Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1886 — Magnetism and Electricity. [ARTICLE]

Magnetism and Electricity.

It is usually true that great discoveries are not achieved all at once, but by degrees; and not often by one person only, but by several persons, all workingun the same line. Long before the existence ot the electrical force was known it was noticed that discharges of lightning frequently gave polarity to bars of steel, and in some cases reversed the mariner’s compass. When, early in the eighteenth century, scientists first began making tentative experiments in electricity, the analogy between the phenomena observed and those of magnetism attracted attention. Dr. Franklin was one of the first to suggest that the forces might be identical, but his experiments, undertaken to test his theory, were not successful. In 1819, Professor Oersted, a Danish chemist, discovered the power which the electric current has of deflecting a magnetized needle. Not long after this Arago dis overed that a steel rod, placed across a wire carrying a current, was magnetized. Ampere immediately substituted a helix for a stra ght .wire, and in 1825 Sturgeon used soft iron in the place of steel, and the electro-mag-net was born. By these means the conversion of electricity into magnetism was shown, but it was not known that magnetism could be converted into electricity— Faraday, in 1831, was the first to demonstrate that this also could be done, and that the two forces were one and the same. The electric telegraph may also be said to be not the invention of one man, but of many. Experimenters is Germany, France, England, and the United States were testing the possibility of transmitting messages by the aid of electricity, for some years before Professor Morse achieved bis great triumph in the invention, of the most simple and practical method. The electro-magnet has always had a part in telegraphic work. In fact, the discovery of electro-mag-netism by Oersted led immediately to experimental telegraphy. Tljp Morse apparatus uses an electric battery to supply the power for sending the message, and. the electro-magnet to receive and register it.— lnter Ocean.