PROGRESS IN ELECTRICITY 



seems highly probable that ho hud done so, as he was 

 constantly experimenting with the sparks, and must 

 almost certainly have set certain substances ablaze by 

 accident, if not by intent. At all events, he carried on 

 a series of experiments along this line to good purpose, 

 finally succeeding in exploding gun-powder, and so 

 making the first forerunner of the electric fuses now 

 so universally used in blasting, firing cannon, and other 

 similar purposes. It was Bose also who, observing 

 some of the peculiar manifestations in electrified tubes, 

 and noticing their resemblance to " northern lights," 

 was one of the first, if not the first, to suggest that the 

 aurora borealis is of electric origin. 



These spectacular demonstrations had the effect of 

 calling public attention to the fact that electricity is a 

 most wonderful and mysterious thing, to say the least, 

 and kept both scientists and laymen agog with ex- 

 pectancy. Bose himself was aflame with excitement, 

 and so determined in his efforts to produce still 

 stronger electric currents, that he sacrificed the tube 

 of his twenty-foot telescope for the construction of a 

 mammoth electrical machine. With- this great ma- 

 chine a discharge of electricity was generated power- 

 ful enough to wound the skin when it happened to 

 strike it. 



Until this time electricity had been little more than 

 a plaything of the scientists or, at least, no practical 

 use had been made of it. As it was a practising 

 physician, Gilbert, who first laid the foundation for 

 experimenting with the new substance, so again it was 

 a medical man who first attempted to put it to prac- 

 tical use, and that in the field of his profession. Gott- 

 VOL. ii. 19 



