The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Makers of Electricity

BY
BROTHER POTAMIAN, F.S.C., D.Sc., Lond.
PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS IN MANHATTAN COLLEGE, N. Y.
AND
JAMES J. WALSH, M. D., Ph.D., LL.D.
DEAN AND PROFESSOR OF NERVOUS DISEASES AND OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE AT FORDHAM UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE; PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY AT THE CATHEDRAL COLLEGE, NEW YORK

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK
1909

[PREFACE]

This volume represents an effort in the direction of what may be called the biographical history of electricity. The controlling idea in its preparation was to provide brief yet reasonably complete sketches of the lives of the great pioneer workers in electricity, the ground-breaking investigators who went distinctly beyond the bounds of what was known before their time, not merely to add a fringe of information to previous knowledge, but to make it easy for succeeding generations to reach conclusions in electrical science that would have been quite impossible until their revealing work was done. The lives of these men are not only interesting as scientific history, but especially as human documents, showing the sort of men who are likely to make great advances in science and, above all, demonstrating what the outlook of such original thinkers was on all the great problems of the world around us.