Book Description

Excerpt from A Manual of Electricity, Practical and Theoretical It may seem extraordinary that the most commonly observed phenomenon of electricity had not been before noticed as a pro perty pertaining to electrical bodies. It should be borne in mind, however, that furs and silks, from the friction of which sparks are so frequently emitted, had not been classed as electrics, and the only property of electricity then known was that of attraction. It was not likely, therefore, until the two phenomena of attraction and the emission of light were observed combined in the same substance, that the excitement of sparks by friction should be considered due to electricity. To Otto Guericke must also be conceded the honour of having discovered the property of electric repulsion. He ascertained that a feather, when attracted to an excited electric, after adhering to it for a short time, is repelled from the surface, and that it will not again approach until it has touched some other body to which it can part with the electricity it contains. He observed, also, that a feather when thus repelled by an excited electric, always keeps the same side presented towards it. The correspondence between this fact and the position of the moon towards the earth, induced some speculative philosophers to assume that the revolution of the moon round the earth might be caused by electrical attraction and repulsion. 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.