HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY IN AMERICA 135 



that turns expectation toward him in so high a degree. The 

 language in which Professor Thomson's deductions are pre- 

 sented to scientific listeners, while sufficiently technical in 

 detail, is built into a whole which is constructed on the best 

 literary models. No other speaker is so welcome to an au- 

 dience of electrical engineers. He gives them the peculiar 

 gratification which tends to express itself in applause. He 

 creates the expectant mood, and now and then — at the proper 

 moment — he gratifies it, suddenly, ^\ith the usual result. 

 A good example of his admirable treatment of an abstruse 

 subject is a lecture on Magnetism in its Relation to Electro- 

 motive Force and Current, delivered before the American 

 Institute of Electrical Engineers, of which he was then pres- 

 ident. Starting with Farada3^'s theory of universal ether 

 in which magnetic and electrical phenomena appear. Pro- 

 fessor Thomson here gathers together illustration after illus- 

 tration, each of which suggests, in a manner quite delicious 

 to the scientific mind, a confirmation of his theory, and the 

 cumulative effect of which is strongly convincing. In this 

 particular instance, however. Professor Thomson expressly 

 disclaims having attempted a final solution of the problems 

 attacked. But the lecture remains full of suggestion, a 

 laborious accumulation of facts, finely ordered, and with 

 the labor all disguised in the beauty of the presentation. 

 Perhaps the most important theoretical work done by Pro- 

 fessor Thomson has been in connection with the alternating 

 current motor which has risen to industrial prominence only 

 within the last few years, and that chiefly through the labors 

 of Professor Thomson and of Nikola Tesla, a naturalized 

 citizen of the United States. 



Owing to the association of the two names in the title 

 of the company with which Professor Thomson is still con- 

 nected, his labors are sometimes confounded in the public 

 mind mth those of Professor Houston of the Philadelphia 

 Central High school, of whom there will be occasion to speak 

 later. Their joint work really ceased more than ten years 

 ago, with the formation of the company whose name is re- 

 sponsible for the confusion. 



