The apparatus was quickly perfected by coating both the inside and outside of a jar with tin foil, applying the charge by means of a wire or chain to the inside coating and allowing the outer one to stand upon the earth or upon a conducting substance in electrical contact with the latter. The exaltation of spirit with which the discovery was hailed by the _savants_ appears to have been extraordinary--one student who took a discharge through his body being reported to state that he would not have missed the experience for a fabulous consideration, and that he would not repeat it if it were to save his life. In reality the advance was enormous; it gave a means for literally bottling up electricity in quantities previously unthought of. The prime conductor of an electrical machine could not retain any considerable quantity of electricity for the reason that, a certain small intensity of electrification having been reached, the addition operated to upset the balance, so to speak, and the electricity escaped by a sudden (disruptive) discharge, or spark, or by the brush discharge already alluded to. With the Leyden jar, however, as fast as electricity was supplied to the inside coating it became "bound" there by the charge of opposite sign accumulating on the outside, and the limit of capacity of the jar was simply one of strength of the glass: if too much electricity was supplied, the stress of mutual attraction between the two charges relieved itself by destroying the jar. Although Professor Muschenbroeck discovered the principle in the manner above referred to, it appears extremely probable that two other investigators, working independently, also did the same. One Cuneus and a monk named Kleist each claimed the honor of original invention of the condenser. About 1747 the first gun was fired by electricity; this was accomplished by Sir William Watson, who also succeeded in kindling alcohol and gas by means of a drop of cold water and even with ice. The same experimenter reversed the ordinary procedure of causing the electric influence to pass from an electrified body to the one to be experimented upon, the latter being unelectrified, by electrifying the latter, and then producing the desired effect by approaching it to an unelectrified one. A party of the Royal Society with Watson as chief operator instituted a series of researches on a grand scale to determine, if possible, the velocity of the electric discharge, and arrived at a number of conclusions which, however, were of a decidedly negative nature. The most important of these were as follows: That they could not observe any interval between the instant of applying the discharge to one end of the line and its reception at the other; that the destructive effects of discharge are greater through bad conductors than through good ones; that conduction is equally powerful whether occurring through earth or water.