Description of an electrical machine of a new form, constructed with regard to the principles of electrical laws / by P.H. Vander Weyde.

  • Van der Weyde, P. H. (Peter Henri), 1813-1895.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Description of an electrical machine of a new form, constructed with regard to the principles of electrical laws / by P.H. Vander Weyde. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    atoms would be diffused in space if they were not kept together bv gravitation, and the consequent pressure of the upper layers on the lower ones, as is the case in the atmosphere of our planet; in a similar way the Electricity distributed over a conductor, is kept there by our atmosphere, to the isolating property of which we are indebted to all our knowledge of Electricity, and without which we would not ; est notion of this force,(*) as it would be carried off as soon as developed by any of the usual means. This property is the cause of many phenomena which we will enumerate : 1. The Clect'ic Charge is always present at the surface of the conductor and not in its interior; the experiments demonstrating this are quite common ami described in most text-books on PI ysics. 2. The Electric Charge is only equally distributed over the sur- face if every part of this surface is equally distant from a com- mon centre, as is the case on the globe. 3. An Electric Charge will also be equally distributed over the circumference of a circular ring ; the tension, however, will be smaller on those \ avis of the ring's surface turned towards its centre, and the greatest on the outside. 4- In an elongated conductor the tension will be greater to- wards its extremities, and smaller in those parts of its surface which are nearer to its centre. Coulomb, in France, was more than 50 years investigating this property and gave a representation of this increase in intensity (*) If our atmosphere had the conducting power of water, we could not pos- sibly ha e any idea whatev r of Ele tricity, and so there may exist other nat- ural forces or matters, of which we can have no idea, as they never reveal themselves to us, on the surface of our planet in the circumstances in which we are placed. So for instance it is certain that Comets are of a nature of which we have not the remotest id^a ; we know what they are not, we don't know what they are; they are not solid, not liquid, not gaseous, not any- thing we are acquainted with, in short a something not existing on the sur- face of the earth, at least not in such a form that it is tangible to us.