Lightning arrester

“ Thus we find among our many examples a strange fact, which will serve to reconcile our thoughts a little to thunder.
On June 20, 1872, in Kentucky State, we have already cited the case of the nigger Norris, who was going to be hanged for the murder of a mulatto companion, and who, just as he was putting his foot on the fatal platform, was struck by lightning, and thus spared the sheriff the trouble of hurling him into eternity. ”

“ However, firearms when carried by men appear to attract the lightning. Soldiers are often enough struck when in the exercise of their calling, when they are carrying arms. [223]
But, curiously enough, many cases are known in which lightning has struck a loaded gun, melting the bullet and part of the barrel, without setting fire to the powder. ”

“ If the resistance connected in series with lightning arresters is high, the tendency is a little greater for lightning to go to earth at some point in the apparatus where the insulation is low. If only a small resistance is employed to connect lightning arresters with the earth, the danger is that arcs formed by lightning discharges will be followed and maintained by the dynamo currents. ”

“ While the old guard was being turned out to receive the new, a blinding flash of lightning was seen, accompanied instantly by a terrific peal of thunder. The whole of the old guard, together with part of the new, were thrown violently to the earth. The shock was so severe and sudden that, in most cases, the rear rank men were thrown across the front rank men. One [Pg 35] man was instantly killed, and thirty-two men were more or less severely burned by the electric fluid. ”

“ As the evening wore on we could see the flash from both shell and gun.
About the time we finished our frugal evening meal lightning began to play in intermittent flashes, like a heavenly searchlight, from far across the hidden Narrows and Asia Minor, and put to shame the puny bursts of light from the handiwork of man. The boats were still at it, but their dull booming was now intermixed with the rumble of distant thunder.
The lightning becomes more vivid. There is a rattling, crashing roar from the artillery of the skies that can never be equalled by any earthly batteries. ”

“ Ther’s only one way for Lightning when it comes to fixing things. If he’s after Andy McFardell he means to kill him. He will kill him. And it won’t be to head off the Police from this valley either. Oh, it’s all crazy. It’s terrible. It’ll be murder, and—and Lightning’s done it. He’s a reckless, crazy-headed savage. He’s the whitest, loyalest friend. And they’ll take him, and hang him, for—murder. I know,” she went on, in a surge of emotion. “None of you know, or can ever get the things lying back of Lightning’s head. He cares nothing for himself. ”

“ In Prussia, where the registration of the causes of death is most rigidly enforced by law, and, in consequence, is far more accurate than in England, there were one thousand and four persons reported as killed by lightning in the nine years from 1869 to 1877. ”

“ Snow Harris went into the practical part of the business of protecting buildings, and, more especially, powder magazines and others containing explosive materials, against the effects of lightning. ‘It follows,’ he remarked,’from these established facts, that if a building were metallic in all its parts, an iron magazine for example, then no damage could possibly arise to it from any stroke of lightning which has come within the experience of mankind. A man in armour is safe from damage by lightning. ”

“ Hence, a man standing on an open plain, or walking, or riding on horseback, or in an open vehicle, across it, is liable to be struck by lightning. There is no evidence that the motion of walking or riding makes the liability either greater or less than it would be if he were at rest. The danger is increased, other conditions being the same, by nearness to water, or to large masses of metal, or other conducting material, lying flat on the ground or rising only a little way from it. ”

“ On Federal Hill there were watchers as anxious as he, and rain-soaked knots of men paraded the square and alleys around the evil church with umbrella-shaded candles, electric flashlights, oil lanterns, crucifixes, and obscure charms of the many sorts common to southern Italy. They blessed each flash of lightning, and made cryptical signs of fear with their right hands when a turn in the storm caused the flashes to lessen and finally to cease altogether. A rising wind blew out most of the candles, so that the scene grew threateningly dark. ”

“ Lightning constantly rent the black mantle of clouds that covered the sky; thunder shook the prison buildings and emphasized their gloom; terror seemed to have shackled nature; a fearful expectancy filled the souls of the prisoners.
The Eagle gazed up at the black sky, watching the lightning that shredded it, and turned away to pace up and down his cell. Without realizing it, he tramped ever quicker and quicker, like a wild beast in its cage. Suddenly he stopped and looked out of the side window in his corner cell, which was half boarded up. ”

“ The eight reapers who were killed under an oak, quoted by Cardan in our first example, were quite black.
That the subtle fluid accumulated in great masses in the clouds should kill a man, deprive him of movement, annihilate his faculties, or slightly wound him—this ought not to astonish us when we contemplate the marvellous results and the prodigies of strength accomplished by the much more feeble electricity of our laboratories.
But the extraordinary point about lightning is its variety of action. Why does it not invariably kill those it strikes? and why does it sometimes not even wound them? ”

“ This, however, does not prevent death by lightning from being regarded on other occasions as the punishment of crime—as in the cases of Salmoneus, Kapaneus, etc.; though in some even of these cases the idea is occasionally present that the lightning’s victim is raised to a higher existence. ”

“ At about 3.30 there was a clap of thunder, and lightning struck the electric wires. In the stand twenty-eight men, riflemen, scorers, and spectators, are thrown to the ground in every direction and in every position. Some are quite inert, apparently dead; others, looking as though they were asphyxiated, give out a painful rattling noise from their throats. At the bar, to the side of the stand, no one felt anything—it was not even noticed that there had been a violent stroke of lightning. ”

“ The light seemed to gather around him as a centre. Indeed some believed that it throbbed and radiated from his person, and not from the stormy heavens above them. The lightning had rent the wall of his prison, and released the iron staple of his chain, which he had wound about him like a girdle. In his hand he carried an iron fetter-bar, which he had found on the floor of the vault. More terrified at his aspect than at all the violence of the storm, the visitors, with many a shriek and cry, rushed out into the tempestuous night. By degrees, the storm died away. ”

“ But the records which we possess are [197] not conclusive; if, now and then, the discharge becomes distributed by means of the ribs, it also very often happens that it runs along the metal parts of the handle to whatever pieces of metal may be on the person, finally striking the soil through the human body.
On July 13, 1884, in the province of Liége, a man and a woman sheltering under the same umbrella were struck by lightning. The man was killed instantly. His garments were in tatters, and the soles torn from his shoes. ”

“ Sometimes, also, the clap of thunder, when striking [140] men and animals, proves more murderous for the latter than the former, who, however, have sometimes succumbed.
A diligence was slowly mounting an incline, when suddenly a stroke of lightning interrupted its ascent. An electric ball burst over the heads of the horses, and threw the whole five down, stone dead. The postillion was struck, but not one other person was touched, though the carriage was full of women and children. ”

“ But in each case the real evil evades the feeling and defeats its object with demoralizing effects.
They do some things better in France. The government has ordered observations to be made on strokes of lightning and their effects, by a bureau, using postmasters and others as observers. A report for the first half of 1883 shows that in January there was one lightning stroke which injured a man carrying an umbrella with metal ribs ”

“ At the moment of the explosion an enormous column of vapour arose, like smoke coming out of a chimney when fresh coal has been put on the fire. The lightning flashed in all directions, great branches gave way, and when the vapour cleared off, there stood the pear tree, its trunk a dazzling white: the lightning had taken the bark completely off. Sometimes the bark is only partially stripped off one side, or left on, in more or less regular bands, either on the trunk or on the branches. ”

“ Some time after, the doctor was called to attend to [269] a stranger who had been found lying insensible under a tree, having been struck by lightning. The first thing that he noticed on examining the man's body was that on his thigh there was a reproduction, as though by photography, of his own monogram. His astonishment may be imagined. He succeeded in reviving the stranger, who was taken to a hospital. The doctor remarked that in his clothes his lost tortoise-shell purse would probably be found. So it proved. The individual struck by lightning was the thief. ”

“ Vast swarms of them hovered and hummed, seeking no food but only their random mates. The female received the fertilizing flash from the male, laid her eggs in the water, and floated dead near the dying mate. The watchful herring, themselves like flashes of living lightning, gorged themselves on dead lovers.
The electric swiftness of the whole tragedy appalled her, and yet human beings were not much slower. She herself had felt the lightning-flash when Marvin first looked into her eyes, and her mother had confessed to feeling the same thing on meeting Ambrose Rich. ”

“ Even now, while this trial proceeds, San Francisco and New York, Boston and Portland, and the still farther East, communicate together as by a flash of lightning—indeed, it may be said, making an electric flash farther across the earth's surface, and intelligible too, to man, than ever, in the natural phenomena of the heavens, the lightning displayed itself. ”

“ In vain the monster Tiberius, and the infamous Caligula, sought a subterranean refuge from lightning. Their impure consciences, laden with crimes, dreaded the chastisement of heaven. By fleeing from the lightning flash, they believed themselves saved from death. Lightning dogs our footsteps, and works even when the criminals believe themselves in safety. It is conceivable that the ancients should have dreaded it as an instrument of celestial justice. ”

“ A thunderous explosion came from a few feet away, and a brilliant flare lit the scene like a flash of lightning.
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With daylight clearness, the startled raiders could see every feature of their surroundings, standing out from the night. It was like a stage play. The inside of Tent Fifteen was lit with a blinding radiance. ”

“ In June, 1823, at Moisselles, lightning fell upon a great elm, and striking against an enormous knob, rebounded on to a neighbouring elm half its own height, pierced it through and through, shivering it to tatters; the trunk was burst open to the roots, it looked as if it had been bored through from one end to the other by a red-hot bullet that blackened and charred it.
Does it not seem as if the lightning plays with the lives of the trees as with man? ”

“ Secondly, death by thunder is regarded as a punishment for some secret crime committed against human or divine law, and consequently a man who is not conscious of anything of the kind faces the elements without fear. Away behind the clouds during a storm or typhoon sit the God of Thunder armed with his terrible bolts, and the Goddess of Lightning, holding in her hand a dazzling mirror. With this last she throws a flash of lightning over the guilty man that the God of Thunder may see to strike his victim ”

“ The flash of lightning is not more nimble than the leap that the young man made to his feet, which he no sooner gained, than his dirk gleamed in the light of the lamps, as he brandished it fiercely with one hand, while with the other he extended a pistol, in a menacing attitude, towards his disturbers. ”

“ So far as can be gathered from the existing sources of information, it would seem that the number of persons killed by lightning is, on the whole, about one in three of those who are struck. The rest are sometimes only stunned, sometimes more or less burned, sometimes made deaf for a time, sometimes partially paralyzed. On particular occasions, however, especially when the lightning falls on a large assembly of people, the number of persons struck down and slightly injured, in proportion to the number killed, is very much increased. ”

“ The only light we had to guide us was from the lightning in the heavens and the vivid flashes that came from the enemy's cannon. Their firing did not do much execution, as they failed to get a proper range. Besides, we were so close to them they were firing over our heads, but the booming of the guns that hour of night, with the roar of the thunder, was terrifying indeed, and beyond description. We would wait for a lightning flash and advance a few steps and halt, and then for a light from the batteries and again advance. ”