106 Britain's Heritage of Science 



CHAPTER IV 



(Physical Science) 



THE HERITAGE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



IN a superficial review of the history of science a new idea 

 or a striking experiment is associated with an individual 

 name and a particular date. Hence, we receive a general 

 impression that science proceeds by sudden inspirations ; 

 yet, on closer examination, we find that the salient features 

 are connected with each other, and that the great landmarks 

 are generally reached only by a succession of intermediate 

 steps, some of which may be as important as the last which 

 culminates in the final discovery. Time tends to efface the 

 intermediate steps, and so it happens that it is only in dealing 

 with the more recent events that we can obtain a correct 

 view of the continuity of science. To trace this continuity 

 is one of the functions of the historian, but occasionally 

 his efforts will fail, and he will be faced by what appears to 

 be an entirely new departure. Such was Volta's discovery 

 of current electricity, which surprised the scientific world 

 in the first year of the nineteenth century. The electrical 

 shocks which certain fishes can inflict on those who touch them, 

 and an accidental observation by Galvani, an Italian doctor, 

 disclosed a class of phenomena called " animal electricity." 

 But there was much confusion of ideas with regard to the signi- 

 ficance of the observed facts until Volta, the great Italian 

 experimenter, succeeded in separating what was physical 

 from what was physiological in Galvani's results, and so 

 laid the foundation of a new science. By discovering the 

 electrical effects that could be obtained at the contact of 

 two dissimilar metals, Volta was led to those wonderful 

 researches which gave us the electric battery, His previous 



