Part 8 (1/2)

The following are soures, of the business side of electricity in the United States at the present writing In 1866, about twenty years after the establishraph, but with a population of only a little raph wire in use, and 2,520 offices In 1893 there were 740,000 miles of wire, and more than 20,000 offices The receipts for the year first named are unknown, but for 1893 they were about 24,000,000 The expenses of the system for the same year were 16,500,000

The telephone, an industry now about sixteen years old, had in 1893, for the Bell alone, over 200,000 round The instrus

There were 10,000 employes, and 233,000 subscribers All companies combined had 441,000 miles of wire Ninety-two millions of dollars were invested in telephone _fixtures_

In 1893, the average cost of a telegrae alleged cost of sending the same to the co a profit of nine and three-tenths cents on every e It must be remembered that with raph e is always an extraordinary ures ive the reader a dieneral of the branches of electrical industry have grown in the United States

MEDICAL ELECTRICITY--For ular practice persisted in disregarding all the claient In earlier times it was supposed to have a value that supplanted all other encies

Franklin seems to have been one of the earliest experimenters in this line, and to have been successful in many instances where his brief spark from the only sources of the current then knoere applicable to the case The medical department of the science then fell into the hands of charlatans, and there is a natural disposition to deal in the wonderful, the miraculous or semi-miraculous, in the cure of disease

Divested of the wonder-idea through a wider study and greater knowledge of actual facts, electricity has again coent in the last ten years Instruction in its ement in disease is included in the curriculum of almost every medical school, and most physicians non an outfit, more or less extensive, for use in ordinary practice To decry and utterly conde physician, the ethics of whose cloth had been for centuries to conde whose action could not be understood by the examples of common experience, and without special study outside the lines of e as prescribed

Perhaps the developments based upon the discoveries of Faraday have had ent The current usually used is the Faradic; the induced alternate current from an induction coil This is, indeed, the current eed utility

In surgery the advance is still greater ”Galvano-cautery” is the incandescent light precisely; the white-hot wire being used to cut off, or burn off, and cauterize at the sarowths that could not be easily reached by other means than a tube and a small loop of platinuer than a pea is used to light up and explore cavities, and this advance alone, purely mechanical and outside ofof life and the avoidance of huical, or by the touch, or mysterious, in the treatment of disease by the electrical current The results depend upon intelligent applications, based upon reason and experience, a varied treat cases Nor is it a remedy to be applied by the patient himself reat injury The pills, potions, powders and patent medicines made to be taken indiscriminately, and which he more or less understands, may be still harmful yet much safer Even the application of one or the other of the two poles with reference to the course of a nerve, ood

INCOMPLETE POSSIBILITIES--There are at least two things greatly desired by mankind in the field of electrical science and not yet attained One of these, thatof the latent energy of, say a ton of coal, into electrical energy without the use of the steaine; without the intervention of any machine For electricity is not manufactured; not created by athered, in a measure and to a certain extent confined and controlled, and sent out as a _concentrated fory_ on its various errands Should a y be found whereby it could be ement of some natural law such as places it in enormous quantities in the thundercloud, a revolution that would pere all the affairs of men would take place, since the industrial world is not a thing apart, but affects all ht

The other desideratum, more reasonable apparently, yet far fro a supply of electricity when it has been gathered by the means now used, or by any means

THE STORAGE BATTERY is an atte, since even in this attempt electricity is in no sense ”stored,” but a che a current takes place in the eiven circumstances, it is reater efficiency But ht of the appliances used, and another, considerable cost The tere battery” is now infrequently used, and the name ”secondary” battery is usually substituted The principle of its action is the deco of combined cheenerator or dynaain unite as soon as they are allowed to do so by the coive off nearly asthee,” battery, once charged, is like that of a primary battery The current is produced by chemical action Two metals outside of the solution contained in a pri physical conditions from each other, will yield a current A piece of polished iron and a piece of rusty iron, connected by a wire, will yield a sht lead, has a high electroen ases cast off ater is subjected to a current (See _ante_ under _Electrolysis_) So Augustin Plante, the inventor of as e or secondary battery, suspended two plates of lead in water, and when a current of electricity was passed through it hydrogen was thrown off at one plate,its surface When the current was removed the altered plates, connected by a wire, would send off a current which was in the opposite direction froain in their original condition

This is the principle and e battery So far it has assumed many forms Scores of modifications have been invented and patented The leaden plates have taken a variety of forms, yet have remained leaden plates, one cleaned and the other fouled by the electrolytic action of a current, and giving off an alain by the return process The arrangement endures for several repetitions of the process, but is finally expensive and always inconvenient The secondary battery, in its infancy, as stated, presents now alvanic, or primary, battery did before the induced current had become the servant of man

CHAPTER IV

ELECTRICAL INVENTION IN THE UNITED STATES

A list of the electrical inventors of this country would be very long

Many of the names are, in the mass and number of inventions, almost lost It happens that many of the practical applications described in this volume, indeed most of them, are the work of citizens of this country

In previous chapters I have referred briefly to Franklin, Morse, Field, and others These arded as perinality of idea, and each one of thereatest of all these, and in the sareatest American, was Benjaiven, but to that : He had arrived at conclusions that were vast in scope and startling in result by applying the reasoning faculty upon observations of pheno since the world wasHe used the simplest means His experiment was in a different way daily perfor, indifferently a tinker with nature's terrific ust temple that men were never known to have entered; a mortal who smiled in the face of inscrutable and awfulin a sense not , was instantly killed by lightning while repeating Franklin's experienius lay in a power of swift inductive reasoning His common sense and his sense of hums that have lived like those of Solon He was a philosopher like Diogenes, lacking the bitterness He wrote the ”Busy-Body,” and annually made the plebeian and celebrated ”Almanac,” and the ”Ephemera” that were not ephemeral, and is the author of the story of ”The Whistle,” that everybody knows, and everybody reads with shamefacedness because it is a brief chapter out of his own history

He was apparently an adept in the art of caring for his of his tiht, toiled incessantly, for his fellow men He had little education obtained as it is supposed an education must be obtained He was coue,” or remembered a brilliant after-dinner speech that he has made Yet he finally stood beforeof splendid women, covered with the laurels of a brilliant scientific renown But he was a printer, a tinkerer with stoves, the inventor of the lightning rod, theapprentices, such as he himself had been when his jealous and common-minded brother had whipped him, that ”time is money,” that ”credit is money”--which is the most prominent fact in the commercial world of 1895--and that honor and self-respect are better than wealth, pleasure, or any other good

Yet clear, keen, cold and inductive as was Franklin's mind, no vision reached hi tingling in his fingers fro, of those wonders which were to coh which others of his countryence, and yet others were to use in sprinkling night with clusters as innuher stars

The story of the Morse telegraph has been repeatedly told, and I have briefly sketched it in connection with the subject of the telegraph

But, unlike the original, scientifically lonely and independent Franklin, Morse had the best assistance of his times in the persons of men more skilled than himself and almost as persistent The chief of these was Alfred Vail, a name until lately almost unknown to scientific fame, who eliminated the clumsy crudities of Morse's conception, remade his instruments, and was the inventor of that renowned alphabet which spells without letters or writing or types, that may be seen or heard or felt or tasted, that is adapted to any language and to all conditions, and that perfor the inane rattle of pieces of ainst each other to speak to even a careless listener the exact thoughts of one a thousand ht be appropriately included in any coraph system were Leonard D Gale, then Professor of Chemistry in the University of New York, and Professor Joseph Henry, who had made, and was apparently indifferent to the importance of it because there was no alphabet to use it with, the first electric telegraph ever constructed to be read, or used, _by sound_ Last, though hardly least if all facts are understood, ht be included a skillful youth named Williaine,” who, shut in a room with Vail in a machine shop in New Jersey, made in conjunction with the author of the alphabet the first telegraphic instrunet and battery cells, sent across space the first e ever read by a person who did not knohat the words of the e would say or raph the state of electrical knowledge was for a long time such that electrical invention was in a sense impossible The renowned exploit of Field was not an invention, but a heroic and successful extension of the scope and usefulness of an invention But thought was not idle, and filled the interval with preparations for final achievements unequaled in the history of science Two of these results are the electric light and the telephone For the various ”candles,” such as that of Jablochkoff, exhibited at Paris in 1870, only served to sti possibilities of the subject The details of these great inventions are better known than those of any others The telegraph and the newspaper reporter had come upon the field as established institutions Every process and progress was a piece of news of intense interest When the light glowed in its bulb and sparkled and flashed at the junction points of its chocolate-colored sticks it had been confidently expected There was little surprise The practical light of the world was considered probable, profitable, and absolutely sure The real story will never be told The thoughts, which phrase may also include the inevitable disappointments of the inventor, are never written down by hireat exceptions, was not known until modern, very recent tiine only, but also reduces all ideas to _commercial_ form, has yet to have its analysis and its historian, for it is to all intents a new phase of the evolution of mind

[Illustration: THOMAS A EDISON]

A typical example of this class of intellect is Mr Thomas A Edison It may be doubted if such a man could, in the qualities that make him remarkable, be the product of any other country than ours In common with nearly all those who have left a deep impression upon our country, Edison was the child of that hackneyed ”respectable poverty” which here is a different condition fro all over Europe, where the phrase was coined There, the phrase, and the condition it describes, mean a dull content, an incapacity to rise, a happy indifference to all other conditions, a dullness that does not desire to learn, to change, to think To respectable poverty in other civilizations there are strong local associations like those of a cat, not arising to the dignity of love of country In the United States, without a word, without argu man becomes a pioneer--not necessarily one of locality or physical newness, but a pioneer in mind--in creed, politics, business--in the boundless domain of hope and endeavor In America no man is as his father was except in physical traits Nohis country's battles except froht to be A man is an inventor, a politician, a writer, first because he knows that valuable changes are possible, and, second, because he can reat reale; unique a the nations