PROF. WISE, THE AERONAUT.—[From a Photograph by Brady.]too
training moïr;
USE AND ABUSE OF THE BOD.
Thunder and Thunderstorms.
THIRTY YEARS IN THE CLOUDS,
WITH OBSERVATIONS ON THUNDERSTORMS—FEELING, SEEING AND SMELLING THEM.
FORMATION OF RAIN, HAIL, SNOW AND THUNDERBOLTS. By J. WISE,
PROP. OP AERONAUTICS.
“ Truth is strange—stranger than fiction.”
LANCASTER, PA.:
PEARSOL & GEIST, PRINTERS, EXPRESS PRINTING OFFICE.
1870.Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870,
BY J. WISE,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.TO
ALEXANDER HARRIS, Esq.,
WHOSE VARIED SCHOLARSHIP AND ASSIDUITY IN THE PURSUIT
OP KNOWLEDGE
ARE HIGHLY APPRECIATED,
THIS LITTLE TREATISE IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY
THE AUTHOR.PREFACE.
In preparing this work the author has confined himself mainly to facts. This has seemed to him as the best method for the treatment of a subject of the material of which we have so little knowledge, and which plays so constant and varied a part in the works of the universe. At best we can only play “blind man’s buff” in treating on the subject of electricity. We are compelled to go it blind, feeling our way in the tracks and traces it leaves, because we have no way nor means at hand by which we can examine it in itself; therefore, a relation of the most striking facts resulting from its action, is best calculated as means of information to the general reader.
Having experienced much of its phenomena, on the earth—in the clouds—in the thunderstorm, the author flatters himself in the belief that his book will be interesting to the common reader,, as well as to the student of science, art and nature.
J. Wise.
Lancaster, 1870.INTRODUCTION.
In all the varied departments of science and the diversified phenomena of nature, there is not a subject so materially interwoven with our life, and being, and welfare—our health and ailments—the very motion of our muscles, and the nervous action moving our intellects, as that of electricity. And on the other hand, there is not a substance—of gas—of liquid—of solid-metal or mineral, that we know so little about as we do of the subtle fluid called electricity.
Many of the important things pertaining to our earthly comfort can be analyzed, and the analysis proven by synthesis, but of the mysterious fluid termed electricity we can make no analysis. Whether it is a compound, or .simple substance, or substance at all, is as yet involved in the mystery of nature.
It can do our talking across the ocean with a facility equal to the lips across a chamber. It sometimes plays the photographer. Prof. Silliman reports an instance wherein a thunderbolt electrotyped the image of a bird bn the hide of a sheep. The bird—a robin, was sitting on the branch of a tree, and immediately underneath the branch a sheep was reposing. The thunderbolt struck the robin—darted on the sheep, killing them both. The owner of the sheep having witnessed the thing, found, on removing the fleece from the animal, a photograph upon its body of the bird, which was killed by the same bolt that killed the sheep.
There is another instance related in the books of similar import. A ship at sea, having on its mainsail the trademark of the maker, in raised brass letters, the ship was struck by lightning, and a sailor, standing at the time under the mainsail, received the shock, and had imprinted on his thigh an exact copy of the trademark letters. There are other well authenticated instances of similar import recorded in the books.
We use terms in its elucidation, that, while they serve to fully explain the things related to other matter, utterly fail to explain to us their meaning as regards their processes in the matter of electricity. Positive and negative have a definite meaning as applied to ordinary things, because we see, hear, and feel the things referred to. Not so in the case of their application to electricity. Here we always assume a presence—a dual presence—an inseparable presence of the two—and in close proximity. Dufaye attempted to resolve these terms into a more tangible form by the assumption of two kinds of electricity—the vitreous and resinous. Franklin, always more practical in his views than the general run of philosophers, resolved the problem into minus8
and plus electricity, and that is the rule generally adopted. He went a little further, and improved the theory by the doctrine of induction. When electricity is accumulated upon one side of a non-conducting substance, its equivalent quantity departs from the other side, as shown in the leyden jar. When this electrical condition is established upon any substance, there immediately follows an intense disposition to equalize its disturbed balance. And while it has not the nature of passing through the non-conducting matter that separates its minus and plus places, .it will fly any conceivable distance through a conducting medium, to equalize the two places of minus and plus, though they were not a tenth of an inch apart. This induction is more active as the distance is small between the positive and negative sides of its locality. Its peculiar habitudes in proximity with points is a matter of mystery. It will flow or pass to a point of glass or wood in preference to a blunted substance of metal or mineral, when it is present in a quiescent state. But in its active condition—in the thunderbolt, it prefers blunts to points for its explosive violence. While in a quiescent condition it would seem to be framed in balls of films—very elastic, bending and indenting—yielding, as it were, to the pressure of a blunt, but susceptible to the puncture of a point.
Whatever the nature and quality of its material body may be, we do know that points thrust into its sphere of action, into its body as it were, will diffuse it—tap it apparently; while blunted bodies, presenting surface, receive it as it were in bulk, causing it to explode like a bombshell.
It is upon this doctrine of induction that some philosophers place the efficacy of the lightning rod, but it is as untenable as is the theory of Dufaye of vitreous and resinous electricity to account for the phenomenon of Franklin’s induction. The vitreous and resinous doctrine was well sustained in the fact of passing a spark of machine electricity through a quire of paper; it made a burr on each side, as well where it entered as where it went out, indicating that the vitreous passed in one direction, while the resinous passed iff the opposite.
The minus and plus doctrine is comprehensive, so far as it assumes a presence and an absence, but when we take in connection the inductive condition of the matter, it becomes anomalous, and makes us wonder why it first drives off its neighbor, and at the same instant endeavors to hug him up with an energy that makes them both fly to pieces when the union is permitted by the bridge of conduction.
Such being its mysterious bodily characteristics, we must, for the present, content ourselves in tracing it by its effects, giving it at least a history, if we cannot give it a definite science.HISTORY OF LIGHTNING,
AND ITS
IDENTITY WITH ELECTRICITY.
In all ages of the world mankind has viewed the thunderbolt with fear and trembling, more from its awe-inspiring impressiveness than the frequency of its destruction. When the heavens are darkened and the clouds roll to and fro, and the quick flash of the thunderbolt darts athwart the black background at an inconceivable velocity, with its barbed fire* and the roaring thunder follows like the rumbling of a thousand carriage wheels, it makes even the philosopher stand in wonder-stricken silence as he contemplates this sublime phenomenon, speaking in the majesty of its nature.
The Thracians used to shoot their metal arrows at it in order to disperse its fury. The Etruscans pretended to have a secret method by which they could draw lightning from the clouds, and guide it at their pleasure. Numa was the possessor of the method, and Tullus Hostilius, making a blunder in the performance of the ceremony, was himself struck.
The ancient poet says:
‘‘Before their sovereigns came, the Cyclops strove With eager speed, to forge a bolt for Jove,
Such as by heaven’s Almighty Lord are hurled,
All charged with vengeance on a guilty world. ’ ’
In modern times, while much of this terror still exists, science and close observation have shorn it much of its dire alarms. Less than two centuries ago the church assisted in augmenting the fears of the people of civilized Europe upon this subject. The towering steeples of their places of worship being oftener visited by the thunderbolts of heaven than other buildings, gave them the notion that Satan was the author of these fearful atmospheric disturbances. Consequently it became the custom in many parts of Europe to ring the church bells when a thunderstorm was approaching, in order to scare away the demon of the air. Sometimes the men at the bell rope were struck down, and then it was10
conceded the devil got the upper hand because the ringing had not been vigorous enough. We have an instance recorded of eleven men receiving a thunderbolt while ringing a ponderous bell in the town of Chabeul, near Valence, and seven of them struck dead at the bell rope. These men, however, were ringing for another purpose than scaring away the devil.
When a building is shattered by the thunderbolt, under the protection of a lightning rod, the rod men say it was not put up right, getting out of the dilemma as did the bell ringers. Nevertheless the erection of lightning rods goes on with very little deviation from those that failed to scare away the demon of the air.
Thus the investigation of lightning—the thunderbolt—hot and eold strokes—the lightning rod and thunderstorms, is one fraught with interest, and worthy the attention of every intelligent person. In taking up its line of history and its most thorough scrutinizes, we shall find Benjamin Franklin, the humble tallow chandler’s son, standing most prominent among the brilliant intellects who earnestly entered this domain of physical science. He was one of the first in the list of philosophers who proposed to disarm the thunder clouds by exhausting them of their fulminating ammunition by the strategy of the lightning rod. And he was one of the first men in the world to prove the identity of the lightning of heaven with the electricity developed by friction on glass, and that they were both one and the same kind of matter. Being of a peculiar utilitarian turn of mind, he expressed a strong desire to turn these discoveries to the common use of mankind.
In order to give proper credit to the persons who also first maintained the identity of lightning and artificial electricity, I have taken the following from Dr. Lardner. He says it was suggested by Dr. Wall in 1708, by Mr. Grey in 1785, the Abbe Nollet in 1748, Franklin in 1749, MM. Dalibard .and Delor in i752.
Franklin addressed a letter to Mr. Collinson in 1749, in which he says: “Chagrined a little that we have hitherto been able to produce nothing in this way of use to mankind, and the hot weather coming on, when electrical experiments are not so agreeable, it is proposed to put an end to them for this season somewhat humorously, in a party £>f pleasure on the banks of the Schuylkill. Spirits, at the same time, are to be fired by a spark sent from side to side, through the river, without any other conductor than the water—an experiment which we some time since performed to the amazement of many. A turkey is to be killed for dinner by the electric spark, and roasted by the electrical jack*.
*A little revolving machine worked by electricity, the invention of Franklin.11
before a fire kindled by the electrified bottle, when the healths of all the famous electricians of England, Holland, France and Germany are to be drunk in electrified bumpers, under the discharge of guns from the electrical battery.”
In a subsequent letter, bearing date 1753, to the same person, he says: “In my former paper on this subject, written first in 1747, enlarged and sent to England in 1749,1 considered the sea as the great source of lightning.”
M. Arago, who disputes the claim of Franklin as the discoverer of the identity of electricity and lightning, says: “If the experiment were necessary or useful, science owes it to M. Dalibard, who executed it at Marly-la-Ville a month before Franklin made it with his kite at Philadelphia.” Now the fact as stated by M. Dalibard himself, was, that he took Franklin’s printed directions in performing it. He put these directions into the hands of an old retired soldier, named Coffier, a carpenter by trade, and who put up the conductor for it. The spark was drawn by Coffier while Dalibard was at Paris. This experiment took place on the 10th of May, 1752, and in June following Franklin drew down the lightning spark from the clouds, during a thunderstorm, with his kite.
Now Franklin, having noticed that thunderbolts had a peculiar tendency to lodge on points or projections, particularly on the tops of high masts, and the spires of churches, or the corner of a roof—indeed all projecting bodies pointing toward electrified clouds, led him to the idea of the lightning rod.
Upon this he says, in one of his letters, “If these things are so, may not the knowledge of this power of points be of use to mankind in preserving houses, churches, ships, &c., from the stroke of lightning, by directing us to fix, on the highest points of these edifices, upright rods of iron, made sharp as a needle, and gilt to prevent rusting; and, from the point of these rods, a wire run down the outside of the building into the ground, or down round one of the shrouds of a ship and down her side till it reaches the water? Would not these points probably draw the electrical fire silently out of the cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible mischief?”
Such was the reasoning of Franklin after the identification of electricity and lightning. He continued to investigate with zeal and determination all its phenomena, with a view to render the new discoveries of its laws and nature useful to mankind. Having an extensive correspondence with eminent scientists of Europe, his letters upon electricity to his friends there always incited a lively interest upon the subject, notwithstanding the Hoyal Society of London looked upon some of his notions as12
absurd and ridiculous. They refused to give them admission in the “Philosophical Transactions.”
Dr. Fothergill, however, thought them of so much value that he wrote a preface to them, and had them published in pamphlet form, and they became so popular as to pass through five editions.
A few years later this same learned institution conferred upon him the highest honor in its gift, by voting him the Copley medal and unanimously electing him an honorary member of their society in 1753.
King George the Third, in order to gratify his spleen against American genius, had blunted, instead of pointed, lightning rods^ erected upon his royal palace, of which Franklin wrote to a friend in England, that “the King’s changing his pointed conductors for Hunt ones is a matter of small importance to me. If I had a wish about them it would be that he would reject them altogether as ineffectual. For it is only since he thought himself and his family safe from the thunder of heaven that he has dared to use his own thunder in destroying his innocent subjects.”
In regard to the rod shielding buildings from the thunderbolt,. Franklin believed that it must tower up high in the air, and with this view he was then awaiting the erection of a high church steeple in Philadelphia. He never once suggested the idea that a lightning rod should be struck; but that its office should be to carry the lightning from the electrified cloud down into the earth silently, and thus, by its diffusion in that way, restore the electrical equilibrium between the thunder cloud and the earth.
He said: “To determine this question, whether the clouds that contain lightning be electrified or not, I would propose an experiment to be tried, where it may be done conveniently. On the top of some high tower or steeple, place a kind of sentry-box, big enough to contain a man and an electrical stand. From the middle of the stand let an iron rod rise and pass, bending, out of the door, and then upright twenty or thirty feet, pointed very sharp at the end. If the electrical stand be kept clear and dry, a man standing on it, when such clouds are passing low, might be electrified, and afford sparks, the rod drawing fire to him from a cloud. If any conger to the man be apprehended, let him stand on the floor of his box, and now and then bring near to the rod the loop of a wire that has one end fastened to the leads, he holding it by a wax handle, so the sparks, if the rod is electrified, will strike from the rod to the wire and not affect him.”
This is one of the propositions that the Eoyal Society laughed at, and which was deemed too absurd to be entered upon the. records of the “Philosophical Transactions.” In this proposition we have all the science, of the lightning rod in a nutshell. It must project up with its point near to the thundercloud. It must13
draw or tap the surcharge from the cloud silently. It must not be struck by lightning. Such was the philosophy of Franklin in regard to the lightning rod, and that philosophy of it cannot be logically controverted. When the clouds run low enough to nearly scrape the top of the lightning rod, it will discharge them silently; but that is a circumstance and condition of the atmosphere that rarely, very rarely happens. And the way that lightning rods are constructed and put up they do not shield property from the thunderbolt when the clouds do run thus low. Their terminal extremities not presenting metallic surface sufficient to diffuse and spread it out so as to neutralize its tension, the consequence is an explosion from recoil.
Franklin was also the first man to elucidate electrical induction; as, for instance, if one side of a pane of glass is positively electrified, the other side will become negatively electrified: that is to say, just in proportion that you increase the electricity on the one side over its normal portion, the opposite side will lose an equivalent portion of its normal quantity. This demonstration established the doctrine of minus and plus electricity, termed positive and negative, in place of that of the celebrated Dufaye, which was based upon two kinds, namely, vitreous and resinous electricity.
The impetus given to electrical investigation in Franklin’s time, with a view to explain its various phenomena, gave rise to many curious suggestions. And at the present time, with the invention of the Holtz electrical machine and Rumkorf coil, we are in a fair way of having the Franklinian energy renewed.
ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY.
The following is a condensed report of a discourse by Prof. Henry, before the “American Scientific Association,” sitting at Newport, Rhode Island, in the Summer of 1860. It embraces observations I made while in the midst of thunderstorms, which from time to time were communicated to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The report says: “The conclusions as to the causes and accompanying phenomena of thunderstorms gratify by their simplicity and distinctness.” [So they ought to when they are the relation of facts.—Author.] “He first stated the many theories which from time to time had been given relating to the origin or source of the subtle fluid, electricity. It had been supposed to be produced by the friction of the currents of air in motion. It had also been attributed to growing vegetation; also to evaporation. It was well known that boiling salt water produced electricity. Steam blown off from a locomotive was a source of electricity, but it was frictional. Upon the14
whole, the origin of atmospheric electricity was not conclusively ascertained. There is a theory that the atmosphere is not electrical per 5<9, but only by induction; that the earth is electric, and the air only electric under certain conditions. This was Pelcher’s theory*. It had been adopted by some European phi-sicists, and he must say it had not received the attention deserved. The late Dr. Hare, of Philadelphia, entertained a similar theory, that the earth was plus electrical and the air minus.
“It was certain that the amount of electricity in the air varied with the amount of vapor present. On clear, dry, cloudless days, there was but little electricity to be detected by the electrometers, and it was only when we had masses of vapor in the form of clouds that there were electrical discharges. If a polished-iron rod, two or three feet in length, with a polished brass knob at each end, be held horizontally, there will be no sign of electricity in the rod; but if it be held vertically, it instantly becomes electrical. The end nearest the earth will be plus electrical and the upper end minus. If the rod^ be held near the ground, and then raised as high as a man can reach, the electrometer indicates a change of electrical condition; when near the ground it is most electrified. The electrometer at the Smithsonian Institute showed great changes in a few feet elevation. It had been demonstrated that the electricity was repelled by tho atoms of matter composing the earth into the air. He used the word repelled as best expressing the idea. It had also been demonstrated that an atom of electricity at the surface of the globe acted in concert with the globe itself in repelling a second atom of electricity outside the first. The repelling power was inversely as the square of the distance. Prof. Henry then gave the phenomena of explosive atmospheric electricity. Ho thunderstorm can occur until there are two layers of clouds. The electricity is carried into the air by the masses of vapor going up from the earth. Yapor rising from the earth always carries more or less electricity with it. He had ascertained these and other interesting facts from Mr. Wise, the balloonist, with whom he had been in correspondence, and who had undertaken experiments. Mr. Wise said that in passing through a thunderstorm he was always first carried through a dense cloud, into an open space, with a second cloud hanging above him. Currents of air frequently moved transversely to the current below the lower cloud. He had repeatedly been carried along by this transverse current, and upon coming down through the lower cloud, he had been caught by the ascending current and whirled up
*That conclusion fastened itself on me during my observations in thunder storms during balloon voyages.15
again. Between the two clouds there were constant flashes of lightning from the upper to the lower. These flashes were not explosive. The heat lightning so often seen is the electricity of the upper cloud descending to the lower. The explosive discharges are generally between the lower cloud and the earth. Between the two clouds hail is formed. The upper cloud is always less dense than the lower,* and always less electrical.
“A thunderstorm as it moved across the country was sometimes constantly renewed by the masses of vapor constantly ascending and carrying up electricity from the earth in diffused particles, to be returned in explosive discharges. New vapor carried up new electricity.f The French physicists thought that a thundercloud might be disarmed by running up numerous-points. It might be disarmed or rendered harmless for a single locality, but as the clouds passed on new electricity would be sent up, so that to wholly disarm the thunder was impossible* for it had new resources always at command.
“ Mr. Wise had seen a water-spout on one occasion that had no upper cloud, but was, in the beginning, a single cloud of great density, which began to hang down in the centre like a funnel, hollowed into a whirlpool, carried round with tremendous rapidity, with discharges of lightning across it, and explosive discharges to the earth. Mr. Wise had invited him to a balloon excursion into a thunderstorm.”
ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY AS A MOTOR.
In July, 1859, the author of this work addressed the following letter to the Scientific American, of New York, to wit: “In No. 1, Yol. I, new series, there appears an article under the head of ‘Lightning batteries—remarkable invention,” stating that M_ Hippolete Charles Yion, of Paris, France, has invented and patented certain contrivances for bringing down from the atmosphere natural electricity, to be used as a motive power for various purposes, and that in level countries it is to be brought down with a balloon and conducting wire. As I claim priority of design, if not of doing the thing satisfactorily, although I have brought down electricity with a six feet diameter balloon and hempen cord, permit me to say how far my claim stands the proof of record.
“In the Fall of 1857 I wrote to Prof. Henry, Secretary of the-Smithsonian Institution, about it, and my wish of having it tried
*It looks so, being much lighter.
fl always found that to be the case as the storm crossed forests and moved along valleys.16
with a large balloon, that would go a mile or two high, with metallic tractors and conducting wire to bring it down to the earth. September 26th, 1857, Prof. Henry answered me. He says: ‘ It is a fact, established by abundant experiment and observation, that the difference of electrical intensity between the surface of the earth and the atmosphere increases as we ascend in the latter. If we were to suspend a copper wire to a balloon, the lower end of which is insulated at the surface of the earth, the quantity and intensity of the electricity which would be given off from the lower extremity of the wire, would increase with the elevation of the balloon, though the law of the increase with the elevation is not yet known. I doubt whether a sufficient quantity of electricity, for practical purposes, could be obtained in the way you propose. The electricity of the atmosphere, though greater in intensity, is very small in quantity, according to the experiments of Faraday, Pouillet, and others. I would not wish, however, to discourage your experiments. It would give me much pleasure to see you in Washington, and to have a long talk on the subject of atmospheric phenomena, &c., &c.’
“In April, 1858, I made my visit to Washington accordingly. I spent several days with Prof. Henry, and after stating to him all I knew about thunderstorms and atmospheric phenomena, so far as I had observed and experienced the workings of nature, both in and outside oi the clouds, I proposed to build a balloon expressly for these experiments, to be conducted under the auspices of this learned philosopher—the Smithsonian Institution to furnish gas, conductors, ropes and meteorological instruments, and to this the Secretary at once agreed. The balloon was built and arrangements were instituted to make the experiments in August or September of 1858. Business, however, pressed so hard on him about that time, in bringing out his ‘report’ of the transactions under his charge, that it was necessary to defer these experiments until the next summer.
“ The following Summer, in May, 1859, I made an ascension with this balloon. It was labeled, or rather named, ‘Smithsonian,’ and bore the motto, ‘Pro scientia et arte.1 Having noted some remarkable phenomena during this voyage, such as an incipient thundercloud—the formation of a water-spout hanging down from this cloud—the increase of the cloud into a regular thundergust, and while sailing in the trail of the storm, that is in the rear of its ascending vortex, encountering large drops of rain dashing against the balloon and scintillating fire as they struck the balloon, it is needless to say I hurried down upon that demonstration. The ascension was publicly made from the Centre Square of Lancaster City, Pa. In the acknowledgment17
of this report to him, Prof. Henry said, ‘ I shall probably have a few weeks’ vacation this Summer, and would be pleased to make-some of the experiments with you which we contemplated last Summer. Please inform me when it would be most convenient for you to meet me.’
“When I received this cheering proposition from Prof. Henry to make the experiment of bringing down atmospheric electricity, with a view to its uses as a motor, I was busily engaged inmaking preparations for the great trans-continental balloon voyage, from St. Louis to the Atlantic seaboard, with the balloon ‘Atlantic,’ furnished by Mr. O. H. Gager, with whom I had entered into a contract for the directorship of that enterprise. Business matters of the Institution continually pressing upon Prof. Henry,, and the rebellion already developing itself like an incipient thunderstorm, was the cause of not making the experiment, and it was almost forgotten.
“ This is sufficient to show that America has the first claim to the practical idea of appropriating natural electricity as a motor for engines. A natural power capable of pulverizing rocks, splitting up trees, knocking down masonry, and ploughing up the earth, wants only to be properly understood, and properly harnessed, to make it subservient to human purposes.
“In June, of 1859, Prof. Henry, while speaking of meteorology,, at the Springfield meeting of the ‘American Scientific Association,’ said, in his discourse, that ‘he had conferred with Mr„ Wise, and thought that the success of the proposition to cross-the Atlantic ocean in a balloon was by no means improbable. And I look upon the balloon as a very important instrument in meteorology, and the observations of Mr. Wise have been of great value.’ ”
I make this digression from the present subject merely to show what the best authority on these matters thinks of my observations concerning them. And it will not be considered an inexcusable digression to state a circumstance showing how abstract science sometimes points out the places, modes and forms of things in advance of their realization. While Prof. Henry and myself were talking over the matter of thunderstorms,. Prof. Espy, then acting as meteorologist for the United States* Government, came into the room, upon which Henry asked him whether thunderstorms had any particular shape, to which Espy replied, ‘certainly they have, or ought to have;’ then pointing to me, said, ‘Wise ought to know that.’ Upon being requested to pencil a sketch of the shape of a thunderstorm on a sheet of paper, he drew precisely the same figure I had drawn the evening before as an illustration of the geometrical figure a storm presents to the eye of the aeronaut when sailing past its side.18
Like the beautiful and exact arch of the rainbow, as it spans its prismatic colors athwart the heavens, so has everything in nature its shapes, and its forms, and its ways of working, with an exactitude so unmistakable; and in every blade and flower—-the surging of the ocean—the rumbling of the earthquake—the motion and track of the planet, proclaiming throughout the universe that an intelligent power and Divine Providence directs and rules the heavens and the earth.
SILENT LIGHTNING.
'The phenomenon of silent lightning is one that has puzzled the researches of physicists. Some meteorologists contend that there is no such thing as 6istill lightning”—that it is the distance from the observer that causes the absence of its sound. Three nights ago I watched it for an hour, and it was then flapping in the distance and immediately overhead. The tops of the nimbus clouds were at times brightly illuminated. Most of the time the flashes were feeble but in very rapid succession. The day was sultry and hot, and this is always the case when still lightning plays among the clouds. Only once in thirty years did I observe this phenomenon in daytime. It flashed between the upper and lower cloud of a thunderstorm, and involved the whole aereil apparatus, but there was neither sound nor shock. It was of an orange color, resembling somewhat in its color and tremulous action the aurora borealis. It might properly be denominated electricity of feeble tension. Judging its nature and development from its appearances, it does seem to go upwards more than downwards; and it would seem from this to pass from the earth to the clouds.
I had in my experience one natural illustration of its real character. It occurred during the great balloon voyage from St. Louis, Mo., to Jefferson County, N. Y. The balloon was inflated on the first day of July, 1859, the day being very hot, and &t 7 P. M. the balloon ascended. It was new moon and at 9 P. M. we had nothing but starlight. My attention was now drawn to the illuminated appearance of the balloon. Every seam and every little mark upon it was made visible from its translucent character. It was filled with a pale, orange colored light^ enabling me to see the hour and minute hands of my watch, as well as to see the figures on the barometer. We carried this enveloped light all night. Being of feeble tension it died away in appearance in the dawn of the morning. During the night I saw in the -distant clouds—we passed through none that whole night—a flickering of silent electricity. After a while this changed into a thunderstorm, in which thunder and lightning were dis-19
•cernible in the distance. This is generally the case after the appearance of silent lightning, though not always. Sometimes simple showers follow the phenomenon of still lightning.
Now in the case of the phosphorescent matter carried along in the balloon, it would seem to have been taken from the earth— the heated earth—as the day was excessively hot; and having the same affinity for the hydrogen in the balloon that the still lightning has for the clouds, it developed itself in a similar manner, that is to say, by feeble illumination.
AN EXPLANATION OF STILL LIGHTNING.
In my late observations on still lightning, it seems to me to be explainable in this way. When the weather is calm, and the .sun shining hot all day upon the earth, its surface becomes overheated. This causes a sultry atmosphere, and after the setting of the sun this atmosphere becomes very humid, causing a lassitude of the animal system, well known to every intelligent person. Humid air being a slow conducting medium of electricity, conveys it up to the incipiently formed scattered clouds, where, by its feeble tension, and diffuse condition, it flickers in the clouds, and -darts from one to the other, as they stand related by their positive and negative conditions.
The lassitude we experience on these occasions arises from the loss of animal electricity—the vital force that strings our nervous system, and gives us power to live, and move, and work, and think.
It might properly be termed electricity of slow velocity, in distinction fom electricity of high velocity. The one kind might be compared to gunpowder spread out over a large surface and scattered, which, when fired, would be slow in motion; the other to gunpowder compressed within a small compass, which, when fired, would be quick in motion. From this view of the matter, subject as it must be to various modifications arising from the various degrees of condition in these atmospheric phenomena, we have a clue to the upward stroke of lightning—visible and invisible thunderbolts. It is only by close scrutiny and persevering observation that electrical phenomena are becoming reduced to scientific date. There are some authenticated accounts of persons being shocked—knocked over, and convulsed by upward strokes, in which there were no electrical explosions, as in the case of thunderbolts, but all these cases are shrouded in mystery, so far as a knowledge of their scientific causes is concerned. That silent lightning plays a different part from that of «explosive lightning, is clearly evident.
Such is also the case with fire—combustion. We have fire that20
burns the hand when touched, and we have fire that may be* touched with impunity. Eremacausis, is the term for this innocent kind of fire. It is the technical word for slow combustionr such as we find in rotten wood—known as “fire wood”—in the* firefly, and rotten fish, &c. Chemistry teaches us that eremacau-sis is nothing different from that of the firebrand under the dinner pot, except in degree. One is slow, or feeble combustion— the other is violent, or intense combustion. Such it would seem to me, as far as close observation teaches, to be the difference; between silent lightning and explosive lightning; and in both cases of comparison, the feeble or inactive may merge into the violent or intense condition. Spontaneous combustion is nothing* more than a change from slow into quick combustion. Oiled rags* possess this chemical characteristic, but nevertheless subject in. their action as to rapidly, or slowly, merging from incipient into* mature combustion, as the author has good reason to know, by certain atmospheric changes.
A sudden change of atmosphere from dampness, into that of clear dry weather—as, for instance, the change from southeasterly winds to north westerly winds, such as make the electrical machine snap and crack with a vigor well known to electricians, is peculiarly favorable to spontaneous combustion of oiled textile fabrics. It has been the cause of many mysterious conflagrations, especially where lamp wipers, and machinery cleansing rags or cotton wastes have been thrown into a heap of rubbish.
EFFECTS OF SILENT LIGHTNING UPON VEGETATION.
The celebrated Duhamel du Monceau states that this silent, lightning breaks ears of corn on the stock, and that farmers are well acquainted with this fact. He says, on the 3d of Septem-tember, 1771, there was much lightning in the morning, and that he found nearly all the ears of corn in his field broken off at the nearest knot. The only ears which remained standing were the green ones. There are a great many instances of this kind recorded, such as the barking of trees during thunderstorms, supposed to be the effect of silent lightning.
The Abbe Eicaud says: “On the 2d of July, 1750, at three o’clock in the afternoon, being in the Church of St. Michael, at Dijon, during a storm, I saw appear suddenly between the first two pillars of the principal nave, a red flame, which was suspended in the air at the height of three feet from the floor. This* flame then gradually augmented its volume until it attained the height of from twelve to fifteen feet. After having risen through several fathoms in a diagonal direction, nearly to the height of21
the organ gallery, it disappeared with an explosion like the report of a cannon discharged in the church.”
We find another instance of electrical luminosity among the many that might be recorded of still lightning, in the report of Major Sabine and Captain James Eoss, in their first North-pole expedition, while in the Greenland seas. During one of the dark nights of those regions, they were called up by the officer of the deck to observe a very extraordinary phenomenon. Ahead of the vessel, right in the course then steering, there appeared a stationary light, resting on the water and rising to a considerable height, while every other part of the heavens, all around the ship, was as dark as pitch. And as these navigators knew no danger likely to result from such phenomenon the course of the wessel was not altered. When the ship entered the region of this 'light the vessel became illuminated, so that the minutest parts of the rigging became visible. The extent of this luminous space was about four hundred and fifty yards, and when the ship emerged from it, it seemed suddenly to have been plunged into thick darkness. Behind there remained this luminous spot quite stationary. These gentlemen communicated this fact to M. Arago. He simply replied, “The cause of these phenomena, to use the beautiful expression of Pliny, is still hidden in the majesty of nature.”
Still lightning, ball lightning, and we might say, spear lightning, were all known even to the ancients, and long before electricity had taken its place among the sciences. The points of spears of the ancient soldiers were frequently illuminated by electricity, and sometimes a great battle was lost to the party who had the misfortune to be the recipients of this phenomenon, because the soldiers looked upon it as an evil omen, and thus considered themselves only marching to a forlorn hope. When these ball lightnings flicker in pairs at the ends of the ship’s yard arms, the sailors call them Castor and Pollux; when single, they call it Helen. The latter is deemed an evil omen, the former a favorable presage.
It is frequently said that there are strokes of lightning from the earth to the clouds. As regards forked lightning, such as we term thunderbolts, or zig-zag lightning, there are no well attested cases reported in the authorities on this subject. But it would appear that there is a class of phenomena of lightning effects, such as persons being shocked, and struck, and charged, that would indicate that electricity at times proceeds from the earth towards the clouds.
In the neighborhood of Cold-Stream, on the 10th of July, 1785, a storm broke out about noon, and Brydone, being on the ground, relates the following circumstance: A woman who was22
cutting grass on the banks of the Tweed, was suddenly thrown down without any apparent cause. She called her companions-, to her and stated to them that she had received a sudden and violent blow on the soles of her feet, but whence it came she could not tell, as there was no thunder and lightning at the time. At the same time a shepherd saw one of his sheep fall suddenly down, and on examining it found it stiff and dead. At this time a storm was approaching in the distance. Two coal wagons,, driven by boys, seated on the benches of them, had just crossed the Tweed, and were in the act of ascending the opposite bank,, when a loud explosion was heard, but unattended by rolling thunder. At the moment of the explosion the boy who droves the hinder wagon saw the foremost one with the two horses and driver fall suddenly to the ground, the coal scattered around in every direction. The horses and driver were instantly killed. The coal had the appearance of having been in the fire. The points where the wheels rested on the ground were found to bn pierced with circular holes, which Brydone says emitted an odor resembling ether. The hair on the legs and bellies of the horses, was singed, and from their appearance as they lay it was evident-that they were struck suddenly dead, so that no life remained when they touched the ground. The body of the driver was. scorched, and his clothes were reduced to rags. A strong odor proceeded from them.
All the witnesses of this disaster agreed, that no luminous appearance attended its occurrence. A sound was heard, but no light was seen. This seems to have been one of the rare classes of electrical phenomena passing from the earth towards the clouds..
From all the observations by the writer, it would seem to him as a logical proposition that the earth is endowed with a normal portion of electricity—-rendering it positive in relation to the air above it. That an accumulation of heat on any given space of the earth’s surface will cause an uprising vortex of air, carrying with it the electricity of this space, which is liberated suddenly by the condensation of the vapor carried from the surface of the earth to the higher and colder portions of the atmosphere, thus rendering these suddenly formed thunder clouds positive as related to the earth below them. In this view of the case we may have, as it seems we do have, reciprocations of positive and negative electricities between the earth’s surface and the cloud surface. When the sky is clear it must be negative as related to the earth. In such case the phenomenon of still lightning, ball lightning, and aurora borealis would be natural results. Upward strokes would also ensue, as in the case of the woman struck in the soles of her feet, she forming the conductor between the positively charged earth and the negatively charged cloud above.23
I have on several occasions been the subject of electrical phenomena in my own person. While combing my hair on one occasion with an India rubber comb, sparks and brushes of fire were emitted, and it continued to do so for several hours, whenever the comb was run through my hair. At another time the tips of my fingers emitted a bright light upon touching the plaster of the walls of the house. When I would draw my fingers dowrn the wall, streaks of fire would shine in their track. At another time, in going to a wardrobe where a black silk dres& was hanging, the dress emitted flashes of fire on being shaken. And at another time, coming home late at night in frosty weather, I threw my blue cloth cloak on a highly polished mahogany table, when it emitted a copious flash of fire. I repeated it, and found each successive time the flash grew weaker. I have also seen corruscations of electricity playing around the safety valve of a Locomotive engine on the Cumberland Yalley railroad. There was steam escaping from the valve at the time. The engineer, Mr. Cockley, who drew my attention to it, informed me it always happened so when a thundergust was pending in the neighborhood.
EFFECTS OF LIGHTNING
The housewife has a tradition that the breakfast milk is curd-died from the effects of the thunder and lightning of the night, previous. Many electricians looked upon these notions of milk curdling suddenly-^-bread in a state of ferment souring—eggs in the process of incubation being rendered inert, &c., arising from electricity, as being too absurd for scientific consideration— looking upon it with the indifference and contempt that the Royal Society did upon Franklin’s idea of drawing lightning from the clouds with a kite. Modern discoveries, however, verify the humble family tradition. It is now well ascertained that electricity generates ozone. This ozone gives rise to the sulphurous, smell we perceive in places where thunderbolts have struck. The same smell is perceptible when we knock two flint stones together, and when we rub a glass tube to excite positive electricity, or 3ls it develops itself at the rubber of an electrical machine when put in motion.
Ozone is air holding a double portion of oxygen in its composition. It is called “alotropic condition of the atmosphere.’* The author has often smelled it when passing through clouds, and has at times been made hoarse as a pond frog by inhaling it. It is this powerful acidifying agent that causes sourness of milk, &c., during thunderstorms.
For a long time physicists supposed that there was such a thing24
as cold strokes of electricity. Franklin adopted this theory even to the belief of the cold fusion of metals, endeavoring in this way to account for some anomalous freaks of lightning. The march of science soon dissipated these erroneous notions, showing that lightning may strike metals and melt them, and at other times strike metals and not melt them. In the former case the electric fluid is arrested, and thus spends its force upon the metal, causing it to heat, weld, fuse, and sometimes vaporize. In the latter the metal escapes this heating power by having a line of conduction to the fluid, and thus spreads, dissipates, and equalizes it over the surface of the adjacent earth.
The power of lightning to fuse metals was known to the ancients. Pliny, Aristotle, Seneca and others speak of it. Seneca says that the coin in a purse was fused, while the purse was not injured in the least, and that a sword was melted in its scabbard without touching the sheath. Pliny gives an instance where a bag of silver and copper money that was sealed up was melted by lightning, and that the bag was unburnt and the sealing wax unmelted. From such facts Franklin deduced the doctrine of cold fusion, believing that metals could be liquified without heat. And to this day you may hear persons relating circumstances of cold strokes of lightning. There is no such thing as fusion of metals without heat.
Lightning welds metals, as well as fuses them. On the 20th of April, 1807, a windmill was struck by lightning in Lancashire; the fluid ran down a chain used as an elevator, heating and softening the chain to such 'a degree, that its own weight caused the welding of the links into one rigid bar of iron. Such instances could be multiplied without number, as recorded in the works on this subject.
Lightning also melts the sand where the thunderbolt descends from the clouds to the sandy plain beneath. Such vitrifactions are termed fulgurites. They are hollow conical tubes, inside coated, or enamelled, with a smooth coating of glass, hard enough to strike fire with a flint. The finding of these curiosities gave rise to the belief of the thunder stone; and at the present day many persons believe the thunderbolt to be a missile of this character—mistaking the effect for the cause.
MECHANICAL EFFECTS OF LIGHTNING.
Some years ago the house of Alexander Danner, in the city of Lancaster, was struck by lightning. In company with Franklin Keigart, the author made an examination of the premises. The house was a one story brick building, with shingle roof. In the roof there was a sheet of tin, having been put there to replace a25
decayed shingle. Immediately in front of the house, upon the ^eurb line, stood a buttonwood tree, towering above the house. The bolt struck into the top of this tree, ran down one of the two main branches of it to the crotch below, from whence it glanced off, and right across the pavement on to the sheet of tin above mentioned, knocking a hole of an inch in diameter through ’the tin, and leaving scars on the crotch of the tree. From the tin it darted back some distance, to the tin water trough at •the eave of the roof; from this point it run right and left, leaving at various places on the tin water trough holes one-tenth of an inch in diameter. At the left termination of the water trough it darted on to the wooden cornice, and shivered it, as well as knocking out several bricks from the wall under the cornice. At the other end of the water trough it descended down the water conductor to its end, about two feet from the water pan in the pavement; from the end of the water conductor it darted on the 'water pan, turning it upside down and burrowing a hole in the ground immediately under the spot the pan occupied, much like a hole made by a post-hole auger.
Many curious theories have been propounded in explanation of the effects of lightning in its anomalous freaks of action upon matter struck by it. Its force will pulverize stones, disintegrate trees, perforate metal plates, melt the most refractory metals, evaporate gold and silver, kill animals, &c. The most rational conclusion we can arrive at, as regards the mode of its mechanical effects, is that it obeys the same dynamic laws of all other matter and forces. It glances like a cannon ball—flies off at a “tangent—rebounds—follows the course of least resistance; in--deed, it seems to obey all the behests of other moving bodies, and varies only from others in that its velocity is superior to any ether mundane moving bodies.
LIGHTNING CONDUCTING BODIES.
That some substances are better conductors of lightning than ethers is well attested in the course that it pursues when liberated. It will break through solid bodies of wood and stone to get to a body of metal; and we may safely lay down the rule, that from the best conductors, such as charcoal, metals, wet earth, water and fires, to the best non-conductors, such as glass, silk, feathers, dry wood, &c., there is a regular gradation of electrical attraction. "When lightning follows a conductor of any kind, and such conductor comes to an abrupt end, an explosion invariably takes place.
Lightning struck the rod of Mr. West’s house, in Philadelphia, ^and at the place where its lower extremity entered the dry ground,26
about five feet below the surface, an explosion took place. The pavement in the vicinity being wet, it gave it the appearance of being on fire, the flame covering it for several yards.
An instance is related of lightning striking the steeple of St.. Bride’s Church, in London, doing great damage. The weathercock was first struck; from that the bolt descended along a bar of iron buried among the massive stones of which the steeple was> built. This bar was two inches thick and twenty feet long, ite lower end terminating in a cavity in a stone five inches deep,, secured by lead. The gilding on the cross and weather-cock was nearly all destroyed—what remained was blackened. The? soldering was fused. Along the bar which it descended it left-no visible trace, but at its lower extremity, where the continuity' ended, the marks of violence were visible. The stone was shattered to pieces, and at this point a large breach was made in the-wall of the steeple. From this point the bolt leaped from one* iron clamp to the other immediately under it, and so on to the? next proximate one binding the large stones together in the masonry, splitting and pulverizing some, and hurling others, from their places, leaving general destruction in its track.
Some modern philosophers contend that there is no such thing' as an electric fluid, but that it is the motion of the ultimate particles of matter. This idea is not reconcilable with the effects of the thunderbolt, unJess we allow in this theory that the ultimate-atoms of matter fly from their gravitating centres. If it were the-ultimate atoms of iron composing‘a bar that became welding, hot by the action of lightning, there must have been something; to put these atoms into corpuscular action. True it is that some-electrical phenomena develop themselves in such a way as to* apparently put all known laws at defiance. But does this notarise from the fact that we are not perfected in the understanding; of natural laws. In another century they may be as comprehensible as are at present the laws that spring from atmospheric pressure.
Before the invention of the barometer the law of the suction*, pump was a mystery. The explanation was that nature abhors a vacuum. But, says an astute philosopher of that day, “it. abhors a vaenum only to the extent of thirty-four feet.” So* with the often anomalous play of electricity. It acts only in some cases beyond our ability to trace its peculiar characteristics.
A volume might be written to illustrate the freaks of lightning, and many, no doubt, will yet occur before mankind shall have as good an understanding of its nature and habitudes as we? have of some other physical sciences. When we shall become more acquainted with the nature and laws of electricity, we will2>27
no doubt, be enabled to avoid many of the ills and ailments from which we suffer. Already electropathy is adopted in the healing art, but it is the blind leading the blind as yet, for, like a two-edged sword, it cuts both ways, and requires to be better understood before it can be reliably applied in the profession of the healing art.
LIGHTNING HODS.
Having noticed some of the well authenticated facts of the effects of electricity, let us now turn our attention to lightning rods, and investigate the nature and facts of their utility, and their protection in shielding our houses and other buildings from the destructive power of lightning. Many persons contend that lightning rods are of no use whatever. Some go so far as to say they are a positive injury—subjecting the buildings they surmount to continual danger of being struck by lightning—acting as tractors to the descending thunderbolt, and very often causing the destruction they were intended to avert. A great many buildings have been struck with lightning, and burned to the ground, upon which the lightning rod had peered, and drew, as it were, the descending bolt to its metallic surface, when it would otherwise have taken a different direction. Whatever the merits of the lightning rod may be, it was never designed to be struck~ That would be like averting the effects of a cannon shot by attempting to catch the ball on the point of a bayonet. Jugglers, perform this feat, but sensible people look upon it as a trick. The efficient way of averting the cannon shot is to draw the charge silently, or else plug up the touch-hole with a rat-tail file.
If we attempt to draw a comparison for or against the rod by the number of buildings struck by thunderbolts and burned or shattered by its effects, which had lightning rods on them, and the number struck that had no rods on them, it tells a tale against, the lightning rod.
In searching the records of ancient times, before the invention of the lightning rod, to ascertain the comparative amount of injury done by thunderbolts, and comparing with the injury dona from the same cause since its invention, we shall again be confronted with the fact that in these later days the vengeance of Jupiter is more potent, and more frequent, than it was when the bell ringers used to scare him off with the clamor of the church bells. Like the weather and the moon, in fifty years comparison of the fulfillment and non-fulfillment of the predictions of the weather by the signs of the moon, the moon loses, its glory by a decided majority against it. With meteorologists the moon theory of weather prediction is a dead letter, and yet28
sail this time the farmer consults his almanac to ascertain the up-going and downgoing of the moon in order to make a good deposit in seed time. The housewife, not to be behind the times, looks to the almanac prediction for clear weather in order to have a good time for general washing day. And so it is with the lightning rod. "When the house is built, and the outside and inside completed and finished in detail, the proprietor feels like putting the finishing stroke to it in the erection of the lighting rod, and very often it does finish the edifice.
The vineyards of France being very subject to destruction from hail storms, their owners adopted some years ago their system of paragreles, being nothing more than little lightning rods erected on bean poles, believing that they would equalize the electricity of the clouds with that of the earth, and by that intervention prevent these destructive hail storms. They found, however, that despite of the paragreles, the hail storm destruction continued. Upon this, the philosopher Arago suggested that these conductors, or rods, be raised to a great elevation by balloons. While it was conceded that Arago’s method would remedy the evil, it never got into use because of its expensiveness. Here then, we have one of the first philosophers in the world maintain ing the doctrine, that in order to make the lightning rod efficient in disarming the surcharged cloud of its hail-forming power, the point of the rod should penetrate the very magazine of thunder and lightning.
The thunderbolt has ever been viewed as pending over our person or property, in the same light that we would view a cannon loaded with powder and ball, poised and trained directly upon us, ready to be fired by accident or incident, as the case might be, wanting only the spark at the touch-hole. What -would be our remedy in such case to avert the pending danger? The cannon is too heavy to be removed! Then it must be disarmed ? The charge must be drawn. How ? Certainly not on us. So reasoned Franklin. How then is it to be drawn? Why silently. Drawn with the screw ramrod, as the gunner draws it from the cannon, when he does not want to fire it upon any body. How is this to be done in the case of the cloud poised five to .«even hundred yards above us. Why, as Arago says: point your paragreles into the clouds, and draw the surcharge of the positive cloud into the negative earth, and thus restore the electrical equilibrium between the two surfaces, that of the cloud, and that of the earth in juxtaposition.
Will not the ordinary lightning rod do this ? That is the question. When the thunder clouds run low enough to scrape the tops of our buildings, the rods surmounting them will draw off the electricity silently—they will even be pointed with a minute29
blue flame while doing this. Such conditions of thunder storms, are of rare occurrence. They are the exceptions to the rule~ But, says Franklin, will not this take place by induction. And so say, or rather, ash, many electricians. The author maintains» it will not. It can not by induction through a space of one or two thousand feet disarm the surcharge cloud. Induction acts, only in proximate series.
On a succession of clouds, one close above the other, piled up as it were from earth to heaven, it would act to disarm, and that, silently, by induction. The side of the cloud nearest the rod would be negatived by giving up to the rod its surcharge. This would render the other, rather the upper side, negative, and the-negative side of this would, in its turn, render the proximate side of the cloud next above it positive, causing it to give up its surcharge to its negative neighbor below, just as the lowest cloud' gives it up.to the lightning rod. This is a very pretty theory as, to thunderclouds, but an untenable one as to the vacant space between the earth and the thundercloud in ordinary thunderstorms.
The advocates of the induction theory fail to establish this» when they admit that air is a non-conductor. If the clear space between the earth and the cloud would conform itself into this condition, i. e., arrange itself into series of electrical strata, we should never see the bolt come crashing through it, taking the rod for a target in its course, in case the bolt happens to come near to it in its downward course to the earth. The bolt striking the rod is fortuitous, inasmuch as the rod is near its line of direction, and metal being more tractive to electricity than wood or mineral, air or earth, passes the fluid onward. As the induction theory fails to meet the case in matter of fact, as well as in. matter of strict electrical science, it remains to be proved that, the rod acts as a preventive of harm from thunderbolts. If the ratio of buildings destroyed and damaged by lightning which had rods on them did not hold equal—at least equal—pace with the number destroyed or damaged which were without rods^ the question might rest here. But, as before mentioned, it tells-a tale against the rod, and thus science attempts to suggest a mode for the erection of lightning rods that will shield our property from the descending bolt. The ordinary rod will not accomplish this. Its lower extremity buried five or six feet in the earth will not enable it to diffuse the electric fluid into the earth,, but will, on the other hand, cause it, by recoil, to leave the rod and dart upon the next best proximate conductor, and this i& often the human body. Yery often, in such cases, the metallic-jewelry worn about the person is melted or partly fused. In other cases the recoil electricity, darting and flashing from the30
rod, scintillates upon the straw thatch of the barn, on the furze of old shingles, or some other proximate combustible, setting it on fire. Although the thunderbolt seems to play, in numerous observed cases, very contrary and anomalous parts, a strict investigation always shows that it invariably obeys the known dynamic laws of motion which govern all moving bodies.
The seeming exception to these laws arises from its greater velocity—what it lacks in solidity of body, it more than makes up in superior velocity.
It is now adopted as sound philosophy that motion and heat .are convertible terms. That a solid body may, by a high velocity, be converted into thin vapor—dissolved into its elements— into heat.
The revelations of the spectroscope in* observations upon the csun indicate the absence of oxygen in that body; and as our terrestrial chemical philosophy teaches us that there can be no combustion without oxygen gas, it follows that there must be some other way of decomposition of the materials that keep up the heat and power of that body than by the aid of that gas. Hence, the theory of velocity—that is to say, the inconceivable motion, or the gravitating rapidity with which meteors, comets and worlds rush into the body of the sun, being by such great speed, say two hundred thousand miles in a second, converted into gas, accounts for the heat of that luminary, which is continually dispensing to its family of subordinate planets, heat and light. .Such velocity modern philosophy assigns to the thunderbolt as its vis inertia.
A cannon ball, of one hundred pounds weight, moving at the rate of eight miles per minute, (the average velocity of cannon balls,) would not exert as much force in striking anything, as would a buckshot, moving with the velocity of a thunderbolt. Hence it takes but a very small quantity of lightning to knock 4he life out of a man or a beast. The riving of trees, the pulverizing of massive stones, the forming of fulgurites, the melting -of metals, and the many other wondrous feats that lightning performs, are not so strange when we take into consideration the great velocity with which it moves. What the substance is we know not, and in the words of Pliny we can only say, it lies concealed within the majesty of nature.
The attempt to arrest or to negate the violence of the thunderbolt, darting from the clouds to the earth, is futile. The lightning rod that intercepts its path shares the same fate that any .similar substance shares in being struck; it is twisted, wrenched from its fastenings, melted into drops, and only tells the tale that £ he rod was struck, instead of something else. How often do we81
see the effects of lightning where no rod is near, with nothing more than a rail or post split in pieces—a stone crushed to powder—a chain of iron fused into a solid bar; all these freaks accomplished by a very small quantity of matter coming with a very great velocity. The fires that it kindles, and the lives that it destroys, are what give it its terrors, together with the roaring -of the thunder that accompanies it. And yet with all this terrible array of its powers of destruction, the damage of property .and loss of life from it are not a drop in the bucket compared with the destruction of property and loss of life caused by steam boiler explosions.
The lightning rod, as used for the protection of ships at sea is the most perfect rod in use, and when terminating in contact with a ship’s bottom that is coppered, ought to be never-failing, if the theory of the lightning rod is correct. The author is not certain that ships’ rods are so terminated. They run from the mast head down and over the side of the ship into the water, and ought to connect with the copper on its bottom. Nevertheless ships are struck with thunderbolts while at sea, sometimes shattered, at others burned up, having rods on them, just as ships are without them.
To say that a lightning rod was struck upon a house, and that the house received no serious damage, proves nothing more than does the house that was struck having no rod on it, and suffered no serious damage. We could multiply such instances of rod .and no rod impunity to thunderbolts. It is a fact patent to all observers of lightning phenomena. As long as the thunderbolt ■exhibits its partiality to buildings with rods as generously as it does to buildings without them, the philosophy of lightning rod protection fails to establish its peculiar claim, and more especially so when we take into consideration the other view of the case, wherein buildings with rods peering on them are burned down as well as buildings without them. Even in the ship’s rod we have this anomaly. The foremast of the ship Endymion was .struck by a bolt at Calcutta, in March, 1842. The mainmast, not fifty feet distant, had on it a lightning rod, which failed to perform its office. Again, the bow of the ship Etna was struck ,at Corfu, January, 1830, although the mainmast carried a lightning rod. Many instances of this kind are noted of buildings on land, notwithstanding electrical authority puts down the rule that the area protected is equal to four times the diameter of the distance from the point of the rod to the plane where it enters the earth. Thus, if the point of the rod is one hundred feet above the ground, a space four hundred feet in diameter comes under its protection. ¡So said the Physical Section of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. Experience and the thunderbolt have long32
ago proven this as erroneous as is the prediction of the weather by the old fashioned Dutch almanac.
The thunderbolt generally darts upon the highest points, but not always so; sometimes it takes the middle of the height-There are instances recorded, where persons in the upper story of a building were struck dead by a thunderbolt, while persons in the story below were unharmed.
The Cathedral of Milan was struck by a thunderbolt^ also the; lighthouse at Genoa, both damaged, and both surmounted by lightning rods of the most approved construction. These many contradictions of the theory and utility of the lightning rod-caused many people to discard them altogether, while others, cling to the belief of their utility, as do the believers in the up-going and down-going of the moon in reference to seed time and harvest.
It is not the intention of the author to make out a case for or against the lightning rod, but to give facts as they occur and allow the intelligent observer to draw his own conclusions. The subject has puzzled philosophers from the days of Pliny down to the-present, and we must be content with the facts revealed by nature, noting them from time to time, because, as yet, the science of the lightning rod is as vague and undefined as is the science of the “nebular hypothesis.”
It is considered dangerous to erect lightning rods on powder magazines. The sparks scintellated from a thunderbolt, it is* said, might ignite some powder accidently lodged in some projection or crevice of the building. Consequently it has been, proposed to erect the rods away from such buildings, or, as suggested by Dr. Lardner, to have a number of rods placed around the building some distance away from it.
In defence of the rod, M. Arago states, that the temple of Jerusalem stood from the time of Solomon till the year 70 of the Christian era, a period of over 1000 years—that it was fairly exposed to the violent storms of Palestine, and that it was never struck by lightning, as neither the Bible nor Josephus mentions any such accident. As it was covered with wood within and without it would in all probability have been fired had a thunderbolt struck it. Its preservation is explained in this way. The^ roof of the temple was made of cedar wood, and the wood was covered with thick gilding. From end to end the roof was-adorned with long upright spears of steel pointed and gilt. These, the architect put on to prevent birds from defiling the roof. These metallic spears connecting with the gilding of the roof, and the gilding again connecting with the metallic water pipes for draining the roof, and these copper pipes again connecting with the water pools under the porch of the temple, constituted, not33
by design, but fortuitously, paratonerres, and, it may be added, more perfectly arranged than the lightning rod of the present day. It is a rare thing, at the present day, to hear of a metallic covered roof being injured by a thunderbolt. And if, like the Smithsonian Institution building, at Washington, such roof, lightning rod, and water conductor, be connected by metallic chain or rod to the street water pipes, it ought to act as a complete protection from the effects of thunderbolts. Such however is not always the case. When the surcharge of the cloud above is greater than the capacity of the metallic surface to absorb it, or diffuse it, or equalize it over the surface of the earth, the surplus will be driven into some projecting point or corner, just as the red hot cinders are driven from the glowing bar of iron under the blacksmith’s hammer.
Large metallic surfaces will diffuse the lightning of intensity, into lightning of feeble tension; that is to say, it spreads out over its surface, and thus disarms it of its force. To protect a building covered with wood or other combustible covering, broad bands of copper along the apex of the roof, running down the end of the building to water or gas pipes, would, no doubt, afford some protection to the edifice.
A very violent thunderstorm passed over the city of Paris, July, 1866. The atmosphere was black with dense clouds, which, dissolving rapidly into rain, caused the evolution of great quantities of lightning, and, as a natural sequence, the crashing of thunderbolts was frequent and terrific. In one instance it struck a gas pipe in the street, fused it and set fire to the gas, causing great consternation in the neighborhood. All this time the tops of the lightning rods were illumined with a lambent flame. The streets, say some of the papers of that day, were filled with Are, gliding along the water courses and blazing up from the sewers.
From the accounts as given, it would seem as though a reciprocal' action of electricity between the clouds and the surface of the earth was going on at the time.
A few years earlier than the Paris thunderstorm, several such passed over the cities of New York and Boston, leaving destruction in their tracks without regard to the averting influence of lightning rods—indeed it was more than surmised that the buildings with rods suffered the most. To this the rod advocates responded, “they were not put up right.” A person would naturally suppose that during the lapse of a hundred years from the time of the invention of the lightning rod, it ought to have arrived to a tolerable degree of perfection. Nevertheless, “the bell ringing,” in the shape of the lightning rod, goes bravely on, and just as bravely does Jupiter meet it with his thunderbolts.34
THUNDER-STORMS.
During the winter of 1857, I prepared a somewhat elaborate treatise upon thunder-storms, as I had observed them during my peregrinations through the atmosphere and clouds for fifteen years. It was afterwards re-published in full in the meteorological report of the U. S. records for that year, as presented officially by Prof. Espy, and is as follows:
Editor of the New York Tribune, Sir: A great deal has been written about storms—some from theoretical deductions, and some from fact. My purpose in this treatise is to relate the physical aspect of thunder-storms as viewed from above the clouds, from the surface of the earth, from their sides in mid-air, and from thè middle of their cauldrons. I have made diligent observations on these meteors for ten years past, and have read some theories concerning them; but as my object is mainly to give facts to the student of meteorology, I will confine my relation at present to that which devolved itself to the sense of seeing, hearing, feeling and smelling of these phenomena.
A storm viewed from above the clouds has the appearance of ebullition. The upper surface of the cloud is bulged upward and outward, and has the resemblance of a vast sea of snow, boiling and upheaving from internal convulsion. This view is from a point where the atmosphere is clear, around and above the storm. Immediately above the storm the air is not so cold as in a place where there is no cloud nor storm beneath. The falling of the rain can be heard by the person above the cloud, making a noise like a waterfall over a precipice. The thunder, as heard above the cloud, is not sonorous and loud, and the flashes of lightning appear like streaks of intensely white fire on a surface of snow-white vapor.
A side view of a storm—observed when it is a mile or two off, and somewhat lower than the point of observation—presents in form the shape of an hour-glass ; the picture of a water-spout also gives a good outline of its shape. In this well defined form it moves along over the earth. When the storm is so small that you can embrace its whole bulk at a single glance—which you can do, if you are several miles off, and a little more elevated than the meteor—it looks as though it were trailing its lower base along on the surface of the earth, the lower part dragging a little behind, and it presents an individuality which cannot be recognized when viewed from the ground. Although the storm is being moved along by the same current of wind that is drifting along the observer, it will be deflected from that course by its encountering a mountain ridge, or deep valley, just in proportion to the amount of lateral force or obstruction it sustain85
in such cases; and at the same time the observer, in a balloon, may continue in the even tenor of his current, while the storm has left him at a right angle. These side views of storms are very grand and imposing, as they rush past, or under, an elevated observer. A grand army of flying artillery at full gallop arrayed in all the panoply of war, could not produce so imposing a sight; over city, forest, river and plain, it goes with undaunted march.
A clear view from the side of a storm, and partly in it—that is, between the upper and lower cloud—reveals a very interesting physical aspect. The one now described occurred on the 3d of June, 1852, during a balloon excursion from Portsmouth, Ohio. The storm was hedging up the Ohio river, about fifty miles above Portsmouth, and where the river courses nearly north and south, while I was sailing from west to east. Moving at nearly right angle with the storm soon brought us together, and the country below being wide spread dense forest, the meteor’s company was preferred to a reception in the woods. It was easy to keep out of the vortex of the storm by the use of an abundant supply of ballast aboard of the air-ship; hence a point in its wake Avas the station from whence to observe its action: and having before learned that the shape of a storm was that of two cones joined at their apexes, with a wind driving into the lower end and rushing. out at the top, I might sail Avith impunity in its wake, provided I kept midAvay between the upper and lower cloud. When getting too Ioav in its Avake, there Avas a tendency to rock the balloon into the vortex, but this Avas countervailed by rising up near to the outspreading cloud. In this position the air was cold, and you are in the shadoAV of the upper cloud; but you may sink Ioav enough to reach the sun’s rays shining in betAveen the upper and loAver cloud. Although the sun was shining on me, the rain and small hail Avere pattering on the balloon. A rainbow was standing in and against the body of the meteor—or rather, a prismatically colored arch, the shape of a horse shoe, Avas reflected against it; and, as the point of observation'—the balloon—changed laterally and perpendicularly, the perspective of this golden grotto changed its hues and form.
Above and behind this gilded arch there was going on the most terrific thunder, much like the firing of great bomb-mortars, but no zig-zag lightning Avas visible there, only bright flashes like the explosion of “Roman candles” in fireworks, appeared.
Occasionally there would be a zig-zag explosion in the cloud beloAV, and the thunder therefrom sounded like a “feudejoie ” of a rifle corps. Once an orange colored wave of light seemed36
to fall from the upper to the lower cloud, and right over the balloon, but no sensible effect was produced by its contact. This was no doubt “still lightning.” There appeared all the time while in the storm, electrical action going on in the balloon, such as expansion, tremulous tension, attraction—by lifting papers out of the car ten feet below the body of the balloon, and hugging them to its body for a moment and then letting them drop off again; but as I had no instruments, I can only relate the things as they manifested themselves to my senses.
While, as stated above, a distant view of a storm is grand and imposing, a closer view of a great thunder-storm, such as this Ohio meteor, is truly sublime; although the rushing noise below caused by the rain dashing on the forest, and the thunder in its midst, is almost appalling.
The quantity and quality of Thunder, seem to be in proportion to the magnitude of the storm. A storm may be so limited in size as that there will be no electrical explosions, as I have frequently seen. In such case the developed electricity can be diffused and taken up by the immediate surrounding cloud formation. April and May showers are an exemplification of this fact. When the storm is of great magnitude, the central portion of its top becomes surcharged with electricity on account of the great quantity of air rushing up the vortex, that is drawn in below from a great area of surface, making the accumulated electricity in the top of the meteor too great for a silent absorption by the surrounding cloud surface, and hence explosions must follow, with terrific and rapid discharges of thunder ; and, moreover, the drops of rain that are suddenly formed from this dense vapor in the top of the cloud, also become surcharged with electricity, going off spontaneously, while they may also fall down through the clear space, which clear air is a non-conductor, and as soon as they reach the lower cloud, which I take to be negative, they give up their surplus—silently, if the capacity of the lower cloud is sufficient to absorb it, but explosively if it is insufficient; and it may fly off laterally, until dissipated; or it may glance downward to the earth. The physical facts here stated are as I saw them ; the rationale of explosion is conformed by the known play of electrichy, as divulged by the common electrical machine experiments.
A storm viewed from within its Cauldron—that is, from within its vortex, where the cloud vapor is driving upward to where it spreads out—is rather a terrible thing; and the very fact that you are caught up in the midst of one of nature’s laboratory furnaces, makes you feel resigned and determined to see the end thereof. It may be only terrible because we are not used to it;37
nevertheless, I would not like to enter one again for observation until science dictates, without a doubt, that we are not liable to annihilation or serious harm. [I have since come to the conclusion that there is no more danger in it, than outside of it.]
The one now to be described, is the result of a trip in the midst of a local storm of so limited dimensions, as to have had no electrical explosions during my stay of nineteen minutes within its bosom. This storm originated nearly over the town of Carlisle, Pa., on the 17th of June, 1843. I entered it just as it was forming. Its nucleus cloud above me was just spreading out as I entered the vortex below unsuspectingly. I was hurried into it so quick that I had no opportunity of viewing the surrounding outside, save its outspreading black and ragged edges, and must therefore coniine its description to its internal action. On entering the whirlpool, its rotary motion swung the balloon to and fro and round in a circle, causing a compound motion, and this was accompanied by a dismal howling noise, with an unpleasant and sea-sickening sensation. In a few moments more there was heard the falling of heavy rain below, resembling in sound the noise of a cataract. The color of the cloud, internally, was of a milky hue, somewhat resembling a dense body of steam in open air; and the cold in it was so sharp that my beard became bushy with hoar-frost. As there were no electrical explosions in this storm during my incarceration, it might have been borne comfortably enough, but for the sea-sickness occasioned by its rotary, swinging action. Still, I could hear and see, and even smell everything close around me. Little pellets of snow, with an icy nucleus when broken, were pattering-profusely around me in promiscuous and confused disorder, while slight blasts of wind* occasionally penetrated the cloud, as it were, laterally, notwithstanding the constant strong upmoving column of wind. The upmoving stream would carry the balloon up to a point in the upper cloud, where its force was expended by the outspreading of its vapor, whence the balloon would be thrown outward—fall down some distance—inside the vapor—then be drawn into the vortex, and again whirled up, only to repeat the former revolution, until I had gone through the cold furnace, or hail mill, after that fashion, seven or eight times; and all this time the smell of sulphur, or what is now termed ozone, was perceptible, and I was sweating profusely all this time, cold as the cloud was, from some unknown cause, unless it was from undue excitement. The last time of descent in this cloud the balloon fell through its base, where, instead of the pellets of snow, I encountered a drenching rain, and down through this into a clear field, and the storm passed on.38
This storm may have been aceompanied with electrical discharges after it left me, as it was increasing as it passed along—being much greater in its diameter when I came out than when I entered it. Next day I was informed by the people in the neighborhood of my descent, that it deposited two parallel trains of hail, some distance from each other, and corresponding to the line of the storm course.
I have frequently, since and before this occurrence, witnessed storms while up in the air at some distance from me, of this limited form—sometimes four and five at the same time in different parts of the heavens, and always in the months of May and June, and always without electrical explosions when they were small in dimensions. They are the meteors we know by the appellation of “ April showers.”
Thunder-storms viewed from the Earth, have not the characteristic shapes delineated to the eye of the observer, as when viewed sidewise from above. Neither does one discover the two plates of cloud joined in conic sections. The upper cloud can be seen rolling outward, and black clouds below drifting inward, but still the meteor seems to be merged into a common mass. By close observation and scrutiny, it will, however, appear manifest to an observer from below, that there are two plates, or layers of clouds in every thunder-storm. In watching clouds carefully from the earth, it will be observed that vivid zig-zag flashes and heavy peals of thunder, are always followed by sudden dashes of rain. The rain-drops, being positively charged with electricity, drop through a clear atmosphere, which is a non-conductor, into the lower cloud, which is negatively electrified; and if the shower is too copious for the lower cloud’s capacity to absorb it silently, explosions must follow, in the same way as the Leyden jar explodes its charge spontaneously when overloaded. Were it not for the lower cloud and its negative condition, the surcharged drops of rain would strike fire as they touched the ground.
Thunder-storms rage more violently as they pass over forests and moist places, and were it not for the deposition of rain as they pass along, their track would exhibit a parched condition. Over the sea they form water-spouts. A long drouth is adverse to the generation of a thunder-storm—on the other hand, a moist earth is promotive of one.
Thunder-storms are deflected from their courses, as well as retarded in their movement, by friction against the earth. Ascending from the earth in the rear of a storm, and mounting up a thousand feet or more above it, the balloon will soon override the storm, and may descend in advance of it. I have expe-39
rieneed this several times. The great eastward current drags the meteor, as it were, by the hair of its head, along in its course.
This treatise, as re-published in the U. S. Meteorological reports of Prof. Espy, drew the attention of meteorologists all over the civilized world: and why should it not, when it is the result of positive observations, though errors of sight and judgment it may contain.