— Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 – 1944), The Nature of the Physical World.
Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the
whole country.
— V. I. Lenin (1870 – 1924), Report to the eighth all-Russia Congress of the
Soviets on the work of the Council of People’s Commissars, December 1920.
There are no electrical theories which go back of Benjamin
Franklin.
— R. A. Millikan (1868 – 1953), The
Electron, University of Chicago Press, 1917.
This theory generally goes by the name of Dr. Franklin, and
there is no doubt of his right to it; but justice requires that I mention the
equal, and perhaps, prior claim of Dr. Watson … [who] showed a series of
experiments to confirm the doctrine of plus
and minus electricity to Martin
Folkes, Esq., then president, and to a great number of fellows of the Royal
Society, so early as the beginning of the year 1747, before it was known in
England that Dr. Franklin had discovered the same thing in America.
— Joseph Priestley (1733 – 1804), The
History and Present State of Electricity, 1767.
Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The
difference is, I presume, that one comes a little more expensive, but is more
durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it.
— Stephen Leacock (1869-1944), Literary
Lapses (1910)
Listen and I will explain the nature of the field and how
change takes place within it.
— Bhagavad Gita, 13:3, in the
translation of Eknath Easwaran, Arkana Books, 1985.
Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the
horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.
— James Thurber (1894-1961), My Life and
Hard Times.
At first there was no known connection between magnetism and
electricity, but in the nineteenth century the relation between them was
discovered. Immediately thereafter the great Faraday showed how electric
currents could be generated by moving electric conductors through a magnetic
field.
— R. A. Millikan and H. G. Gale, New
Elementary Physics, Ginn and Co., 1936.
Why should electricity not modify the formation and
properties of crystals?
— Denis Diderot (1713-1784) Pensées sur
l’interpretation de la nature, (1753).
The large increase in central stations for distributing
electrical energy, during recent years, gives a peculiar interest to the
question of electric meters and to the examination of the principles of some
recently proposed solutions of the problem, which is a simple one in theory,
but extremely difficult in practice if we wish the apparatus to realize all the
conditions that characterize a perfect instrument and that are often
incompatible with each other.
— Translated from La Nature, and
published in the Scientific American
Supplement, January 25, 1890, 11726.
…the invention sprang solely from my experience gained by
constantly using and experimenting with the many electrical machines which I
possessed. It was from these I formed a working hypothesis which led me to make
the small machine now before you … . In conclusion I may be permitted to say
that it was fortunate I had not read the opinions of Sir William Thomson and
Professor Holtz…previous to my own practical experiments. For had I read such
opinions from such authorities I should probably have accepted them without
putting them to practical test. As the matter stands I have done those things
which they said I ought not to have done, and I have left undone those things
which they said I ought to have done, and by so doing, I think you must freely
admit, that I have produced an electric generating machine of great power, and
have placed in the hands of the physicist … an instrument more reliable than
anything hitherto produced.
— James Wimshurst, lecture to the Royal Institution. 1888.
Why, Sir, there is every probability that you will soon be
able to tax it.
— Michael Faraday (1791 – 1867), answering Mr Gladstone’s question about the
practical worth of electricity.
This room is equipped with Edison Electric Light. Do not
attempt to light with match. Simply turn key on wall by the door. The use of
electricity is in no way harmful to health, nor does it affect the soundness of
sleep.
— 19th century sign in a hotel room.
We arrived at Morristown about 11 1/2 o’clock the next day
amid a great crowd of persons of all ages and both sexes who had assembled from
all of the adjacent country to witness the execution. Preparations for the
Galvanic experiments had been made in the court room of the court house a fine
building which is also occupied in the lower story as a Jail. In the court room
we found Dr Canfield of Morristown, with Dr Rinlander, Dr Gale, Dr, and Mr.
James Chilton of N.Y. They had arrived the day previous with the large battery
of the college of Physicians and surgeons consisting of 200 plates of 6 inches
[15 cm] square …
The troughs [of the battery] were all filled by 4 assistants
each with a pitcher as soon as the body was laid upon the table. This was a
great mistake as the battery should not have been filled until the dessectyion
had been made for the operators owing to the accidental rupture of the carotid
artery were from 10 to 15 minutes preparing the body for the first experiment;
during this time the action of the battery was constantly diminishing in energy
while the body on the other hand was loosing its susseptibility to the galvanic
influence with the elapsing time.
The first experiment consisted in placing one of the poles
at the neck and in contact with the nerve of respiration and the other against
the diaphragm …
Another experiment was tried at my request which consisted
in passing the galvanic current backwards and forward, first in the direction
of the nerves and then immediately in the opposite direction or from the
branches to the trunk of the nerve. In this experiment a remarkable difference
was observed in the intensity of the action when the direction of the current
was changed: by far the greatest apparent effect was produced when the current
passed in an opposite direction to the nerves or from the branches to the
trunk.
— Joseph Henry (1797 – 1878), using original spelling in describing experiments
using electricity on an executed criminal.
It’s enough to scare any man. I’ll have a row of electric
lamps up here inside of six months, and you won’t know it again with a
thousand-candlepower Swan and Edison right here in front of the hall door.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), The new heir to Baskerville Hall in Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930), The
Hound of the Baskervilles (1902).
In the Armstrong installation a Siemens generator was driven
by a water-turbine of 6 horse-power situated 1500 yards from the house. There
were 45 lamps in the house, eight of which lit the library, 33’ x 20’ [10
metres x 6 metres]. In the dining room … Sir William and Lady Armstrong are
seated at a dining table illuminated by 6 x 20 candle power Swan lamps …
— W. T. O’Dea, Lighting, London:
Science Museum illustrated booklet, 1967.
The apparatus to which I will allude … is only the
assemblage of a number of good conductors of different kinds arranged in a
certain manner. Thirty, forty, sixty or more pieces of copper, or rather
silver, applied each to a piece of tin, or zinc which is much better, and as
many strata of water, or any other liquid which may be a better conductor, such
as salt water, lees etc., or pieces of cardboard, skin etc., well soaked in
these liquids; such strata interposed between every pair or combination of two
differentials in an alternate series, and always in the same order of these
three kinds of conductors, are all that is necessary for constituting my new
instrument, which, as I have said, imitates the effects of the Leyden flask, or
of electric batteries, by communicating the same shock as these do …
— Alessandro Volta (1745 – 1827), On the electricity excited by the mere
contact of conducting substances of different kinds, letter to Sir Joseph
Banks, 1800, translation in Bern Dibner, Alessandro
Volta.
For the sake of portability, many forms of Leclanché cell
have been constructed in which there is no free liquid present. In most of
these there is a paste containing manganese dioxide surrounding a carbon rod.
This is in contact with a layer of sawdust, or in some cases, plaster of Paris,
saturated with sal-ammoniac. The whole is contained in a zinc case which forms
the negative electrode.
— J. Duncan and S. G. Starling, A Text
Book of Physics, Macmillan, 1918, 912.
… the magnetic needle was moved from its position by the
help of the galvanic apparatus when the galvanic apparatus was closed, but not
when open …
— Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851).
The first experiments … were set on foot in the classes for
electricity, galvanism and magnetism, which were held by me in the winter just
past. By these experiments it seemed … that the magnetic needle was moved from
its position by the help of the galvanic apparatus … when the galvanic circuit
was closed, but not when open, as certain very celebrated physicists in vain
attempted several years ago …
The joining conductor may consist of several metallic wires
or bands connected together. The kind of metal does not alter the effects,
except, perhaps as regards quantity. We have employed with equal success wires
of platinum, gold, silver, copper, iron, bands of lead and tin, a mass of
mercury …
If the joining wire is placed in a horizontal plane under
the magnetic needle, all the effects are the same as in the plane over the
needle, only in an inverse direction …
That these things may be more easily remembered let us use
this formula: the pole over which negative electricity [in modern terms,
electron flow] enters is turned towards the west, that over which it enters is
turned toward the east.
— Hans Christian Oersted (1777 – 1851), Oersted’s original pamphlet, translated
by Rev. J E Kempe, in Journal of the
Society of Telegraph Engineers, vol V (1876), corrected from the French
text published in Annales de Chimie et de
Physique, t. XIV, 417-425, 1820.
Oersted would never have made his great discovery of the
action of galvanic currents on magnets had he stopped in his researches to
consider in what manner they could possibly be turned to practical account; and
so we would not now be able to boast of the wonders done by the electric
telegraphs. Indeed, no great law in Natural Philosophy has ever been discovered
for its practical implications, but the instances are innumerable of
investigations apparently quite useless in this narrow sense of the word which
have led to the most valuable results.
— Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), quoted in R. A. Gregory, Discovery (1916), 241-2.
The quantity of electricity requisite to deflect a magnetic
needle is so inconsiderable, that if the current of a moderately-sized pair of
plates were sent into one end of a wire, and only one-hundredth part of it came
out at the other end, it would still be sufficient.
— Edward Davy, (1806-1885), inventor of the electrical relay.
Few of our readers have heard of the name of Edward Davy in
connection with the history of the telegraph … nothing has been published of
his labours. Yet it is certain that, in those days, he had a clearer grasp of
the requirements and capabilities of an electric telegraph than, probably,
Cooke and Wheatstone themselves …
— J. J. Fahie, The Electrician, July
7, 1883.
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