Electricity and Magnetism

Of the sources of electricity we have mentioned two: Friction, and Galvanism or chemical action. There are hundreds of forms of the latter species of apparatus for generating el...

Iron and steel have a peculiar property called magnetism. It is an attraction in many ways unlike the attraction of cohesion or the attraction of gravitation. It is very certain...

In the year 1617 Strada, an Italian Jesuit, proposed to telegraph news without wires by means of two sympathetic needles made of loadstone so balanced that when one was turned t...

Electricity as a well-developed science is not old. Those of us who have lived fifty years have seen nearly all its development so far as it has been applied to useful purposes,...

Although the printing and automatic systems of telegraphing are used in America to some extent, the larger part is done by the Morse system of sound-reading and copying from it,...

The simplest form of an electric machine is one in which the operator is a prominent part of the operation. Electricity, like magnetism, operates in a closed circuit, even when...

In the foregoing chapters I have described the method of transmitting musical tones telegraphically and its applications to multiple telegraphy, as well as to a mode of communic...

In the series of chapters on Heat (Vol. II) and in the chapter on Magnetism the word molecule was frequently used synonymously with atom. In chemistry a distinction is made, and...

In the last chapter I described some of the appliances used in connection with the power-house. There are many things that are commonplace as electrical appliances when used wit...

Broadly speaking, "Wireless Telegraphy" is any method of transmitting intelligible signals to a distance without wires; and this includes the old Semaphore systems of visual sig...

When we consider the number of new products for whose existence we are indebted to electricity, and the number of old products that have heretofore existed experimentally, in th...

Some years ago a company was formed for the purpose of utilizing, to some extent, this greatest of all water-powers. A tunnel of large capacity was run from a point a short dist...

Everybody knows what the telephone is because it is in almost every man's house. But while everybody knows what it is, there are very few (comparatively speaking) that know how...

The production of electricity in such enormous quantities as are generated at Niagara Falls has led to many discoveries and will lead to many more. Products that at one time exi...

Early in the history of the telegraph short lines began to be used for private purposes, and as the Morse code was familiar only to those who had studied it and were expert oper...

Nature has another mode of generating electricity, called atmospheric. The normal conditions of potential between the earth and the upper atmosphere seem to be that the atmosphe...

So far we have described several methods of electrical communication at a distance, including the reading of letters and symbols at sight (as by the dial-telegraph and the Morse...

A novel form of double transmission was invented by the writer soon after the completion of the harmonic system, and was an outgrowth of it. It is still in use on some of the ra...

It is said that the word magnetism is derived from the name of a Greek shepherd, called Magnes, who once observed on Mount Ida the attractive properties of loadstone when applie...

"It never rains but it pours." Almost simultaneously with the demonstration of the Morse telegraph other types were devised. There were the needle systems of Cooke and Wheatston...

Having given a short account of some of the sources of electricity, let us now proceed to describe some of the practical uses to which it is put, and at the same time describe t...

The first attempts at transmitting messages through wires laid in water were made about 1839. These early experiments were not very successful, because the art of wire-insulatio...

Until within recent years it was never supposed that a sunbeam would ever laugh except in poetry. But the modern scientist has taken it out of the realm of poetry and put it int...

With but few exceptions the Morse code is the one almost universally used the world over. As it is used in Europe, it is slightly changed from our American code, but they all de...

Another important use to which electricity is put at Niagara Falls is the manufacture of a new product, called calcium carbide. Like carborundum and aluminum, this product could...

The writer has spent much of his time for thirty-five years in the study of electricity and in inventing appliances for purposes of transmitting intelligence electrically betwee...

Another comparatively new article of manufacture now produced in large quantities at Niagara Falls is aluminum. Until within the last few years this metal was not used to any ex...

Another industry that has assumed large proportions at Niagara Falls, owing to the vast quantity of electricity produced there, is the manufacture of a commercial product called...

As our readers know, Niagara Falls is situated upon the Niagara River, which is the connecting-link between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The surface of Lake Erie lies 330 feet ab...

number of carbon particles that are contained in it, which become heated to incandescence as soon as they come in contact with the oxygen of the air, and remain so, for a brief...