A History of Science, vol 3 by Henry Smith Williams (sites to read books for free TXT) 📕

Fresnel was not a little dashed to learn that his original ideas had been worked out by another while he was a lad, but he bowed gracefully to the situation and went ahead with unabated zeal.

The championship of Arago insured the undulatory theory a hearing before the French Institute, but by no means sufficed to bring about its general acceptance.

On the contrary, a bitter feud ensued, in which Arago was opposed by the “Jupiter Olympus of the Academy,”

Laplace, by the only less famous Poisson, and by the younger but hardly less able Biot. So bitterly raged the feud that a life-long friendship between Arago and Biot was ruptured forever. The opposition managed to delay the publication of Fresnel’s papers, but Arago continued to fight with his customary enthusiasm and pertinacity, and at last, in 1823, the Academy yielded, and voted Fresnel into its ranks, thus implicitly admitting the value of his work.

It is a humiliating thought that such controversies as this must mar the progress of scientific truth; but fortunately the story of the introduction of the undulatory theory has a more pleasant side. Three men, great both in character and in intellect, were concerned in pressing its claims—Young, Fresnel, and Arago—and the relations of these men form a picture unmarred by any of those petty jealousies that so often dim the lustre of great names. Fresnel freely acknowledged Young’s priority so soon as his attention was called to it; and Young applauded the work of the Frenchman, and aided with his counsel in the application of the undulatory theory to the problems of polarization of light, which still demanded explanation, and which Fresnel’s fertility of experimental resource and profundity of mathematical insight sufficed in the end to conquer.

After Fresnel’s admission to the Institute in 1823

the opposition weakened, and gradually the philosophers came to realize the merits of a theory which Young had vainly called to their attention a full quarter-century before. Now, thanks largely to Arago, both Young and Fresnel received their full meed of appreciation.

Fresnel was given the Rumford medal of the Royal Society of England in 1825, and chosen one of the foreign members of the society two years later, while Young in turn was elected one of the eight foreign members of the French Academy. As a fitting culmination of the chapter of felicities between the three friends, it fell to the lot of Young, as Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, to notify Fresnel of the honors shown him by England’s representative body of scientists; while Arago, as Perpetual Secretary of the French Institute, conveyed to Young in the same year the notification that he had been similarly honored by the savants of France.

A few months later Fresnel was dead, and Young survived him only two years. Both died prematurely, but their great work was done, and the world will remember always and link together these two names in connection with a theory which in its implications and importance ranks little below the theory of universal gravitation.

VII. THE MODERN DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM

The full importance of Young’s studies of light might perhaps have gained earlier recognition had it not chanced that, at the time when they were made, the attention of the philosophic world was turned with the fixity and fascination of a hypnotic stare upon another field, which for a time brooked no rival.

How could the old, familiar phenomenon, light, interest any one when the new agent, galvanism, was in view?

As well ask one to fix attention on a star while a meteorite blazes across the sky.

Galvanism was so called precisely as the Roentgen ray was christened at a later day—as a safe means of begging the question as to the nature of the phenomena involved. The initial fact in galvanism was the discovery of Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), a physician of Bologna, in 1791, that by bringing metals in contact with the nerves of a frog’s leg violent muscular contractions are produced. As this simple little experiment led eventually to the discovery of galvanic electricity and the invention of the galvanic battery, it may be regarded as the beginning of modern electricity.

The story is told that Galvani was led to his discovery while preparing frogs’ legs to make a broth for his invalid wife. As the story runs, he had removed the skins from several frogs’ legs, when, happening to touch the exposed muscles with a scalpel which had lain in close proximity to an electrical machine, violent muscular action was produced. Impressed with this phenomenon, he began a series of experiments which finally resulted in his great discovery. But be this story authentic or not, it is certain that Galvani experimented for several years upon frogs’ legs suspended upon wires and hooks, until he finally constructed his arc of two different metals, which, when arranged so that one was placed in contact with a nerve and the other with a muscle, produced violent contractions.

These two pieces of metal form the basic principle of the modern galvanic battery, and led directly to Alessandro Volta’s invention of his “voltaic pile,” the immediate ancestor of the modern galvanic battery.

Volta’s experiments were carried on at the same time as those of Galvani, and his invention of his pile followed close upon Galvani’s discovery of the new form of electricity. From these facts the new form of electricity was sometimes called “galvanic” and sometimes “voltaic” electricity, but in recent years the term “galvanism” and “galvanic current” have almost entirely supplanted the use of the term voltaic.

It was Volta who made the report of Galvani’s wonderful discovery to the Royal Society of London, read on January 31, 1793. In this letter he describes Galvani’s experiments in detail and refers to them in glowing terms of praise. He calls it one of the “most beautiful and important discoveries,” and regarded it as the germ or foundation upon which other discoveries were to be made. The prediction proved entirely correct, Volta himself being the chief discoverer.

Working along lines suggested by Galvani’s discovery, Volta constructed an apparatus made up of a number of disks of two different kinds of metal, such as tin and silver, arranged alternately, a piece of some moist, porous substance, like paper or felt, being interposed between each pair of disks. With this “pile,”

as it was called, electricity was generated, and by linking together several such piles an electric battery could be formed.

This invention took the world by storm. Nothing like the enthusiasm it created in the philosophic world had been known since the invention of the Leyden jar, more than half a century before. Within a few weeks after Volta’s announcement, batteries made according to his plan were being experimented with in every important laboratory in Europe.

As the century closed, half the philosophic world was speculating as to whether “galvanic influence”

were a new imponderable, or only a form of electricity; and the other half was eagerly seeking to discover what new marvels the battery might reveal. The least imaginative man could see that here was an invention that would be epoch-making, but the most visionary dreamer could not even vaguely adumbrate the real measure of its importance.

It was evident at once that almost any form of galvanic battery, despite imperfections, was a more satisfactory instrument for generating electricity than the frictional machine hitherto in use, the advantage lying in the fact that the current from the galvanic battery could be controlled practically at will, and that the apparatus itself was inexpensive and required comparatively little attention. These advantages were soon made apparent by the practical application of the electric current in several fields.

It will be recalled that despite the energetic endeavors of such philosophers as Watson, Franklin, Galvani, and many others, the field of practical application of electricity was very limited at the close of the eighteenth century. The lightning-rod had come into general use, to be sure, and its value as an invention can hardly be overestimated. But while it was the result of extensive electrical discoveries, and is a most practical instrument, it can hardly be called one that puts electricity to practical use, but simply acts as a means of warding off the evil effects of a natural manifestation of electricity. The invention, however, had all the effects of a mechanism which turned electricity to practical account. But with the advent of the new kind of electricity the age of practical application began.

Volta’s announcement of his pile was scarcely two months old when two Englishmen, Messrs. Nicholson and Carlisle, made the discovery that the current from the galvanic battery had a decided effect upon certain chemicals, among other things decomposing water into its elements, hydrogen and oxygen. On May 7, 1800, these investigators arranged the ends of two brass wires connected with the poles of a voltaic pile, composed of alternate silver and zinc plates, so that the current coming from the pile was discharged through a small quantity of “New River water.” “A fine stream of minute bubbles immediately began to flow from the point of the lower wire in the tube which communicated with the silver,” wrote Nicholson, “and the opposite point of the upper wire became tarnished, first deep orange and then black… .” The product of gas during two hours and a half was two-thirtieths of a cubic inch. “It was then mixed with an equal quantity of common air,” continues Nicholson, “and exploded by the application of a lighted waxen thread.”

This demonstration was the beginning of the very important science of electro-chemistry.

The importance of this discovery was at once recognized by Sir Humphry Davy, who began experimenting immediately in this new field. He constructed a series of batteries in various combinations, with which he attacked the “fixed alkalies,” the composition of which was then unknown. Very shortly he was able to decompose potash into bright metallic globules, resembling quicksilver. This new substance he named “potassium.” Then in rapid succession the elementary substances sodium, calcium, strontium, and magnesium were isolated.

It was soon discovered, also, that the new electricity, like the old, possessed heating power under certain conditions, even to the fusing of pieces of wire. This observation was probably first made by Frommsdorff, but it was elaborated by Davy, who constructed a battery of two thousand cells with which he produced a bright light from points of carbon—the prototype of the modern arc lamp. He made this demonstration before the members of the Royal Institution in 1810.

But the practical utility of such a light for illuminating purposes was still a thing of the future. The expense of constructing and maintaining such an elaborate battery, and the rapid internal destruction of its plates, together with the constant polarization, rendered its use in practical illumination out of the question. It was not until another method of generating electricity was discovered that Davy’s demonstration could be turned to practical account.

In Davy’s own account of his experiment he says: “When pieces of charcoal about an inch long and one-sixth of an inch in diameter were brought near each other (within the thirtieth or fortieth of an inch), a bright spark was produced, and more than half the volume of the charcoal became ignited to whiteness; and, by withdrawing the points from each other, a constant discharge took place through the heated air, in a space equal to at