Bulletin (26-33) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: being shocked, but if a wire be connected with the ventilating pipes running to the ground there are small sparks. Introducing a condenser in the circuit, the intensity of the spark is increased. It only remains to construct an appropriate coil of the kite wire and place within it another independent coil. In the outer coil a quick circuit breaker may be placed, and theoretically, at least, we shall transform down the high potential and low amperage charge of the air to a current of less potential and greater amperage. This can be put to work and the long-delayed realization of Franklin's plan of harnessing the electricity of the air be consummated., ELECTRIFICATION OF THE ATMOSPHERE. Franklin, in addition to many other experiments upon the electrification of the air, erected upon his house an iron rod with two bells. When the rod was electrified the bells were rung. By charging Ley- den jars and testing the sign of the electrification, he came to the conclusion that " the clouds of a thunder gust are most commonly in a negative state of electricity." A detailed history of most of Franklin's colaborers may be found in the accounts given by Exner,1 Hoppe,2 Mendenhall, ' Elster, and Geitel.' The author5 of this book has also given a brief summary. The following table will give at a glance the work of the chief investigators from the time of Franklin to the end of the eighteenth century. Passing Peter Collinson, of London, who introduced to the notice of the Royal Society the experiments of Franklin, and the three less known, workers?J. H. Winkler, who wrote in 1746 on the electrical origin of the weather lights; Maffei, 1747; and Barbaret, 1750?we have: DATE. NAME. EXPERIMENTS. REFERENCES. 1751 Franklin Effects of lightning Phil. Trans., xlvii, p. 289 1751 Maze...