Steam Steel and Electricity

f these have been mentioned in the preceding chapter. Others will appear in what is

of drawing, "attracting" o

through a conductor, at any distance. A current might

d it should be remembered that even water is a chemical, and tha

rtible into heat in a w

possible, and should be remembered in connec

us with our own names. We apparently produce out of nothing but the whirling of a huge bobbin of wire any power we may wish, and send it over a thin wire to where we wish to use it, though every adult can remember when the difficulty of distance, in the propelling of machinery, was thought to have been solved to the satisfaction of every reasonable man by the making of wire cables that would transmit power between grooved wheels a distance of some hundreds of feet. We turn night into day with the glow of lamps that burn without flame, and almost without heat, whose mysterious glow is fed from some distant place, that hang in clusters, banners, letters, in city streets, and that glow like new stars along the treeless prairie horizon wh

s of copper, as pure as it can be made in the ordinary course of manufacture. There are other metals that conduct an electrical current eve

esistance." There are no absolutely perfect conductors, and there are no substances that may be called absolutely non-conductors. A non-conductor is simply a reluctant, an excessively slow, conductor. In all electrical operations we look first for these two essentials: a good conductor and a good non-conductor. We want the latter as supports and attachments for the first. If we undertake to convey water in a pipe we do not wish the pipe to leak. In conveying electricity upon a wire we have a little leak wherever we allow any other conductor to come too near, or to touch, the wire carrying the current. These little electrical leaks constantly exist. All nature is in a conspiracy t

to carry it. There is also a trait called inertia; that property of all matter by which it tends when at rest to remain so, and when in motion to continue in motion, which we meet at every step we take in the material world. Electricity is again an exception. It knows neither gravity, nor inertia, nor material volume, nor spa

de where the approach is made. If in any conductor the current is weak, very little of it, if any, will go off into the conductor before actual contact is made. If it is strong, it will often leap across the space with a spark. One body may be charged with positive, and another with negative, electricity. There is then a disposition to equalize that cannot be easily repressed. The positive and the negative will assume their dual functions, their existence together, in spite of

"lines of force." The law as stated is that the lines in which the magnetism produced by electricity acts are always at right angles with the direction in which the current is passing. Let us put this in ordinary phrase, and say that in a wire through which a current is passing there is a magnetic attraction, and that the "pull" is always straight toward the wire. This magnetism in a wire, when it is doubled up and multiplied sufficiently, has strong powers of attraction. This multiplying is accomplished by winding the wire into a compact coil and passing a current through it. If one should wind insulated wire around a core, or cylinder

of the coil without a current. For it may as well be stated now that no matter how good a conductor a wire may be, two qualities of it cause what is called "resistance"--the current does not pass so easily. These two qualities are thinness and length. The current will no

orm, one of the indispensable parts of the electromagnetic machines used in industrial electricity, and in all of them except the appliances of electric lighting, and even in that case it is indispensable in producing the current which consumes the points of the carbon, or heats the filament to a white glow. The current may traverse the wire for a hundred miles to reach this little coil. But, instantly, at a touch a hundred miles away that forms a contact, there is a continuous "circuit;" the core becomes a magnet, and the piece of iron near it is drawn suddenly to it. Remove the distant finger from t

nnot be controlled. In common phrase, it cannot be made to "let go" at will. The greatest value of magnetism, as connected with electricity, consists in the fact of the intimate relationship of the two. A magnet may be made at

piece of fine steel, of hard temper, which has been magnetized, usually by having had a current passed through or around it, and sometimes by contact with another magnet. For the singular property of a magnet is that it may continually impart its quality, yet

have its two poles. The law is arbitrary and invariable under all circumstances, and is a law of nature, as unexplainable and as invariable as any in that mysterious code. All bar magnets, when suspended by their centers, turn their ends to the North and

der it, but afterwards retains it permanently. Iron and steel are the magnetic metals, but there is a considerable list of metals not magnetic that are better than they as conductors of the electric current. In a certain sense they are also the electric metals. A Dynamo, or Motor, made of brass or copper e

t, not necessarily by any actual contact with any other magnet, or by touching or rubbing, but by being placed in an electric field. It acquired its magnetism by induction; by drawing in (since that is the meaning of the term) the

w in the second wire, passing in an opposite direction from the first wire's current. But this current in the second wire does not continue. It is a momentary impulse, existing only at the moment of the first passing of the current through the wire attached to the poles of the battery. After this first instantaneous throb there is nothing more. But now cut off the

earer to the secondary, and again moved away from it, the current passing all the time through it. Every time it is moved nearer, an impulse will be generated in the secondary which will be opposite in direction to the current

ent in the primary be increased or diminis

ly be performed if an instrument sufficiently delicate were attached to the terminals of the secondary to make the impulses

trength in the primary, induces, with these movements or conditio

s in strength in the primary, induces a momentary curre

y, and send a current through the coil. This would then be the primary, and the other would be the secondary, as described above. But, since the power and efficiency of an induced current depends upon the length of the secondary wire that is exposed to the influence of the current carried by the primary, we fix two separate coils, one small enough to slip inside of the other. This smaller, inner coil is made with coarser wire than the outer, and

minals of the secondary coil held apart for a distance of several feet, and would pierce sheets of plate glass three inches thick. Before the days of practical electric lighting the induction-coil was used for the simultaneous lighting of the gas-jets in public buildings, and is still so used to a limited extent. Its description is introduced here as an illustration of the laws of induction which the reader will find

field surrounding the conductor. (3) The nature of the induced current, and the manner in which it is produced. The sum of the information so far may be stated in other words to be how to make an electromagnet, and how to produce an induced current. Such information has

rm of motion of the minute and invisible atoms of which it is composed. This movement is instantaneously communicated along the length of a conductor. There must, of course, be an end to this process in theory, because all the molecules once moved must return to rest, or to a former condition, before being moved again. Therefore it is necessary to add that when the motion of the last mol

r" The question is still in dispute whether we have only one electricity or two opposite electricities. The great field of chemistry enters into the discussion as perhaps having the solution of the question within its possibilities. The practical electrician acts upon facts which he knows are true without knowing their cause; empirically; and so far adheres to the molecular hypothesis. The demonstrations and experiments of Tesla so far produce only new theories, or demonstrate the fallacies of the old, but give us nothing absolute. Nevertheless, under his investigations, the possibilities of the near future are widely extended. By means of currents alternating with very high

following quotation from Nature, as expressed in a lecture by

alone can decide. In any case, our insight into the possibilities of static electricity ha

can now be produced without chemical aid--a flame which yields light and heat without the consumption of material and without any chemical process. To this end we require improved methods for producing excessively frequent alternations and en

the whole field, not merely of opt

ugh a dense fog. But electrical rays of a foot or two wave-length, of which we

ne of the varieties or manifestations of energy. Nevertheless, electricity has an important influence upon vital phenomena, and is in turn set in action by the living being--animal or vegetable. We have electric fishes--one of them the prototype of the torpedo of mod

ithout wires, posts, cables, or any of our present costly appliances. It is vain to attempt to pi

energized, and remain so as long as the conductor is attached to a source of electricity. In such a case an additional charge is required only w

ence has attained in its inquiries to the present date. The electric light is scarcely explainable

urse of investigations that were suggested by that antique, accidental discovery. What we know as the dynamic branch of the subject was created by the investigations of Faraday; induction was its mother. It is the practically import

t known belong, as the telegraph, electro-plating, etc. I shall first consid

expressed so as to be read at a distance, and that conveys a meaning, is a telegram. [21] Our plains Indians used columns of smoke, or fires, and are the actual inventors of the heliograph, now so called, though formerly meaning the making of a picture by the aid of the sun--photography. The vessels of a squadron at sea have long used telegraphic signals. Some of the celebrated sentences of our history have been written by visual signals, such as "Hold the fort, for I am coming," "Don't give

. It avoids the use of two words, as "Telegraphic Message," or "Telegraphic Dispatch," and the

lectroscope at the other. The modern reader may smile at the idea of the hurried sender of a message taking a piece of cat-skin, or his silk handkerchief, and rubbing up the successive letter-balls of glass or sulphur until he had spelled out his telegram. Later a man named Dyer, of New York, invented a system of sending messages by a single wire, and of causing a record to be made at the receiving office by means of a point passing over litmus paper, which the current was to mark by chemical action, the paper passing over a roller or

ssel he seems to have conceived the idea which thenceforth occupied his life. It was the beginning of the present Electric Telegraph. During this same voyage he embodied his notions in some drawings, and they were the beginnings of vicissitudes among the most long-continued and trying for which life affords any opportunity. He abandoned his studies. He paid attention to no other

hange in the systems to which it was accustomed. There is always enmity against an improver. In reality, the question of how much money Morse should make by inventing the electric telegraph was the question of least importance. Yet it was regarded as the only one. He is dead. His profits have gone into the mass, hi

The bar was varnished for insulation, and the turns of wire were so few that they did not touch each other. The apparatus would not work at a distance of more than a few feet, and not invariably then. Professor Leonard D. Gale suggested the cause of the difficulty as being in the sparseness of the coils of wire on the magnet and the use of a single-cell battery. He furnished an electro-magnet and battery out of his own belongings, with which the efficiency of the contrivance was greatly increased. The only insulated wire then known was bonnet-wire, used by milliners for shaping the immense flaring bonnets worn by our grandmothers, and when it fin

then a set of type arranged to regulate and communicate the signs, and rules in which to set this type. There was a means for regulating the movement forward of the rule containing the types. This was a crank to be turned by the hand. The marking or writing apparatus at the receiving instrument was a pendulum arranged to be swung across the slip of paper, as it was unwound from the drum, making a zig-zag mark the points of which were to be counted, a certain number of points meaning a certain numeral, which numeral meant a word. A separate type was used to represent each numeral, having a corresponding number of projections or teeth. A telegraphic dictionary was necessary, and one was at great pains prepared by Morse. His process was, therefore, to translate the message to be sent into the numerals corresponding to the words used, to set the types corresponding to those numerals in the rule, and then to pass the rule through the applia

erators of the first line discovered that it was possible to read the signals by the sound made by the armature lever. In vain did the managers prohibit it as unauthorized. The practice was still carried on wherever it could be without detection. Morse was uncompromising in his opposition to the innovation. The wonderful alphabet of the telegraph, the most valuable of the separate inventions that make up the system, was not his conception. The invention of this alphabetical code, based on the ele

anufacture and sale of a patent plow, and undertook to make a pipe-laying machine for this new telegraph line. After the work had been begun Vail tested and united the conductors as each section was laid. When ten miles were laid the insulation, which had been growing weaker, failed altogether. There was no current. Probably every schoolboy now knows what the trouble was. The earth had stolen the current and absorbed it. The modern boy would simply remark "Induction," and turn his attention to some efficient remedy. Then, there was consternation. Cornell dexterously managed to break the pipe-laying

onclusions of all except Franklin, until we come to Faraday. It is one of the features of the time in which we live that, regardless of age, we are all scholars of a new school in which mere diligence and behav

rise further. Morse stayed with one instrument in the Capitol at Washington, and Vail carried another with him at the end of the line. Already the type-and-rule and all the symbols and dictionaries had been di

pe his progresses were like those of a monarch. He was made a member of almost all of the learned societies of the world, and on his breast glittered the medals and orders that are the insignia of human greatness. A congress of repres

signals were made by sound, as all signals now are in the so-called Morse system. He hung a bar-magnet on a pivot in its center as a compass-needle is hung. He wound a U-shaped piece of soft iron with insulated wire, and made it an electro-magnet, and placed the north end of the magnetized bar between the two legs of this electro-magnet. When the latter was made a magnet by the current the e

telegraph line are not here stated. There are none

Henry which he abandoned without an idea of its utility or of the possibilities of any telegraph as we have long known them. Morse knew these possibilities. He was one of the inn