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and discharging the phial, it is in compliance with custom, and for want of others more suitable. Since we are of opinion that there is really no more electrical fire in the phial after what is called its charging, than before, nor less after its discharging; excepting only the small spark that might be given to, and taken from the non-electric matter, if separated from the bottle, which spark may not be equal to a five hundredth part of what is called the explosion.

For, if on the explosion, the electrical fire came out of the bottle by one part, and did not enter in again by another, then, if a man, standing on wax, and holding the bottle in one hand, takes the spark by touching the wire hook with the other, the bottle being thereby discharged, the man would be charged; or whatever fire was lost by one, would be found in the other, since there was no way for its escape: but the contrary is true.

9. Besides, the phial will not suffer what is called a charging, unless as much fire can go out of it one way, as is thrown in by another. A phial cannot be charged standing on wax or glass, or hanging on the prime conductor, unless a communication be formed between its coating and the floor.

10. But suspend two or more phials on the prime conductor, one hanging on the tail of the other; and a wire from the last to the floor, an equal number of turns of the wheel shall charge them all equally, and every one as much as one alone would have been. What is driven out at the tail of the first, serving to charge the second; what is driven out of the second, charging the third; and so on. By this means a great number of bottles might be charged with the same labour, and equally high, with one alone; were it not that every bottle receives new fire, and loses its old with some reluctance, or rather gives some small resistance to the charging, which in a number of bottles becomes more equal to the charging power, and so repels the fire back again on the globe, sooner in proportion than a single bottle would do.

tracted; if either of these two operations be hindered, the other cannot be done. But the spring is not said to be charged with elasticity when bent, and discharged when unbent; its quantity of elasticity is always the same.

13. Glass in like manner, has, within its substance, always the same quantity of electrical fire, and that a very great quantity in proportion to the mass of glass, as shall be shown hereafter.

14. This quantity, proportioned to the glass, it strongly and obstinately retains, and will have neither more nor less, though it will suffer a change to be made in its parts and situation; i. e. we may take away part of it from one of the sides, provided we throw an equal quantity into the other.

15. Yet when the situation of the electrical fire is thus altered in the glass; when some has been taken from side, and some added to the other, it will not be at rest or in its natural state, till it is restored to its origi nal equality. And this restitution cannot be made through the substance of the glass, but must be done by non-electric communication formed without, from surface to surface.

16. Thus, the whole force of the bottle, and power of giving a shock, is in the GLASS ITSELF; the non-electrics in contact with the two surfaces, serving only to give and receive to and from the several parts of the glass; that is, to give on one side, and take away from the other.

17. This was discovered here in the following manner: purposing to analyse the electrified bottle, in order to find wherein its strength lay, we placed it on glass, and drew out the cork and wire which for that purpose had been loosely put in. Then taking the bottle in one hand, and bringing a finger of the other near its mouth, a strong spark came from the water, and the shock was as violent as if the wire had remained in it, which showed that the force did not lie in the wire. Then to find if it resided in the water, being crowded into and condensed in it, as confined by the glass, which had been our former opinion, we electrified the bottle again, and placing it on glass, drew out the wire and cork as before; then taking up the bottle, we decanted all its water into an empty bottle, which likewise stood on glass; and taking up that other bottle, we expected, if the force resided in the water, to find a shock from it; but there was none. We judged then that it must either be lost in decanting, or remain in the first bottle. The latter we found to be true; for that bottle

11. When a bottle is charged in the common way, its inside and outside surfaces stand ready, the one to give fire by the hook, the other to receive it by the coating; the one is full, and ready to throw out, the other empty and extremely hungry; yet as the first will not give out, unless the other can at the same instant receive in; so neither will the latter receive in, unless the first can at the same instant give out. When both can be done at once, it is done with inconceivable quick-on trial gave the shock, though filled up as it ness and violence.

stood with fresh unelectrified water from a 12. So a straight spring (though the com- tea-pot. To find, then, whether glass had parison does not agree in every particular) this property merely as glass, or whether the when forcibly bent, must, to restore itself, form contributed any thing to it; we took a contract that side which in the bending was pane of sash-glass, and laying it on the hand, extended, and extend that which was con-placed a plate of lead on its upper surface;

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20. The magical picture* is made thus: Having a large mezzotinto with a frame and glass, suppose of the KING, take out the print, and cut a pannel out of it near two inches distant from the frame all around. If the cut is through the picture it is not the worse. With thin paste, or gum water, fix the border that is cut off on the inside the glass, pressing it smooth and close; then fill up the vacancy by gilding the glass well with leaf-gold, or brass. Gild likewise the inner edge of the back of the frame all round, except the top part, and form a communication between that gilding and the gilding behind the glass: then put in the board, and that side is finished. Turn up the glass, and gild the foreside exactly over the back gilding, and when it is dry, cover it, by pasting on the pannel of the picture that hath been cut out, observing to bring the correspondent parts of the border and picture together, by which the picture will appear of a piece, as at first, only part is behind the glass, and part before. Hold the picture horizontally by the top, and place a little moveable gilt crown on the king's head. If now the picture be moderately electrified, and another person take hold of the frame with one hand, so that his fingers touch its inside gilding, and with the other hand endeavour to take off the crown, he will receive a terrible blow, and fail in the attempt. If the picture were highly charged, the consequences might perhaps be as fatalf as that of high treason, for when the spark is taken through a quire of paper laid on the picture by means of a wire communication, it makes a fair hole through every sheet, that is, through fortyeight leaves, though a quire of paper is thought good armour against the push of a sword, or even against a pistol bullet, and the crack is exceeding loud. The operator, who holds the picture by the upper end, where the inside of the frame is not gilt, to prevent its falling, feels nothing of the shock, and may touch the face of the picture without danger, which he pretends is a test of his loyalty.—If a ring of persons take the shock among them, the exma-periment is called The Conspirators.

then electrified that plate, and bringing a finger to it, there was a spark and shock. We then took two plates of lead of equal dimensions, but less than the glass by two inches every way, and electrified the glass between them, by electrifying the uppermost lead; then separated the glass from the lead, in doing which, what little fire might be in the lead was taken out, and the glass being touched in the electrified parts with a finger, afforded only very small pricking sparks, but a great number of them might be taken from different places. Then dextrously placing it again between the leaden plates, and completing a circle between the two surfaces, a violent shock ensued; which demonstrated the power to reside in glass as glass, and that the non-electrics in contact served only, like the armature of a loadstone, to unite the force of the several parts, and bring them at once to any point desired: it being the property of a non-electric, that the whole body instantly reccives or gives what electrical fire is given to or taken from any one of its parts. 18. Upon this we made what we called an electrical battery, consisting of eleven panes of large sash-glass, armed with thin leaden plates, pasted on each side, placed vertically, and supported at two inches distance on silk cords, with thick hooks of leaden wire, one from each side, standing upright, distant from each other, and convenient communications of wire and chain, from the giving side of one pane, to the receiving side of the other; that so the whole might be charged together, and with the same labour as one single pane; and another contrivance to bring the giving sides, after charging, in contact with one long wire, and the receivers with another, which two long wires would give the force of all the plates of glass at once through the body of any animal forming the circle with them. The plates may also be discharged separately, or any number together that is required. But this machine is not much used, as not perfectly answering our intention with regard to the ease of charging, for the reason given sec. 10. We made also of large glass panes, gical pictures, and self-moving animated wheels, presently to be described.

19. I perceive by the ingenious Mr. Watson's last book, lately received, that Dr. Bevis had used, before we had, panes of glass to give a shock;* though, till that book came to hand, I thought to have communicated it to you as a novelty. The excuse for mentioning it here is, that we tried the experiment differently, drew different consequences from it (for Mr. Watson still seems to think the fire accumulated on the non-electric, that is in contact with the glass, p. 72) and, as far as we hitherto know, have carried it farther.

* I have since heard that Mr. Smeaton was the first who made use of panes of glass for that purpose.

21. On the principle, in sec. 7, that hooks of bottles, differently charged, will attract and repel differently, is made an electrical wheel, that turns with considerable strength. A small upright shaft of wood passes at right angles through a thin round board, of about twelve inches diameter, and turns on a sharp point of iron, fixed in the lower end, while a strong wire in the upper end, passing through a small hole in a thin brass plate, keeps the shaft truly vertical. About thirty radii of equal length, made of sash-glass, cut in narrow strips, issue horizontally from the cir

* Contrived by Mr. Kinnersly.

↑ We have since found it fatal to small animals, though not to large ones. The biggest we have yet killed is a hen. 1750.

cumference of the board, the ends most dis-surface of the wheel; and about six inches

tant from the centre being about four inches apart. On the end of every one a brass thimble is fixed. If now the wire of a bottle electrified in the common way, be brought near the circumference of this wheel, it will attract the nearest thimble, and so put the wheel in motion; that thimble, in passing by, receives a spark, and thereby being electrified is repelled, and so driven forwards; while a second being attracted, approaches the wire, receives a spark, and is driven after the first, and so on till the wheel has gone once round, when thimbles before electrified approaching the wire, instead of being attracted as they were at first, are repelled, and the motion presently ceases.-But if another bottle, which had been charged through the coating, be placed near the same wheel, its wire will at-nute, which is six hundred turns in the whole; tract the thimble repelled by the first, and thereby double the force that carries the wheel round; and not only taking out the fire that had been communicated to the thimbles by the first bottle, but even robbing them of their natural quantity, instead of being repelled when they come again towards the first bottle, they are more strongly attracted, so that the wheel mends its pace, till it goes with great rapidity twelve or fifteen rounds in a minute, and with such strength, as that the weight of one hundred Spanish dollars with which we once loaded it, not seem in the least to retard its motion-This is called an electrical jack; and if a large fowl were spitted on the upright shaft, it would be carried round before a fire with a motion fit for roasting.

from it is another bullet, communicating in like manner with the under surface. When the wheel is to be charged by the upper surface, a communication must be made from the under surface to the table. When it is well charged it begins to move; the bullet nearest to a pillar moves towards the thimble on that pillar, and passing by electrifies it, and then pushes itself from it; the succeeding bullet, which communicates with the other surface of the glass, more strongly attracts that thimble, on account of its being before electrified by the other bullet; and thus the wheel increases its motion till it comes to such a height as that the resistance of the air regulates it. It will go half an hour, and make one minute with another twenty turns in a mi

the bullet of the upper surface giving in each turn twelve sparks to the thimbles, which makes seven thousand two hundred sparks; and the bullet of the under surface receiving as many from the thimbles; those bullets moving in the time near two thousand five hundred feet.-The thimbles are well fixed, and in so exact a circle, that the bullets may pass within a very small distance of each of them.-If instead of two bullets you put eight, four communicating with the upper surface, and four with the under surface, placed alternately, with eight, at about six inches distance, completes the circumference, the force and swiftness will be greatly increased, the wheel making fifty turns in a minute; but then it will not continue moving so long.— These wheels may be applied, perhaps, to the ringing of chimes, and moving of light-made orreries.

23. A small wire bent circularly, with a loop at each end; let one end rest against the under surface of the wheel, and bring the other end near the upper surface, it will give a terrible crack, and the force will be discharged.

24. Every spark in that manner drawn from the surface of the wheel, makes a round hole in the gilding, tearing off a part of it in coming out; which shows that the fire is not accumulated on the gilding, but is in the glass itself.

22. But this wheel, like those driven by wind, water, or weights, moves by a foreign force, to wit, that of the bottles. The selfmoving wheel, though constructed on the same principles, appears more surprising. It is made of a thin round plate of window glass, seventeen inches diameter, well gilt on both sides, all but two inches next the edge. Two small hemispheres of wood are then fixed with cement to the middle of the upper and under sides, centrally opposite, and in each of them a thick strong wire eight or ten inches long, which together make the axis of the wheel. It turns horizontally on a point at the lower end of its axis, which rests on a bit of brass cemented within a glass salt-cellar. The upper end of its axis passes through a hole in a thin brass plate cemented to a long strong piece of glass, which keeps it six or eight inches distant from any non-electric, and has a small ball of wax or metal on its top, to keep in the fire. In a circle on the table which supports the wheel, are fixed twelve small pillars of glass, at about four inches distance, with a thimble on the top of each. On the edge of the wheel is a small leaden bullet, communicating by a wire with the gilding of the uppernersley.

25. The gilding being varnished over with turpentine varnish, the varnish though dry and hard, is burnt by the spark drawn through it, and gives a strong smell and visible smoke. And when the spark is drawn through paper, all round the hole made by it, the paper will be blacked by the smoke, which sometimes penetrates several of the leaves. Part of the gilding torn off is also found forcibly driven into the hole made in the paper by the stroke. 26. It is amazing to observe in how small *This was afterwards done with success by Mr. Kin

suspended by a silk thread, hang in contact with the shot. Take a bottle in each hand, one that is electrified through the hook, the other through the coating: apply the giving wire to the shot, which will electrify it po sitively, and the cork shall be repelled: then apply the requiring wire, which will take out the spark given by the other; when the cork will return to the shot: apply the same again, and take out another spark, so will the shot.

a portion of glass a great electral force may lie. A thin glass bubble, about an inch diameter, weighing only six grains, being half filled with water, partly gilt on the outside, and furnished with a wire hook, gives, when electrified, as great a shock as a man can well bear. As the glass is thickest near the orifice, I suppose the lower half, which being gilt was electrified and gave the shock, I did not exceed two grains; for it appearied when broken, much thinner than the up-be electrified negatively, and the cork in that per half.- If one of these thin bottles be electrified by the coating, and the spark taken out through the gilding, it will break the glass inwards, at the same time that it breaks the gilding outwards.

case shall be repelled equally as before. Then apply the giving wire to the shot, and give the spark it wanted, so will the cork return: give it another, which will be an addition to its natural quantity, so will the cork be re27. And allowing (for the reasons before pelled again: and so may the experiment be given, § 8, 9, 10,) that there is no more elec-repeated as long as there is any charge in the tral fire in a bottle after charging, than before, how great must be the quantity in this small portion of glass! It seems as if it were of its very substance and essence. Perhaps if that due quantity of electral fire so obsti- Chagrined a little that we have been hithernately retained by glass, could be separated to able to produce nothing in this way of use from it, it would no longer be glass; it might to mankind; and the hot weather coming on, lose its transparency, or its brittleness, or its when electrical experiments are not so agreeelasticity. Experiments may possibly be in-able, it is proposed to put an end to them for vented hereafter, to discover this.

bottles. Which shows that bodies, having less than the common quantity of electricity, repel each other, as well as those that have more.

this season, somewhat humourously, in a party of pleasure, on the banks of Schuylkill.* Spirits at the same time, are to be fired by a spark sent from side to side through the river, without any other conductor than the water; an experiment which we some time since performed, to the amazement of many. A turkey is to be killed for our dinner by the electrical shock, and roasted by the electrical jack, before a fire kindled by the electrified bottle: when the healths of all the famous electricians in England, Holland, France, and Germany are to be drank in electrified bumpers, under the discharge of guns from the electrical battery.

28. We were surprised at the account given in Mr. Watson's book, of a shock communicated through a great space of dry ground, and suspect there must be some metalline quality in the gravel of that ground; having found that simple dry earth, rammed in a glass tube, open at both ends, and a wire hook inserted in the earth at each end, the earth and wires making part of a circuit, would not conduct the least perceptible shock, and indeed when one wire was electrified, the other hardly showed any signs of its being in connexion with it.* Even a thoroughly wet packthread sometimes fails of conducting a shock, though it otherwise conducts electricity very well. A dry cake of ice, or an icicle held between two in a circle, likewise prevents the shock, which one would not expect, easily conceived, I shall here describe it.-Two iron as water conducts it so perfectly well.-Gild-rods, about three feet long, were planted just within the margin of the river on the opposite sides. A thick ing on a new book, though at first it conducts piece of wire, with a small round knob at its end, was the shock extremely well, yet fails after ten fixed on the top of one of the rods, bending downwards, so as to deliver commodiously the spark upon the suror a dozen experiments, though it appears face of the spirit. A small wire fastened by one end otherwise in all respects the same, which we to the handle of the spoon, containing the spirit, was carried across the river, and supported in the air by the cannot account for.f rope commonly used to hold by, in drawing the ferryboats over. The other end of this wire was tied round spark was delivered from the hook to the top of the rod the coating of the bottle; which being charged, the standing in the water on that side. At the same instant the rod on the other side delivered a spark into and fired the spirit; the electric fire returning to the coating of the bottle through the handle of the spoon and the supported wire connected with them.

29. There is one experiment more which surprises us, and is not hitherto satisfactorily accounted for; it is this: place an iron shot on a glass stand, and let a ball of damp cork, * Probably the ground is never so dry.

We afterwards found that it failed after one stroke with a large bottle; and the continuity of the gold appearing broken, and many of its parts dissipated, the electricity could not pass the remaining parts without leaping from part to part through the air, which always resists the motion of this fluid, and was probably the cause of the gold's not conducting so well as before; the number of interruptions in the line of gold, making, when added together a space larger, perhaps, than the striking distance.

*The river that washes the west side of Philadelphia, as the Delaware does the east side.

↑ As the possibility of this experiment has not been

the spoon,

That the electric fire thus actually passes through the water, has since been satisfactorily demonstrated to many by an experiment of Mr. Kinnersley's, performed in a trough of water about ten feet long. The hand being placed under water in the direction of the spark (which always takes the strait or shortest course, if sufficient, and other circumstances are equal) is struck and penetrated by it as it passes.

An Electrified bumper is a small thin glass tumbler,

To Peter Collinson, London. Observations and suppositions, towards forming a new Hypothesis for explaining the several Phenomena of Thunder-gusts.*

1. NON-ELECTRIC bodies, that have electric fire thrown into them, will retain it till other electrics, that have less, approach; and then it is communicated by a snap, and becomes equally divided.

2. Electrical fire loves water, is strongly attracted by it, and they can subsist together. 3. Air is an electric per se, and when dry will not conduct the electrical fire; it will neither receive it, nor give it to other bodies; otherwise no body surrounded by air, could be electrified positively and negatively: for should it be attempted positively, the air would immediately take away the overplus; or negatively, the air would supply what was wanting.

4. Water being electrified, the vapours arising from it will be equally electrified; and floating in the air, in the form of clouds, or otherwise, will retain that quantity of electrical fire, till they meet with other clouds or bodies not so much electrified, and then will communicate as before-mentioned. 5. Every particle of matter electrified is repelled by every other particle equally electrified. Thus the stream of a fountain, naturally dense and continual, when electrified, will separate and spread in the form of a brush, every drop endeavouring to recede from every other drop. But on taking out the electrical fire they close again.

6. Water being strongly electrified (as well as when heated by common fire) rises in vapours more copiously; the attraction of cohesion among its particles being greatly weakened, by the opposite power of repulsion introduced with the electrical fire; and when any particle is by any means disengaged, it is immediately repelled, and so flies into the

air.

7. Particles happening to be situated as A and B, (FIG. VI. representing the profile of a vessel of water) are more easily disengaged than C and D, as each is held by contact with three only, whereas C and D are each in contact with nine. When the surface of the water has the least motion, particles are continually pushed into the situation represented by A and B.

8. Friction between a non-electric and an electric per se will produce electrical fire; not by creating but collecting it; for it is equally diffused in our walls, floors, earth, and the whole mass of common matter. Thus the

nearly filled with wine and electrified as the bottle. This when brought to the lips gives a shock, if the party be close shaved, and does not breath on the liquor. April 29, 1749.

Thunder-gusts are sudden storms of thunder and lightning, which are frequently of short duration, but sometimes produce mischievous effects.

whirling glass globe, during its friction against the cushion, draws fire from the cushion, the cushion is supplied from the frame of the machine, that from the floor on which it stands. Cut off the communication by thick glass or wax, placed under the cushion, and no fire can be produced, because it cannot be collected.

9. The ocean is a compound of water, a non-electric, and salt an electric per se.

10. When there is a friction among the parts near its surface, the electrical fire is collected from the parts below. It is then plainly visible in the night; it appears in the stern and in the wake of every sailing vessel; every dash of an oar shows it, and every surf and spray in storms the whole sea seems on fire. The detached particles of water then repelled from the electrified surface, continually carry off the fire as it is collected; they rise and form clouds, and those clouds are highly electrified, and retain the fire till they have an opportunity of communicating it.

11. The particles of water, rising in vapours, attach themselves to particles of air.

12. The particles of air are said to be hard, round, separate and distant from each other; every particle strongly repelling every other particle, whereby they recede from each other, as far as common gravity will permit.

13. The space between any three particles, equally repelling each other, will be an equilateral triangle.

14. In air compressed, these triangles are smaller; in ratified air they are larger.

15. Common fire, joined with air, increases the repulsion, enlarges the triangles, and thereby makes the air specifically lighter. Such air, among denser air, will rise.

16. Common fire, as well as electrical fire, gives repulsion to the particles of water, and destroys their attraction of cohesion; hence common fire, as well as electrical fire, assists in raising vapours.

17. Particles of water, having no fire in them, mutually attract each other. These particles of water then, being attached to the three particles of a triangle of air, would, by their mutual attraction operating against the air's repulsion, shorten the sides and lessen the triangle, whereby that portion of air made denser, would sink to the earth with its water, and not rise to the formation of a cloud.

18. But if every particle of water attaching itself to air brings with it a particle of common fire, the repulsion of the air being assisted and strengthened by the fire, more than obstructed by the mutual attraction of the particles of water, the triangle dilates, and that portion of air, becoming rarer and specifically lighter, rises.

19. If the particles of water bring electrical fire when they attach themselves to air, the repulsion between the particles of water

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