If we want to carry only a small current for a long distance we do not
need to use large cells, but many of them. We increase the pressure or
voltage by increasing the number of cells set up in series. If we have a
wire of given length and resistance and find we need 100 volts to force
the right amount or strength of current through it, and the
electromotive force of the cells we are using is one volt each, it will
require 100 cells. If we have a battery that has an E. M. F. of two
volts to the cell, as the storage-battery has, fifty cells would
answer. If we want a very strong current of great volume, so to speak,
for electric light or power, and use a galvanic battery, we should have
to have cells of large surface and lower resistance both inside and
outside the cells.
When dynamos are used they are so constructed that a given number of
revolutions per minute will give the right voltage. In fact, the dynamo
has to be built for the amount of current that must be delivered through
a given resistance. The same holds good for a dynamo as for a galvanic
battery. If any one factor is fixed, we must adapt the others to that
one in order to get the result we want. There are many other units, but
to introduce them here would only confuse the reader. The advanced
student is referred to the text-books.
With this much as a preliminary we are prepared to take up the
applications of electricity, which to most people will be more
interesting than what has gone before.
CHAPTER X.
THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.
In the year 1617 Strada, an Italian Jesuit, proposed to telegraph news
without wires by means of two sympathetic needles made of loadstone so
balanced that when one was turned the other would turn with it. Each
needle was to have a dial with the letters on it. This would have been
very nice if it had only worked, but it was not based on any known law
of nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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