John Phin

“ Dozens of writers have committed the same error, and it is not long since a medical man wrote a book on the curative powers of static, as distinguished from dynamic, electricity, while any physicist would have told him that in the entire volume there was not a single case described in which static electricity was used! Whenever electricity is in motion, that is to say, when it is flowing along a conductor, it is dynamic, no matter from what source it may be obtained. ”

“ THE season when the attention of the public will be directed to protection from lightning is now approaching, and it is of the utmost importance that correct views in regard to the construction and erection of lightning-rods should prevail. We have in this country a class of men who have devoted themselves to the business of making money out of the fears which thunder and lightning inspire, and it unfortunately happens that the majority of these men care more for the money which they obtain than for the actual protection which they afford to their customers. ”

“ Dynamic electricity may be produced by the ordinary plate or cylinder machine; static electricity may have its origin in a voltaic battery.
Knowing that electricity at rest always tends to diffuse itself on the surface, in fact, that it always confines itself to the surface, it became, at an early period, a question whether electricity in motion did not follow the same law. Pouillet determined the question in a very ingenious manner. He took a cylindrical wire of a certain size and measured the resistance which it offered to a current of electricity. ”