Part 23 (1/2)
Thus, on April 13, 1863, a telegraph clerk was engaged with several other employees repairing some telegraph wires in the station at Pontarlier, when all at once they felt, at the knee-joints more particularly, a violent shock which made them bend their legs as if they had been struck with a stick; one of them was even thrown down.
No doubt the fluid reached the wires, which in those remote parts was in charge of the clerks.
On September 8, 1848, during a violent thunderstorm, two telegraph poles were thrown down at Zara in Dalmatia. Two hours later, as they were being set up again, a couple of artillerymen, having seized the wire, felt slight electric shocks, then suddenly found themselves flat on the ground. Both had their hands burnt; one indeed, gave no sign of life; the other, in trying to raise himself up, fell back as soon as his arm came in contact with that of one of his comrades, who ran to his a.s.sistance on hearing him cry for help. The latter thrown down in turn, felt his nerves tingle, and giddiness seize him, with singing in his ears. When his arm was uncovered, there was a superficial burn just on the spot where he had been touched.
On May 9, 1867, lightning fell on the road from Bastogne to Houffalize (Luxembourg), attracted by the telegraph wire, which it destroyed for about a kilometre. At a certain part, and over a length of about twenty metres, the wire was cut in small pieces, three or four centimetres long, which were scattered over the ground, and were as black and as fragile as charcoal. The poles which supported them, and several poplars planted on the same side of the road, were more or less damaged.
It has been observed that trees planted on the same side as a telegraph line were sometimes blasted on a level with the wires. It is the same with houses near the copper threads along which human thoughts take wing. Thus, at Chateauneuf-Martignes, on August 25, 1900, lightning destroyed the telegraph poles on the outskirts of the railway-station. A severe shock, like an electrical discharge, was felt at the same moment by two people who were in bed, not far from where the wire was fixed in the wall of the house, which was a very low one. The same phenomenon had been felt there already.
In the railway-stations, as well as in the telegraph and telephone offices, curious results of the spark pa.s.sing at a certain distance, or even in the immediate neighbourhood, are sometimes observed.
On May 17, 1852, towards five o'clock, the sky looking overcast, the station-master at Havre warned his colleague at Beuzeville that it would be well to put his apparatus in connection with the ground.
Beuzeville is twenty-five kilometres away from Havre, and at the former station the weather then did not look at all threatening. But clouds soon piled up, driven before a violent wind. Suddenly three awful peals of thunder succeeded each other in quick succession. With the last, lightning struck a farm about a kilometre from the station, and at the same moment a globe of fire of a reddish brown, and apparently about the size of a small bomb-sh.e.l.l, rose as if out of a clump of trees. It glided through the air like an aerolite, and leaving behind it a train of light. At a hundred metres or so from the station, it alighted like a bird on the telegraph wires, then disappeared with the rapidity of lightning, leaving no trace of its pa.s.sage, either on the wires or the station. But at Beuzeville several interesting phenomena were observed. Firstly, the needles turned rapidly, with a grating noise like that of a turnspit suddenly running down, or like a grindstone sharpening iron, which emits sparks. A great number, indeed, flew out of the apparatus. One of the needles, that on the Rouen side, went out of order; all the screws on that part of the instrument were unscrewed, and on the copper dial near the axis of the needle, there was a hole through which one could pa.s.s a grain of corn.
The instruments at Havre were unaffected. The needle remained as usual, also the dial, screws, and so on.
One of our correspondents has sent me the following very interesting communication:--
”On June 26, 1901, having rung up at the central telephone-office at St. Pierre, Martinique, a harsh noise was heard, which was almost immediately succeeded by the appearance of a ball of fire, having an apparent diameter of twenty centimetres, and the brilliancy of an electric light of twenty candle power. This voluminous globe followed the telephone wire towards the instrument. Arrived near the receiver, it burst with a terrific explosion. The witness of this phenomenon felt a severe shock, and dizziness. Recovered from his stupefaction, he noted the following facts: the telephone apparatus was completely burnt, the relay of Morse's installation was slightly damaged. The electrical tension must have been enormous, for the wire of the bobbins was, to a great extent, melted.”
This latter effect, however, occurs very frequently. Not only does the lightning melt and break the telegraph wires, but it injures the poles which support them.
These are sometimes broken, split, thrown down, burst, or splintered, sometimes into threads or shavings. Poles which have been blasted are often to be seen alternating with others which are uninjured. Thus, on the line from Philadelphia to New York, during a great storm, every alternate pole up to eight was broken or thrown down; the odd numbers were uninjured. We have mentioned a similar case already.
There are several accounts, too, of lightning in pursuit of trains.
On June 1, 1903, travellers by train from Carhaix to Morlaix, between Sorignac and Le Cloistre, saw lightning follow the train over a course of six kilometres, breaking or splitting several telegraph poles.
This feat has been observed more than once. The train is escorted by lightning flashes which succeed each other almost without cessation, and the travellers seem to be whirled through an ocean of flame.
Lightning rarely strikes the carriages; only on one occasion did it actually wreck one, by breaking a wheel. The mutilated coach, however, continued to hobble along until the injury was discovered.
Generally the fluid is content to wander about the rails, to the great terror of the pa.s.sengers who witness this display of rather alarming magic. It spreads itself over ma.s.ses of iron, as for instance the roofs and balconies in Paris, without striking any particular point.
The danger would be greater to a cyclist on a road. In the suburbs of Brussels, on July 2, 1904, a cyclist named Jean Ollivier, aged twenty-one years, was riding during a violent storm, when suddenly he was struck and killed on the spot.
We shall end this description of the whims and caprices of lightning by a notice of the blasting of a German military balloon. It happened in June, 1902. The aeronaut, whose car was steered by a sub-lieutenant, was held captive, and soared at a height of about 500 metres above the fortifications at Lechfeld, near Ingolstadt. All at once the aerial skiff was touched by an electric spark, caught fire, and began to descend, slowly at first, then swiftly. The aeronaut had the good luck to get off with a broken thigh. The five a.s.sistants, who worked the windla.s.s and the telephone, also received shocks transmitted through the metal wires of the cable. They fell unconscious, but were quickly restored. This phenomenon, which is excessively rare, fittingly closes this odd collection of stories, fantastically ill.u.s.trated by lightning.
A communication from Berlin also mentions that the captive balloon of the battalion of aeronauts was struck by lightning on the exercise ground at Senne. Two under-officers and a private were wounded by the explosion.
CHAPTER IX
LIGHTNING CONDUCTORS
Until comparatively recent times, as we have seen, all that was known about thunderstorms was that they occurred pretty well all over the world, and generally in either spring or summer.
While efforts were being made on our old continent to establish by long and ingenious dissertations the exact degrees of relations.h.i.+p between lightning and the sparks given out by machines, in America practical experiments were being set about towards solving the problems of electricity.
Franklin it was who hit upon the idea of extracting electricity from the clouds for the purpose of investigation.