=A.D. 1733.=--Winckler (Johann Heinrich), a philosopher of Wingendorf, Saxony, and Professor of Languages in the University of Leipzig, first uses a fixed cushion in the electric machine for applying friction instead of by means of the hand, and is, by many, believed to have been the first to suggest the use of conductors as a means of protection against lightning (see B.C. 600). In March 1745, Winckler read a paper before the Royal Society, in which he describes machines for rubbing tubes and globes, also a contrivance with which he can give his globes as many as 680 turns in a minute. Priestley states that the German electricians generally used several globes at a time and that they could excite such a prodigious power of electricity from “globes, whirled by a large wheel and rubbed with woollen cloth or a dry hand, that, if we may credit their own accounts, the blood could be drawn from the finger by an electric spark; the skin would burst and a wound appear, as if made by a caustic.” During the year 1746 Winckler made use of common electricity for telegraphic communications by the discharge of Leyden jars through very long circuits, in some of which the River Pleisse formed a part, and it may be added that Joseph Franz had previously discharged the contents of a jar through 1500 feet of iron wire while in the city of Vienna. REFERENCES.--_Phil. Trans._, Vol. XLIII. p. 307; Vol. XLIV. pp. 211, 397; Vol. XLV. p. 262; Vol. XLVII. p. 231; Vol. XLVIII. p. 772; also following abridgments: Hutton, Vol. IX. pp. 74, 109, 251, 345, 494; Vol. X. pp. 197, 529; John Martyn, Vol. X. part ii. pp. 269, 273, 327, 345, 399; Priestley, 1775, on the discoveries of the Germans, pp. 70–77; “Thoughts on the Properties,” etc., Leipzig, 1744, pp. 146, 149. =A.D. 1733.=--Brandt (Georg), Swedish chemist, gives in the “Memoirs of the Academy” of Upsal an account of the experiments made by him to show the possibility of imparting magnetism to substances which are not ferruginous. He proved it in the case of the metal cobalt, and during the year 1750 the able discoverer of nickel, Axel. F. de Cronstedt, showed that the latter is likewise susceptible of this property. REFERENCES.--Thomas, “Dict. of Biog.,” 1871, Vol. I. p. 428; English Cyclopædia (Biography Supplement), 1872, p. 423. =A.D. 1734.=--Polinière (Pierre), French physician and experimental philosopher (1671–1734), member of the Society of Arts, entirely revises the fourth edition of his “Expériences de Phisique” originally issued in 1709. While the second volume contains but a short chapter relative to electricity, meteoric disturbances, etc., the remainder of the work gives very curious and interesting experiments with the loadstone, making allusion to the observations of John Keill, besides treating of the declination of the needle, etc.