Classics of modern science : $b (Copernicus to Pasteur)
History
Classics of modern science : $b (Copernicus to Pasteur)
Science; Science -- History
3. Further: whether Ampère’s beautiful theory were adopted, or any
other, or whatever reservation were mentally made, still it appeared
very extraordinary, that, as every electric current was accompanied by
a corresponding intensity of magnetic action at right angles to the
current, good conductors of electricity, when placed within the sphere
of this action, should not have any current induced through them, or
some sensible effect produced equivalent in force to such a current.
4. These considerations, with their consequence, the hope of obtaining
electricity from ordinary magnetism, have stimulated me at various
times to investigate experimentally the inductive effect of electric
currents. I lately arrived at positive results; and not only had my
hopes fulfilled, but obtained a key which appeared to me to open out a
full explanation of Arago’s magnetic phenomena, and also to discover a
new state, which may probably have great influence in some of the most
important effects of electric currents.
5. These results I purpose describing, not as they were obtained, but
in such a manner as to give the most concise view of the whole.
EVOLUTION OF ELECTRICITY FROM MAGNETISM
27. A welded ring was made of soft round bar-iron, the metal being
seven-eighths of an inch in thickness, and the ring six inches in
external diameter. Three helices were put round one part of this ring,
each containing about twenty-four feet of copper wire one-twentieth
of an inch thick; they were insulated from the iron and each other,
and superposed in the manner before described (6), occupying about
nine inches in length upon the ring. They could be used separately or
conjointly; the group may be distinguished by the letter A. On the
other part of the ring about sixty feet of similar copper wire in two
pieces were applied in the same manner, forming a helix B, which had
the same common direction with the helices of A, but being separated
from it at each extremity by about half an inch of the uncovered iron.
28. The helix B, was connected by copper wires with a galvanometer
three feet from the ring. The helices of A were connected end to
end so as to form one common helix, the extremities of which were
connected with a battery of ten pairs of plates four inches square. The
galvanometer was immediately affected, and to a degree far beyond what
has been described when with a battery of tenfold power helices without
iron were used (10); but though the contact was continued, the effect
was not permanent, for the needle soon came to rest in its natural
position, as if quite indifferent to the attached electro-magnetic
arrangement. Upon breaking the contact with the battery, the needle
was again powerfully deflected, but in the contrary direction to that
induced in the first instance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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