152 
PROFESSOR OLIVER LODGE ON THE ABSENCE OF 
desired, so as to be able to attack the question above, numbered 4, without additional 
expense. Accordingly, I ordered from Messrs, Mather and Platt an oblate spheroid 
of best Swedish iron, a yard in diameter and half a foot thick, with a deep channel 
or groove half an inch wide cut into its rim to a depth of one foot all round. It 
was not found practicable to make the iron all in one piece, and accordingly it was 
constructed of two pieces bolted together, and its section is shown in fig. 1. 
Fig. 1. 
The bottom of the groove was wound with wire to a depth of 4^ inches, the wire 
used being No. 20 B.W.G, double silk-covered copper; and of it 14 lbs. 10 ozs, 
was wound on, in 94 layers of 9 convolutions per layer, the central iron core being 
1 foot thick. The ends of the wire come out through small holes drilled for the 
purpose, with balancing holes drilled at equal opposite radii so as to leave the centre 
of gravity undisturbed, and the wire was then tightly bound with tape and steel to 
resist centrifugal force. 
The free ends of the covered wire were clamped to the surface of the disk and led 
to a set of insulated brass rings on the upper part of the axle, so that an electric 
current either steady or commutated could conveniently be supplied whenever 
desired. 
The resistance of the wire coil was measured by one of my students as 29'9 ohms, 
and its insulation resistance was just short of 2 megohms. The length of the wire is 
about 1 kilometre or two-thirds of a mile. 
The magnetising current was usually supplied from the town mains, at 110 volts 
nominal, which gave a current of 3*8 amperes through the coil of 846 turns, and 
accordingly developed a magneto-motive force of 4000 cgs. 
The lines of force so generated streamed across the half inch gap from the one half 
of the oblate spheroid to the other, being rather more plentiful in the deep parts of 
the channel. But the course of the beam of light only partially penetrated into the 
most intense region, and its mean track was situated about 4'6 inches from the 
periphery ; so at this place I asked a student to measure the magnetic field excited 
by various strengths of current (by the common method of suddenly snatching out a 
small exploring coil and comparing the galvanometer throw with that caused b}^ an 
