Electrical power has also been employed for the purpose of measuring time, and by its means a great number of clocks can be kept in a state of uniform correctness, which no other arrangement can effect. A battery being united with the chief clock, which is itself connected by wires with any number of clocks arranged at a distance from each other, has the current continually and regularly interrupted by the beating of the pendulum, which interruption is experienced by all the clocks included in the electric circuit; and, in accordance with this breaking and making contact, the indicators or hands move over the dial with a constantly uniform rate. Instead of a battery the earth itself has supplied the stream of electric fluid, with which the rate of its revolutions has been registered with the utmost fidelity.[169]
Electricity, which is now employed to register the march of time, rushes far in advance of the sage who walks with measured tread, watching the falling sands in the hour-glass.
The earth is spanned and the ocean pierced by the wires of the electric telegraph. Already, from the banks of the Thames to the shores of the Adriatic, our electric messenger will do our bidding. The telegraph is making its way through Italy, and it is dipping its wires in the Mediterranean, soon to reach the coast of Africa. They will then run along the African shores to Egypt and Turkey, and still onward until they unite with the telegraphs of India, of which three thousand miles are in progress. From Hindostan these wondrous wires will run from island to island in the Indian Archipelago, and thus connect Australia and New Zealand with Europe.
In a few years we may expect to have an instantaneous report in London of the extraordinary “nugget” discovered by some fortunate gold-digger; and the exile from his native land in the Islands of the South Pacific Ocean, may learn every hour, if he will, of the doings of his family and friends in some village home of England.
FOOTNOTES:
[136] Traité de Physique: M. Biot, vol. vii. Becquerel: Annales de Chimie, vol. xlvi.-xlix. Faraday’s Experimental Researches in Electricity, 2 vols., 1830–1844. A Speculation touching Electric Conduction and the Nature of Matter: by Michael Faraday, D.C.L., F.R.S.; Philosophical Magazine, vol. xxiv., 1836. Objections to the theories severally of Franklin, Dufay, and Ampère, with an attempt to explain Electrical Phenomena by statical or undulatory polarization: by Robert Hare, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania.
[137] “A good piece of gutta percha will insulate as well as an equal piece of shell-lac, whether it be in the form of sheet, or rod, or filament; but being tough and flexible when cold, as well as soft when hot, it will serve better than shell-lac in many cases where the brittleness of the latter is an inconvenience. Thus it makes very good handles for carriers of electricity in experiments on induction; not being liable to fracture in the form of thin band or string, it makes an excellent insulating suspender; a piece of it in sheet makes a most convenient insulating basis for anything placed on it. It forms excellent insulating plugs for the stems of gold-leaf electrometers, when they pass through sheltering tubes, and larger plugs form good insulating feet for electrical arrangements; cylinders of it, half an inch or more in diameter, have great stiffness, and form excellent insulating pillars. In these and in other ways its power as an insulator may be useful.”—On the use of Gutta Percha in Electrical Insulation: by Dr. Faraday; Philosoph. Mag., March, 1848.
The following deductions have been given by Faraday, in his Researches in Electricity, a work of most extraordinary merit, being one of the most perfect examples of fine inductive philosophy which we possess in the English language:—