Makers of ElectricityWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
Makers of Electricity
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Electricity -- Biography
Later observers discovered that even for a given place this element of
magnetic declination has not a constant value, but undergoes changes
which complete their cycle, some in a day, others in a year, and others
again in centuries. The last or _secular_ change in the direction of the
magnetic needle was discovered by Gellibrand, of London, in 1634
(published in 1635); the _annual_, by Cassini, at Paris, 1782-1791; and
the _diurnal_, by Graham, of London, in 1722.
The first observation of magnetic declination on _land_ appears to have
been made about the year 1510 by George Hartmann (1489-1564), Vicar of
the Church of St. Sebald in Nuremberg, who found it to be 6° east in
Rome, where he was living at the time. Hartmann's observation of the
declination in Rome and also in Nuremberg, where the needle pointed 10°
east of north, will be found in a letter which he wrote in 1544 to Duke
Albert of Prussia and which remained unpublished until the year 1831.
Returning to the treatise of Peregrinus on the magnet, it should be said
that for several centuries the twenty-eight manuscript copies lay
undisturbed on the dusty shelves of city and university libraries. In
1562, four years after the appearance of the first printed edition
(Augsburg, 1558), Taisnier, a Belgian writer on magnetics, who is also
described as poet-laureate and Doctor "utriusque juris," was among the
earliest to discover the "Epistola," from which he copied extensively in
his little quarto on the magnet and its effects, thus showing that there
were literary pirates in those days. It was also well known to Gilbert,
to Cabeo and Kircher; but despite the references of these writers, the
"Epistola" remained practically unknown until Cavallo, of London, called
attention to the Leyden manuscript in the third edition of his "Treatise
on Magnetism,"[3] 1800, by giving part of the text and accompanying it
with a translation.
Later, in 1838, Libri, historian of the mathematical sciences in Italy,
gave excerpts from the Paris codex with translation; but the scholar who
contributed most of all to make the work of Peregrinus known is the
Italian Barnabite, Timoteo Bertelli, who published in 1868 a critical
study of the various manuscripts of the letter, principally those which
he found in Rome and in Florence, adding copious notes of historic,
bibliographic and scientific value. Father Bertelli was Professor of
Physics in the Collegio della Quercia, in Florence, where he took an
active interest in Italian seismology besides carrying on investigations
in meteorology, telegraphy and electricity. Born in Bologna in 1826, he
died in Florence in March, 1905.
The following list of manuscript copies of the "Epistola" is taken from
a scholarly paper by Professor Silvanus P. Thompson, of London, which
appeared in the "Proceedings of the British Academy" for 1906:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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