A treatise on electricity wherein its various phoenomena are accounted for, and the cause of the attraction and gravitation of solids, assigned : To which is added, a short account, how the electrical effluvia act upon the animal frame, and in what disorders the same may probably be applied with success, and in what not / By Francis Penrose.

  • Penrose, Francis, 1718-1798.
Date:
1752
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on electricity wherein its various phoenomena are accounted for, and the cause of the attraction and gravitation of solids, assigned : To which is added, a short account, how the electrical effluvia act upon the animal frame, and in what disorders the same may probably be applied with success, and in what not / By Francis Penrose. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    37/40 (page 37)
    which has been fhewn to be the caufe of light bodies being forced towards the globe) thefe par¬ ticles of light do immediately enter the globe on one fide, and force out the fame quantity on the other • in the fame manner as water through a fieve, without ever making any expanfion or rare¬ faction. Having thus fhewn how and by what means the fire and light in electricity are produced ; our next inquiry muff be, why fome bodies commu¬ nicate this light to ever fo great a diftance, and that inftantaneoufly; whilfl others will not 5 and alfo, why fome bodies are electrical and others non-eleCtricaL EleCirical bodies are thofe, whofe pores are fo fine, as to admit nothing through them but light, or air ground to a proper fitnefs; as met alls, glafs, amber, wax &c. Bodies non-eleCtrical, are all thofe, which, by the largenefs of their pores, ad¬ mit, not only light but alfo grofs air. We fee, when the air is gonnd to pieces by an eledtrical machine, and put into fufficient mo¬ tion, by the friction between the glafs globe and the hand, a wire being hung from the iron bar¬ rel, fo as very near to touch the ball, part of the light iffuing from the ball, as above defcribed, enters the wire, and is by it communicated to the iron barrel, and from thence carried by another wire