Earth (electricity)

“ The potential difference between any point of the wall and the surface of the sphere is numerically equal to the energy required to bring a unit of positive electricity from the wall to the sphere. The wall of the room being in contact with the earth, both must be considered as at the same potential, and if we arbitrarily fix this as zero (which is evidently permissible since we deal with potential differences and may take our datum line where we like) , then the energy expended is the absolute potential of the sphere. ”

“ The earth is undoubtedly a great thermal battery that is kept in action by the constant changes of temperature going on at the earth's surface, caused by its rotation every twenty-four hours on its axis. The sun, of course, is at some point heating the earth, which at other points is cooling, making a constant change of potential between different points. If we heat a metal ring at one point a current of electricity will flow around it—especially if it is made of two dissimilar metals—until the heat is equally distributed throughout the ring. ”

“ Thus we have two bodies—the cloud and the earth—charged with opposite kinds of electricity, and separated by a stratum of the atmosphere. The two opposite electricities powerfully attract each other; but for a time they are prevented from rushing together by the intervening stratum of air, which is a non-conductor of electricity, and acts as a barrier between them. ”

“ Yet this appearance, which superstition declared to be miraculous, was only electrical; for, while the solar heat is converting into vapour the water and moisture of the earth, electricity is freely disengaged. “The clouds which this power forms are in different electrical conditions, though the electricity of the atmosphere, when serene, is invariably the same. Hence the descent of clouds towards the earth, their mutual approach, the force of atmospherical currents, and the ever-varying agencies of heat and cold convert the aërial envelope of the globe into a complete electrical apparatus ”

“ I hold that by the law of electric energy the sun is not a thermal or heating engine as the astronomers proclaim, but is an electric generator and is not hot, and that the sun's rays, neither where they originate or where they act are hot, but they come to the earth as cool currents of electricity, which generate heat near the earth's surface by coming in contact with an opposite electricity and the resistance and friction of its atmosphere. ”

“ There is no place of the earth or sea where the electric fire may not be collected, by making a communication between it and the rubber of an electric machine. Therefore, considering 121that the whole earth is moist, and that moisture is a conductor of electricity, and that every part of the earth must thus communicate with another, it is certain that the electric matter must diffuse itself as far as the moisture of the earth reaches ”

“ And I think never will, as long as the false notion prevails that heat and electricity are modes of motion. A mode of motion is nonsense, for motion is an effect produced by a cause—it is not a cause. And all cause of motion is electricity, and the mode of operation is the law of electro-magnetism.
There is no difference in the law or the mode of operation of electric currents in a volcano, in a cloud, in the earth, in the sun or planets, in an electric light, or in a man's body. ”

“ The photosphere is a great luminous body of gaseous matter that is believed to envelop the sun, so that we do not see the core of the sun unless it is when we look into one of these spots. In some way, evidently, the sun affects the earth by radiating magnetic lines of force which are cut by the earth's revolution, and so creating currents of electricity. The sun is the field-magnet, and the earth is the revolving armature of nature's great dynamo-electric machine. ”

“ There is a dry electrical atmosphere; the attrition of trade winds and sand half the year; and the rushing to and fro [159] of busy and excited men, charged as full of electricity as they can hold, and bent upon charging everybody else, so that at nightfall the sparks will snap at the finger-ends, and the air will crackle like a brush-heap just set on fire. Now, the earth is a very good conductor. It is better to let this surplus electricity run down the fingers on to the spade, and along its shining steel blade into the ground, than to blow up your best friend. ”

“ We are compelled by the results of the present experiments to conclude that a more rapid discharge of electricity into the atmosphere takes place in sunlight than in darkness from the surfaces of the earth, which is composed of mineral particles charged, as the positive sign of the slope of atmospheric potential indicates, with negative electricity. ”

“ If a cloud is heavily charged with positive electricity, say, the earth underneath will have an equal charge of negative electricity. Let us illustrate it by the tides. As the moon passes over the ocean it attracts the water toward it and tends to pile up, as it were, at the nearest point between the earth and the moon. ”

“ Thorns, leaves with sharp edges, etc., have a great effect upon atmospheric electricity. They allow a silent escape of electrification from the earth to neutralize that in the clouds which is opposite in nature. (See Atmospheric Electricity.) ”

“ Having shewn that solid bodies have no power either of attraction or gravitation, and that their firmness or solidity depends on the pressure of the atmosphere; I shall now endeavour to shew, from electrical experiments, how, and by what means they descend towards the earth.
What is called the attraction of the earth seems to be performed in the same manner as that of the glass globe in electricity; the explaining of which will give us a clear idea, by what means heavy bodies are forced towards the terraqueous globe. ”

“ After demonstrating the practicability of this method of transmission, the thought naturally occurred to me to use the earth as a conductor, thus dispensing with all wires. Whatever electricity may be, it is a fact that it behaves like an incompressible fluid, and the earth may be looked upon as an immense reservoir of electricity, which, I thought, could be disturbed effectively by a properly designed electrical machine. Accordingly, my next efforts were directed toward perfecting a special apparatus which would be highly effective in creating a disturbance of electricity in the earth. ”

“ For had this globe we live on as much of it in proportion, as we can give to a globe of iron, wood, or the like, the particles of dust and other light matters that get loose from it, would, by virtue of their separate electrical atmospheres, not only repel each other, but be repelled from the earth, and not easily be brought to unite with it again; whence our air would continually be more and more clogged with foreign matter, and grow unfit for respiration. ”

“ If the potential of a body becomes greater than that of the earth, the body is said to be positively electrified; if the potential of the body is less than that of the earth, it is said to be negatively electrified. If we fill a bottle with sea water, we have a great deal of water when we compare it with the bottle, but a very little water when we compare it with the sea. The earth is so large that small amounts of electrification taken from it or added to it do not affect its potential to any extent. ”

“ Lightning may be produced by the passage of electricity between clouds, or between the cloud and the earth, which, with the intervening air, have the effect of a condenser. If one cloud is charged, it acts inductively upon another, producing in it the opposite kind of electrification. When the attraction between the two electrifications becomes great enough, it overcomes the resistance of the air, and lightning is produced. ”

“ Electric science had greatly advanced in my reign, and electric powers had been discovered by which the heaviest masses could be lightened temporarily, so that their specific gravity, called by us the "tenacious electricity," and its tendency to seek the sympathetic electricity of the earth was temporarily diminished, if not entirely neutralized, without injury to the mass subjected to the operation. ”

“ Turning our attention to the more recent advances in electricity and the arts of electrical construction, we have found that induction machines, as contradistinguished from the older friction machines, operate in a manner strongly suggestive of the rotation of a planet through space, and we learn that the electrical potential of the air overhead increases constantly by an enormous multiplying number as we ascend, proving great electrical action in the regions immediately surrounding the earth, and which we have called the terrestrial electrosphere. ”

“ Electricity becomes luminous in a vacuum, and De la Rive, by combining the electric currents with those of magnetism, produced all the peculiarities of the aurora. The magnetic currents, passing from the earth, have associated electric ones in connection, and these, in the upper attenuated atmosphere, become luminous. ”

“ But none of these machines actually generate electricity ab initio; they merely put into effective operation the pre-existing force. The mass of the earth is of irregularly negative polarity, the air above is positive, and as we [90] ascend, the potential, or voltage, or pressure increases at a nearly uniform rate of from twenty to forty volts for each foot. The earth is thus surrounded by an electrosphere as well as an atmosphere, and the two are not coincident, for while the pressure of the atmosphere diminishes as we ascend, that of the electrosphere increases. ”

“ Thus two clouds, or a cloud and the earth, unequally electrified, tend to return to a condition of equality through a conducting medium, a metallic or moist body having the preference as a conductor, the discharge of electricity appearing in the form of a spark or flash, accompanied by a loud detonation according to its violence, the peal rebounding in echoes from cloud to cloud, and from hill to hill. Some regions of the globe are peculiarly subject to accumulations of electricity. ”

“ If the upper part of the revolving ball be considered as a wire moving from east to west, over the unmarked pole of the earth, the current of electricity in it should be from north to south (99. 114. 150.) ; if the under part be considered as a similar wire, moving from west to east over the same pole, the electric current should be from south to north; and the circulation of electricity should therefore be from north above to south, and below back to north, in a metal ball revolving from east above to west in these latitudes. ”

“ The design of these conductors is to permit the electric matter accumulated in the clouds to pass through them into the earth in a smaller continued stream as the cloud approaches, before it comes to what is termed striking distance; now as it is well known that accumulated electricity will pass to points at a much greater distance than it will to knobs there can be no doubt of their preference ”

“ By this plan the current is increased in intensity, for the “earth circuit” appears to offer less resistance than the copper wire. The view, however, which regards the earth not as a conductor in the same sense as the wire, but as the great reservoir or storehouse of electricity, accords better with known facts. ”

“ Cloud formations may be evaporated in the upper air into invisible moisture spherules, and charged at the time with potential energy. If we go up into a high mountain when the conditions are right, we can witness the effect of this condition of electrical charge or strain between the upper regions of the atmosphere and the earth, and [Pg 79] the tendency to equalize the potentials between the clouds and the earth. Often one's hair will stand on end, not from fright, but from electricity passing down from the upper regions to the earth. ”

“ We know, of course, that chemical changes cannot operate to produce them. They must be derived from something contained in or diffused through interplanetary space, and the planets themselves must be the means by which such currents of electricity are brought into effective operation. On our own earth we have many kinds [89] of mechanically-constructed electrical apparatus which generate electricity, to use a popular expression, or which, more properly, separate the opposite potentials from an unstable electrical tension or equilibrium of the matter of space. ”

“ In view of what must actually take place at no distant day,—the girdling of the earth by the electric wires,—a singular question arises:—If we send a current of electricity east, it will lose twenty-four hours in going round the globe ”

“ If the planetary electrical machines now commence their rotations, and currents of electricity begin to pass in quantity and intensity like those which pass between the earth and the sun, both the solar and cometic pith-balls will become similarly electrified, and their gaseous atmospheres, instead of drawing towards each other, will become luminous and self-repulsive. ”