Transcriber’s Note Italic text displayed as: _italic_ LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 133 Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius Principles of Electricity Maynard Shipley HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY GIRARD, KANSAS Copyright, 1925, Haldeman-Julius Company. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PRINCIPLES OF ELECTRICITY CONTENTS Chapter Page 1. “What Is Electricity?” 5 2. Magnetic Phenomena 13 3. Pioneers in Electromagnetic Theory 19 4. Theories of Electricity 30 5. Modern Magnetic Theory 41 6. Proofs that Electrons Are Atoms of Electricity 44 7. The Discovery of Wireless Telegraphy 55 PRINCIPLES OF ELECTRICITY CHAPTER 1 “WHAT IS ELECTRICITY?” Many persons who have devoted no time to the study of physics wonder what the force is that drives the street-car along—turning its wheels, while at the same time furnishing incandescent lamps (light) for the passengers. They have been told, of course, that the “power” used is “electricity”, generated by dynamos “at the power-house”, and conveyed to the rapidly moving car by the overhead wire. “Electricity: yes, but what is electricity?” This is a natural and perfectly legitimate question for a layman to ask. Scientists and philosophers are asking the same question. But they understand quite well that it is like asking: “What is matter?” Very probably the average inquirer does not ask the question, “What is electricity?” in the same spirit. We can answer one question no better than the other, if the ultimate nature of either matter or electricity is what the inquirer has in mind. For matter, in the last analysis, is electricity. Yet the same person who might ask: “What is electricity?” would not think of asking: “What is matter?” He thinks he knows what matter is—his common sense tells him that _matter is what it appears to be_. “Matter’s matter, and there’s an end of it.” And just so the physicist insists upon his common-sense right to reply: “Electricity is electricity.” It is what it appears to him to be. And it appears to be a form of _energy_, or a _mode of motion_. Thales, the reputed founder of Greek science and philosophy, would call electricity “the soul of the universe”, because it “endows all things with motion”. This “soul”, interpenetrating all matter—if not constituting it—is by nature always moving—it is self-moving; motion is part of its very essence. In the lodestone, said Thales, “it moves iron.”[1]