The electrified leviathan: How humanity tamed the current to power the modern ship

“ And think, my hearers, for one moment, of the wonders of electricity. Here is a power which we name but do not know; which flashes through the sky, shatters great trees, burns buildings, strikes men dead in the fields; and we have learned to lead it, all unseen, from our house-tops to the earth; we tame this mighty, secret, unknown power into serving us as a a daily messenger; and no man sets the limits now to the servitude that we shall yet bind it down to. ”

“ The people of this generation have witnessed the most astounding development of electrical machinery, appliances and utilities. In every department of effort human genius has called forth this invisible, mysterious magician, electricity, to work the miracles of Omnipotence.
And so rapid and marvelous have been the discoveries that the human mind stands paralyzed with wonder and amazement and asks, What next? In discovering electricity man has discovered the working force of Deity, the right hand of Omnipotence, the word of creative power, and uses it in all fields of human effort. ”

“ The discovery and application of electricity is the most wonderful phenomenon that has ever been grasped by the human intellect, and we contend it is one of Jehovah's invisible agencies in nature, which He has permitted man to comprehend in part, and thus to prepare the mind to comprehend more fully the infinity of His power, and the nature of our relation to Him. ”

“ But all these benefits which the world reaps from photography have come to us from inventions. It is not the fruit so much of genius, as of that patient labor and research which is winning from Nature, day by day, secrets far more valuable to man than all her hidden treasures of gold and silver.
Within the memory of men not very old, a new power has, by the genius of inventors, been trained into the service of man. This power is electricity. ”

“ Our scientific world is indeed a world of wonders. Our electric telegraph flashes intelligence to us from England, a distance of sixteen thousand miles, in a couple of hours. By means of the telephone we can converse with each other while we are many miles apart. The phonograph brings to us again the voices of the dead just as they were spoken, and of the living who are at the other side of the broadest oceans. We can hear the Prince of Wales and Mr. Gladstone speaking in public assemblies, and bands of music playing fifty years ago. ”

“ And another great agent in the development of civilization was about to come. Electricity, which during all previous time had laughed at bonds, was soon to become man's slave, and to be made his purveyor of news. It is the story of this chaining of the lightning, and forcing it to become the swift conveyer of man's sayings and doings, that we have here to tell.
In the far remote period named—if we measure time by deeds, not by years—a packet-ship, the Sully, was making its deliberate way across the Atlantic from Havre to New York. ”

“ With the invention of steam as a locomotive power of great velocity, with the introduction of the cable, and later, the wireless telegraphy; with the mastery of these natural forces and their introduction in every part of the world, we see the old world being drawn nearer and nearer to us by ten thousand invisible cords of commercial interests, until shortly, probably within the lifetime of you and me, the once worn out and almost stranded wreck will be found quickened with new life and moored alongside us. ”

“ Who can help dreaming here, on the spot where we stand? For it is truly a marvellous romance of civilization, this Great Eastern and this Atlantic Telegraph cable. [Pg 264] Even should our age produce nothing else, it alone would be the triumph of our age."
As the work approached completion, public interest revived in the stupendous undertaking, and crowds of wonder-seekers came down from London to see the preparations for the expedition. Even if not admitted on board, they found a satisfaction in sailing round the great ship, in whose mighty bosom was coiled this huge sea-serpent. ”

“ Electricity is used in the navy for a great variety of purposes besides telegraphy. Our battleships are lighted by electricity, which is generated at a standard pressure of 220 volts. This current is transformed down for the searchlights, and also for the intricate systems of telephone, alarm, and firing circuits. The magazines containing the deadly cordite are maintained at a constant temperature of 70° F. by special refrigerating machinery driven by electricity,282 and the numerous fans for ventilating the different parts of the ship are also electrically driven. ”

“ Nevertheless, from the earliest moment in which it became known that electricity was akin to heat--that an interruption of the easy passage of a current produced heat--the minds of men were busy with the question of how to turn the tremendous fact to everyday use. Progress was slow, and part of it was accidental. The great servant of modern mankind was first an untrained one. It was a marked advance when the gaslights in a theater could be all lighted at once by means of batteries and the spark of an induction coil. ”

“ That which was utterly unknown to the most splendid civilizations of the past is in our time the chief power of civilization, daily engaged in making that history of a new era that is yet to be written in words. It has been demonstrated long since that men's lives are to be influenced not by theory, or belief, or argument and reason, so much as by that course of daily life which is not attempted to be governed by argument and reason, but by great physical facts like steam, electricity and machinery in their present applications. ”

“ Electric power is used for capstans, coaling winches, sounding machines, lifts, pumps, whether for drainage, fire extinction, or raising fresh water from the tanks, and for the mechanism for operating boats and torpedo nets. The mechanism for manipulating the great guns and their ammunition is hydraulic. Electricity was tried for this purpose on the battle cruiser Invincible, but was abandoned in favour of hydraulic power. But though electricity is apparently out of favour in this department, it takes an extremely important share in the work of controlling and firing the guns ”

“ Whether this mental action creates or develops a fluid akin to magnetism, is a question which may never be solved. Nor is it deemed important that it should be; and it may be as well to class it at once among the many things unknowable, as to waste valuable time in a vain effort to wrest the secret from Nature. Electricity is known as a great force in physical nature; and it is harnessed and made to perform many services to mankind. Like all the great forces of nature, it is invisible, except through its effects, and it defies analysis. ”

“ Already, half our science is occupied with matter that is invisible. From time to time some grand generalisation is proposed—electricity is now the evoked spirit which is to help us through our besetting difficulties—but, fast as the theory is formed, some new fact emerges that will not range itself within it ”

“ Thus there are vast highways and boulevards of electric currents passing from suns to planets and from planets to suns which are pathways to the stars and the great highways of eternity, on which invisible atoms, and perhaps invisible human souls, may pass from earth to suns and central suns. In the future, man will turn the searchlight of investigation upon electricity as the universal operating cause of all physical phenomena. He will solve the riddle of the universe by its subtle invisible forces. ”

“ Let but a slight disturbance occasion a vibration of the beam, and electricity shakes the stoutest heart with terror, at the might of its devastating power. [271] Heat melts the hardest rocks, and the earth trembles with volcanic strugglings; and actinic agency, being freed from its chains, speedily spreads decay over the beautiful, and renders the lovely repulsive.
We know matter in an infinite variety of forms, from the most ponderous metal to the lightest gas; and we have it within our power to render the most solid bodies invisible in the condition of vapour. ”

“ THE ELECTRIC CURRENT In the previous chapters we have dealt with electricity in charged bodies, or static electricity, and now we must turn to electricity in motion, or current electricity. In Chapter I. we saw that if a metal rod is held in the hand and rubbed, electricity is produced, but it immediately escapes along the rod to the hand, and so to the earth. In other words, the electricity flows away along the conducting path provided by the rod and the hand. When we see the word “flow” we at once think of a fluid of some kind, and we often hear people speak of the “electric fluid.” ”

“ The means by which this is accomplished is ingenious and surprising, since it means that the supply of electricity over a wire--seemingly the most subtle and elusive essence on earth--may be controlled like a stream from a cock, or the gas out of a burner. But this reduction of the current that makes the red glow in the clusters in a theater is by no means the only instance. The trolley-car, and even the common motor, may be made to start very slowly, and the unseen current whose touch kills is fed to its consumer at will. ”

“ Great magnetic power having been developed by passing a galvanic current around a bar of soft iron, Faraday concluded that it was reasonable to suppose that as mechanical action is accompanied by an equal amount of reaction, electricity ought to be evolved from magnetism. ”

“ There is often a pecuniary reward for the servant of science. Just as often there is not, and the work done has been the same.
It was on Christmas morning, 1821, that Faraday first succeeded in making a magnetic needle rotate around a wire carrying an electric current. He was the discoverer of benzole, the basis of our modern brilliant aniline dyes. In 1831 he made the discovery he had been leading to for many years--that of magneto-electric induction. All we have of electricity that is now a part of our daily life is the result of this discovery. ”

“ CHAPTER XVIIToC POWER, AND VARIOUS OTHER ELECTRICAL MANIFESTATIONS
It would be difficult to mention any direction in human activity where electricity does not serve as an agent in some form or manner. Man has learned that the Creator gave this great power into the hands of man to use, and not to curse.
When the dynamo was first developed it did not appear possible that it could generate electricity, and then use that electricity in order to turn the dynamo in the opposite direction. It all seems so very natural to us now, that such a thing should practically follow; but man had to learn this. ”

“ Among the greatest triumphs of Faraday was his discovery of the converse of the production of magnetism by electrical current; I mean the production of current by magnetism. After long attempts, he found that if a magnet was moved into, out of, or in the neighborhood of a coil of wire forming a complete circuit, then a current of electricity was induced, as he put it, in the coil during the motion of the magnet. This is the germ of our dynamo-electric machines which to-day supply all the current for our light, power and electric traction. ”

“ Just as water tends to flow from the higher level to the lower level, so positive electricity has the tendency to flow from the conductor of higher to that of lower potential. The mechanical meaning of the term potential will be discussed in the following chapter; for the present it must suffice to note that as long as the two conductors are kept at a difference of potential by the working of the frictional machine, a current of electricity will flow from the positive to the negative conductor through the wire joining them. ”

“ When water flows along a pipe we know that it is being forced to do so by pressure resulting from a difference of level. That is to say, a difference of level produces a water-moving or water-motive force; and in a similar way a difference of potential produces an electricity-moving or electro-motive force, which is measured in volts. If we wish to describe the rate of flow of water we state it in gallons per second, and the rate of flow of electricity is stated in amperes. Volts thus represent the pressure at which a current is supplied, while the current itself is measured in amperes. ”

“ By this we mean that to get the current through the wire the force which is pushing the electricity from one end to the other is much smaller with silver than with lead; silver offers less "resistance" to the flow of electricity than lead. Thus each conductor has a certain physical property called its electric resistance, and this depends on the length and section of the conductor, on its temperature and on its material. In order to compare different materials as regards resistance, we must eliminate those elements which may vary from case to case and reduce all to the same standard. ”

“ A stout wire will transfer a bigger quantity in unit time than a thin wire, or, as we may also say, it is able to carry a bigger current. When it is a question of electricity in motion the conductor must have body, whilst as we have seen, with electricity at rest only the surface counts, or, to speak more correctly, only the capacity counts. ”

“ The vibrations of electricity are accomplished rapidly, and without loss. Those of heat are slow, and greatly radiated. When a current of electricity reaches a place in the conductor where it cannot pass easily, and the orderly vibrations of its molecules are disturbed, they are thrown into the disorderly motion known as heat. So, when the conductor is not so good; when a large wire is reduced suddenly to a small one; when a good conductor, such as copper, has a section of resisting conduction, such as carbon ”

“ An electric current manifests itself by heating the wire or conductor, by causing a magnetic field around the conductor245 and by causing chemical changes in a liquid through which it may pass.
Note.—Statics is that branch of mechanics which treats of the forces which keep bodies at rest or in equilibrium. Dynamics treats of bodies in motion. Hence static electricity is electricity at rest. The earth’s great store of electricity is at rest or in equilibrium. ”

“ To know has become a part of the sum of life; to understand or to abandon is the rule. When the ages of tradition, of assertion without the necessity for proof, of content with all that was and was right or true because it was a standard fixed, went by, the age not necessarily of steam, or of steel, or of electricity, but the age of thought, came in. Some of the results of this thought, in one of the most prominent of its departments, I shall attempt to describe.
A wire is the usual concomitant in all electrical phenomena. It is almost the universally used conductor of the current. ”

“ In passing through a very long wire an electric current becomes greatly reduced in strength owing to the resistance of the wire. If two telegraph stations are a great distance apart the energy of the current thus may be unequal to the task of making the electro-magnet move the lever of the sounder so as to produce a click, but this difficulty is overcome by the use of an ingenious arrangement called a “relay.” It consists of a very small electro-magnet which134 attracts a light bar, the movement of the bar being made to close the circuit of another battery at the receiving station. ”

“ The wire may be a carbon filament, or a filament of tantalum, tungsten, or other highly refractory metal. Whatever the substance used for the filament of a lamp, it is subject to the same influence as any other conductor—it gets hot when traversed by a current. There is, however, this difference in degree. In the lamp we desire to produce heat at a high temperature, for only then do we get light as well as heat ”

“ ELECTRIC HEATING The light of the electric incandescent lamp is produced by the heating to incandescence of a thin filament of metal or carbon, and the heat itself is produced by the electric current forcing its way through the great resistance opposed to it by the filament. In such lamps the amount of heat produced is too small to be of much practical use, but by applying the same principle on a larger scale we get an effective electric heater. ”

“ An electric current meets with some resistance in passing through any substance, and if the substance is a bad conductor the resistance is very great. As the current forces its way through the resistance, heat is produced, and a very thin wire, which offers a high resistance, may be raised to a white heat by an electric current, and it then glows with a brilliant light. This fact forms the basis of the electric incandescent or glow lamp. ”

“ Its advantages amount to a miracle of convenience only. So far as power is concerned, it merely transfers it for long distances over a single wire. So far as light is considered, it practically creates it where wanted, in new and convenient forms, with a new intensity and beauty, but with the same expenditure of transmitted energy in the form of burned coal as would be used in manufacturing the gas that was new, wonderful, and a luxury at the beginning of the century.
The dynamo is the most prominent instance of actual mechanical utility in the field of electrical induction. ”

“ A microphone is an instrument for making extremely small sounds plainly audible. If a current is passed through a box containing loose bits of broken carbon, it meets with great resistance, but if the bits of carbon are compressed their conducting power is considerably increased. Even such slight differences in pressure as are produced by vibrating the box will affect the amount of current passing through the carbon. If this current is led by wires to an ordinary telephone receiver the arrangement becomes a simple form of microphone. ”

“ The most prominent instance of this is the new utilization of Niagara as a turbine water-power with which to whirl the armatures of gigantic dynamos, using the power thus obtained upon motors, and in the production of light and the transmission of power to neighboring cities.
The discovery of the possibility of transmitting power by a wire, and converting it again into mechanical energy, is a strange story of the human blindness that almost always attends an acuteness, a thinking power, a prescience, that is the characteristic of humanity alone, but which so often stops short of results. ”

“ In this great city the elevated roads, the subways, and the street railways are operated by my system, and the lamps and other electrical appliances get the current through machinery of my invention. And as in New York so all the world over where electricity is introduced. The telephone and the incandescent lamp fill specific and minor demands, electric power meets the many general and sterner necessities of life. ”

“ It is a practical fact that chickens are hatched by the thousand by the electrical current, and that men have discovered more than nature knew about the period of incubation, and have reduced it by electricity from twenty-one to nineteen days. The proverb about the value of the time of the incubating hen has passed into antiquity with all things else in the presence of electrical science.
Whenever an American mechanician, a manufacturer or an inventor, is confronted by a difficulty otherwise insolvable he turns to electricity. ”

“ One of the most striking consists in their opening a path for a current of electricity. The electrical discharge, feeble in itself, not capable of lifting by means of a motor a pound weight a foot from the floor, is yet competent to open a path for a current which can set all the trolley cars of a great city in motion. To exhibit this mysterious effect we bring the ends of the electrical current which we wish to excite near each other, but not touching, in a glass tube with thin walls, from which the air has been exhausted. ”

“ In large engineering works powerful electro-magnets, suspended from some sort of travelling crane, are most useful for picking up and carrying about heavy masses of metal, such as large59 castings. No time is lost in attaching the casting to the crane; the magnet picks it up directly the current is switched on, and lets it go the instant the current is stopped. In any large steel works the amount of scrap material produced is astonishingly great, hundreds of tons of turnings and similar scrap accumulating in a very short time. ”

“ It is only when feeble currents are required that it pays to produce current by electrolytic process; when current is required on a large scale, such as for lighting and power, and also for metallurgical work, copper refining and electro-plating on a large scale, it must be produced by dynamo machines. ”

“ The lamps were of the incandescent variety, and what we now know as the filament was platinum wire. Vacuum bulb, filament, carbon, dynamo, were all unknown. But the current, and the heat of resistance, and every fact now in use in electric lighting, were there in operation.
The reader will understand that modern dynamic electricity owes its development to the principle of economy in production. Practical science most effectively awakens from its lethargy at the call of commerce. ”

“ Alternating current is produced at almost all power stations supplying large districts. It is generated at high pressure, from 2000 volts upwards, the highest pressure employed in this country being about 11,000 volts. Such pressures are of course very much too high for electric lamps or motors, and the object of generating current of this kind is to secure the greatest economy in transmission through the long cables. Electric energy is measured in watts, the watts being obtained by multiplying together the pressure or voltage of the current, and its rate of flow or amperage. ”

“ At first it came dribbling in by rail in trucks, till the thaw set in; and then fast, in a multitude of barges, with a great rush of unbound waters. The gentle master stevedore had his hands very full at last; and the chief mate became worried in his mind as to the proper distribution of the weight of his first cargo in a ship he did not personally know before.
Ships do want humouring. They want humouring in handling; and if you mean to handle them well, they must have been humoured in the distribution of the weight which you ask them to carry through the good and evil fortune of a passage. ”

“ The laws of any country which have for their object the correction and regulation of human action and to determine between the right and the wrong are progressive in their nature, like other institutions of the world. France has taken the lead among nations by abolishing the death sentence -- the most barbarous of all laws -- be it ever said to her credit!
I have always leaned toward the side of that justice which demands that capital punishment be abolished. I have, however, fathered electrocution as the most humane method of execution, and this method has become the law of several states. ”

“ This mode of legal execution was brought forward by me owning to the fact that it is the quickest and most certain of all death penalties. Nevertheless I am for the banishment of this most barbarous practice. This relic of the dark ages is one of the evils afflicting the enlightened civilized nations of the present era.
In reality capital punishment is only legalized murder. Justice does not go with human passions, and a perfectly dispassionate and unbiased judgment is a myth. The chief aim with a true surgeon is to save a limb, not take it off. ”

“ In brief, all the present arts and sciences, inventions and discoveries man has brought forth were once mysteries which nature had decreed should remain hidden and latent, but man has taken them out of the plane of the invisible and brought them into the plane of the visible. This is contrary to nature’s laws. Electricity should be a latent mystery, but man discovers it and makes it his servant. He wrests the sword from nature’s hand and uses it against nature, proving that there is a power in him which is beyond nature, for it is capable of breaking and subduing the laws of nature. ”

“ and the civilized world seems at last to be proceeding to the conviction of that fundamental and manifest truth, that the powers of government are but a trust, and that they cannot be lawfully exercised but for the good of the community. As knowledge is more and more extended, this conviction becomes more and more general. Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams. ”