Triumphs and wonders of the 19th century, the true mirror of a phenomenal era, a volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress .. . icity byothers, because it was regarded as electricity in a state of rest. Though athing fitted for curious experiment, and a constant invitation to scientificresearch, it had no use whatever in the arts. An excited electric could fur-nish but a trivial and temporary supply of electricity. It exh
Triumphs and wonders of the 19th century, the true mirror of a phenomenal era, a volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress .. . icity byothers, because it was regarded as electricity in a state of rest. Though athing fitted for curious experiment, and a constant invitation to scientificresearch, it had no use whatever in the arts. An excited electric could fur-nish but a trivial and temporary supply of electricity. It exhausted itself inthe exhibition of a single spark. WONDERS OF ELECTRICITY 23 II. THE NEW NINETEENTH CENTURY ELECTRICITY. By a happy accident in 1790, Galvani, of Bologna, Italy, while experiment-ing upon a frog, discovered that he could produce alternate motion betweenits nerves and muscles through the agency of a fluid generated by certaindissimilar metals when brought close together. Though this mysteriousfluid came to be known as the galvanic fluid, and though galvanism was madeto perpetuate his name, it was not until 1800 that Volta, another Italian,showed to the scientific world that really a new electricity had been found. Volta constructed what became known as the galvanic pile, but more. FRANKLIN INSTITUTE, PHILADELPHIA. (From photo furnished by Institute.) largely since as the voltaic pile, which he found would generate electricitystrongly and continuously. He used in its construction the dissimilar metalssilver and zinc, cut into disks, and piled alternately one upon the other, butseparated by pieces of cloth moistened with salt water. This simple gener-ator of electricity was the forerunner of the more powerful batteries of thepresent day, and which are still popularly known as voltaic cells or the importance of Voltas discovery did not lay more in the construc-tion of his electrical generator than in the great scientific fact that chemistrynow became li
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidtri, booksubjectinventions
