Makers of Electricity

by Brother Potamian; James J. Walsh

It may here be noted that the velocity v of the earth in its orbit is a varying quantity, depending on distance from the sun. As this distance is least in December and greatest in June, it follows that the earth is heavier relatively to the sun in winter than it is in summer.

The mass of the earth, on the other hand, is not a relative and variable quantity, but a constant and independent one, which would not be affected either by the sudden annihilation of all the other members of the solar system or by the instantaneous or successive addition of a thousand orbs. Mass being the product of volume by density, that of the earth is 6000,000000,000000,000000 or 6×10²¹ tons mass, which reads six thousand million million million tons mass.

The number which expresses the mass of the earth is thus very different from that which represents its weight relatively to the sun. It is obvious that the latter would be a much greater quantity if our planet were transferred to the orbit of Venus and very much less if transferred to that of far-off Jupiter, but the number which expresses its mass would remain precisely the same in both cases, viz., the value given above.

In elaborating his theory of magnetism, and especially his magnetic theory of the earth, Gilbert made extensive use of lodestone-globes, which he called "terrellas," i.e., miniature models of the earth. In pursuing his searching inquiry, he was gradually led from these "terrellas" to his great induction that the earth itself is a colossal, globe-like magnet. Following Norman, "the ingenious artificer," of Limehouse, London, he also showed that the entire cubical space which surrounds a lodestone is an "orb of virtue," or region of influence, from which he inferred that the earth itself must have its "orb of virtue," or magnetic field, extending outward to a very great distance.

Gilbert does not, for a moment, think that this theory of terrestrial magnetism, the first ever given to the world, is a wild speculation. Far from it; he is convinced that "it will stand as firm as aught that ever was produced in philosophy, backed by ingenious argumentation or buttressed by mathematical demonstration."

If the earth has a magnetic field, he argued, why not the moon, the planets and the sun itself, "the mover and inciter of the universe"? Given these planetary magnetic fields, Gilbert seems to have no difficulty in finding out the forces necessary to account for the crucial difficulties of the Copernican doctrine. Nor is the medium absent that is needed for the mutual action of magnetic globes, for we are assured that it is none other than the universal ether, which, he says "is without resistance."

Gilbert disposes of the cosmographic puzzle of the "suspension" of the earth in space by saying, and saying justly, that the earth "has no heaviness of its own," and, therefore, "does not stray away into every region of the sky." To emphasize the statement, he continues: "The earth, in its own place, is in no wise heavy, nor does it need any balancing"; and again, "The whole earth itself has no weight." "By the wonderful wisdom of the Creator," he elsewhere says, "forces were implanted in the earth that the globe itself might with steadfastness take direction."

Gilbert holds that the daily rotation of the earth on its axis is also caused, and maintained with strict uniformity, by the same prevalent system of magnetic forces, for "lest the earth should in divers ways perish and be destroyed, she rotates in virtue of her magnetic energy, and such also are the movements of the rest of the planets."

Just how this magnetic energy acts to produce the rotatory motion of a massive globe Gilbert does not say. Nor was he able to solve such a magnetic riddle, for there was nothing in his philosophy to explain how a lodestone-globe in free space should ever become a perpetual magnetic motor. Oddly enough he disagrees with Peregrinus, who maintained in his Epistola, 1269, that a terrella, or spherical lodestone, poised in the meridian, would turn on its axis regularly every 24 hours. He naively says: "We have never chanced to see this; nay, we doubt if there is such a movement." Continuing, he brings out his clinching argument: "This daily rotation seems to some philosophers wonderful and incredible because of the ingrained belief that the mighty mass of earth makes an orbital movement in 24 hours; it were more incredible that the moon should in the space of 24 hours traverse her orbit or complete her course; more incredible that the sun and Mars should do so; still more that Jupiter and Saturn; more than wonderful would be the velocity of the fixed stars and firmament."

Here he finds himself obliged to berate Ptolemy for being "over-timid and scrupulous in apprehending a break up of this nether world were the earth to move in a circle. Why does he not apprehend universal ruin, dissolution, confusion, conflagration and stupendous celestial and super-celestial calamities from a motion (that of the starry sphere) which surpasses all imagination, all dreams and fables and poetic license, a motion ineffable and inconceivable?"