=A.D. 1702.=--Kæmpfer (Engelbrecht), German physician and naturalist (1651–1716), describes in his “Amœnitates Exoticæ,” experiments made by him upon the electric _torpedo_ (Leithead, 1837, Chap. XII). He insists that any person may avoid all sensation of the shock by merely holding the breath while touching the animal. This apparently improbable fact has since been confirmed, however, by many scientists; the accurate observations of Mr. Walsh (A.D. 1773) on the subject, reported in the _Phil. Trans._ for 1773–1774–1775, claiming especial attention (Larousse, “Dict.,” Vol. IX. p. 1144). =A.D. 1704.=--Amontons (Guillaume), an ingenious mechanician and scientist, exhibits before the royal family of France, and before the members of the Académie des Sciences, his system of communicating intelligence between distant points through the agency of magnifying glasses--telescopes. The “Mémoires de l’Académie,” 1698–1705, contain an account of his many scientific productions. REFERENCES.--Larousse, “Dict.,” Vol. I. pp. 282–283; Appleton’s “Cyclop.,” Vol. I. p. 432. =A.D. 1705.=--Witson (Nicholaes), Burgomaster of Amsterdam, announces at p. 56 of his “Noord en Oost Tartarye,” that the nautical compass was in use by the Coreans in the second half of the seventeenth century. =A.D. 1705.=--Hauksbee (Francis), English natural philosopher and Curator of the Royal Society, makes, before the latter, several experiments on the _mercurial phosphorus_. He shows that a considerable quantity of light can be produced by agitating mercury in partly exhausted as well as in thoroughly exhausted glass vessels. When the mercury is made to break into a shower, flashes of light are seen to start everywhere “in as strange a form as lightning.” He also showed light _in vacuo_ produced by rubbing amber and by rubbing glass upon woollen. He says (Priestley, “Hist. and Present State of Electricity,” London, 1775, p. 19) that every fresh glass first gave a purple and then a pale light, and that woollen, tinctured with salt or spirits, produced a new, strong and fulgurating light. Hauksbee constructed a powerful electrical machine wherein the Von Guericke sulphur globe was replaced by one of glass, as had already been done by Sir Isaac Newton (at A.D. 1675). With it he found that upon exhausting the air, whirling the globe rapidly and placing his hand upon the outside, a strong light appeared upon the interior, and that the light would show itself also upon the outside when air was let into the globe (“Physico-Mech. Exp.,” pp. 12, 14, 26, 32, 34). The machine, which the celebrated mechanician Leupold had constructed at Leipzig for Mr. Wolfius, only differed from the original one made by Hauksbee in that the glass globe turned vertically instead of horizontally.