Electricity 



play of its forces, there is a growing faith that 

 the day is at hand when the tie between electri- 

 city and gravitation will be unveiled when the 

 reason why matter has weight will cease to puz- 

 zle the thinker. Who can tell what relief of 

 man's estate may be bound up with the ability 

 to transform any phase of energy into any other 

 without the circuitous methods and serious losses 

 of to-day ! In the sphere of economic progress 

 one of the supreme advances was due to the in- 

 vention of money, the providing a medium for 

 which any salable thing may be exchanged, 

 with which any purchasable thing may be 

 bought. As soon as a shell, or a hide, or a bit of 

 metal was recognized as having universal con- 

 vertibility, all the delays and discounts of barter 

 were at an end. In the world of physics and 

 chemistry the corresponding medium is elec- 

 tricity; let it be produced as readily as it pro- 

 duces other modes of motion, and human art 

 will take a stride forward such as when Volta 

 disposed his zinc and silver discs together, or 

 when Faraday set a magnet moving around a 

 copper wire. 



For all that the electric current is' not as yet 

 produced as economically as it should be, we do 

 wrong if we regard it as an infant force. How- 

 ever much new knowledge may do with elec- 

 tricity in the laboratory, in the factory, or in the 

 exchange, some of its best work is already done. 

 It is not likely ever to perform a greater feat 

 than placing all mankind within ear-shot of each 

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