Scientific American Volume 78 Number 03 (January 1898) . 8inches coated on both sides with tinfoil. Starting withtwenty thousand volts, I can exalt this to one milliontwo hundred thousand volts. The accompanying illus-tration (Fig. 2) shows the Plants machine. The me-chanician of the laboratory has introduced a notable improvement in the apparatus of Plants. Instead ofa revolving commutator such as was used by the latter,Mr. Thompson employed lever arms, by means ofwhich the jars were first charged in parallel and thendischarged in series. It was found that the apparatusdesigned by Plante coul
Scientific American Volume 78 Number 03 (January 1898) . 8inches coated on both sides with tinfoil. Starting withtwenty thousand volts, I can exalt this to one milliontwo hundred thousand volts. The accompanying illus-tration (Fig. 2) shows the Plants machine. The me-chanician of the laboratory has introduced a notable improvement in the apparatus of Plants. Instead ofa revolving commutator such as was used by the latter,Mr. Thompson employed lever arms, by means ofwhich the jars were first charged in parallel and thendischarged in series. It was found that the apparatusdesigned by Plante could not be used for higher volt-ages than one or two thousand without serious errorand loss. By means of this apparatus I can study elec-trical discharges at least four feet in length—of greatbody—which are produced by an electromotive forceof one million two hundred thousand volts. This ap-paratus possesses the great advantage that it enablesone to obtain a fairly exact measure of such high volt-age. When we reflect that the trolley car employs only. Fig. 1. THE CELLS. five hundred volts, and in the system of transmissionof power from Niagara Falls it is proposed to use onlyten thousand volts, it is evident that the effects pro-duced by voltages of over a million must be of greatscientific interest. The study of such high electromotive forces immedi-ately showed that previous estimates of the electromo-tive force necessary to produce a spark of a certainlength were highly erroneous. For instance, Heyde-weiler, a German investigator, believes that Prof. ElihuThomsons statement, that a spark of five feet in lengthwhich he produced required a voltage of five hundredthousand, is very wide of the mark, and Heydeweilermaintains that one hundred thousand would be nearerthe truth. I find that even Prof. Thomsons estimate would therefore require the enormous number of overone hundred million volts. In reflecting upon the de-velopment of such enormous energy in the air we canunderstan
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectwire, bookyear1898
