VON KLEIST'S EXPERIMENTS. 513 



Cathedral of Caiuin in Pomerania, completed certain ex- 

 periments, concerning which on the following 4th of 

 November he felt sufficiently sure to send an account of 

 them to Dr. Lieberkuhn in Berlin. And in December he 

 forwarded other descriptions to Dr. Kruger in Halle and to 

 Archdeacon Swietlicki of the Church of St. John in Dant- 

 zic, and later to Winkler and others. Lieberkuhn 1 re- 

 ported the facts to the Berlin Academy, Kruger printed 

 the letter as an appendix to his book, 2 and Swietlicki, hav- 

 ing communicated the intelligence to his dozen or so co- 

 members of the little Physical Society of Dantzic, some of 

 the latter tested the matter experimentally and sent back 

 word to Von Kleist that his apparatus would not work. 3 

 All of the others kept silent, for they appear to have 

 reached the same conclusion. 4 



Now what Von Kleist did, according to his own story, 

 is this: Up to the present time, he says, 2 it has not been 

 recognized that sparks and streams flow of themselves out 

 of electrified wood, but that in order to make a light ap- 

 pear, something unelectrified must be approached. But 

 all that is needed now to show the sparks is to insert a 

 spool on which wire is wound in a glass tube. Wood and 

 tube, however, must be warm and dry. If further an iron 

 nail be placed in the spool, then the flames will stream 

 sometimes frorri the metal and sometimes from the wood. 

 That was the first step. The next was to place a nail or a 

 wire in a narrow-necked medicine vial shaped like a 

 Florentine flask and to electrify the nail. Strong action, 

 he says, follows, especially if mercury or alcohol be in the 

 vial ; and when he takes the vial from the machine a 

 flaming pencil of light breaks forth, which continues burn- 



1 Priestley: History ofElec'y. London, 1767. 



2 Kruger: Geschichte der Erde. Halle, 1746. 



3 Gralath: Nachricht von Einigen Electrischen Versuchen. Versuche, 

 etc., der Naturforsclienden Gesellschaft in Dantzig, vol. I. Dantzic, 1747. 



4 Winkler: Die Starke der Elektrischen Kraft des Wassers. Leipsic. 

 1746. 



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