522 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



was called, and to this day bears the name of the L,eyden 

 jar. 



To return now to the Dantzic Society, or rather to 

 Daniel Gralath, who was at work in its behalf. In Feb- 

 ruary of 1746, Von Kleist sent a final epistle, which seems 

 to have clarified matters; so that ten days later, Gralath 

 definitely finds that the jar must be held in one hand and 

 its wire touched with the other, and ascribes the long de- 

 lay to Von Kleist' s failure to make this plain in the 

 beginning. Gralath soon after hears of the Leyden ex- 

 periment, and at once advocates Von Kleist's claim to the 

 discovery, naming the proceeding the u Kleistian strength- 

 ening experiment," and the jar, the "strengthening 

 machine." But it was too late the infant had already 

 been christened, and the world refused, justly or unjustly, 

 to sanction the change of cognomen. 



Gralath's experiments were, however, fraught with new 

 discovery. In common with Musschenbroeck he records 

 the great power of the discharge, which he says gave some 

 people the nose-bleed, and acted like a lightning stroke; 

 but announces that the thinner the glass of which the bot- 

 tle is made, the stronger are its effects: that he has suc- 

 ceeded in retaining the charge in it for three days (but 

 here Von Kleist excels him, for in his hands the bottle 

 worked well even after eight days' inaction) ; and that, al- 

 though the bottle might seem to be completely discharged 

 so that no trace of electricity is manifest, nevertheless, 

 after a short period of rest it once more yields vivid sparks. 



The difficulty which minds moving in a rut always find 

 in getting out of it, is well exemplified in the manner in 

 which the philosophers dealt with the new apparatus. 

 Despite its singular capacities, they saw in it only a con- 

 trivance for producing shocks stronger than their machines 

 would yield, and bent their energies to testing the effects. 

 Nollet killed birds with the discharge, noting that on dis- 

 section they exhibited the same condition of ecchymosis 

 shown by people struck by lightning. Gralath destroyed 





