Little Masterpieces of Science: Invention and Discovery
History
Little Masterpieces of Science: Invention and Discovery
Inventions
These steps in the advance of electro-magnetism, though small, were such
as to interest and astonish the scientific world. With the same battery
used by Mr. Sturgeon, at least a hundred times more magnetism was
produced than could have been obtained by his experiment. The
developments were considered at the time of much importance in a
scientific point of view, and they subsequently furnished the means by
which magneto-electricity, the phenomena of dia-magnetism, and the
magnetic effects on polarized light were discovered. They gave rise to
the various forms of electro-magnetic machines which have since
exercised the ingenuity of inventors in every part of the world, and
were of immediate applicability in the introduction of the magnet to
telegraphic purposes. Neither the electro-magnet of Sturgeon nor any
electro-magnet ever made previous to my investigations was applicable to
transmitting power to a distance.
The principles I have developed were properly appreciated by the
scientific mind of Dr. Gale, and applied by him to operate Mr. Morse's
machine at a distance.
Previous to my investigations the means of developing magnetism in soft
iron were imperfectly understood. The electro-magnet made by Sturgeon,
and copied by Dana, of New York, was an imperfect quantity magnet, the
feeble power of which was developed by a single battery. It was entirely
inapplicable to a long circuit with an intensity battery, and no person
possessing the requisite scientific knowledge, would have attempted to
use it in that connection after reading my paper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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