494 TH E INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



he had no globe, and saw no chance of obtaining one, until 

 the old still suddenly revealed itself in a new light. There 

 was the noseless glass retort; big, but all the better for 

 that, for perhaps the effects would be stronger. Down 

 came the vessel to be mounted lathe fashion, and the re- 

 sults, as I shall shortly relate, were amazing. 



Meanwhile Hausen, 1 who was a professor of mathematics 

 at the Leipsic Academy, and lectured there on electricity, 

 while using the glass tube in one of his demonstrations, 

 inveighed against its inconvenience, when a student re- 

 minded him of the Hauksbee globe. Hausen at once con- 

 structed such an apparatus, and, by means of a large 

 crank- wheel and belt, made it possible to rotate the sphere 

 very rapidly. Both Hausen and Bose now found, at about 

 the same time, that not only could a practically contin- 

 uous supply of electricity thus be obtained, but one of 

 much greater strength than had hitherto been known. 

 Hausen suspended a boy with his toes in proximity to the 

 globe, and drew sparks from his fingers. Bose disposed 

 twenty soldiers in line, with hands touching, and admin- 

 istered a shock to all of them at once. Hausen remarked 

 the sulphurous odor of the electrical discharge, and distin- 

 guished three kinds of electric light due respectively to 

 the " spark," the " brush" and the "glow," as the phe- 

 nomena are now termed; but he was before all a theorist. 

 He announced that the electric field is formed of vortices of 

 electric matter, caused by its being attracted and repelled in 

 oppositely convex curves, that the vortex becomes a spiral 

 around a rubbed tube, and that all electric action is due 

 to the influences of vortices upon vortices, or vortices upon 

 matter. 



In the light of modern conceptions Hausen J s hypothesis 

 of the identity of his so-called electric matter with the 

 ether of Newton and Huyghens is remarkable. He con- 

 siders ether to be electric matter, because both glow as 

 soon as the proper motion is impressed; and from this he 



1 Hausen: Novi Profectus in Historia Electricitatis. Leipsic, 1743. 



