524 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



confines himself to remarking that, if a natural law con- 

 necting attraction and spark energy should be established, 

 his contrivance would be an '"Electrometer," adapted to 

 measure both the attractive force and the sparks, and that 

 it would be of great use, and free this branch of philosophy 

 from many uncertainties. Such was the first attempt to 

 measure electricity, to-day the most modern of all electri- 

 cal arts. 



The records of the L,eyden jar experiments which now 

 appear are devoted more to graphic descriptions of the 

 physical sufferings of over-zealous philosophers than to the 

 announcement of new discoveries. Winkler modified the 

 apparatus by winding an iron chain around the bottle, and 

 connecting it to a metal plate near the prime conductor of 

 his machine; the wire from within the bottle also being 

 connected to the same conductor. His letter to the Royal 

 Society recounts his convulsions, the agitation of his blood, 

 the supervention of an ardent fever, and the evil result at- 

 tending the curiosity of his better-half, who, taking the 

 shock a second time, was afflicted with nosebleed. Nollet 

 entertained the French king by transmitting the discharge 

 through 180 of his guards, "who were all so sensible of it 

 at the same instant that the surprise caused them all to 

 spring up at once." This however, was outdone by the 

 performance of the Carthusian monks in Paris, who formed 

 a line 900 feet long u by means of iron wires of propor- 

 tionable length between every two, and consequently far 

 exceeding the line of the one hundred and eighty guards. 

 The effect was that when the two extremities of this long- 

 line met in contact with the electrified vial, the whole 

 company at the same instant of time gave a sudden spring, 

 and all equally felt the shock." 



It is not difficult to understand why the electrical his- 

 tories of de Mangin, Secondat, Priestley, d'Alibard, Gra- 

 lath and others, written near to the time of the discov- 

 ery of the Leyden jar, hail it as a great advance, because 

 of its capabilities in the production of discharges of unpre- 



