OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 



4356 



OIL CITY 



The basin of the Ohio is subject at' inter- 

 vals to disastrous floods. The average rain- 

 fall in the region is about forty-three inches 

 yearly. During the spring rains, when the 

 swift mountain streams along its eastern course 

 are in flood, the river often rises with appalling 

 suddenness, submerging bottom lands and 

 flooding low-lying cities along its banks. See 

 FLOOD, for details of these visitations. 



Consult Thwaites* On the Storied Ohio; Hul- 

 u-rt's The Ohio River. 



OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, an institution 

 of higher education established by the state 

 legislature at Columbus, 0., in 1870. It was 

 first called the Ohio Agricultural and Mechan- 

 ical College and was opened in 1873. The in- 

 stitution was reorganized in 1878 as the Ohio 

 State University, and at present consists of the 

 departments of arts, philosophy and science, 

 agriculture, engineering, education, medicine, 

 homeopathic medicine, dentistry, law, phar- 

 macy, veterinary medicine, and a graduate 

 school. The Starling-Ohio Medical College, 

 including a dental college, has been a part of 

 the university since 1914. The affairs of the 

 university are managed by a board of seven 

 trustees whose appointments are made by the 

 governor of the state and confirmed by the 

 legislature. There are about 520 instructors 

 and nearly 5,800 students. The university li- 

 brary contains 160,500 volumes. Of the 582 

 acres of land owned by the institution, all but 

 110 are devoted to work in agriculture and 

 horticulture. There is a laboratory for summer 

 research work at Sandusky. 



OHM, ome, the unit of resistance to an elec- 

 tric current. It is the resistance offered by 

 thirty feet of No. 25 copper wire at 32 F.; 

 that is, the resistance of a wire about eighteen- 

 thousandths of an inch in diameter at the 

 freezing point of water. Every electrical con- 

 ductor offers resistance to the flow of an elec- 

 tric current, just as a tube through which 

 water flows offers resistance to the current by 

 friction on its walls. Small tubes offer rela- 

 tively greater resistance than large ones, so poor 

 conductors offer greater resistance to the flow 

 of the electric current than good conductors. 

 See ELECTRICITY. 



Ohm's Law. Experiment proves that if the 

 resistance remains the same, the flow of an 

 electric current will increase in proportion to 

 the increase of the strength of the current. 

 For example, if a current from a single dry 

 cell flows at a given rate over a wire, and we 

 increase the number of cells to four, the flow 



will be four times as great. Converse!}*, the 

 flow will decrease in the same proportion as 

 the source from which it is derived is weak- 

 ened. Professor Ohm, a German physicist, who 

 discovered this law, stated it as follows: Cur- 

 r< n( equals volts divided by ohms. 



Georg Simon Ohm (1787-1854), a German 

 physicist who discovered and announced Ohm's 

 Law in 1825. He was born in Erlangen, Ba- 

 varia. From 1817 until his death, July 7, 

 1854, he was successively professor of physics 

 in the Jesuit College of Cologne, director of 

 the Polytechnic School in Nuremberg and pro- 

 fessor of physics in the University of Munich. 

 For his discovery he received the Copley medal 

 from the Royal Society of London. 



OIL CITY, PA., the principal oil market of 

 the petroleum fields of Pennsylvania, is a city 

 in Venango County, in the northwestern part 

 of the state, 135 miles northeast of Pittsburgh 

 and about fifty-five miles southeast of Erie. 

 The city occupies over three square miles .of 

 hilly ground along both banks of the Alle- 

 gheny River, at the mouth of Oil Creek. 

 Several steel bridges unite the three sections 

 of the town. It is on the Pennsylvania, the 

 Erie and the New York Central railroads and 

 has interurban electric lines. The population, 

 which in 1910 was 15,657, was 19,297 (Federal 

 estimate) in 1916. 



Vast amounts of oil are shipped from the 

 surrounding oil fields. Natural gas, also found 

 in the vicinity, is used for heat and light and 

 for power in manufacture. The industrial es- 

 tablishments include oil refineries, oil-well sup- 

 ply manufactories, engine, machine and boiler 

 shops, and manufactories of spokes and han- 

 dles, explosives, tubes and tanks. The city 

 parks, including Hasson's Park of forty-eight 

 acres, are supplemented by Monarch Park, a 

 beautiful resort four miles distant. Prominent 

 buildings include the Federal building, Y. M. 

 C. A. building, state armory, Carnegie Library, 

 sanatorium, city hospital, high school building 

 and the offices of the Standard Oil Company. 



Oil City was settled in 1825, but did not 

 become important until the discovery of oil in 

 1859. It was incorporated as a borough in 1863 

 and became a city in 1874. The commission 

 form of government was adopted in 1911. In 

 the spring of 1892, Oil .Creek, swollen by a 

 cloud-burst, washed into the city a mass of 

 burning oil which escaped from tanks which 

 were probably struck by lightning. More than 

 fifty lives were lost, and property valued at 

 $1,000,000 was destroyed. G.W.L. 



