400 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



electrified, and the appearance of the electrification in a 

 long conductor at the end opposite to that at which it is 

 produced or, in other words, the apparent instantaneous 

 transfer of electricity from end to end of the line. He 

 had noticed that "if you let down almost to the globe a 

 linen thread suspended from above and try to touch it 

 with the finger or something else, the thread recedes and 

 will not allow the finger to meet it." So he fastens a 

 similar thread, an ell in length, to the end of a sharp 

 stick attached to a table, and allows it to hang vertically 

 and so that its extremities will be situated "a thumb 

 breadth distance from some other body" the nature of 

 which is not material. Now he excites his globe and 

 brings it up to the stick which supports the thread. And 

 then he sees the lower extremity of the thread move up 

 to the adjacent body. 



"By this," he says in one place, "it is demonstrated 

 to the eye that the virtue extends itself in the linen 

 thread even to the lowest parts where it either attracts 

 or is itself drawn" and in another "This experiment 

 ocularly shows that the sulphur globe, having been pre- 

 viously excited by rubbing, can exercise likewise its virtue 

 through a linen thread an ell or more long, and there 

 attract something," 



Here and not in mythical sympathies of Widely-sepa- 

 rated magnets was the true beginning of the harnessing 

 of the lightning to compass the annihilation of distance 

 and time. The first telegraph, the first conductor for the 

 transmission of energy by electricity, were there in von 

 Guericke's "linen thread an ell or more long;" and its 

 quivering extremity, swinging to the juxtaposed body, 

 indicated the approach of the excited globe to the distant 

 supporting rod as certainly and by means of the same 

 medium as does the equally swinging spot of light in the 

 receiving station show the varying electrification of the 

 great cable controlled on the other side of the Atlantic. 



Note, moreover, that von Guericke attaches his little 





