry wood remains stationary over gold;
while it oscillates with great vivacity over glass. The respective
habitudes of different odometers to different Od-subjects is one of the
simplest points of investigation which the facts I am narrating suggest.
A gold ring with a plain stone in it was the first odometer which
I employed, and it is one of the most largely available. And gold
forms in general the most successful Od-subject. Sulphur likewise
displays very lively motions in the odometer. But the material which
I finally employed to verify the following phenomena was shell-lac, a
portion a full inch long, broader towards the lower end, then cut to
be lancet-shaped. The odometer moves more sluggishly with some than
with others, and in the same hand on different days; and doubtless
is capable of manifesting a greater variety of effects than I have
yet elicited from it. I can only pledge myself to the certainty of my
being always now able to obtain with the shell-lac odometer all the
results mentioned in the XXVII. experiments which first follow. Over
rock-crystal, however, the shell-lac odometer acts very feebly; but a
glass odometer moves with brilliant vivacity. I would besides advise
the reader to try a gold-ring odometer, in preference, for experiments
X., XI., XII., XIII.