PROGRESS IN ELECTRICITY 



Pomeranian, and his actions in the matter are entirely 

 honorable. 



His discovery was the result of an accident. While 

 experimenting to determine the strength of electricity 

 he suspended a gun-barrel, which he charged with 

 electricity from a revolving glass globe. From the 

 end of the gun-barrel opposite the globe was a brass 

 wire, which extended into a glass jar partly filled with 

 water. Musschenbroek held in one hand this jar, 

 while with the other he attempted to draw sparks from 

 the barrel. Suddenly he received a shock in the hand 

 holding the jar, that " shook him like a stroke of light- 

 ning, ' ' and for a moment made him believe that ' ' he 

 was done for." Continuing his experiments, never- 

 theless, he found that if the jar were placed on a piece 

 of metal on the table, a shock would be received by 

 touching this piece of metal with one hand and touch- 

 ing the wire with the other that is, a path was made 

 for the electrical discharge through the body. This 

 was practically the same experiment as made by Von 

 Kleist with his bottle and nail, but carried one step 

 farther, as it showed that the "jar" need not necessari- 

 ly be held in the hand, as believed by Von Kleist. 

 Further experiments, continued by many philosophers 

 at the time, revealed what Von Kleist had already 

 pointed out, that the electrified jar remained charged 

 for some time. 



Soon after this Daniel Gralath, wishing to obtain 

 stronger discharges than could be had from a single 

 Ley den jar, conceived the idea of combining several 

 jars, thus for the first time grouping the generators in 

 a "battery" which produced a discharge strong enough 



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