Steam Steel and Electricity

dynamic class there can be no more common and striking example than the now almost universal electric light. Yet, with a sufficient expenditure of chemicals and electrode

and an immense circular chamber beneath the dome was occupied by hundreds of cells of the ordinary form of battery. The lamps were of the incandescent variety, and what we now know as the filame

means, and would have been impossible otherwise. But these were only incidents and suggestions. The question was how to make this instantaneous spark continuous. There was pondering upon the fact that the only difference between heat and electricity is one of molecular arrangement. Heat is a molecular motion like that of electricity, without the symmetry and harmony of action electricity has. The vibrations of electricity are accomplished rapidly, and without loss. Those of heat are slow, and greatly radiated. When a current of electricity reaches a place in the conductor where it cannot pass easily, and the orderly vibrations of its molecules are disturbed, they are thrown into the disorderly motion known as heat. So, when the conductor is not so good; when a large wire is reduced suddenly to a small on

all cells, the most powerful generator that had been made to that time, produced a brief and brilliant spark, the result of momentarily imperfect contact. Every such spark, produced since

s in the open air. This is the "arc." The other is by heating to a white heat a filament of carbon, or some su

them to continually creep together, yet never touch. Many devices have been contrived to this end. With all theories and reasons well known, and all effects accurately calculated, upon this small arrangement depends the practical utility of the arc light. The best arrangement is the invention of Edison, and is controlled most ingeniously by the current itself, acting through the increased difficulty of its passage when the two carbon-poi

where it is called upon to traverse, a smaller one. Platinum was attempted for this place of greater resistance because of its qualities. It does not rust, has a low specific heat, and is therefore raised to a higher temperature with less heat imparted. But it was a scarce and expensive material, and so long as it was heated to incandescence in the open air, that is, so long

eral weeks in the making of a single loop-shaped carbon filament that would bear the most delicate handling. This was then carefully carried to a glass-worker to be inclosed in a bulb, and at the first movement he broke it, and the work must be done over and done better. It finally was. The little pear-shaped bulb with its delicate loop of filament, which cost months of toil and experiment at first, is no

tic quality to the surrounding air. It would be as true if one should speak of a

the incandescent to interiors. The latter is also capable of a modification not applicable to the arc. It can, in theaters and other buildings, be "turned down" to a gentle, blood-red glow. The means by which this is accomplished is ingenious and surprising, since it means that the supply of electricity over a wire--seemingly the most subtle and elusive es

team engine and far excelling it, whose familiar burring sound is now heard in almost every village in the United States and has become the characteristic sound of modern civilization, must constit

t of the Magneto-electric machine of M. Gramme, in the London Standard of April 9th, 1873, confirmed by other information, leads to the belief that a decided improvement has been made in these machines." The word "dynamo" was then unknown. Later, Edison, Weston, Thompson, Hopkinson, Ferranti and others appear as improvers in the mechanism necessary for best developing a well-known principle, and many of these improvements may be classed among original inventions. As soon as the magneto-electric machine attained a si

o electric power unconsciously

and common wear. Its advantages amount to a miracle of convenience only. So far as power is concerned, it merely transfers it for long distances over a single wire. So far as light is considered, it practically creates it where wanted, in new

ncredible that the apparently small facts discovered by Faraday, the bookbinder, the employé of Sir Humphrey Davy at weekly wa

red valuable. The scientific world still speaks of his quarrel with Davy with regret, since the personalities of great men should be free from ordinary weaknesses. But Lady Davy was not a scientist, and while the brilliant young mechanic was in her husband's employment for scientific purposes she insisted upon treating

nown soldier with a taste for natural science doubtless had his reward in the exquisite pleasure always derived from the personal verification of fa

He was the discoverer of benzole, the basis of our modern brilliant aniline dyes. In 1831 he made the discovery he had been leading to for ma

ed with a kind of instinct. He was a scientific prophet. A man who could, in 1838, foresee the ocean cable, and describe those minute difficulties in its working that all in time came true, must be classed as one of the great, clear, intuitive intellects of his race. He was in yo

EARLY EXPERIMEN

inventors of the times ceased to turn the magnet on a shaft, and turned the iron cores instead, because they were lighter. In like manner, the huge field magnets of a modern dynamo are not whirled round a stationary armature, but the armature is whirled within the legs of the magnet with very great rapidity. The next step was to increase the numb

dynamo. One of the ends of the wire used in this winding was fastened to the axle of the armature, and the other to a ring insulated from the shaft, but turning with it. Two springs, one bearing on the shaft and the other on the ring, carried away the current through wires attached to them. Siemens also originated the mechanical

The ring mentioned above was split, and the two springs both bore upon it, one on each side. The ends of the wires were both fastened to this ring. The springs came to be known as "brushes." The effect was that one of them was in the insulated space between the split halves of the ring while the other was bearing on the metal to wh

n as a ring armature, and is the mother of all dynamos built upon that principle. It is exceedingly ingenious in construction, and for certain purposes in

legs of his field magnets, as shown in the diagram. This induced in them a new supply of magnetism, and this of course intensified the current from the armature. It is true he had a separate smaller magneto-electric machine, with which he evolved a current for the coil around the legs of the field magnet of a greatly larger machine

ets with which to generate a current by the whirling of the bobbin which we now call an armature. The time came, led to by the improvement of Wilde, in which tho

to evolve a still stronger current in the armature. Soon the full effect is reached. The big iron field magnet, often weighing some thousands of pounds, is then the same as a permanent steel horseshoe magnet, which would hardly be possible at all. One who has watched the installation of a dynamo, knowing that there is nowhere near any ordinary source of electricity, and has seen its armature begin to whirl and hum, and then in a few moments the violet sparklings of the brushes and the evident presence of a powerful current

cture at the head of this article. In it the field magnet--answering to the horseshoe magnet of the magneto-electric machine--is plainly distinguishable to the unskilled observer. It is not even solid, but is made of several pieces bolted together. Its legs are hollowed at the ends to admit closely the armature which turns there. There are valuable peculiarities in its construction, which, while comp

appings of armature and field magnet, makes of the one a dynamo and of the other a motor. Nevertheless, they are separate studies in electrical science. Practice has brought ab

nto the form of electrical energy. The motor, in turn, chan

armature is rotated by steam power, producing an electrical energy in the form of a powerful current transmitted by a wire. In the motor the armature, in turn, is rotated by this current. It is but another instance of that ability to work backwards--to reverse a process--that seems to pervade all machines, and almost all processes. I have mentioned steam power, and, consequently, the necessary burning of coal and expenditure of money in producing the dynamo current. The dynamo

agara as a turbine water-power with which to whirl the armatures of gigantic dynamos, using the power thu

a thinking power, a prescience, that is the characteristic of humanity alone, but which so often stops short of results. This discovery has been attributed to accident alone; the accident of an e

city on the application of motive power to its armature, or to produce motive power on connecting it with a source of electricity. Yet it did not occur to him to definitely experiment with two of his machines for the purpose of accomplishing that which in less than twenty ye

tor ever contrived. A small motor made by Farmer in 1847, and embodying the electro-dynamic principle was exhibited at the great exposition at Chi

occurred to him, as he could do no better, to work one of the machines with a current "deprived," partly stolen, from the other, as a temporary measure. A friend lent him the necessary piece of wire, and he connected the two machines. The machine used as a motor was connected with a pumping apparatus, and when the machine intended as a generator started, and this make-shift, temporarily-stolen current was carried to the acting motor, the action of the last was so much more vigorous than was intended that the water was thrown over the sides of the tank. Fontaine was forced to remedy this excessive action by procuring an additional wire of such length that its resistance permitted the motor to work more mildly and throw less water

and considering the means, whose inadequacy is now better understood by any reader of these lines than it then was by the deepest student of electricity, this first railroad was a success. Davenport came as near to solving the problem of an electric motor as was possible without the invention of Pacinotti. Following this there were many patents issued for electro-magnetic motors to persons residing in all parts of the country, north and south. One was made by C. G. Page, of the Smithsonian Institute, in which the motive power consisted in a round rod, acting as a plunger, being pulled into the space where the core would be in an ordinary electro-magnet, and thereby working a crank. [35] A large motor of this kind is alleged, in 1850, to have developed ten horse power. It was actually applied to outdoor

at before long electro-magnetic action will have dethroned steam and will be the adopted motor," etc. This was an enth

om a stationary source of electricity--of course a dynamo. These first electric roads had the current carried on the rail. They were partially successful, but there was something wrong in the plan, and that something was induction by the earth. Later came, as a remedy for this, the "Trolley" system; the trolley being a small, grooved wheel running upon a current-carrying wire overhead. The question of how best to convey a curren

has used the current it passes by most systems into the rail and the ground. By others there is a "metallic circuit"--two wires. Many men whose interest and occupation leads them to a study of such matters know that the use of electricity, instead of steam locomotion, is merely a question of time on all railroads. I have said elsewhere that the actual age of electricity had no

anted by the electrical current in some of the most beautiful and useful phenomena of our time.

with sulphuric acid to favor electrical action, these poles will become covered with bubbles of gas which presently rise to the surface and pass off. These bubbles are composed of the two constituents of water, the oxygen rising from the positive a

electrolyte is composed of many substances a current will act a little on all of them, and the quantity in which the elementary bodies appear at the p

ountry on the discovery of a special process some years ago, is all done by electrolysis. The silver plating of modern tableware and table cutlery, as beautiful and much less expensive than silver, and the fine finish of the beautiful bronze hardwar

n exact impression of a medal, coin, or other figure, or a depositing of a coating of the same on any metallic surface. Formerly the faces of the types used in printing were very commonly faced with copper to give them finish and a wearing qual

h the process is accomplished is called, for silver, gold or platinum contains one hundred parts of water, ten of potassium cyanide, and one of the cyanide of whichever of those metals is to be deposited. The articles to be plated are suspended i

legraph and the telephone circuits of cities and the larger towns. Every electric current may now be safely

nting with the battery that bears his name. Jacobi, at St. Petersburg, first published a description of

as by no means been destroyed by the modern ease with which a precious metal may be deposited upon one utterly base. A contemplation of the moral side of the subject might lead at once to the conclusion that we could now spare one of the least in act

dopted and named, some of them being proposed as lately as 1893. An instance of the value of some of these old determinations of a time when all we now know of electrical science was unknown, may be given in what is known as Ohm's Law. Ohm was a native of Erlangen, in Bavaria, and was Professor of Physics at Munich, where he died in 1874. He formulated this Law in 1827, and it was transl

Pressure /

tical work. This remarkable precision and definiteness of action has made possible the creation of an extensive school of electrical testing, by which we are not only enabled to make accurate measurement of electrical apparatus and appliances,

lectricity are expressed in the fol

s a unit of pressure that is equa

f resistance that is equivalent to the resistance

amics" and other works, and a profound practical investigator) equals a unit of current equivale

ty called the "Torsion balance," and general early investigator

pacity of the current became officially prominent some years ago, upon the passage by the legislature of the State of New York of a statute requiring the death penalty to be inflicted by means of electricity. The object was to deter evildoers by surrounding the penalty with scientific horror, [37] and the idea had its origin in the accidents which formerly occurred much more frequently than now. The "death current" is now almost everywhere,

word "electrocute," derived from "execute"

dustry--protect themselves in their occupation. But there is a new commandment added to the list of those to be memorized by the body-

he results of the working of natural law. When the railroads were first built across the plains the Indians repeatedly attempted to stop moving trains by holding the ends of a rope stretched across the track in front of the engine, and with results which greatly surprised them When the lines were first constructed in northern Mexico the Mexican peasant could not be induced to refrain from trying p

s and varieties for every specific purpose. Electrical measurement has become a department of physical science by itself, and a technical, extensive and varied one. Already the electrical speciali

The installation of the electric plant in a dwelling house is done in the same way, and as regularly, as the plumbing is. Soon there must be still another enlargement,

e telegraph, but with a population of only a little more than half the present, there were 75,686 miles of telegraph wire in use, and 2,520 offices. In 1893 there were 740,000 miles of wi

nd over 90,000 miles of wire under ground. The instruments were in 15,000 buildings. There were 10,000 employés, and 233,000 su

of nine and three-tenths cents on every message. It must be remembered that with mail facilities and cheapness that are unrivalled, the telegraph message is always an extraordinary mode of communicatio

ere applicable to the case. The medical department of the science then fell into the hands of charlatans, and there is a natural disposition to deal in the wonderful, the miraculous or semi-miraculous, in the cure of disease. Divested of the wonder-idea through a wider study and greater knowledge of actual facts, electricity has again come forward as a curative agent in the last ten years. Instruction in its management in disease is included in the curriculum of almos

ve agent. The current usually used is the Faradic; the induced alternate current from an induction coil. This is, indeed, the c

escences and growths that could not be easily reached by other means than a tube and a small loop of platinum wire. A little incandescent lamp with a bulb no bigger than a pea is used to

treatment for varying cases. Nor is it a remedy to be applied by the patient himself more than any other is. On the contrary, he may do himself great injury. The pills, potions, powders and patent medicines made to be taken ind

n of any machine. For electricity is not manufactured; not created by men in any case. It exists, and is merely gathered, in a measure and to a certain extent confined and controlled, and sent out as a concentrated form of energy on its various errands. Should a means for the concentration of this universally diffused energy be found wh

t accomplishment, is a means of storing and carrying a supply of elect

them. The action of the secondary, "storage," battery, once charged, is like that of a primary battery. The current is produced by chemical action. Two metals outside of the solution contained in a primary battery cell, but under differing physical conditions from each other, will yield a current. A piece of polished iron and a piece of rusty iron, connected by a wire, will yield a small current. Rusty lead, so to speak, so connected with bright lead, has a high electromotive force. Oxygen makes lead rusty, and hydrogen makes it bright. Oxygen and hydrogen are the two gases cast off when water is subjected to a current. (See ante under Electrolysis) So Augustin Planté, the inventor of as much as we yet have of what is called a storage or secondary battery, suspended two plates of lead in water, and when a current of electricity was passed through it hydrogen was thrown off at one plate, making it bright, and oxygen at the other plate, p