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THE MODERN DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICITY 

 AND MAGNETISM 



GALVANI AND VOLTA 



THE full importance of Young's studies of light 

 might perhaps have gained earlier recognition 

 had it not chanced that, at the time when they were 

 made, the attention of the philosophic world was turn- 

 ed with the fixity and fascination of a hypnotic stare 

 upon another field, which for a time brooked no rival. 

 How could the old, familiar phenomenon, light, interest 

 any one when the new agent, galvanism, was in view ? 

 As well ask one to fix attention on a star while a meteor- 

 ite blazes across the sky. 



Galvanism was so called precisely as the Roentgen 

 ray was christened at a later day as a safe means of 

 begging the question as to the nature of the phenomena 

 involved. The initial fact in galvanism was the dis- 

 covery of Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), a physician of 

 Bologna, in 1791, that by bringing metals in contact 

 with the nerves of a frog's leg violent muscular con- 

 tractions are produced. As this simple little experi- 

 ment led eventually to the discovery of galvanic elec- 

 tricity and the invention of the galvanic battery, it 

 may be regarded as the beginning of modern elec- 

 tricity. 



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