XIV
PROGRESS IN ELECTRICITY FROM GILBERT
AND VON GUERICKE TO FRANKLIN
A History of Science: in Five Volumes. Volume II: The Beginnings of Modern Science | ||
WILLIAM WATSON
Naturally, the new discoveries made necessary a new nomenclature, new words and electrical terms being
In 1746, a French scientist, Louis Guillaume le Monnier, bad made a circuit including metal and water by laying a chain half-way around the edge of a pond, a man at either end holding it. One of these men dipped his free hand in the water, the other presenting a Leyden jar to a rod suspended on a cork float on the water, both men receiving a shock simultaneously. Watson, a year later, attempted the same experiment on a larger scale. He laid a wire about twelve hundred feet long across Westminster Bridge over the Thames, bringing the ends to the water's edge on the opposite banks, a man at one end holding the wire and touching the water. A second man on the opposite side held the wire and a Leyden jar; and a third touched the jar with one hand, while with the other he grasped a wire that extended into the river. In this way they not only received the shock, but fired alcohol as readily across the stream as could be done in the laboratory. In this experiment Watson discovered the superiority of wire over chain as a conductor, rightly ascribing this superiority to the continuity of the metal.
Watson continued making similar experiments over longer watercourses, some of them as long as eight thousand feet, and while engaged in making one of these he made the discovery so essential to later inventions, that the earth could be used as part of the circuit in
XIV
PROGRESS IN ELECTRICITY FROM GILBERT
AND VON GUERICKE TO FRANKLIN
A History of Science: in Five Volumes. Volume II: The Beginnings of Modern Science | ||