Electricity At High Pressures

Author : Elihu Thomson
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781330015278
Total Pages : 38 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (152 download)

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Download or read book Electricity at High Pressures written by Elihu Thomson and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Electricity at High Pressures My interest in the subject we shall consider this evening is the more pronounced from the fact that I began my experience, with electrical phenomena by working with relatively high pressures or potentials. My first machine, constructed when I was eleven years of age, was a high potential apparatus, giving about 30, 000 volts or thereabouts. It was a frictional electric machine, the main part being a wine-bottle revolved upon an axis, to which was added the usual rubber, silk flap, and prime conductor. Electrical development on the large scale has in the past few few years been going on in the direction of increase of electrical pressures, or increase of potential differences, and this fact gives a renewed interest. The prime cause of all electrical manifestations is, of course, difference of pressure or potential. That we have much more to learn in this fascinating field is evidenced by the condition of our knowledge in regard to the phenomena of lightning, the aurora, comets' tails, and possibly, also, of the solar corona. It is about one hundred years since Volta studied the voltaic battery and gave to the world a source of steady currents at low pressure. Long before that, however, the older experiments of the development of electric charges by friction, and the properties of charged bodies had been studied and wondered at. Priestley, in his "History of Electricity," a work of nearly 800 pages, has even given expression to the opinion that, "In electricity there is the greatest room to make new discoveries. It is a field but just opened," etc. His book was published in the latter part of the last century. It dealt entirely with electricity at high pressures. Even the old experiment of rubbed amber would give 10,000 to 20,000 volts, and the old glass globe machines, such as Franklin used, a much higher pressure; nothing, however, in comparison with that of a lightning stroke. Still I must say that I have no sympathy for those who speak without hesitation of hundreds of millions of volts even in such cases, or who affect to describe apparatus as in existence to-day developing pressures of several millions of volts. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.