Little Masterpieces of Science: Invention and Discovery

by Unknown

A galvanometer actuated by a thermo-electric pile furnishes much the most sensitive means of detecting changes of temperature; hence electricity enables the physicist to study the phenomena of heat with new ease and precision. It was thus that Professor Tyndall conducted the classical researches set forth in his “Heat as a Mode of Motion,” ascertaining the singular power to absorb terrestrial heat which makes the aqueous vapours of the atmosphere act as an indispensable blanket to the earth.

And how vastly has electricity, whether in the workshop or laboratory, enlarged our conceptions of the forces that thrill space, of the substances, seemingly so simple, that surround us—substances that propound questions of structure and behaviour that silence the acutest investigator. “You ask me,” said a great physicist, “if I have a theory of the universe? Why, I haven't even a theory of magnetism!”

The conventional phrase “conducting a current” is now understood to be mere figure of speech; it is thought that a wire does little else than give direction to electric energy. Pulsations of high tension have been proved to be mainly superficial in their journeys, so that they are best conveyed (or convoyed) by conductors of tubular form. And what is it that moves when we speak of conduction? It seems to be now the molecule of atomic chemistry, and anon the same ether that undulates with light or radiant heat. Indeed, the conquest of electricity means so much because it impresses the molecule and the ether into service as its vehicles of communication. Instead of the old-time masses of metal, or bands of leather, which moved stiffly through ranges comparatively short, there is to-day employed a medium which may traverse 186,400 miles in a second, and with resistances most trivial in contrast with those of mechanical friction.

And what is friction in the last analysis but the production of motion in undesired forms, the allowing valuable energy to do useless work? In that amazing case of long distance transmission, common sunshine, a solar beam arrives at the earth from the sun not one whit the weaker for its excursion of 92,000,000 miles. It is highly probable that we are surrounded by similar cases of the total absence of friction in the phenomena of both physics and chemistry, and that art will come nearer and nearer to nature in this immunity is assured when we see how many steps in that direction have already been taken by the electrical engineer. In a preceding page a brief account was given of the theory that gases and vapours are in ceaseless motion. This motion suffers no abatement from friction, and hence we may infer that the molecules concerned are perfectly elastic. The opinion is gaining ground among physicists that all the properties of matter, transparency, chemical combinability, and the rest, are due to immanent motion in particular orbits, with diverse velocities. If this be established, then these motions also suffer no friction, and go on without resistance forever.

As the investigators in the vanguard of science discuss the constitution of matter, and weave hypotheses more or less fruitful as to the interplay of its forces, there is a growing faith that the day is at hand when the tie between electricity and gravitation will be unveiled—when the reason why matter has weight will cease to puzzle the thinker. Who can tell what relief of man's estate may be bound up with the ability to transform any phase of energy into any other without the circuitous methods and serious losses of to-day! In the sphere of economic progress one of the supreme advances was due to the invention of money, the providing a medium for which any salable thing may be exchanged, with which any purchasable thing may be bought. As soon as a shell, or a hide, or a bit of metal was recognized as having universal convertibility, all the delays and discounts of barter were at an end. In the world of physics and chemistry the corresponding medium is electricity; let it be produced as readily as it produces other modes of motion, and human art will take a stride forward such as when Volta disposed his zinc and silver discs together, or when Faraday set a magnet moving around a copper wire.

For all that the electric current is not as yet produced as economically as it should be, we do wrong if we regard it as an infant force. However much new knowledge may do with electricity in the laboratory, in the factory, or in the exchange, some of its best work is already done. It is not likely ever to perform a greater feat than placing all mankind within ear-shot of each other. Were electricity unmastered there could be no democratic government of the United States. To-day the drama of national affairs is more directly in view of every American citizen than, a century ago, the public business of Delaware could be to the men of that little State. And when on the broader stage of international politics misunderstandings arise, let us note how the telegraph has modified the hard-and-fast rules of old-time diplomacy. To-day, through the columns of the press, the facts in controversy are instantly published throughout the world, and thus so speedily give rise to authoritative comment that a severe strain is put upon negotiators whose tradition it is to be both secret and slow.

Railroads, with all they mean for civilization, could not have extended themselves without the telegraph to control them. And railroads and telegraphs are the sinews and nerves of national life, the prime agencies in welding the diverse and widely separated States and Territories of the Union. A Boston merchant builds a cotton-mill in Georgia; a New York capitalist opens a copper-mine in Arizona. The telegraph which informs them day by day how their investments prosper tells idle men where they can find work, where work can seek idle men. Chicago is laid in ashes, Charleston topples in earthquake, Johnstown is whelmed in flood, and instantly a continent springs to their relief. And what benefits issue in the strictly commercial uses of the telegraph! At its click both locomotive and steamship speed to the relief of famine in any quarter of the globe. In times of plenty or of dearth the markets of the globe are merged and are brought to every man's door. Not less striking is the neighbourhood guild of science, born, too, of the telegraph. The day after Röntgen announced his X rays, physicists on every continent were repeating his experiments—were applying his discovery to the healing of the wounded and diseased. Let an anti-toxin for diphtheria, consumption, or yellow fever be proposed, and a hundred investigators the world over bend their skill to confirm or disprove, as if the suggester dwelt next door.

On a stage less dramatic, or rather not dramatic at all, electricity works equal good. Its motor freeing us from dependence on the horse is spreading our towns and cities into their adjoining country. Field and garden compete with airless streets. The sunny cottage is in active rivalry with the odious tenement-house. It is found that transportation within the gates of a metropolis has an importance second only to the means of transit which links one city with another. The engineer is at last filling the gap which too long existed between the traction of horses and that of steam. In point of speed, cleanliness, and comfort such an electric subway as that of South London leaves nothing to be desired. Throughout America electric roads, at first suburban, are now fast joining town to town and city to city, while, as auxiliaries to steam railroads, they place sparsely settled communities in the arterial current of the world, and build up a ready market for the dairyman and the fruit-grower. In its saving of what Mr. Oscar T. Crosby has called “man-hours” the third-rail system is beginning to oust steam as a motive power from trunk-lines. Already shrewd railroad managers are granting partnerships to the electricians who might otherwise encroach upon their dividends. A service at first restricted to passengers has now extended itself to the carriage of letters and parcels, and begins to reach out for common freight. We may soon see the farmer's cry for good roads satisfied by good electric lines that will take his crops to market much more cheaply and quickly than horses and macadam ever did. In cities, electromobile cabs and vans steadily increase in numbers, furthering the quiet and cleanliness introduced by the trolley car.

A word has been said about the blessings which electricity promises to country folk, yet greater are the boons it stands ready to bestow in the hives of population. Until a few decades ago the water-supply of cities was a matter not of municipal but of individual enterprise; water was drawn in large part from wells here and there, from lines of piping laid in favoured localities, and always insufficient. Many an epidemic of typhoid fever was due to the contamination of a spring by a cesspool a few yards away. To-day a supply such as that of New York is abundant and cheap because it enters every house. Let a centralized electrical service enjoy a like privilege, and it will offer a current which is heat, light, chemical energy, or motive power, and all at a wage lower than that of any other servant. Unwittingly, then, the electrical engineer is a political reformer of high degree, for he puts a new premium upon ability and justice at the City Hall. His sole condition is that electricity shall be under control at once competent and honest. Let us hope that his plea, joined to others as weighty, may quicken the spirit of civic righteousness so that some of the richest fruits ever borne in the garden of science and art may not be proffered in vain. Flame, the old-time servant, is individual; electricity, its successor and heir, is collective. Flame sits upon the hearth and draws a family together; electricity, welling from a public source, may bind into a unit all the families of a vast city, because it makes the benefit of each the interest of all.

But not every promise brought forward in the name of the electrician has his assent or sanction. So much has been done by electricity, and so much more is plainly feasible, that a reflection of its triumphs has gilded many a baseless dream. One of these is that the cheap electric motor, by supply power at home, will break up the factory system, and bring back the domestic manufacturing of old days. But if this power cost nothing at all the gift would leave the factory unassailed; for we must remember that power is being steadily reduced in cost from year to year, so that in many industries it has but a minor place among the expenses of production. The strength and profit of the factory system lie in its assembling a wide variety of machines, the first delivering its product to the second for another step toward completion, and so on until a finished article is sent to the ware-room. It is this minute subdivision of labour, together with the saving and efficiency that inure to a business conducted on an immense scale under a single manager, that bids us believe that the factory has come to stay. To be sure, a weaver, a potter, or a lens-grinder of peculiar skill may thrive at his loom or wheel at home; but such a man is far from typical in modern manufacture. Besides, it is very questionable whether the lamentations over the home industries of the past do not ignore evil concomitants such as still linger in the home industries of the present—those of the sweater's den, for example.