EULOGY ON ALEXANDER VOLTA. 



15 Y ARAGO. 



[Translated for the Saiithsouiau Institution.] 



Gentlemen : When amber is rubbed it immediately attracts liglit 

 bodies, such as the down of feathers, fragments of straw, and sawdust. 

 Theophrastus, the Greek, and Pliny, the Roman, had both noticed this 

 property, but attaching apparently no importance to it, treated it sim- 

 ply as an accident of form and color. They little suspected they were 

 touching the first link of a long chain of discoveries, and did not appre- 

 ciate the value of an observation which, at a later date, was to furnish 

 assured means of disarming the thunder-cloud and conducting the 

 electricity concealed in its bosom to the earth without danger and 

 sometimes even without explosion. 



From electron, the Greek for amber, is derived " electricity," a term ap- 

 plied originally to the attractive property of rubbed bodies, but now to 

 the cause of a great variety of effects and to all the details of a brilliant 

 science. 



Electricity long remained in the hands of physicists, the almost exclu- 

 sive result of complicated combinations, which nature rarely presented. 

 The man of genius whose works we are about to analyze was the first to 

 transcend these narrow limits. With the aid of microscopic apparatus, 

 he found electricity everywhere, in combustion, in evaporation, and in 

 the simple contact of dissimilar bodies. He therefore assigned to this 

 powerful agent a wide-extended domain, which, in terrestrial phenomena, 

 scarcely gives precedence to that of gravity. 



The development disclosing the connection of these important discov- 

 <'ries appears to me deserving of being traced with some degree of ex- 

 tension. It seems to me also that, since definite knowledge is so much 

 desired, academic eulogies may become introductory chapters of a gen- 

 eral history of the sciences. The following is an essay, on my part, 

 which I IVaiikiy submit to the rigid and enlightened criticism of the 

 ])ublic. 



CIRTH OF VOLTA — HIS YOUTH — IIIS FIRST WORKS — LEYDEN JAR — 

 PERPETUAL ELECTROPHORUS — IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ELECTRI- 

 CAL MACHINE — CONDENSING ELECTROMETER— ELECTRIC PISTOL — 

 PERPETUAL LAMP — EUDIOMETER. 



Alexander Volta, one of the eight foreign members of the Academy 

 of Science, and son of Philip Volta and Madeleine, de Conti Inzaghi, 

 was born at Como, on the 18th of February, 1745. His early education 



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