jar provided the means of generating electric oscillations of very high frequency.
Telegraphy.—Turning to practical applications of electricity, we may note that electric telegraphy took its rise in 1820, beginning with a suggestion of Ampère immediately after Oersted’s discovery. It was established by the work of Weber and Gauss at Göttingen in 1836, and that of C. A. Steinheil (1801–1870) of Munich, Sir W. F. Cooke (1806–1879) and Sir C. Wheatstone in England, Joseph Henry and S. F. B. Morse (1791–1872) in the United States in 1837. In 1845 submarine telegraphy was inaugurated by the laying of an insulated conductor across the English Channel by the brothers Brett, and their temporary success was followed by the laying in 1851 of a permanent Dover-Calais cable by T. R. Crampton. In 1856 the project for an Atlantic submarine cable took shape and the Atlantic Telegraph Company was formed with a capital of £350,000, with Sir Charles Bright as engineer-in-chief and E. O. W. Whitehouse as electrician. The phenomena connected with the propagation of electric signals by underground insulated wires had already engaged the attention of Faraday in 1854, who pointed out the Leyden-jar-like action of an insulated subterranean wire. Scientific and practical questions connected with the possibility of laying an Atlantic submarine cable then began to be discussed, and Lord Kelvin was foremost in developing true scientific knowledge on this subject, and in the invention of appliances for utilizing it. One of his earliest and most useful contributions (in 1858) was the invention of the mirror galvanometer. Abandoning the long and somewhat heavy magnetic needles that had been used up to that date in galvanometers, he attached to the back of a very small mirror made of microscopic glass a fragment of magnetized watch-spring, and suspended the mirror and needle by means of a cocoon fibre in the centre of a coil of insulated wire. By this simple device he provided a means of measuring small electric currents far in advance of anything yet accomplished, and this instrument proved not only most useful in pure scientific researches, but at the same time was of the utmost value in connexion with submarine telegraphy. The history of the initial failures and final success in laying the Atlantic cable has been well told by Mr. Charles Bright (see The Story of the Atlantic Cable, London, 1903).[1] The first cable laid in 1857 broke on the 11th of August during laying. The second attempt in 1858 was successful, but the cable completed on the 5th of August 1858 broke down on the 20th of October 1858, after 732 messages had passed through it. The third cable laid in 1865 was lost on the 2nd of August 1865, but in 1866 a final success was attained and the 1865 cable also recovered and completed. Lord Kelvin’s mirror galvanometer was first used in receiving signals through the short-lived 1858 cable. In 1867 he invented his beautiful siphon-recorder for receiving and recording the signals through long cables. Later, in conjunction with Prof. Fleeming Jenkin, he devised his automatic curb sender, an appliance for sending signals by means of punched telegraphic paper tape. Lord Kelvin’s contributions to the science of exact electric measurement[2] were enormous. His ampere-balances, voltmeters and electrometers, and double bridge, are elsewhere described in detail (see Amperemeter; Electrometer, and Wheatstone’s Bridge).
Dynamo.—The work of Faraday from 1831 to 1851 stimulated and originated an immense mass of scientific research, but at the same time practical inventors had not been slow to perceive that it was capable of purely technical application. Faraday’s copper disk rotated between the poles of a magnet, and producing thereby an electric current, became the parent of innumerable machines in which mechanical energy was directly converted into the energy of electric currents. Of these machines, originally called magneto-electric machines, one of the first was devised in 1832 by H. Pixii. It consisted of a fixed horseshoe armature wound over with insulated copper wire in front of which revolved about a vertical axis a horseshoe magnet. Pixii, who invented the split tube commutator for converting the alternating current so produced into a continuous current in the external circuit, was followed by J. Saxton, E. M. Clarke, and many others in the development of the above-described magneto-electric machine. In 1857 E. W. Siemens effected a great improvement by inventing a shuttle armature and improving the shape of the field magnet. Subsequently similar machines with electromagnets were introduced by Henry Wilde (b. 1833), Siemens, Wheatstone, W. Ladd and others, and the principle of self-excitation was suggested by Wilde, C. F. Varley (1828–1883), Siemens and Wheatstone (see Dynamo). These machines about 1866 and 1867 began to be constructed on a commercial scale and were employed in the production of the electric light. The discovery of electric-current induction also led to the production of the induction coil (q.v.), improved and brought to its present perfection by W. Sturgeon, E. R. Ritchie, N. J. Callan, H. D. Rühmkorff (1803–1877), A. H. L. Fizeau, and more recently by A. Apps and modern inventors. About the same time Fizeau and J. B. L. Foucault devoted attention to the invention of automatic apparatus for the production of Davy’s electric arc (see Lighting: Electric), and these appliances in conjunction with magneto-electric machines were soon employed in lighthouse work. With the advent of large magneto-electric machines the era of electrotechnics was fairly entered, and this period, which may be said to terminate about 1867 to 1869, was consummated by the theoretical work of Clerk Maxwell.
Maxwell’s Researches.—James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) entered on his electrical studies with a desire to ascertain if the ideas of Faraday, so different from those of Poisson and the French mathematicians, could be made the foundation of a mathematical method and brought under the power of analysis.[3] Maxwell started with the conception that all electric and magnetic phenomena are due to effects taking place in the dielectric or in the ether if the space be vacuous. The phenomena of light had compelled physicists to postulate a space-filling medium, to which the name ether had been given, and Henry and Faraday had long previously suggested the idea of an electromagnetic medium. The vibrations of this medium constitute the agency called light. Maxwell saw that it was unphilosophical to assume a multiplicity of ethers or media until it had been proved that one would not fulfil all the requirements. He formulated the conception, therefore, of electric charge as consisting in a displacement taking place in the dielectric or electromagnetic medium (see Electrostatics). Maxwell never committed himself to a precise definition of the physical nature of electric displacement, but considered it as defining that which Faraday had called the polarization in the insulator, or, what is equivalent, the number of lines of electrostatic force passing normally through a unit of area in the dielectric. A second fundamental conception of Maxwell was that the electric displacement whilst it is changing is in effect an electric current, and creates, therefore, magnetic force. The total current at any point in a dielectric must be considered as made up of two parts: first, the true conduction current, if it exists; and second, the rate of change of dielectric displacement. The fundamental fact connecting electric currents and magnetic fields is that the line integral of magnetic force taken once round a conductor conveying an electric current is equal to 4 -times the surface integral of the current density, or to 4 -times the total current flowing through the closed line round which the integral is taken (see Electrokinetics). A second relation connecting magnetic and electric force is
- ↑ See also his Submarine Telegraphs (London, 1898).
- ↑ The quantitative study of electrical phenomena has been enormously assisted by the establishment of the absolute system of electrical measurement due originally to Gauss and Weber. The British Association for the advancement of science appointed in 1861 a committee on electrical units, which made its first report in 1862 and has existed ever since. In this work Lord Kelvin took a leading part. The popularization of the system was greatly assisted by the publication by Prof. J. D. Everett of The C.G.S. System of Units (London, 1891).
- ↑ The first paper in which Maxwell began to translate Faraday’s conceptions into mathematical language was “On Faraday’s Lines of Force,” read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society on the 10th of December 1855 and the 11th of February 1856. See Maxwell’s Collected Scientific Papers, i. 155.
