CHAPTER I.

The electricity of friction.

A schoolboy who rubs a stick of sealing-wax on the sleeve of his jacket, then holds it over dusty shreds or bits of straw to see them fly up and cling to the wax, repeats without knowing it the fundamental experiment of electricity.  In rubbing the wax on his coat he has electrified it, and the dry dust or bits of wool are attracted to it by reason of a mysterious process which is called “induction.”

Electricity, like fire, was probably discovered by some primeval savage.  According to Humboldt, the Indians of the Orinoco sometimes amuse themselves by rubbing certain beans to make them attract wisps of the wild cotton, and the custom is doubtless very old.  Certainly the ancient Greeks knew that a piece of amber had when rubbed the property of attracting light bodies.  Thales of Miletus, wisest of the Seven Sages, and father of Greek philosophy, explained this curious effect by the presence of a “soul” in the amber, whatever he meant by that.  Thales flourished 600 years before the Christian era, while Croesus reigned in Lydia, and Cyrus the Great, in Persia, when the renowned Solon gave his laws to Athens, and Necos, King of Egypt, made war on Josiah, King of Judah, and after defeating him at Megiddo, dedicated the corslet he had worn during the battle to Apollo Didymaeus in the temple of Branchidas, near Miletus.

Amber, the fossil resin of a pine tree, was found in Sicily, the shores of the Baltic, and other parts of Europe.  It was a precious stone then as now, and an article of trade with the Phoenicians, those early merchants of the Mediterranean.  The attractive power might enhance the value of the gem in the eyes of the superstitious ancients, but they do not seem to have investigated it, and beyond the speculation of Thales, they have told us nothing more about it.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century Dr. Gilbert of Colchester, physician to Queen Elizabeth, made this property the subject of experiment, and showed that, far from being peculiar to amber, it was possessed by sulphur, wax, glass, and many other bodies which he called electrics, from the Greek word elektron, signifying amber.  This great discovery was the starting-point of the modern science of electricity.  That feeble and mysterious force which had been the wonder of the simple and the amusement of the vain could not be slighted any longer as a curious freak of nature, but assuredly none dreamt that a day was dawning in which it would transform the world.