Heroes of Science: Physicists Part 14

On March 8, 1871, he accepted the chair of Experimental Physics in the University of Cambridge. This chair was founded in consequence of an offer made by the Duke of Devonshire, the Chancellor of the University, to build and equip a physical laboratory for the use of the university. In this capacity Maxwell's first duty was to prepare plans for the laboratory. With this view, he inspected the laboratories of Sir William Thomson at Glasgow, and of Professor Clifton at Oxford, and endeavoured to embody the best points of both in the new building. The result was that, in conjunction with Mr. W.

M. Fawcett, the architect, he secured for the university a laboratory n.o.ble in its exterior, and admirably adapted to the purposes for which it is required. The ground-floor comprises a large battery-room, which is also used as a storeroom for chemicals; a workshop; a room for receiving goods, communicating by a lift with the apparatus-room; a room for experiments on heat; balance-rooms; a room for pendulum experiments, and other investigations requiring great stability; and a magnetic observatory. The last two rooms are furnished with stone supports for instruments, erected on foundations independent of those of the building, and preserved from contact with the floor. On the first floor is a handsome lecture-theatre, capable of accommodating nearly two hundred students. The lecture-table is carried on a wall, which pa.s.ses up through the floor without touching it, the joists being borne by separate brick piers. The lecture-theatre occupies the height of the first and second floors; its ceiling is of wood, the panels of which can be removed, thus affording access to the roof-princ.i.p.als, from which a load of half a ton or more may be safely suspended over the lecture-table. The panels of the ceiling, adjoining the wall which is behind the lecturer, can also be readily removed, and a "window" in this wall communicates with the large electrical-room on the second floor. Access to the s.p.a.ce above the ceiling of the lecture-theatre is readily obtained from the tower.

Adjoining the lecture-room is the preparation-room, and communicating with the latter is the apparatus-room. This room is fitted with mahogany and plate-gla.s.s wall and central cases, and at present contains, besides the more valuable portions of the apparatus belonging to the laboratory, the marble bust of James Clerk Maxwell, and many of the home-made pieces of apparatus and other relics of his early work. The rest of the first floor is occupied by the professor's private room and the general students' laboratory.

Throughout the building the brick walls have been left bare for convenience in attaching slats or shelves for the support of instruments. The second floor contains a large room for electrical experiments, a dark room for photography, and a number of private rooms for original work. Water is laid on to every room, including a small room in the top of the tower, and all the windows are provided with broad stone ledges without and within the window, the two portions being in the same horizontal plane, for the support of heliostats or other instruments. The building is heated with hot water, but in the magnetic observatory the pipes are all of copper and the fittings of gun-metal. Open fireplaces for basket fires are also provided. Over the princ.i.p.al entrance of the laboratory is placed a stone statue of the present Duke of Devonshire, together with the arms of the university and of the Cavendish family, and the Cavendish motto, "Cavendo Tutus." Maxwell presented to the laboratory, in 1874, all the apparatus in his possession. He usually gave a course of lectures on heat and the const.i.tution of bodies in the Michaelmas term; on electricity in the Lent term; and on electro-magnetism in the Easter term. The following extract from his inaugural lecture, delivered in October, 1871, is worthy of the attention of all students of science:--

Science appears to us with a very different aspect after we have found out that it is not in lecture-rooms only, and by means of the electric light projected on a screen, that we may witness physical phenomena, but that we may find ill.u.s.trations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.

The habit of recognizing principles amid the endless variety of their action can never degrade our sense of the sublimity of nature, or mar our enjoyment of its beauty. On the contrary, it tends to rescue our scientific ideas from that vague condition in which we too often leave them, buried among the other products of a lazy credulity, and to raise them into their proper position among the doctrines in which our faith is so a.s.sured that we are ready at all times to act on them.

Experiments of ill.u.s.tration may be of very different kinds. Some may be adaptations of the commonest operations of ordinary life; others may be carefully arranged exhibitions of some phenomenon which occurs only under peculiar conditions. They all, however, agree in this, that their aim is to present some phenomenon to the senses of the student in such a way that he may a.s.sociate with it some appropriate scientific idea. When he has grasped this idea, the experiment which ill.u.s.trates it has served its purpose.

In an experiment of research, on the other hand, this is not the princ.i.p.al aim.... Experiments of this cla.s.s--those in which measurement of some kind is involved--are the proper work of a physical laboratory. In every experiment we have first to make our senses familiar with the phenomenon; but we must not stop here--we must find out which of its features are capable of measurement, and what measurements are required in order to make a complete specification of the phenomenon. We must then make these measurements, and deduce from them the result which we require to find.

This characteristic of modern experiments--that they consist princ.i.p.ally of measurements--is so prominent that the opinion seems to have got abroad that, in a few years, all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will then be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.

If this is really the state of things to which we are approaching, our laboratory may, perhaps, become celebrated as a place of conscientious labour and consummate skill; but it will be out of place in the university, and ought rather to be cla.s.sed with the other great workshops of our country, where equal ability is directed to more useful ends.

But we have no right to think thus of the unsearchable riches of creation, or of the untried fertility of those fresh minds into which these riches will continually be poured.... The history of Science shows that, even during that phase of her progress in which she devotes herself to improving the accuracy of the numerical measurement of quant.i.ties with which she has long been familiar, she is preparing the materials for the subjugation of new regions, which would have remained unknown if she had been contented with the rough methods of her early pioneers.

Maxwell's "Electricity and Magnetism" was published in 1873. Shortly afterwards there were placed in his hands, by the Duke of Devonshire, the Cavendish Ma.n.u.scripts on Electricity, already alluded to. To these he devoted much of his spare time for several years, and many of Cavendish's experiments were repeated in the laboratory by Maxwell himself, or under his direction by his students. The introductory matter and notes embodied in "The Electrical Researches of the Honourable Henry Cavendish, F.R.S.," afford sufficient evidence of the amount of labour he expended over this work. The volume was published only a few weeks before his death. Another of Maxwell's publications, which, as a text-book, is unique and beyond praise, is the little book on "Matter and Motion," published by the S.P.C.K.

In 1878 Maxwell, at the request of the Vice-Chancellor, delivered the Rede Lecture in the Senate-House. His subject was the telephone, which was just then absorbing a considerable amount of public attention.

This was the last lecture which he ever gave to a large public audience.

It was during his tenure of the Cambridge chair that one of the cottages on the Glenlair estate was struck by lightning. The discharge pa.s.sed down the damp soot and blew out several stones from the base of the chimney, apparently making its way to some water in a ditch a few yards distant. The cottage was built on a granite rock, and this event set Maxwell thinking about the best way to protect, from lightning, buildings which are erected on granite or other non-conducting foundations. He decided that the proper course was to place a strip of metal upon the ground all round the building, to carry another strip along the ridge-stay, from which one or more pointed rods should project upwards, and to unite this strip with that upon the ground by copper strips pa.s.sing down each corner of the building, which is thus, as it were, enclosed in a metal cage.

After a brief illness, Maxwell pa.s.sed away on November 5, 1879. His intellect and memory remained perfect to the last, and his love of fun scarcely diminished. During his illness he would frequently repeat hymns, especially some of George Herbert's, and Richard Baxter's hymn beginning

"Lord, it belongs not to my care."

"No man ever met his death more consciously or more calmly."

It has been stated that Thomas Young propounded a theory of colour-vision which a.s.sumes that there exist three separate colour-sensations, corresponding to red, green, and violet, each having its own special organs, the excitement of which causes the perception of the corresponding colour, other colours being due to the excitement of two or more of these simple sensations in different proportions. Maxwell adopted blue instead of violet for the third sensation, and showed that if a particular red, green, and blue were selected and placed at the angular points of an equilateral triangle, the colours formed by mixing them being arranged as in Young's diagram, all the shades of the spectrum would be ranged along the sides of this triangle, the centre being neutral grey. For the mixing of coloured lights, he at first employed the colour-top, but, instead of painting circles with coloured sectors, the angles of which could not be changed, he used circular discs of coloured paper slit along one radius. Any number of such discs can be combined so that each shows a sector at the top, and the angle of each sector can be varied at will by sliding the corresponding disc between the others. Maxwell used discs of two different sizes, the small discs being placed above the larger on the same pivot, so that one set formed a central circle, and the other set a ring surrounding it. He found that, with discs of five different colours, of which one might be white and another black, it was always possible to combine them so that the inner circle and the outer ring exactly matched. From this he showed that there could be only three conditions to be satisfied in the eye, for two conditions were necessitated by the nature of the top, since the smaller sectors must exactly fill the circle and so must the larger.

Maxwell's experiments, therefore, confirmed, in general, Young's theory. They showed, however, that the relative delicacy of the several colour-sensations is different in different eyes, for the arrangement which produced an exact match in the case of one observer, had to be modified for another; but this difference of delicacy proved to be very conspicuous in colour-blind persons, for in most of the cases of colour-blindness examined by Maxwell the red sensation was completely absent, so that only two conditions were required by colour-blind eyes, and a match could therefore always be made in such cases with four discs only. Holmgren has since discovered cases of colour-blindness in which the violet sensation is absent. He agrees with Young in making the third sensation correspond to violet rather than blue. Maxwell explained the fact that persons colour-blind to the red divide colours into blues and yellows by the consideration that, although yellow is a complex sensation corresponding to a mixture of red and green, yet in nature yellow tints are so much brighter than greens that they excite the green sensation more than green objects themselves can do, and hence greens and yellows are called yellow by such colour-blind persons, though their perception of yellow is really the same as perception of green by normal eyes. Later on, by a combination of adjustable slits, prisms, and lenses arranged in a "colour-box," Maxwell succeeded in mixing, in any desired proportions, the light from any three portions of the spectrum, so that he could deal with pure spectral colours instead of the complex combinations of differently coloured lights afforded by coloured papers. From these experiments it appears that no ray of the solar spectrum can affect one colour-sensation alone, so that there are no colours in nature so pure as to correspond to the pure simple sensations, and the colours occupying the angular points of Maxwell's diagram affect all three colour-sensations, though they influence two of them to a much smaller extent than the third. A particular colour in the spectrum corresponds to light which, according to the undulatory theory, physically consists of waves all of the same period, but it may affect all three of the colour-sensations of a normal eye, though in different proportions. Thus, yellow light of a given wave-length affects the red and green sensations considerably and the blue (or violet) slightly, and the same effect may be produced by various mixtures of red or orange and green. For his researches on the perception of colour, the Royal Society awarded to Clerk Maxwell the Rumford Medal in 1860.

Another optical contrivance of Maxwell's was a wheel of life, in which the usual slits were replaced by concave lenses of such focal length that the picture on the opposite side of the cylinder appeared, when seen through a lens, at the centre, and thus remained apparently fixed in position while the cylinder revolved. The same result has since been secured by a different contrivance in the praxinoscope.

Another ingenious optical apparatus was a real-image stereoscope, in which two lenses were placed side by side at a distance apart equal to half the distance between the pictures on the stereoscopic slide.

These lenses were placed in front of the pictures at a distance equal to twice their focal length. The real images of the two pictures were then superposed in front of the lenses at the same distance from them as the pictures, and these combined images were looked at through a large convex lens.

The great difference in the sensibility to different colours of the eyes of dark and fair persons when the light fell upon the _fovea centralis_, led Maxwell to the discovery of the extreme want of sensibility of this portion of the retina to blue light. This he made manifest by looking through a bottle containing solution of chrome alum, when the central portion of the field of view appears of a light red colour for the first second or two.

A more important discovery was that of double refraction temporarily produced in viscous liquids. Maxwell found that a quant.i.ty of Canada balsam, if stirred, acquired double-refracting powers, which it retained for a short period, until the stress temporarily induced had disappeared.

But Maxwell's investigations in optics must be regarded as his play; his real work lay in the domains of electricity and of molecular physics.

In 1738 Daniel Bernouilli published an explanation of atmospheric pressure on the hypothesis that air consists of a number of minute particles moving in all directions, and impinging on any surface exposed to their action. In 1847 Herapath explained the diffusion of gases on the hypothesis that they consisted of perfectly hard molecules impinging on one another and on surfaces exposed to them, and pointed out the relation between their motion and the temperature and pressure of a gas. The present condition of the molecular theory of gases, and of molecular science generally, is due almost entirely to the work of Joule, Clausius, Boltzmann, and Maxwell. To Maxwell is due the general method of solving all problems connected with vast numbers of individuals--a method which he called the statistical method, and which consists, in the first place, in separating the individuals into groups, each fulfilling a particular condition, but paying no attention to the history of any individual, which may pa.s.s from one group to another in any way and as often as it pleases without attracting attention. Maxwell was the first to estimate the average distance through which a particle of gas pa.s.ses without coming into collision with another particle. He found that, in the case of hydrogen, at standard pressure and temperature, it is about 1/250000 of an inch; for air, about 1/389000 of an inch. These results he deduced from his experiments on viscosity, and he gave a complete explanation of the viscosity of gases, showing it to be due to the "diffusion of momentum" accompanying the diffusion of material particles between the pa.s.sing streams of gas.

One portion of the theory of electricity had been considerably developed by Cavendish; the application of mathematics to the theory of attractions, and hence to that of electricity, had been carried to a great degree of perfection by Laplace, Lagrange, Poisson, Green, and others. Faraday, however, could not satisfy himself with a mathematical theory based upon direct action at a distance, and he filled s.p.a.ce, as we have seen, with tubes of force pa.s.sing from one body to another whenever there existed any electrical action between them. These conceptions of Faraday were regarded with suspicion by mathematicians. Sir William Thomson was the first to look upon them with favour; and in 1846 he showed that electro-static force might be treated mathematically in the same way as the flow of heat; so that there are, at any rate, two methods by which the fundamental formulae of electro-statics can be deduced. But it is to Maxwell that mathematicians are indebted for a complete exposition of Faraday's views in their own language, and this was given in a paper wherein the phenomena of electro-statics were deduced as results of a stress in a medium which, as suggested by Newton and believed by Faraday, might well be that same medium which serves for the propagation of light; and "the lines of force" were shown to correspond to an actual condition of the medium when under electrical stress. Maxwell, in fact, showed, not only that Faraday's lines formed a consistent system which would bear the most stringent mathematical a.n.a.lysis, but were more than a conventional system, and might correspond to a state of stress actually existing in the medium through which they pa.s.sed, and that a tension along these lines, accompanied by an equal pressure in every direction at right angles to them, would be consistent with the equilibrium of the medium, and explain, on mechanical principles, the observed phenomena. The greater part of this work he accomplished while an undergraduate at Cambridge. He showed, too, that Faraday's conceptions were equally applicable to the case of electro-magnetism, and that all the laws of the induction of currents might be concisely expressed in Faraday's language. Defining the positive direction through a circuit in which a current flows as the direction in which a right-handed screw would advance if rotating with the current, and the positive direction around a wire conveying a current as the direction in which a right-handed screw would rotate if advancing with the current, Maxwell pointed out that the lines of magnetic force due to an electric current always pa.s.s round it, or through its circuit, in the positive direction, and that, _whenever the number of lines of magnetic force pa.s.sing through a closed circuit is changed, there is an electro-motive force round the circuit represented by the rate of diminution of the number of lines of force which pa.s.s through the circuit in the positive direction_.

The words in italics form a complete statement of the laws regulating the production of currents by the motion of magnets or of other currents, or by the variation of other currents in the neighbourhood.

Maxwell showed, too, that Faraday's electro-tonic state, on the variation of which induced currents depend, corresponds completely with the number of lines of magnetic force pa.s.sing through the circuit.

He also showed that, when a conductor conveying a current is free to move in a magnetic field, or magnets are free to move in the neighbourhood of such a conductor, _the system will a.s.sume that condition in which the greatest possible number of lines of magnetic force pa.s.s through the circuit in the positive direction_.

But Maxwell was not content with showing that Faraday's conceptions were consistent, and had their mathematical equivalents,--he proceeded to point out how a medium could be imagined so const.i.tuted as to be able to perform all the various duties which were thus thrown upon it.

a.s.suming a medium to be made up of spherical, or nearly spherical, cells, and that, when magnetic force is transmitted, these cells are made to rotate about diameters coinciding in direction with the lines of force, the tension along those lines, and the pressure at right angles to them, are accounted for by the tendency of a rotating elastic sphere to contract along its polar axis and expand equatorially so as to form an oblate spheroid. By supposing minute spherical particles to exist between the rotating cells, the motion of one may be transmitted in the same direction to the next, and these particles may be supposed to const.i.tute electricity, and roll as perfectly rough bodies on the cells in contact with them. Maxwell further imagined the rotating cells, and therefore, _a fortiori_, the electrical particles, to be extremely small compared with molecules of matter; and that, in conductors, the electrical particles could pa.s.s from molecule to molecule, though opposed by friction, but that in insulators no such transference was possible. The machinery was then complete. If the electric particles were made to flow in a conductor in one direction, pa.s.sing between the cells, or _molecular vortices_, they compelled them to rotate, and the rotation was communicated from cell to cell in expanding circles by the electric particles, acting as idle wheels, between them. Thus rings of magnetic force were made to surround the current, and to continue as long as the current lasted.

If an attempt were made to displace the electric particles in a dielectric, they would move only within the substance of each molecule, and not from molecule to molecule, and thus the cells would be deformed, though no continuous motion would result. The deformation of the cells would involve elastic stress in the medium. Again, if a stream of electric particles were started into motion, and if there were another stream of particles in the neighbourhood free to flow, though resisted by friction, these particles, instead of at once transmitting the rotary motion of the cells on one side of them to the cells on the other side, would at first, on account of the inertia of the cells, begin to move themselves with a motion of translation opposite to that of the primary current, and the motion would only gradually be destroyed by the frictional resistance and the molecular vortices on the other side made to revolve with their full velocity. A similar effect, but in the opposite direction, would take place if the primary current ceased, the vortices not stopping all at once if there were any possibility of their continuing in motion. The imaginary medium thus serves for the production of induced currents.

The mechanical forces between currents and magnets and between currents and currents, as well as between magnets and currents, were accounted for by the tension and pressure produced by the molecular vortices. When currents are flowing in the same direction in neighbouring conductors, the vortices in the s.p.a.ce between them are urged in opposite directions by the two currents, and remain almost at rest; the lateral pressure exerted by those on the outside of the conductors is thus unbalanced, and the conductors are pushed together as though they attracted each other. When the currents flow in opposite directions in parallel conductors, they conspire to give a greater velocity to the vortices in the s.p.a.ce between them, than to those outside them, and are thus pushed apart by the pressure due to the rotation of the vortices, as though they repelled each other. In a similar way, the actions of magnets on conductors conveying currents may be explained. The motion of a conductor across a series of lines of magnetic force may squeeze together and lengthen the threads of vortices in front, and thus increase their speed of rotation, while the vortices behind will move more slowly because allowed to contract axially and expand transversely. The velocity of the vortices thus being greater on one side of the wire than the other, a current must be induced in the wire. Thus the current induced by the motion of a conductor in a magnetic field may be accounted for.

This conception of a medium was given by Maxwell, not as a theory, but to show that it was possible to devise a _mechanism_ capable, in imagination at least, of producing all the phenomena of electricity and magnetism. "According to our theory, the particles which form the part.i.tions between the cells const.i.tute the matter of electricity. The motion of these particles const.i.tutes an electric current; the tangential force with which the particles are pressed by the matter of the cells is electro-motive force; and the pressure of the particles on each other corresponds to the tension or potential of the electricity."

When a current is maintained in a wire, the molecular vortices in the surrounding s.p.a.ce are kept in uniform motion; but if an attempt be made to stop the current, since this would necessitate the stoppage of the vortices, it is clear that it cannot take place suddenly, but the energy of the vortices must be in some way used up. For the same reason it is impossible for a current to be suddenly started by a finite force. Thus the phenomena of self-induction are accounted for by the supposed medium.

The magnetic permeability of a medium Maxwell identified with the density of the substance composing the rotating cells, and the specific inductive capacity he showed to be inversely proportional to its elasticity. He then proved that the ratio of the electro-magnetic unit to the electro-static unit must be equal to the velocity of transmission of a transverse vibration in the medium, and consequently proportional to the square root of the elasticity, and inversely proportional to the square root of the density. If the medium is the same as that engaged in the propagation of light, then this ratio ought to be equal to the velocity of light, and, moreover, in non-magnetic media, the refractive index should be proportional to the square root of the specific inductive capacity. The different measurements which had been made of the ratio of the electrical units gave a mean very nearly coinciding with the best determinations of the velocity of light, and thus the truth underlying Maxwell's speculation was strikingly confirmed, for the velocity of light was determined by purely electrical measurements. In the case also of bodies whose chemical structure was not very complicated, the refractive index was found to agree fairly well with the square root of the specific inductive capacity; but the phenomenon of "residual charge" rendered the accurate measurement of the latter quant.i.ty a matter of great difficulty. It therefore appeared highly probable that light is an electro-magnetic disturbance due to a motion of the electric particles in an insulating medium producing a strain in the medium, which becomes propagated from particle to particle to an indefinite distance. In the case of a conductor, the electric particles so displaced would pa.s.s from molecule to molecule against a frictional resistance, and thus dissipate the energy of the disturbance, so that true (_i.e._ metallic) conductors must be nearly impervious to light; and this also agrees with experience.

Maxwell thus furnished a complete theory of electrical and electro-magnetic action in which all the effects are due to actions propagated in a medium, and direct action at a distance is dispensed with, and exposed his theory successfully to most severe tests. In his great work on electricity and magnetism, he gives the mathematical theory of all the above actions, without, however, committing himself to any particular form of mechanism to represent the const.i.tution of the medium. "This part of that book," Professor Tait says, "is one of the most splendid monuments ever raised by the genius of a single individual.... There seems to be no longer any possibility of doubt that Maxwell has taken the first grand step towards the discovery of the true nature of electrical phenomena. Had he done nothing but this, his fame would have been secured for all time. But, striking as it is, this forms only one small part of the contents of this marvellous work."

CONCLUSION.

SOME OF THE RESULTS OF FARADAY'S DISCOVERIES, AND THE PRINCIPLE OF ENERGY.

In early days, _the spirit of the amber_, when aroused by rubbing, came forth and took to itself such light objects as it could easily lift. Later on, and the spirit gave place to the _electric effluvium_, which proceeded from the excited, or charged, body into the surrounding s.p.a.ce. Still later, and a fluid, or two fluids, acting directly upon itself, or upon matter, or on one another, through intervening s.p.a.ce without the aid of intermediate mechanism, took the place of the electric effluvium--a step which in itself was, perhaps, hardly an advance. Then came the time for accurate measurement. The simple _observation_ of phenomena and of the results of experiment must be the first step in science, and its importance cannot be over-estimated; but before any quant.i.ty can be said to be known, we must have learned how to _measure_ it and to reproduce it in definite amounts. The great law of electrical action, the same as that of gravitation--the law of the inverse square--soon followed, as well as the a.s.sociated fact that the electrification of a conductor resides wholly on its surface, and there only in a layer whose thickness is too small to be discovered. The fundamental laws of electricity having thus been established, there was no limit to the application of mathematical methods to the problems of the science, and, in the hands of the French mathematicians, the theory made rapid advances. George Green, of Sneinton, Nottingham, introduced the term "potential" in an essay published by subscription, in Nottingham, in 1828, and to him we are indebted for some of our most powerful a.n.a.lytical methods of dealing with the subject; but his work remained unappreciated and almost unknown until many of his theorems had been rediscovered. But the idea of a body acting where it is not, and without any conceivable mechanism to connect it with that upon which it operates, is repulsive to the minds of most; and, however well such a theory may lend itself to mathematical treatment and its consequences be borne out by experiment, we still feel that we have not solved the problem until we have traced out the hidden mechanism. The pull of the bell-rope is followed by the tinkling of the distant bell, but the young philosopher is not satisfied with such knowledge, but must learn "what is the particular go of that." This universal desire found its exponent in Faraday, whose imagination beheld "lines" or "tubes of force" connecting every body with every other body on which it acted.

To his mind these lines or tubes had just as real an existence as the bell-wire, and were far better adapted to their special purposes.

Maxwell, as we have seen, not only showed that Faraday's system admitted of the same rigorous mathematical treatment as the older theory, and stood the test as well, but he gave reality to Faraday's views by picturing a mechanism capable of doing all that Faraday required of it, and of transmitting light as well. Thus the problem of electric, magnetic, and electro-magnetic actions was reduced to that of strains and stresses in a medium the const.i.tution of which was pictured to the imagination. Were this theory verified, we might say that we know at least as much about these actions as we know about the transmission of pressure or tension through a solid.

With regard to the _nature_ of electricity, it must be admitted that our knowledge is chiefly negative; but, before deploring this, it is worth while to inquire what we mean by saying that we know what a thing is. A definition describes a thing in terms of other things simpler, or more familiar to us, than itself. If, for instance, we say that heat is a form of energy, we know at once its relationship to matter and to motion, and are content; we have described the const.i.tution of heat in terms of simpler things, which are more familiar to us, and of which we _think_ we know the nature. But if we ask what _matter_ is, we are unable to define it in terms of anything simpler than itself, and can only trust to daily experience to teach us more and more of its properties; unless, indeed, we accept the theory of the vortex atoms of Thomson and Helmholtz. This theory, which has recently been considerably extended by Professor J. J.

Thomson, the present occupier of Clerk Maxwell's chair in the University of Cambridge, supposes the existence of a perfect fluid, filling all s.p.a.ce, in which minute whirlpools, or vortices, which in a perfect fluid can be created or destroyed only by superhuman agency, form material atoms. These are _atoms_, that is to say, they defy any attempts to sever them, not because they are infinitely hard, but because they have an infinite capacity for _wriggling_, and thus avoid direct contact with any other atoms that come in their way. Perhaps a theory of electricity consistent with this theory of matter may be developed in the future; but, setting aside these theories, we may possibly say that we know as much about electricity as we know about matter; for while we are conversant with many of the properties of each, we _know_ nothing of the ultimate nature of either.

But while the theory of electricity has scarcely advanced beyond the point at which it was left by Clerk Maxwell, the practical applications of the science have experienced great developments of late years. Less than a century ago the lightning-rod was the only practical outcome of electrical investigations which could be said to have any real value. [OE]rsted's discovery, in 1820, of the action of a current on a magnet, led, in the hands of Wheatstone, Cooke, and others, to the development of the electric telegraph. Sir William Thomson's employment of a beam of light reflected from a tiny mirror attached to the magnet of the galvanometer enabled signals to be read when only extremely feeble currents were available, and thus rendered submarine telegraphy possible through very great distances. The discovery by Arago and Davy, that a current of electricity flowing in a coil surrounding an iron bar would convert the bar into a magnet, at once rendered possible a variety of contrivances whereby a current of electricity could be employed to produce small reciprocating movements, or even continuous rotation, where not much power was required, at a distance from the battery. An ill.u.s.tration of the former is found in the common electric bell; it is only necessary that the vibrating armature should form part of the circuit of the electro-magnet, and be so arranged that, while it is held away from the magnet by a spring, it completes the battery circuit, but breaks the connection as soon as it moves towards the magnet under the magnetic attraction. To produce continuous rotation, a number of iron bars may be attached to a fly-wheel, and pa.s.s very close to the poles of the magnet without touching them; when a bar is near the magnet, and approaching it, contact should be made in the circuit, but should be broken, so that the magnet may lose its power, as soon as the bar has pa.s.sed the poles; or the continuous rotation may be produced from an oscillating armature by any of the mechanical contrivances usually adopted for the conversion of reciprocating into continuous circular motion. But all such motors are extremely wasteful in their employment of energy. Faraday's discovery of the rotation of a wire around a magnetic pole laid the foundation for a great variety of electro-motors, in some of which the efficiency has attained a very high standard. About ten years ago, Clerk Maxwell said that the greatest discovery of recent times was the "reversibility" of the Gramme machine, that is, the possibility of causing the armature to rotate between the field-magnets by sending a current through the coils. The electro-motors of to-day differ but little from dynamos in the principles of their construction. The copper disc spinning between the poles of a magnet while an electric current was sent from the centre to the circ.u.mference, or _vice versa_, formed the simplest electro-motor. All the later motors are simply modifications of this, designed to increase the efficiency or power of the machine.

Similarly, the earliest machine for the production of an electric current at the expense of mechanical power only, but through the intervention of a permanent magnet, was the rotating disc of Faraday, described on page 262. This contrivance, however, caused a waste of nearly all the energy employed, for while there was an electro-motive force from the centre to the circ.u.mference, or in the reverse direction, in that part of the disc which was pa.s.sing between the poles of the magnet, the current so generated found its readiest return path through the other portions of the disc, and very little traversed the galvanometer or other external circuit. This source of waste could be, for the most part, got rid of by cutting the disc into a number of separate rays, or spokes, and filling up the s.p.a.ces between them with insulating material. The current then generated in the disc would be obliged to complete its circuit through the external conductor. If we can so arrange matters as to employ at once several turns of a continuous wire in place of one arm, or ray, of the copper disc, we may multiply in a corresponding manner the electro-motive force induced by a given speed of rotation. All magneto-electric generators are simply contrivances with this object. The iron cores frequently employed within the coils of the armature tend to concentrate the lines of force of the magnet, causing a greater number to pa.s.s through the coils in certain positions than would pa.s.s through them were no iron present. The electro-motive force of such a generator depends on the strength of the magnetic field, the length of wire employed in cutting the lines of force, and the speed with which the wire moves across these lines. The point to aim at in constructing an armature is to make the resistance as small as possible consistent with the electro-motive force required. As there is a limit to the strength of the magnetic field, it follows that for strong currents, where thick wire must be employed, the generator must be made of large dimensions, or the armature must be driven at very high speed to enable a shorter length of wire to be used.

The so-called "compound-interest principle," by which a very small charge of electricity might be employed to develop a very large one by the help of mechanical power, was first applied about a century ago in the revolving doubler. Long afterwards, Sir William Thomson availed himself of the same principle in the construction of the "mouse-mill,"

or replenisher. The Holtz machine, the Voss and Wimshurst machines, and the other induction-machines of the same cla.s.s, all work on this principle. It may be ill.u.s.trated as follows: Take two canisters, call them A and B, and place them on gla.s.s supports. Let a very small positive charge be given to A, B remaining uncharged. Now take a bra.s.s ball, supported by a silk string. Place it inside A, and let it touch its interior surface. The ball will, as shown by Franklin, Cavendish, and Faraday, remain uncharged. Now raise it near the top of the canister, and, while there, touch it. The ball will become negatively electrified, because the small positive charge in A will attract negative electricity from the earth into the ball. Take the ball, with its negative charge, still hanging by the silk thread, and lower it into B till it touches the bottom. It will give all its charge to B, which will thus acquire a slight negative charge. Raise the ball till it is near the top of B, and then touch it with the finger or a metal rod. It will receive a positive charge from the earth because of the attraction of the negative charge on B. Now remove the ball and let it again touch the interior of A. It will give up all its charge to A; and then, repeating the whole cycle of operations, the charge carried on the ball will be greater than before, and increase in each successive operation, the electrification increasing in geometrical progression like compound interest. A Leyden jar having one coating connected to A and the other to B, may thus be highly charged in course of time. A pair of carrier b.a.l.l.s or plates, or a number of pairs, may be used instead of one. The carriers, just before leaving A and B, may be put in contact with one another instead of being put to earth; they may be mounted on a revolving shaft, and the forms of A and B modified to admit of the revolution of the carriers, and all the necessary contacts may be made automatically. We thus get various forms of the continuous electrophorus, and if the carriers are mounted on gla.s.s plates, and rows of points placed alongside the springs or brushes used for making the contacts, when the charges on the carriers become very strong, electricity will be radiated from the points on to the revolving gla.s.s plates, which will thus themselves take the place of the metal carriers. Such is the action in the Voss and other similar machines.

But after Faraday had shown how to construct a magneto-electric machine, the idea of applying the "compound-interest principle," and thus converting the magneto-electric machine into the "dynamo,"

occurred apparently simultaneously and independently to Siemens, Varley, and Wheatstone. The first dynamo constructed by Wheatstone is still in the museum of King's College, London. Wilde employed a magneto-electric machine to generate a current which was used to excite the electro-magnet of a similar but larger machine, having an electro-magnet instead of a permanent steel magnet. The electro-magnet could be made much larger and stronger than the steel magnet, and from its armature, when made to revolve by steam power, a correspondingly stronger current could be maintained. The idea which occurred to Siemens, Varley, and Wheatstone was to use the whole, or a part, of the current produced by the armature to excite its own electro-magnet, and thus to dispense with the magneto-electric machine which served as the separate exciter. When a part only of the current is thus employed, and is set apart entirely for this duty, the machine is a "shunt dynamo;" when the whole of the current traverses the field-magnet coils as well as the external circuit, it is a "series dynamo." The apparent difficulty lies in starting the current, but a ma.s.s of iron once magnetized always retains a certain amount of "residual magnetism," unless special means are taken to get rid of it, and even then the earth's magnetism would generally induce sufficient in the iron to start the action. Commencing, then, with a slight trace of residual magnetism, the revolution of the armature generates a feeble current, which pa.s.sing round the magnet coils, strengthens the magnetism, whereupon a stronger current is generated, which in turn makes the magnet still stronger, and so on until the magnet becomes saturated or the limit of power of the engine is reached, and the speed begins to diminish, or a condition of affairs is reached at which an increased current in the armature injures the magnetic field as much as the corresponding increase in the field-magnet coils strengthens it, and then no further increase of current will take place without increasing the speed of rotation. In a true dynamo the whole of the energy, both of the current and of the electro-magnets, is obtained from the source of power employed in driving the machine.

But Faraday's discovery of electro-magnetic induction led to practical developments in other directions. Graham Bell placed a thin iron disc in front of the pole of a bar magnet, and wound a coil of fine wire round the bar very near the pole. The ends of the coils of two such instruments he connected together. When the iron disc of one instrument approached the pole of the magnet, the lines of force were disturbed, fewer escaped radially from the bar, and more left it at the end, so as to go straight to the iron disc; thus the number of lines of force pa.s.sing through the coil was altered, and a current was induced which, pa.s.sing round the coil of the other instrument, strengthened or weakened its magnet, and caused the iron disc to approach it or recede from it, according to the way in which the coils were coupled. Thus the movements of the first disc were faithfully repeated by the second, and the minute vibrations set up in the disc by sound-waves were all faithfully repeated by the second instrument.

This was Graham Bell's telephone, in which the transmitter and receiver were convertible.

But another and an earlier application of Faraday's discoveries is found in the induction coil. A short length of thick wire and a very great length of thin wire are wound upon an iron bar. The ends of the long thin wire, or secondary coil, form the terminals of the machine; the short thick wire, or primary coil, is connected with a battery, but in the circuit is placed an "interrupter." This is generally a small piece of iron, or hammer, mounted on a steel spring opposite one end of the iron core, the spring pressing the hammer back against a screw the end of which, like the back of the hammer, is tipped with platinum; and this contact completes the battery circuit. When the current starts, the iron core becomes a magnet, attracts the hammer, breaks the contact, stops the current, the magnetism dies away, the hammer is forced back by the spring, and then the cycle of events is repeated. But the starting of the current in the primary causes a great many lines of magnetic force to pa.s.s through each of the many thousand turns of wire in the secondary, especially as the iron core conducts most of the lines of force of each turn of the primary almost from end to end of the coil, and thus through nearly all the turns of the secondary. This action might be further increased by connecting the ends of the iron core with an iron tube or series of longitudinal bars placed outside the whole coil. When the primary current ceases, all these lines of force vanish. Thus during the starting of the primary current, which, on account of self-induction, occupies a considerable time, there will be an inverse current in the secondary proportional to the rate of increase of the primary; and while the primary is dying away, there will be a direct current in the secondary proportional to its rate of decrease. The primary current cannot be increased at a faster rate than corresponds to the power of the battery, but by making a very sharp break it may be stopped very rapidly. Still, however rapidly the circuit is broken, self-induction causes a spark to fly across the gap until the energy of the current is used up. The introduction of the condenser, consisting of a number of sheets of tinfoil insulated by paper steeped in paraffin wax, and connected alternately with one end or the other of the primary coil, serves to increase the rapidity with which the primary current died away, by rapidly using up its energy in charging the condenser, and produces a corresponding diminution in the spark at the contact-breaker. This rapid destruction of the primary current causes a correspondingly great electro-motive force in the secondary coil, and thus very long sparks are produced between the terminals of the secondary coil when the primary current is broken, though no such sparks are produced when the primary current starts. If the secondary coil be connected up with a galvanometer, so that there is a metallic circuit throughout, it will be found that just as much electricity flows in one direction through the circuit at the break of the primary as flows in the other direction at the make, the difference being that the first is a very strong current of great electro-motive force but lasting a very short time, the second a feebler current lasting a correspondingly longer time.

But though the recent advances in electrical science have been very great, the grandest triumph of this century is the establishment of the principle of the conservation of energy, which has settled for ever the problem of "the perpetual motion," by showing that it has no solution. This problem was not simply to find a mechanism which should for ever move, but one from which energy might be continuously derived for the performance of external work--in fact, an engine which should require no fuel. But in spite of all that has been proved, numbers of patents are annually taken out for contrivances to effect this object.