BIBLIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
OF
ELECTRICITY & MAGNETISM

RESEARCHES INTO THE DOMAIN OF THE
EARLY SCIENCES, ESPECIALLY FROM THE PERIOD OF
THE REVIVAL OF SCHOLASTICISM, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND OTHER
ACCOUNTS OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS
THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE AGES

COMPILED BY

PAUL FLEURY MOTTELAY, Ph.D.

AUTHOR OF
“GILBERT OF COLCHESTER,” “THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ELECTRO-CHEMISTRY,” ETC.

WITH INTRODUCTION BY THE LATE PROF. SILVANUS P. THOMPSON, D.Sc., F.R.S.

AND FOREWORD BY SIR R. T. GLAZEBROOK, K.C.B., D.Sc., F.R.S.

WITH FRONTISPIECE AND PLATES

LONDON

CHARLES GRIFFIN & COMPANY LIMITED

12 EXETER STREET, STRAND, W.C. 2

1922

[All rights reserved.]

Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

BY

SIR RICHARD T. GLAZEBROOK, K.C.B., D.Sc., F.R.S.

Past President of the Institute of Electrical Engineers
and late Director of the National Physical Laboratory

This splendid volume has a tragic story. Dedicated to Lord Kelvin, it opens with an introduction by Silvanus Thompson and a preface by the distinguished author who himself passed from us before the book containing the fruit of many years of toil was ready for issue.

And what toil! A Bibliographical History of Electricity and Magnetism covering 4458 years, from 2637 B.C., when Hoang-Ti, Emperor of China, is said to have directed the pursuit of his troops after a rebellious subject by the aid of the compass, up to Christmas Day, A.D. 1821, when Faraday first caused a wire carrying a current to rotate in a magnetic field.

The early centuries are passed over quickly. Homer’s name occurs with quotations from the Odyssey:

Does this mean that the Greeks knew of the compass? The author is doubtful.

Thales, 600–580 B.C., the discoverer of frictional electricity, follows. The Crusaders wrote of the magnet. A facsimile page is given of Vincent de Beauvais’ Speculum Naturale, and Gauthier d’Espinois, who lived about A.D. 1250, sang to his mistress:

And when one passes to more recent years, there is not a name one knows omitted from the list. There are also many included who all contributed in some way to the growth of natural knowledge, but who can only be known to the few, the very few, who have burrowed in past records scattered far and wide with the perseverance, the patience, and the skill of Dr. Mottelay.

And he has discovered interesting facts without number, and at the same time has supported his case with full references to original works. To the question, How can I find out what—some unknown writer—has written about Electricity? there can in future be but one answer: Look him up in Dr. Mottelay’s Bibliographical History. Our debt to the author is no small one; our regrets that he is not here to be gratified by the reception his book must meet with are deep and sincere.

The Great War delayed the issue of the book. The public are indebted to Messrs. C. Griffin & Co., Ltd., for bringing out a work of the kind under the difficulties which all scientific publications have met with since 1918, and Dr. Mottelay realized to the full the value of the assistance they gave him. I trust with confidence that electricians throughout the world (for the interest of the book is world-wide) will not be slow to show their appreciation of the work of all those who have combined to render them so marked a service.

R. T. Glazebrook.

The present work is the definitive edition of my “Chronological History of Magnetism, Electricity and the Telegraph,” which had tentative publication (1891–1892) serially in four leading technological Journals, viz. “Engineering” of London, “The Electrical World” of New York, “La Lumière Electrique” of Paris, and “L’Industrie Moderne” of Brussels.

Since the time of that first publication, it has received a most thorough revision of the original text, for correction of faults of form, or of substance, suggested by learned critics conversant with the history of electricity and magnetism; and there have been added a very large number of new entries besides exhaustive notices of the work done by Peregrinus, Gilbert, Oersted, Faraday and other great pathfinders, also biographical and bibliographical notices of all the prominent ancient writers mentioned in the original compilation.

This bibliography commences B.C. 2637—conclusively shown to be the earliest date at which history notes anything resembling the application of the magnetic influence—and it ends with Michael Faraday, esteemed by Tyndall to be “the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen,” and who is held “to have done more for the development of electrical science than any other investigator.” Thus is the chronological series shown to cover 4458 years, being purposely made to terminate at A.D. 1820–1821 (Oersted, Ampère, Arago, Faraday, etc.), the culminating period when, through the splendid discovery of electro-magnetism, the two immense groups of phenomena were first linked together.

Besides the matter distinctly involved in the title of the new work, it has been deemed advisable to note in this History all the most important forms of the optical telegraph, or semeiograph. Many of the ancient and historical methods for communicating intelligence swiftly at great distances are noticed in their chronological order: doubtless, this will prove to the generality of readers no less interesting than the vast multitude of curious facts pertaining to the direct line of researches. An exhaustive cross-entry Index[viii] of Selected Names and Subjects, embracing fuller titles and much additional data that could not well be entered into the body of the work, will, for the first time, make this mass of historical data readily accessible.

To bar controversies and partisan discussion as to the relative merits of different discoverers and inventors, concerning which authorities are at variance, it has been thought best to quote all of the weightiest known authorities under the respective heads and dates of the several claimants. To the would-be historian and to the delving student, this will certainly appear the better course. A case in point, and it is no uncommon one, attaches to the invention of the mariner’s compass, where that instrument and its original employment in navigation are credited with equal assurance to China, Iceland, France, England and Italy, by equally eminent historians and scientists. And, as nearly all, except the very earliest, discoveries of any high importance have already been traced to their respective origins by many authors, additional data have been gathered and quoted wherever such data seemed deserving of more than the ordinary notices previously accorded them in print, or where the peculiar nature of the discovery, or the identity of its author, merited authentication to preclude doubt or controversy.

The unusual number of cumulative references purposely given throughout many entries (the most important of which were originally set in italics) cannot be seriously objected to, as they afford ready means for making searches through different accessible channels, covering various phases of a subject, and they facilitate the verification of all extracts and of all quoted passages. They likewise effectually offset the likelihood of misprints necessarily attaching to many of the authorities which are cited from, and which often can be found solely in, rare early publications or in more or less unintelligible manuscripts. Only those who have had to make important searches through such can appreciate the difficulties which continually beset the investigator. Many of the older serials likewise prove quite unreliable and disappointing, either through wrong pagination or irregular and sometimes conflicting dates of publication, as well as through the rearrangement or redistribution of parts or series, at various periods and in different volumes. This is the case, more particularly, with “Le Journal des Savants” and with “The Philosophical Transactions,” as it is also with many technical serial publications of various countries which are referred to in the following pages.

In the Preface to his “Experimental Researches,” the great[ix] Faraday justly remarked that: “The date of a scientific paper containing any pretensions to discovery is frequently a matter of serious importance, and it is a great misfortune that there are many most valuable communications, essential to the history and progress of science, with respect to which this point cannot now be ascertained. This arises from the circumstance of the papers having no dates attached to them individually, and of the Journals in which they appear having such as are inaccurate, i. e. dates of a period earlier than that of publication.”

Of the afore-named serials, the very important “Philosophical Transactions” have doubtless been most frequently alluded to herein, both in their original and abridged forms, and, for that reason, the assistance of representatives of the Royal Society has been sought in order to give a proper account to date, showing the difficulties which have throughout been encountered by its many successive editors. It will be seen, at pages 546–547, that there were numerous irregularities in the publication of the unabridged series from the initial date of 1665, only seven numbers having been issued from 1679 to 1682, whilst neither numbers nor volumes appeared between 1688 and 1690, and that, through lax editing, various numbers were often, during subsequent years, assigned to volumes differently designated. In the many abridged reports, irregularities are still greater, as shown at pages 547–548. During 1721, Motte edited “an abridgment, 1700–1720, in three volumes which was very incorrect” (“Dict. Nat. Biog.,” Vol. XXXIX. p. 194). The six volumes of 1720–1732 also appeared in two volumes, published 1733. The two volumes of 1719–1733 contained an “Index to the previous seven volumes” by different authors. This was made up by John Martyn, who published in five volumes an abridgment of the Transactions for 1719–1750, which he had previously issued in three sets of two volumes each. Mr. Samuel H. Scudder’s remarks as to various discrepancies are worthy of notice. He says (“Cat. of Scient. Serials,” 1879, p. 27) that “the Philosophical Transactions Abridged have been very irregularly issued. The first five volumes went through several editions (from five to two, according to the volume) between 1705 and 1781; the later volumes through only one, 1734–1756.” He adds: “There is a strange discrepancy here, the fourth edition of the first volume being sometimes dated 1731, sometimes 1781, and sometimes 1782, whilst the fifth edition of volumes one to three is dated 1749; the eighth volume is again sometimes dated 1734, sometimes 1747.”

Were I to indite an apologia for the present work, I could not[x] hope to express it more happily than does Mr. J. J. Fahie in the preface to his “History of Wireless Telegraphy, 1838–1899”; or, I might adopt the words of two of the most learned French authors of the day:

“Si je donne ces détails, nouveaux, ou peu connus, c’est qu’il est toujours intéressant de remonter à l’origine et au développement successif des inventions.” (M. Berthelot, in the “Comptes Rendus.”)

“S’il n’y a pas beaucoup de gens qu’elles intéressent, il y en a qu’elles intéressent beaucoup. À ceux-ci, nous avons, en rédigeant ces notes, eu l’intention et l’espérance de venir quelquefois en aide. Tout catalogue a des points obscurs, même les meilleurs.... L’office propre, le devoir de la critique, est de rechercher si ces points obscurs ne pourraient pas être éclairés par quelque lumière. Il est vrai qu’elle y perd souvent sa peine. Mais cela ne doît jamais la décourager.” (M. Hauréau, in “Le Journal des Savants.”)

I am especially thankful for the warm encouragement which I have received, on all sides, since the original work appeared in serial form. This History has been frequently called for, and I regret that I have been hitherto prevented from bringing it out earlier in its present desirable book form. This is the more to be regretted as it long ago received the practical endorsement of the doyen of the electrical profession, Lord Kelvin (formerly styled Sir William Thomson), to whom it is dedicated. Leave to do this was obtained through a mutual friend in such a cordial manner that I cannot refrain from giving the correspondence attaching thereto:

[xi]

I desire to record my great indebtedness to Dr. Silvanus P. Thompson, D.Sc., F.R.S., for the interest he has throughout manifested in, and the material aid he has given to, the improvement and development of the present work. Especial acknowledgment is made of Dr. Thompson’s personal revision of the articles on Petrus Peregrinus (at A.D. 1269), on William Gilbert (at A.D. 1600), and on Michael Faraday (at A.D. 1821). With all of these authors, he has become very prominently identified through the several special publications concerning them, which have been issued by him at different periods, and all of which are herein noticed in their proper order.

Thanks are likewise due, and are also by me hereby tendered, more particularly to Dr. Elihu Thomson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; to Dr. J. A. Fleming, M.A., F.R.S.; to Mr. W. D. Weaver, late Editor of the “Electrical World”; to Mr. Wm. J. Hammer, representative of Mr. Thomas A. Edison; to Mr. A. Hastings White, assistant-librarian, Royal Society, London; to Messrs. Charles Spon and Louis H. Walter, M.A.; to Messieurs Henri Omont, Bibliothèque Nationale; Paul Marais, Bibliothèque Mazarine; Henri Martin, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal;[xii] Amédée Boinet, Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève; Messieurs Plon Nourrit et Cie; as well as to Professors C. F. Brackett, William Hallock and Edward L. Nichols, of the Universities of Princeton, Columbia and Cornell; also to Sir Arthur Schuster, Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, Dr. Robert L. Mond, and Dr. Horace F. Parshall, for many valuable suggestions and other aid given by all of them at different periods to the material benefit of this compilation.

It is scarcely necessary adding that, notwithstanding the great care given to the preparation of this very extensive Bibliography, and to its difficult “proof” reading, errors will undoubtedly present themselves. It is, however, hoped these will not prove of material importance. Such mistakes as are of a typographical nature can easily be recognized and in due time remedied; those, however, resulting from the conflict of authorities are more difficult to trace, and I shall greatly appreciate their being pointed out to me, with the view to improving future editions.

P. Fleury Mottelay.

Anyone who enters on the perilous paths of Bibliography realizes, sooner or later, the truth that “of the making of books there is no end.” But there was a beginning: and if the Bibliography of Electricity promises to stretch onward into the future in endless line, at least its backward reach might seem to be finite in date. Nevertheless, the student of the early periods of book production, when the science of electricity was literally in that “infancy” from which in our time it has emerged, is continually finding that there are early works of which he was unaware, and of which even our best libraries are destitute. He finds, as he progresses backward, toward the origins of things, in how many points our ancestors in the domain of electric science had anticipated the discoveries of later date. He finds that, again and again, by some rare stroke of insight, the great minds that had devoted themselves to the research of phenomena had seen—it may be, with dim or imperfect glimpses—many of the things which are commonly regarded as quite modern. The pioneer, unbiased by the views of contemporary philosophers, unhampered by the load of textbook tradition, often sees further than the professed researcher who comes after him.

The art of scientific discovery—for it is an art—can be attained in but one way, the way of attainment in all arts, namely, by practising it. In the practice of art, the aspirant may at least learn something that all the textbooks cannot drill out of him, and which will help him in his practice, by the careful examination of the actual ways in which the discoveries of science, now facts of history, were actually made. But, to do this, he must throw overboard for a time the systematic textbooks, he must abandon the logical expositions which embody, at second hand, or at third hand, the antecedent discoveries, and he must go to the original sources, the writings and records of the discoverers themselves, and learn from them how they set to work. The modern compendious handbooks in which the results of hundreds of workers have been boiled down, as it were, to a uniform consistency, is exactly the intellectual pabulum which he must eschew. Let him read Faraday, not through the eyes of Maxwell or of Tyndall, but in his own words in the immortal pages of the “Experimental Researches,” with their wealth of petty detail[xiv] and their apparent vagueness of speculation. Let him read Ohm’s own account of the law of the circuit, not some modern watered-down version. Let him turn over the pages of Franklin’s letters to Collinson, as his observations dropped red-hot out of the crucible of his endeavours. Let him read Stephen Gray’s charming experiments in the old-world diction that befitted a pensioner of the Charterhouse. Let him go back to old Gilbert, who had talked with Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh in the flesh, who had discussed magnetism with Fra Paolo Sarpi and had experimented on the dip of the needle with Robert Norman. Gilbert’s account of his own experiments is for the would-be scientific discoverer worth a hundredfold the Novum Organon of the overpraised Francis Bacon. Nay, let him go back to Peter Peregrinus, the soldier-pioneer, and see how he experimented with floating lodestones before he penned his account of the pivoted magnet—the earliest known instrument that can rightly be called a mariner’s compass. Not until he has thus become a bit of an antiquary will he have fully understood how the discoveries of old were made. And, in precisely the same spirit of quest, though with the wealth of modern appliances at his command, must he go to work, if new discoveries are to be made by him.

But, for all this, he needs a guide to tell him what are the records of the original pioneers, by what names their works are called, and where they can be found. Such a guide doubtless exists to some extent in the mere catalogues of electrical literature, such as the catalogue of the Ronalds’ Library at the Institution of Electrical Engineers, in London; or, more fully, even, in the new Catalogue of the Latimer Clark Library, now known as the Wheeler Collection, at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, in New York. The Chronological History of Electricity which Mr. P. F. Mottelay contributed, week by week, to the columns of the “Electrical World” and of “Engineering” in the years 1891–1892, was the beginning of an attempt to provide an even more complete analysis of the earlier literature of the subject. But these are only the beginnings.

In the “Bibliographical History of Electricity and Magnetism,” which Mr. Mottelay is now giving to the world, a far more exhaustive and detailed account is rendered of the earlier workers and writers in our dual science. He has particularly worked up all important electrical channels, and in the more extended articles, some of which it has been the writer’s privilege to peruse in advance, there are presented valuable monographs dealing with particular workers who each in his own day made notable contributions to the advance of the science.

To all who would tread in their paths, and add something to the[xv] ever-widening domain of electrical discovery, this Bibliographical History may be commended, not only for what it contains, but for the appreciative spirit in which it brings before the reader the work of those men who made the science what it is.

Pioneers; O Pioneers!

Silvanus P. Thompson.

[xix]

From b.c. 2637 to a.d. 1821

B.C. 2637.—This date has been conclusively shown to be the earliest one at which history notes anything resembling the application of the magnetic influence. It is related that, during this sixty-first year of the reign of Hoang-ti (Yeou-hioung-che, also named Koung-fun and Hiuen-yuen), the emperor’s troops, who were pursuing the rebellious prince Tchéyeou (Tchi-yeou), lost their way, as well as the course of the wind, and likewise the sight of their enemy, during the heavy fogs prevailing in the plains of Tchou-lou. Seeing which, Hoang-ti constructed a chariot upon which stood erect a prominent female figure which indicated the four cardinal points, and which always turned to the south whatever might be the direction taken by the chariot. Thus he succeeded in capturing the rebellious prince, who was put to death.

Some say that upon this chariot stood a needle, to denote the four parts of the world. That, states the French author writing in 1736, would “indicate the use of the compass, or something very similar to it ... and it is unfortunate that the device has not been explained more fully.”

Hoang-ti (Hoang, supreme king), third in the “Period of the Five Emperors” (Claude Augé, “Nouveau Larousse,” Vol. V. p. 134), regarded as the founder of the Chinese Empire, died at the age of 121, after reigning 100 years, B.C. 2598. Mailla (Joseph[2] A. M. de Moyriac de) in his “Histoire ... traduite du Thoung-Kian-Kang-Mou,” Paris, 1777, Vol. I. p. 28, makes the latter date 2599, as do likewise, Dr. Hœfer (“Nouvelle Biographie Générale,” Paris, 1858, Vol. XXIV. pp. 817–819) and Pierre Larousse (“Grand Dict, du XIX^e Siècle,” 1873, Vol. IX. p. 317), but Michaud (“Biogr. Univer.,” 1857, Vol. XIX. pp. 476–477) says he reigned from 2698 to 2577 B.C., and, in “La Grande Encyclop.,” Vol. XX. pp. 157–158, we are told that the correct period is 2697–2597 B.C. (“L’art de vérifier les dates,” Paris, 1819, Vol. IV. p. 8).

The above-named work of Jean Baptiste Du Halde on China is considered the most complete account of that vast empire that has appeared in Europe (“New Gen. Biogr. Dict.,” London, 1850, Vol. VIII. p. 175). In any case, remarks Mr. Demetrius C. Boulger (“History of China,” London, 1881, Vol. I. pp. 4–5), it is incontestable that the individuality of Hoang-ti, who was the successor of “Fo-hi,” the first great Chinese emperor, is much more tangible than that of any of his predecessors.[1] By him, it is well recorded that the extensive Chinese territory (Empire) was divided into ten provinces, or Chow, each of which was subdivided into ten departments, or Tsee, and these again into ten districts, or Tou, each of them containing ten towns, or Ye.

[3]

B.C. 1110.—Tcheou-Koung is said to have at this date taught the use of the needle compass to the envoys from Youa-tchang. “As the ambassadors sent from Cochin China and Tonquin” (Humboldt, “Cosmos” Vol. V. p. 51) “were about to take their departure” (which was in the twenty-second cycle, more than 1040 years B.C.), “Tcheou-Koung gave them an instrument which upon one side always turned toward the north and on the opposite side to the south, the better to direct them upon their homeward voyage.[2] This instrument was called tchi-nan (chariot of the south), and it is still the name given to the compass, which leads to the belief that Tcheou-Koung invented the latter.” In his chapter on “The Magnetic Needle,” Humboldt says the apparatus was called fse-nan (indicator of the south).

Tcheou-Koung (Ki-tan) was Chinese Minister of State under both Von-Vang (the first emperor of the Tcheou dynasty, who ruled seven years) and Tsching-Vang (second emperor, who ruled thirty-seven years), and lived to be 100 years old. He was one of the most learned and most popular men China has ever known, and is spoken of to this day by the Chinese “with an admiration bordering upon enthusiasm” (Saillant et Nyon, “Mémoires concernant l’Histoire,” Paris, 1776, Vol. III. p. 37). The emperor Tsching-Vang caused Tcheou-Koung’s body to be interred near his father’s remains, after giving it imperial funeral honours.

B.C. 1084.—According to Æschylus, the father of the Athenian drama, Agamemnon employed a line of optical signals to advise his queen Clytemnestra of the fall of Troy. Robert Browning’s translation, London, 1877, runs as follows:

[4]

Anna Swanwick thus renders Æschylus’ “Agamemnon,” London, 1881, p. 13:

At page 193 of his “Agamemnon,” London, 1873, E. H. Plumptre refers to the system of posts or messengers which the Persian kings seem to have been first to organize, and which impressed the minds of both the Hebrews (Esther viii. 14) and the Greeks (Herod., viii. 98) by their regular transmission of the king’s edicts or of special news.

What of the passage from the celebrated patriarch Job (xxxviii. 35): “Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, ‘Here we are?’” (original Hebrew, “Behold us”). As has been remarked, this seems prophetic, when taken in connection with the electric telegraph.

The fire beacons are also alluded to by Plutarch in his Life of Quintus Sertorius; and Mardonius prepared fire signals to notify Xerxes, then at Sardis, of the second taking of Athens.

For a decidedly original explanation of the beacon fires, read the introduction to “The Agamemnon of Æschylus,” translated by A. W. Verrall, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, England. See, likewise, reference to Act of Scottish Parliament, 1455, c. 48, made by Walter Scott in a note to his “Lay of the Last Minstrel”; “Archeologia,” London, 1770, Vol. I. pp. i-7.

B.C. 1068.—In the obscure age of Codrus, the seventeenth and last king of Athens, at about the period of the “Return of the Heraclidae” (descendants of Heracles—Hercules) to the Peloponnesus, the Chinese had magnetic carriages, upon which the movable arm of the figure of a man continually pointed to the south, and which it is said served as a guide by which to find the way across the boundless grass plains of Tartary. Humboldt states, besides, that, even in the third century of our era, Chinese vessels navigated the Indian Ocean under the direction of magnetic needles pointing to the south, and that, at pages xxxviii-xlii, Vol. I. of his “Asie Centrale,” he has shown what advantages this means of topographical direction, as well as the early knowledge and application of the magnetic needle, gave the Chinese geographers over the Greeks and Romans, to whom, for instance, even the true direction of the Pyrenees and the Apennines always remained unknown.

B.C. 1033–975.—Solomon, King of Israel, son of King David and of Bathsheba, who, “in the Jewish scriptures, has the first place assigned to him among the wise men of the East,” is believed by many to have known the use of the compass. The Spanish Jesuit Pineda and Athanasius Kircher assert the same, and state that Solomon’s subjects employed it in their navigations. Others, notably Fuller, “Miscel.,” iv. cap. 19, and Levinus Lemnius, “De Occulta Naturae Miracula,” lib. iii, have even tried to prove that Solomon was the inventor of the compass, and that it was in his time used by the Syrians, Sidonians and Phœnicians, but the contrary has been shown by Henricus Kippingius in his “Antiq. Rom. de exped. Mar.,” lib. iii. cap. 6, as well as by Bochart, the geographer, in his “Géo. Sacr.,” lib. i. cap. 38.

B.C. 1022.—At this period the Chinese magnetic cars held a floating needle, the motions of which were communicated to the figure of a spirit whose outstretched hand always indicated the south. An account of these cars is given in the “Szuki” (Shi-ki), or “Historical Memoirs of Szu-ma-thsian” (Szu-matsien), which were written early in the second century B.C., and are justly considered the greatest of all Chinese historical works, containing, as they do, the history of China from the beginning of the empire to the reign of Hiao-wou-ti, of the Han dynasty.

B.C. 1000–907.—Homer, the greatest of epic poets, called the father of Greek poetry, and who, according to Enfield (“History of Philosophy,” Vol. I. p. 133), flourished before any other poet whose writings are extant, relates that the loadstone was used by the Greeks to direct navigation at the time of the siege of Troy.

The latter construction has been placed upon several passages in Homer, the most important being found in Book VIII of the “Odyssey.”

As this appears to be the first attributed allusion to the compass, it is deemed worth while to give herein several interpretations of the original Greek. The selections made are as follows:

[6]

The afore-named construction is not, however, alluded to by Matthew Arnold in his well-known lectures given at Oxford, nor by the Right Hon. Wm. Ewart Gladstone either in his “Juventus Mundi” or throughout his very extensive “Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age.”

Sonnini tells us that as this period is about the same as that of the Chinese chronicles, it can scarcely be doubted that the knowledge of both the polarity of the needle and of the use of the compass[7] for navigation date back 3000 years (Buffon, “Terre,” Paris, An. VIII. p. 304).

This ill accords, however, with the views of others who have concluded, perhaps rightly, that the Greeks, Romans, Tuscans and Phœnicians[3] were ignorant of the directive property of the magnet, from the fact that none of the writings, more especially of Theophrastus, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius and Pliny, make explicit allusion thereto.

B.C. 600–580.—Thales of Miletus, Ionia, one of the “seven wise men of Greece” (the others being Solon, Chilo, Pittacus, Bias, Cleobolus and Periander), founder of the Ionic philosophy, and from whose school came Socrates, is said to have been the first to observe the electricity developed by friction in amber.

Thales, Theophrastus, Solinus, Priscian and Pliny, as well as other writers, Greek and Roman, mention the fact that when a vivifying heat is applied to amber it will attract straws, dried leaves, and other light bodies in the same way that a magnet attracts iron (“Photii Bibliotheca” Rothomagi, 1653, folio, col. 1040–1041, cod. 242).

Robert Boyle (“Philosophical Works,” London, 1738, Vol. I. p. 506, or London, 1744, Vol. III. p. 647) treats of different hypotheses advanced to solve the phenomena of electrical attraction, saying: “The first is that of the learned Nicholas Cabaeus (A.D. 1629), who thinks the drawing of light bodies by amber ... is caused by the steams which issue out of such bodies and discuss and expel the neighbouring air ... making small whirlwind.... Another is that of the eminent English philosopher, Sir Kenelm Digby (A.D. 1644), and embraced by the very learned Dr. Browne (A.D. 1646) and others, who believed that ... chafed amber is made to emit certain rays of unctuous steams, which, when they come to be a little cooled by the external air, are somewhat condensed ... carrying back with them those light bodies to which they happen to adhere at the time of their retraction.... Pierre Gassendi (A.D. 1632) thinks the same, and adds that these electrical rays ... get into the pores of a straw ... and by means of their decussation take the faster hold of it ... when they shrink back[8] to the amber whence they were emitted ... Cartesius (Descartes, A.D. 1644) accounts for electrical attractions by the intervention of certain particles, shaped almost like small pieces of riband, which he supposes to be formed of this subtile matter harboured in the pores or crevices of glass.”

The ancients were acquainted with but two electrical bodies—amber (electron), which has given the denomination of the science; and lyncurium, which is either the tourmaline or the topaz (Dr. Davy, “Mem. Sir Humphry Davy,” 1836, Vol. I. p. 309). From a recent article treating of gems, the following is extracted: “The name of the precious stone inserted in the ring of Gyges has not been handed down to us, but it is probable that it was the topaz, whose wonders Philostratus recounts in the Life of Apollonius. An attribute of the sun and of fire, the ancients called it the gold magnet, as it was credited with the power of attracting that metal, indicating its veins, and discovering treasures. Heliodorus, in his story of Theagenes and Caricles, says that the topaz saves from fire all those who wear it, and that Caricles was preserved by a topaz from the fiery vengeance of Arsaces, Queen of Ethiopia. This stone was one of the first talismans that Theagenes possessed in Egypt. The topaz, at present, symbolizes Christian virtues—faith, justice, temperance, gentleness, clemency.”

B.C. 600.—The Etruscans are known to have devoted themselves at this period to the study of electricity in an especial manner.[4][9] They are said to have attracted lightning by shooting arrows of metal into clouds which threatened thunder. Pliny even asserts that they had a secret method of not only “drawing it (the lightning) down” from the clouds, but of afterwards “turning it aside” in any desired direction. They recognized different sources of lightning, those coming from the sky (a sideribus venientia), which always struck obliquely, and others from the earth (infera, terrena), which rose perpendicularly. The Romans, on the other hand, recognized only two sorts, those of the day, attributed to Jupiter, and those of the night, attributed to Summanus (see Vassalli-Eandi at A.D. 1790).

This Vassalli-Eandi—like L. Fromondi—made special study of the very extensive scientific knowledge displayed by the ancients and, as shown in his “Conghietture ...” he concluded that they really possessed the secret of attracting and directing lightning. The above-named extracts concerning the Etruscans and Romans are made from the subjoined work of Mme. Blavatsky, wherein the following is likewise given.

Tradition says that Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, was initiated by the priests of the Etruscan divinities, and instructed by them in the secret of forcing Jupiter, the Thunderer, to descend upon earth. Salverte believes that before Franklin discovered his refined electricity, Numa had experimented with it most successfully, and that Tullus Hostilius, the successor of Numa, was the first victim of the dangerous “heavenly guest” recorded in history. Salverte remarks that Pliny makes use of expressions which seem to indicate two distinct processes; the one obtained thunder (impetrare), the other forced it to lightning (cogere). Tracing back the knowledge of thunder and lightning possessed by the Etruscan priests, we find that Tarchon, the founder of the theurgism of the former, desiring to preserve his house from lightning, surrounded it by a hedge of the white bryony, a climbing plant which has the property of averting thunderbolts. The Temple of Juno had its roofs covered with numerous pointed blades of swords. Ben David, says the author of “Occult Sciences,” has asserted that Moses (born about 1570 B.C.) possessed some knowledge of the phenomena of electricity. Prof. Hirt, of Berlin, is of this opinion. Michaelis remarks that there is no indication that lightning ever struck the Temple of Jerusalem during a thousand years: that, according to Josephus, a forest of points, of gold and very sharp, covered the roof of the temple, and that this roof communicated with the caverns in the hill by means of pipes in connection with the gilding which covered all the exterior of the building, in consequence of which the points would act as conductors. Salverte further asserts that in the days of Ctesias—Ktesias—India was acquainted with the use of conductors[10] of lightning. This historian plainly states that iron placed at the bottom of a fountain, and made in the form of a sword, with the point upward, possessed, as soon as it was thus fixed in the ground, the property of averting storms and lightning.

“Ancient India, as described by Ktesias, the Knidian,” J. H. McCrindle, London, 1882, alludes, p. 68, to iron swords employed to ward off lightning. Reference is made to the pantarbe at pp. 7–8, 69–70, and to the elektron (amber) at pp. 20, 21, 23, 51, 52, 70, 86. See account of Ktesias in “Nouvelle Biogr. Génér.,” Vol. XII. pp. 568–571, and in “Larousse Dict.,” Vol. V. p. 614.

In his “Observations sur la Physique,” Vols. XXIV. pp. 321–323, XXV. pp. 297–303, XXVI. pp. 101–107, M. l’Abbé Rosier gives the correspondence between M. de Michaelis, Professor at Göttingen, and Mr. Lichtenberg, showing conclusively how the numerous points distributed over the surface of the roof of the Temple of Solomon effectively served as lightning conductors. Mr. Lichtenberg in addition shows that the bell tower located upon a hill at the country seat of Count Orsini de Rosenberg, was, during a period of several years, so repeatedly struck by lightning, with great loss of life, that divine service had to be suspended in the church. The tower was entirely destroyed in 1730 and soon after rebuilt, but it was struck as often as ten times during one prolonged storm, until finally a fifth successive attack, during the year 1778, compelled its demolition. For the third time the tower was reconstructed, and the Count placed a pointed conductor, since which time no damage has been sustained.

B.C. 588.—The earliest reliable record of messages transmitted by the sign of fire is to be found in the book of Jeremiah, vi. 1: “O ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign [11]of fire in Beth-haccerem; for evil appeareth out of the north and great destruction.”

B.C. 341.—Aristotle, Greek philosopher, says (“Hist. of Anim.,” IX. 37) that the electrical torpedo causes or produces a torpor upon those fishes it is about to seize, and, having by that means got them into its mouth, feeds upon them. The torpedo is likewise alluded to, notably by (Claudius) Plutarch, the celebrated Greek moralist, by Dioscorides, Pedacius, Greek botanist, referred to in Gilbert’s “De Magnete,” Book I. chaps. i, ii, and xiv; by Galen, illustrious Roman physician, who is also frequently alluded to in “De Magnete,” and by Claudius Claudian, Latin poet, who flourished at the commencement of the fifth century. Oppian describes (“Oppian’s Halieuticks of the nature of fishes and fishing of the ancients in five books,” lib. ii. v. 56, etc., also lib. iii. v. 149) the organs by which the animal produces the above effect, and Pliny (“Nat. Hist.,” Book 32, chap. i) says: “This fish, if touched by a rod or spear, at a distance paralyzes the strongest muscles, and binds and arrests the feet, however swift.”

“The very crampe-fish tarped, knoweth her owne force and power, and being herself not benummed, is able to astonish others” (Holland “Plinie,” Book IX. chap. xlii.).

“We, here, and in no other place, met with that extraordinary fish called the torpedo, or numbing fish, which is in shape very like the fiddle fish, and is not to be known from it but by a brown circular spot about the bigness of a crown-piece near the centre of its back” (Ausonius, “Voyages,” Book II. chap. xii.).

[12]

B.C. 341.—Æneas, the tactician, believed to be the same Æneas of Stymphale alluded to by Xenophon, invented a singular method of telegraphing phrases commonly used, especially in war. These were written upon exactly similar oblong boards placed at the dispatching and receiving stations, where they stood upon floats in vessels of water. At a given signal the water was allowed to flow out of the vessel at each station, and, when the desired phrase on the board had reached the level of the vessel, another signal was made so that the outflow could be stopped and the desired signal read at the receiving station.

B.C. 337–330.—From the well-known work by Mme. Blavatsky (“Isis Unveiled,” New York, 1877) the following curious extracts are made regarding “The Ether or Astral Light” (Vol. I. chap. v. pp. 125–162):

“There has been an infinite confusion of names to express one and the same thing, amongst others, the Hermes-fire, the lightning of Cybelè, the nerve-aura and the fluid of the magnetists, the od of Reichenbach, the fire-globe, or meteor-cat of Babinet, the physic force of Sergeant Cox and Mr. Crookes, the atmospheric magnetism of some naturalists, galvanism, and finally, electricity, which are but various names for many different manifestations or effects of the same all-pervading causes—the Greek Archeus....” Only in connection with these discoveries (Edison’s Force and Graham Bell’s Telephone, which may unsettle, if not utterly upset all our ideas of the imponderable fluids) we may perhaps well remind our readers of the many hints to be found in the ancient histories as to a certain secret in the possession of the Egyptian priesthood, who could instantly communicate, during the celebration of the Mysteries, from one temple to another, even though the former were at Thebes and the latter at the other end of the country; the legends attributing it, as a matter of course, to the “invisible tribes” of the air which carry messages for mortals. The author of “Pre-Adamite Man” (P. B. Randolph, at p. 48) quotes an instance, which, being merely given on his own authority, and he seeming uncertain whether the story comes from Macrinus or some other writer, may be taken for what it is worth. He found good evidence, he says, during his stay in Egypt, that one of the Cleopatras actually sent news by a wire to all of the cities from Heliopolis (the magnificent chief seat of sun-worship) to the island of Elephantine, on the Upper Nile.

Further on, Mme. Blavatsky thus alludes to the loadstone:

“The stone magnet is believed by many to owe its name to Magnesia....” We consider, however, the opinion of the Hermetists[13] to be the correct one. The word magh, magus, is derived from the Sanscrit mahaji, meaning the great or wise ... so the magnet stone was called in honour of the Magi, who were the first to discover its wonderful properties. Their places of worship were located throughout the country in all directions, and among these were some temples of Hercules, hence the stone—when it became known that the priests used it for their curative and magical purposes—received the name of Magnesian or Herculean stone. Socrates, speaking of it, says: “Euripides calls it the Magnesian stone, but the common people the Herculean” (Plato, “Ion”—Burgess—Vol. IV. p. 294). In the same Vol. I. of “Isis Unveiled” we are likewise informed that Electricity in the Norse legends is personated by Thor, the son of Odin, at Samothrace by the Kabeirian Demeter (Joseph Ennemoser, “History of Magic,” London, 1854, Vol. II.; J. S. C. Schweigger, “Introd. to Mythol. through Nat Hist.,” Halle, 1836), and that it is denoted by the “twin brothers,” the Dioskuri. Also that the celestial, pure fire of the Pagan altar was electrically drawn from the astral light, that magnetic currents develop themselves into electricity upon their exit from the body, and that the first inhabitants of the earth brought down the heavenly fire to their altars (J. S. C. Schweigger in Ennemoser’s “Hist. of Magic,” Vol. II. p. 30; Maurus Honoratus Servius, “Virgil,” Eclog. VI. v. 42).

B.C. 321.—Theophrastus, Greek philosopher, first observed the attractive property of the lyncurium, supposed by many to be the tourmaline, and gave a description of it in his treatise upon stones (“De Lapidibus,” sec. 53; or the translation of Sir John Hill, 1774, chap. xlix.-l., p. 123). This crystal was termed lapis lyncurius by Pliny in his “Nat. Hist.,” and lapis electricus by Linnæus in his “Flora Zeylanica” (U. Aldrovandus, “Mus. Metal.”; Philemon Holland, “The Historie of the World,” commonly called “The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus,” London, 1601).

Theophrastus and Pliny speak of this native magnet as possessing, like amber, the property of attracting straw, dried leaves, bark and other light bodies. The different sorts of loadstones, of which the best were blue in colour (as stated by Taisnier, Porta, Barthol. de Glanville and others), are thus alluded to by Pliny (“Nat. Hist.,” lib. xxxvi. cap. 16): “Sotacus describes five kinds: the Æthiopian; that of Magnesia, a country which borders on Macedonia; a third from Hyettus, in Boetia; a fourth from Alexandria, in Troas; and a fifth from Magnesia, in Asia” (Porta, “Natural Magick,” Book VII. chap. i.). He further says that iron cannot resist it; “the moment the metal approaches it, it springs[14] toward the magnet, and, as it clasps it, is held fast in the magnet’s embrace.” It is by many called ferrum vivum, or quick iron.[6]

Claudian speaks of it as “a stone which is preferred to all that is most precious in the East.... Iron gives it life and nourishes it” (Claudian, Idyl V; Ennemoser, “Hist. of Magic,” Vol. II. p. 27).

Hippocrates, the father of medical science, calls it “the stone which carries away iron.”

Epicurus, an Athenian of the Ægean tribe, says: “The loadstone or magnet attracts iron, because the particles which are continually flowing from it, as from all bodies, have such a peculiar fitness in form to those which flow from iron that, upon collision, they easily unite.... The mutual attraction of amber and like bodies may be explained in the same manner.”

Hier. Cardan intimates that “it is a certain appetite or desire of nutriment that makes the loadstone snatch the iron....” (“De Subtilitate,” Basileæ, 1611, lib. vii. p. 381).

Diogenes of Apollonia (lib. ii. “Nat. Quæst.,” cap. xxiii.) says that “there is humidity in iron which the dryness of the magnet feeds upon.”

Cornelius Gemma supposed invisible lines to stretch from the magnet to the attracted body, a conception which, says Prof. Tyndall, reminds us of Faraday’s lines of force.

Lucretius accounts for the adhesion of the steel to the loadstone by saying that on the surface of the magnet there are hooks,[15] and, on the surface of the steel, little rings which the hooks catch hold of.

Thales, Aristotle, Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ and the Greek sophist Hippias, ascribe the loadstone’s attractive virtue to the soul with which they say it is endowed. Humboldt (“Cosmos,” article on the Magnetic Needle) says soul signifies here “the inner principle of the moving agent,” and he adds in a footnote: “Aristotle (“De Anima,” I. 2) speaks only of the animation of the magnet as of an opinion that originated with Thales.” Diogenes Laertius interprets this statement as applying also distinctly to amber, for he says: “Aristotle and Hippias maintain as to the doctrine enounced by Thales.”

The native magnet appears to have long been known in nearly every quarter of the globe (Humboldt, “Cosmos,” 1848, Vol. V., and Harris, “Rudimentary Magnetism,” Parts I and II).

In the Talmud, it is called achzhàb’th, the stone which attracts; in the Aztec, tlaihiomani tetl, the stone that draws by its breath; in the Sanscrit, ayaskânta, loving toward iron; in the Siamese, me-lek, that which attracts iron; in the Chinese, thsu-chy, love stone, also hy-thy-chy, stone that snatches up iron; in the French, l’aimant, and in the Spanish, iman, loving stone; in the Hungarian, magnet kö, love stone; while in the Greek it is called siderites, owing to its resemblance to iron.

For lyncurium of the ancients see Phil. Trans., Vol. LI. p. 394, and Hutton’s “Abridgments,” Vol. XI. p. 419.

Euripides (“Fragmenta Euripidis,” Didot edit., 1846, p. 757) called it lapis herculaneus, from its power over iron, and it was also known as lapis heracleus, doubtless because the best was, at one time, said to be found near Heraclea in Lydia (Plato, “Ion”—Burgess—Vol. IV. p. 294; see, besides, Blavatsky, “Isis Unveiled,” Vol. I. p. 130; Hervart (J. F.), Ingolstadii, 1623).

It has likewise been designated as follows: Chinese, tchu-chy, directing stone; Icelandic, leiderstein, leading stone; Swedish, segel-sten, seeing stone; Tonkinin, d’ànamtchûm, stone which shows the south; and, by reason of its great hardness, the Greeks called it calamita; the Italians calamita; the French calamite, also diamant; the Hebrews khalamish or kalmithath, and the Romans adamas, while adamant was the name given to the magnetic needle (compass) by the English of the time of Edward III (T. H. H. Martin, “De l’aimant, de ses noms divers et de ses variétés,” Paris, 1861; Buttmann, “Bemerkungen ... des Magnetes und des Basaltes,” 1808, Band II.; G. A. Palm, “Der Magnet in Alterthum,” 1867).[7]

[16]

“This stone adamas is dyuers and other than an Magnas, for yf an adamas be sette by yren it suffryth not the yren come to the magnas, but drawyth it by a manere of vyolence fro the magnas” (Trevisa, “Barth, de Prop, reb.,” XVI. 8).[8]

“The adamant cannot draw yron if the diamond lye by it” (Lyly, “Euphues,” sig. K. p. 10).

“Right as an adamound, iwys, can drawen to hym sotylly the yren” (“Rom. Rose”).

“In Ynde groweth the admont stone ... she by her nature draweth to her yron” (Caxton, “Myrrour,” II. vii. 79).

“The adamant placed neare any iron will suffer it to be drawen away of the lode stone” (Maplet, “Greene Forest,” I.).

“You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant; but yet you draw not iron; for my heart is true as steel” (Shakespeare, “Midsum. Night’s Dream,” Act. ii. sc. 1).

“As sun to day, as turtle to her mate, as iron to adamant” (Shakespeare, “Troilus and Cressida,” Act iii. sc. 2).

“The grace of God’s spirit, like the true load stone or adamant, draws up the yron heart of man to it” (Bishop Hall, “Occas. Medit.,” 52.).

[17]

“The adamant ... is such an enemy to the magnet that, if it be bound to it, it will not attract iron” (Leonardus, “Mirr. Stones,” 63).

According to Beckmann (Bohn, 1846, pp. 86–98) the real tourmaline was first brought from Ceylon (where the natives called it tournamal), at the end of the seventeenth century or beginning of the eighteenth century (see A.D. 1707).

It is classed by Pliny as a variety of carbuncle (lib. xxxvii. cap. vii.). John de Laet says (“De Gemmis,” 1647, 8vo, p. 155): “The description of the lyncurium does not ill agree with the hyacinth of the moderns.” Watson thinks likewise (“Phil. Trans.,” Vol. LI. p. 394) and so does John Serapion-Serapio Mauritanus—Yuhanna Ibn Serapion Ben Ibrahim (alluded to by Gilbert, “De Magnete,” Book I. chap. i.) in his “Lib. de simplicibus medicinis,” Argent. 1531, fol. p. 263; and Anselm Boèce de Boot, Flemish naturalist (“Gem. et Lap. Hist.,” Leyden, 1636); while Epiphanius (“De Gemmis,” XII.) states that he could find in the Bible no mention of the lyncurium, which latter he also believes to have been the hyacinth. On the other hand, the Duke de Noya Caraffa (“Recueil de Mém. Æpinus,” Petersb. 1762, 8vo, p. 122) considers the tourmaline to be identical with the theamedes of the ancients (Pliny, lib. xx. 50, and xxxvi., 25; Cardan, “De Subtilitate,” lib. vii. p. 386).

The betylos has doubtless been likewise named in this connection. Strabo, Pliny, Helancius—all speak of the electrical or electro-magnetic power of the betyli. They were worshipped in the remotest antiquity in Egypt and Samothrace as magnetic stones “containing souls which had fallen from heaven,” and the priests of Cybelè wore a small betylos on their bodies (Blavatsky, “Isis Unveiled,” Vol. I. p. 332).

B.C. 285–247.—Ptolemy (Ptolemæus II, surnamed Philadelphus, or the brother-loving, son of Ptolemy Soter) ordered Timochares, the architect of the palace, to suspend the iron statue of Arsinoë in the temple of Pharos.

Although Pliny says (lib. xxxiv. cap. 14) that the statue was never completed owing to the death of both Ptolemy and his architect, Ausonius (Decimus Magnus), Roman poet (A.D. 309–393), asserts the contrary in his most important work, “Mosella” (vv. 314–320), translation of Mr. de la Ville de Mirmont, the first edition of which was published by Ugollet at Venice in 1499. Therein it is said: “Timochares (and not Dinochares, Dinocrates, Demochrates or Chirocrates) suspended the statue in mid-air (dans les hauteurs aëriennes du temple).... Under the ceiling-vault crowned with loadstones, a bluish magnet draws, by means of an iron hair, the young woman it holds in its embrace.”

“Dinocrates began to make the arched roofe of the temple of Arsinoë all of magnet, or this loadstone, to the end, that within that temple the statue of the said princesse made of yron, might seeme to hang in the aire by nothing” (Holland, “Plinie,” Book XXXIV. cap. 14).

King Theodoric alludes (Cassiodor, “Variar,” lib. i. epist. 45) to a statue of Cupid in the temple of Diana at Ephesus (one of the seven Wonders of the World), and St. Augustine (“De Civitate Dei,” XXI. 6) speaks of a bronze figure in the temple of Serapis at Alexandria, both suspended by means of a magnet attached to the ceiling.[9]

B.C. 200.—Polybius, a Greek statesman and historian, describes (lib. x. cap. 45, “General History”) his optical telegraph—pyrsia—because the signals were invariably produced by means of fire-lights—an unquestionable improvement upon the modes of communication which had been previously suggested by Cleoxenes and Democritus. It consisted of a board upon which the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet were arranged in five columns, one space being vacant. The party signalling would hold up with his left hand a number of torches indicating the column from which the desired letter was to be taken, while in the right hand he would hold up to view as many torches as were necessary to designate the particular letter required.

B.C. 60–56.—Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus), Roman poet, alludes to the magnet in his poem “De Rerum Natura” (“The Nature of Things”), thus translated by Dr. Thomas Busby, London, 1813, Book VI. vv. 1045–1059:

A rendering by Thomas Creech, A.M., London, 1714, Book VI. vv. 894–989, likewise deserves reproduction here:

The transmission of the magnetic attraction through rings or chains is also alluded to in Plato’s “Ion,” p. 533, D. E. Ed. Stephanus; by Pliny, lib. xxxiv. cap. 14; St. Augustine, “De Civitate Dei,” XX. 4; Philo, “De Mundi Opificio,” D. ed., 1691, p. 32; likewise by the learned Bishop Hall, “The English Seneca,” as follows: “That the loadstone should by his secret virtue so drawe yron to it selfe that a whole chaine of needles should hang by insensible points at each other, only by the influence that it sends downe from the first, if it were not ordinary, would seeme incredible” (“Meditations,” 1640, con. 3, par. 18).

A.D. 50.—Scribonius Largus, Designationus, Roman physician, relates (Chaps. I. and XLI. of his “De Compositione Med. Medica”) that a freedman of Tiberius called Anthero was cured of the gout by shocks received from the electric torpedo, and Dioscorides advises the same treatment for inveterate pains of the head (“Torpedo,” lib. ii.). Other applications are alluded to by Galen (“Simp. Medic.,” lib. xi.; Paulus Ægineta, “De Re Medica,” lib. vii.; “Encycl. Met.,” article “Electricity,” IV. p. 41). See also Bertholon, “Elec. du Corps Humain,” 1786, Vol. I. p. 174.

Fahie states (“History of Electric Telegraphy,” p. 172) that, along the banks of the Old Calabar River, in Africa, the natives employ the electrical properties of the gymnotus for the cure of their sick children. They either place the ailing child close by the vessel of water containing the animal, or the child is made to play with a very small specimen of the fish.

A.D. 121.—The Chinese knew of old the magnet, its attractive force and its polarity, but the most ancient record made of the peculiar property possessed by the loadstone of communicating polarity to iron is explicitly mentioned in the celebrated dictionary “Choue-Wen,” which Hin-tchin completed in A.D. 121, the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Ngan-ti of the Han dynasty.

This dictionary contains a description of the manner in which the property of pointing with one end toward the south may be imparted to an iron rod by a series of methodical blows, and alludes to (“Tseu”) the “stone with which a direction can be given to the needle.”

“In Europe it has been thought that the needle had its chief tendency to the north pole; but in China the south alone is considered as containing the attractive power” (Sir G. Staunton, “Account of an Embassy,” London, 1797, Vol. I. p. 445).

Le Père Gaubil, who was sent to China in 1721 and died in Pekin 1759, says (“Histoire ... de la dynastie de Tang,” in “Mémoires concernant ...” Vol. XV) that he found, in a work written towards the end of the Han dynasty, the use of the compass distinctly marked to distinguish the north and the south. He also states, though doubtless erroneously, that that form was given it under the reign of Hian-Tsoung.

With reference to the magnetic attraction to the pole, it is well to bear in mind that no allusion whatsoever is made thereto by any of the writers of classical antiquity. This much has already been stated under date B.C. 1000–907. It certainly appears to have escaped the attention of the ancient Greeks and Romans, whose admiration, according to the learned French physician Falconet (“Dissert. Hist. et Crit.”), was excited solely by the attractive property of the loadstone.

The Rev. Father Joseph de Acosta (“Natural and Moral History of the Indies,” translation of C. R. Markham, lib. i. cap. 16) thus alludes to the above subject: “I finde not that, in ancient bookes, there is any mention made of the vse of the Iman or Loadstone, nor of the Compasse (aguja de marear) to saile by; I beleeve they had no knowledge thereof.... Plinie speakes nothing of that vertue it hath, alwaies to turne yron which it toucheth towards the north.... Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Lucretius, Saint Augustine, nor any other writers or Naturall Philosophers that I have seene, make any mention thereof, although they treat of the loadstone.”

Thomas Creech, in the notes to his translation of Lucretius’[22] “De Natura” says: “Nor indeed, do any of the ancients treat of this last (the directive) power of the loadstone ... and Guido Pancirollus justly places it among the modern inventions.”

A.D. 218.—Salmasius, in his Commentary upon Solinus, asserts that, at this date, amber was known among the Arabs as Karabe, or Kahrubá, a word which, Avicenna states, is of Persian origin and signifies the power of attracting straws; the magnet being called Ahang-rubá, or attractor of iron.

A.D. 232–290.—Africanus (Sextus Julius), an eminent Christian historical writer, author of a chronicle extending from the date of the creation to A.D. 221, as well as of an extensive work entitled “Kestoi,” states that the Roman generals perfected a system for readily communicating intelligence by means of fires made of different substances.

A.D. 235.—It is related that one Makium, who was ordered by the Chinese emperor to construct “a car which would show the South” succeeded in doing so, and thus recovered the secret of manufacture which had for some time been lost. The “Amer. Journ. of Science and the Arts” (Vol. XL. p. 249) adds that, from this date, the construction of a magnetic car seems to have been a puzzle ... and the knowledge of the invention appears to have been confined within very narrow limits. Humboldt says that the magnetic wagon was used as late as the fifteenth century of our era; the “American Journal” states that it cannot be traced later than 1609.

A.D. 265–419.—What is by many believed to be the earliest reliable, distinct mention or actually printed record of the use of the magnet for navigation, appears in the justly prominent Chinese dictionary or rather encyclopædia, “Poei-wen-yun-fou,” wherein it is mentioned that there were during this period (that of the second Tsin dynasty) ships directed to the South by the ching or needle. It is likewise therein stated that the figure then placed upon the magnetic cars represented “a genius in a feather dress” and that,[23] when the emperor went out upon state occasions this car “always led the way and served to indicate the four points of the compass.”

In a later work called “Mung-khi-py-than” will be found the following: “The soothsayers rub a needle with the magnet stone, so that it may mark the south; however, it declines constantly a little to the east. It does not indicate the south exactly. When this needle floats on the water it is much agitated. If the fingernails touch the upper edge of the basin in which it floats, they agitate it strongly; only it continues to slide and falls easily. It is preferable, in order to show its virtues in the best way, to suspend it as follows: Take a single filament from a piece of new cotton and attach it exactly to the middle of the needle by a bit of wax as large as a mustard seed. Hang it up in a place where there is no wind. Then the needle always shows the south; but among such needles there are some which, being rubbed, indicate the north. Our soothsayers have some which show the south and some which show the north. Of this property of the magnet to indicate the south, like that of the cypress to show the west, no one can tell the origin.”

A.D. 295–324.—Koupho, Chinese physicist as well as writer, and one of the most celebrated men of his age, compares the attractive property of the magnet with that of amber animated by friction and heat. In his “Discourse on the Loadstone” he says: “The magnet attracts iron as amber draws mustard seeds. There is a breath of wind that promptly and mysteriously penetrates both bodies, uniting them imperceptibly with the rapidity of an arrow. It is incomprehensible.”

A.D. 304.—St. Elmo (St. Erasmus) Bishop of Formiæ, in ancient Italy, who suffered martyrdom about this date at Gæta, is the one after whom sailors in the Mediterranean first named the fires or flames which by many are believed to be of an electric nature and which appear during stormy weather, either at the yardarms, mastheads, in the rigging, or about the decks of a vessel. When two flames are seen together, they are called Castor and Pollux, “twin gods of the sea, guiding the mariner to port,” and are considered by seamen an indication of good luck and of fine weather; but when only one flame is visible it is called Helena, and is supposed to be an evil omen, the beacon of an avenging God luring the sailor to death.

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St. Elmo’s fire is also known to the Italians as the fire of St. Peter and of St. Nicholas, to the Portuguese as San Telmo and as Corpos Santos, and to the English sailors as comazant or corposant.

The historian of Columbus’ second voyage says that during the month of October 1493 “St. Elmo appeared on the topgallant-masts with seven lighted tapers.” It is also alluded to by Pliny, “Nat. Hist.” lib. ii. cap. 37; by Stobæus, “Eclogarum Phys.,” I. 514; Livy, “Hist.,” cap. 2; Seneca, “Nat. Quæst.,” I. 1; by Cæsar, “de Bello Africano,” cap. 6 edit. Amstel., 1686; and by Camoëns, “Os Lusiades,” canto v. est. 18.

A.D. 400.—Marcellus Empiricus, who was magister officiorum in the reign of Theodosius the Great (379–395) states in his “De Medicamentis Empiricis,” Venetiis, 1547, P. 89, that the magnet called antiphyson attracts and repulses iron. This, adds Becquerel in his “Résumé,” Chap. III, further proves that these properties were known in the fourth century.

A.D. 425.—Zosimus (Count), Greek historian, who lived under Theodosius II (401–450), “sometime advocate of the Treasury of the Roman Empire,” wrote the history of that empire from the reign of Augustus to the year A.D. 410, wherein he is the first to call attention to the electrolytic separation of metals, i. e. that the latter acquire a coating of copper upon being immersed in a cupreous solution.

A.D. 426.—Augustine (Aurelius, Saint), the most prominent of the Latin Fathers of the Church, finishes his “De Civitate Dei,” which he began in 413, and which is considered the greatest monument to his genius. He was probably the most voluminous writer of the earlier Christian centuries. He was the author of no less than 232 books, in addition to many tractates or homilies and innumerable epistles (“Books and their Makers, during the Middle Ages,” Geo. Haven Putnam, New York, 1896, Vol. I. p. 3). In the “De Civitate Dei” he tells us (Basileæ, 1522, pp. 718–719) of the experiment alluded to herein at A.D. 1558. This had better be given in his own words (“De Civitate Dei,” lib. ii. cap. 4, Dod’s translation, Edinburgh, 1871):

“When I first saw it (the attraction of the magnet), I was thunderstruck (vehementer inhorrui), for I saw an iron ring attracted and suspended by the stone; and then, as if it had communicated its own property to the iron it attracted and had made it a substance like itself, this ring was put near another and lifted it up, and, as the first ring clung to the magnet, so did the second ring to the first. A third and fourth were similarly added, so that there hung from the stone a kind of chain of rings with their hoops connected, not interlinking but attached together by their outer surface. Who would not be amazed by this virtue of the stone, subsisting as it does, not only in itself, but transmitted through so many suspended rings and binding them together by invisible links? Yet far more astonishing is what I heard about the stone from my brother in the episcopate, Severus, Bishop of Milevis. He told me that Bathanarius, once Count of Africa, when the Bishop was dining with him, produced a magnet and held it under a silver plate on which he placed a bit of iron; then as he moved his hand with the magnet underneath the plate, the iron upon the plate moved about accordingly. The intervening silver was not affected at all, but precisely as the magnet was moved backward and forward below it, no matter how quickly, so was the iron attracted above. I have related what I have myself witnessed: I have related what I was told by one whom I trust as I trust my own eyes.”

A.D. 450.—Aëtius (Amidenus), Greek physician, informs us (Aëtii, op. lib. xi. cap. 25) that “those who are troubled with the gout in their hands or in their feet, or with convulsions, find relief when they hold a magnet in their hand. Paracelsus recommended the use of the magnet in a number of diseases, as fluxes, hæmorrhages, etc., while Marcellus (“Steph. Artis. Med. Princip.,” II. p. 253) and Camillus Leonardus (“Speculum Lapidum,” lib. ii.) assert that it will cure the toothache.”

During the year 1596, Jean Jacques Vuccher published “De Secretis” (“The secrets and marvels of Nature”), wherein, at p. 166, he thus advises the application of a loadstone for curing the headache: “La pierre d’aymant appliquée et mise contre la teste, oste toutes les douleurs et maux d’icelle-ce que nostre Hollerius escrit comme l’ayant prins [sic] des commentaires des anciens.” And, in 1754, Lenoble constructed magnets that were readily used in the treatment of various diseases (“Practical Mechanic,” Vol. II. p. 171).

The application of the magnet for the relief of various complaints is treated of at pp. 334–335, Vol. II. of J. Ennemoser’s “History of Magic,” where will be found a list of works containing accounts of the oldest and most extraordinary known cures on record. Additional references to cures by the magnet, as well as with iron or amber—besides those named more particularly at A.D. 1770 (Maxim. Hell) and at A.D. 1775 (J. F. Bolten)—are to be found in the following works:

“The magnet ... gives comfort and grace, and is a cure for many complaints; it is of great value in disputes. When pulverised, it cures many burns. It is a remedy for dropsy” (I Sermone ... di F. Sacchetti ... § 18).

According to Dias, “the magnet reconciles husbands to their wives,” and Platea remarks that “it is principally of use to the wounded,” while Avicenna says “it is a remedy against spleen, the dropsy and alopecian.”

For additional information, consult J. Beckmann’s “History of Inventions,” Bohn, 1846, Vol. I. p. 43, and the article “Somnambulism” in the “Encyclopædia Britannica.”

A.D. 543.—The Japanese say that at about this date the Mikado received from the Court of Petsi in Corea “the wheel which indicates the south.”

A.D. 658.—As shown by Kaï-bara-Tok-sin, in the “Wa-zi-si,” the first magnetic cars were constructed during this year in Japan; the loadstone was not, however, discovered in that country until A.D. 713, when it was brought from the province of Oomi (Klaproth, “Boussole,” p. 94). The “Journal of the Franklin Institute” (Vol. XVIII. for 1836, p. 69), gives a description and illustration of one of these magnetic chariots, taken from the thirty-third volume of the Japanese Encyclopædia.

A.D. 806–820.—Between these dates, under the Thâng dynasty,[28] were first made the cars called Kin-Koung-yuan, which were magnetic chariots similar to those previously known, but bearing in addition a drum and a bell. Both the latter were struck at regular intervals by an erect male figure placed at the head of the car (“American Journal of Science and the Arts,” Vol. XL. p. 249).

A critic named Tchen-yn admits, as already indicated herein under the A.D. 235 date, that the knowledge of the mode of construction of the magnetic cars was by no means general. “I know well,” adds he, “that, at the time of the Thâng, under Hien-toung (who ascended the throne 806 A.D., and reigned seventeen years) a chariot was made which always showed the four parts of the earth, in imitation, it was said, of those constructed at the time of Hoang-ti.... Upon it stood the figure of a spirit, whose hand always pointed to the south.”

A.D. 968.—Kung-foo-Whing is said to have invented a method of transmitting sound through wires by means of an apparatus called thumthsein, although no trace whatever of the latter is to be found in any of the numerous authorities herein quoted.

A.D. 1067–1148.—Frode (Ari Hinn—Ara Hin—or the Wise), Arius Polyhistor (Ari Prestrinha Frodi Thorgillsun), Icelandic historian, “than whom there is no higher authority,” was the first compiler of the celebrated “Landnama-Bok,” which contains a full account of all the early settlers in Iceland, and is doubtless the most complete record of the kind ever made by any nation.

In it, he says that, at the time Floke Vilgerderson left Rogoland, in Norway, about A.D. 868, for another visit to Gardansholm (Iceland), of which he was the original discoverer, “the seamen had no loadstone (leiderstein) in the northern countries,” thus showing, according to Prof. Hansteen, that the directive power of the needle and its use in navigation were known in Europe in the eleventh century. In this manner is given the first intimation of the knowledge of the mariner’s compass outside of China. The passage quoted above is by many supposed to be an interpolation, for it is not found in several manuscripts, and it has even been asserted (“Br. Ann.,” p. 296), that its origin does not antedate the fourteenth century, thus strengthening the claims of the French in behalf of Guyot De Provins.

A.D. 1111–1117.—Keou-tsoungchy, Chinese philosopher and writer, gives, in the medical natural history called “Pen-thsao-yan-i,” written by him under the Soung dynasty, the earliest description of a water compass found in any Chinese work, viz.: “The magnet is covered over with little bristles slightly red, and its superficies is rough. It attracts iron and unites itself with it; and, for this reason, it is commonly called the stone which licks up iron. When an iron point is rubbed upon the magnet, it acquires the property of pointing to the south, yet it declines always to the east, and is not perfectly true to the south.... If the needle be passed through a wick or a small tube of thin reed, and placed upon water, it will indicate the south, but with a continual inclination towards the point ping, that is to say, East five-sixths South.”

In the “Mung-khi-py-than,” also composed under the Soung dynasty, it is stated that fortune-tellers rub the needle with the loadstone in order to make it indicate the south.

A.D. 1160.—Eustathius, Archbishop of Thessalonica, relates in his commentary on the Iliad of Homer, that Walimer, father of Theodoric and King of the Goths, used to emit sparks from his body; also that a certain philosopher observed sparks occasionally issuing from his chest accompanied with a crackling noise.

Leithead tells us that streams of fire came from the hair of Servius Tullius, a Roman King, during sleep, when he was about seven years of age (Dionysius, “Antiq. Rom.” lib. iv.; Pliny, “Hist. Nat.” lib. ii. cap. 37); that Cardan alludes to the hair of a certain Carmelite monk emitting sparks whenever it was rubbed backward (“De Rerum Varietate,” lib. viii. cap. 43); that Father Faber, in his “Palladium Chemicum,” speaks of a young woman whose hair emitted sparks while being combed, and also refers to allusions made in the same line by Thomas Bartholinus, “De Luce Animalium,” Lugd. 1647, p. 121; Ezekiel di Castro, “De Igne Lambente”; Johann Jacob Hemmer, “Trans. Elec. Soc. Mannheim,” Vol. VI; and Phil. Trans., Vol. V. pp. 1, 40.

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A.D. 1190–1210.—Guyot de Provins, minstrel at the Court of the Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), gives the first French mention of the water compass in a manuscript “politico-satirical” poem entitled “La Bible,” to be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It is therein said that sailors were at that time in the habit of rubbing needles upon the ugly brown stone called marinière, “to which iron adheres of its own accord,” and that, as soon as placed afloat upon a small piece of straw in the water, the needles would point to the North. The passage alluding to the compass has been copied by D. A. Azuni, member of the Turin Academy of Sciences, from the original manuscript, and is given entire, with the French translation, at p. 137 of his “Dissertation ...” second edition, Paris, 1809:

The passage is also given by Klaproth, at pp. 41–43, and by Venanson, at p. 72, of their respective works already cited; likewise by Bertelli, p. 59 of his Memoir published in 1868.

Sonnini (C. S.), in Buffon “Minéraux,” Vol. XV, p. 100, says that Azuni has successfully established the claims of France to the first use of the mariner’s compass. Other writers herein, who follow in their order, will doubtless show to the satisfaction of the reader that, as the Arabs possessed it at the same time, they must have received it from the Chinese, and therefore transmitted it to the Franks during the first Crusades, as stated by Klaproth in his “Lettre à M. de Humboldt,” Paris, 1834, pp. 64–66.

A.D. 1204–1220.—Jacobus de Vitry, Cardinal Bishop of Ptolemais, in Syria, one of the Crusaders, thus speaks of the compass in his [31]“Historiæ Hierosolimitanæ,”[10] cap. 89 and 91: “The Magnet [diamant, as shown under the B.C. 321 date] is found in the Indies.... It attracts iron through a secret virtue; after a needle has touched the loadstone, it always turns toward the North Star, which latter is as the world’s axis and is immobile, while the other stars turn around it; that is why the compass is so useful to navigators, valde necessarius navigantibus.”

A.D. 1207.—Neckam (Alexander of), 1157–1217, Abbot of St. Mary’s, alludes in his “De Utensilibus” to a needle carried on board ship, which, being placed upon a pivot and allowed to take its own position of repose, “showed mariners their course when the Polar Star is hidden.” In another work, “De Naturis Rerum” (lib. ii. cap. 89), he writes: “Mariners at sea, when, through cloudy weather in the day, which hides the sun, or through the darkness of the night, they lose the knowledge of the quarter of the world to which they are sailing, touch a needle with a magnet which will turn around until, on its own motion ceasing, its point will be directed toward the North (Chappell, “Nature,” No. 346, June 15, 1876; Thomas Wright, “Chronicles and Memoirs ... Middle Ages,” 1863).

A.D. 1235–1315.—Lully (Raymond) of Majorca (often confounded with Ramond Lull, who is the author of several alchemical books and of whose biography very little is known), was, by turns, a soldier, a poet, a monk, a knight, a missionary and a martyr, and is referred to by Humboldt as “the singularly ingenious and eccentric man, whose doctrines excited the enthusiasm of Giordano Bruno when a boy, and who was at once a philosophical systematizer and an analytical chemist, a skilful mariner and a successful propagator of Christianity.”

During the year 1272 Lully published his “De Contemplatione,” which was followed by “Fenix de las maravillas del orbe” in 1286, and by his “Arte de Naveguar” in 1295. In these he states that the seamen of his time employed instruments of measurement, sea charts and the magnetic needle (tenian, los mareantes, instrumento, carta, compas y aguja), and he describes the improvements made in[32] the astrolabes (designed for the determination of time and of geographical latitudes by meridian altitudes and capable of being employed at sea) from the period that the astrolabium of the Majorcan pilots was in use.

The application of the astrolabe to navigation, Mr. Irving says (“Hist. of the Life ... of Columbus,” London, 1828, Vol. I. pp. 76–78), was “one of those timely events which seem to have some thing providential in them. It was immediately after this that Columbus proposed his voyage of discovery to the crown of Portugal.”

Lully also confirms the fact that the Barcelonians employed atlases, astrolabes[11] and compasses long before Don Jaime Ferrer penetrated to the mouth of the Rio de Ouro, on the western coast of Africa, which was about fifty years after the date of the last-named work.

Incidentally it may be added that Lully, posing as an alchemist, is said to have in the presence of the English King, Edward I, converted iron into gold, which latter was coined into rose-nobles (Bergman, “Hist. of Chem.”; Louis Figuier, “L’Alchimie et les Alchimistes,” Paris, 1860, p. 148).

A.D. 1250.—Vincent de Beauvais, another Crusader, writes his “Mirror of Nature” (“Bibliotheca Mundi, Speculum Majus, Speculum Triplex”) for St. Louis and his consort, Marguerite de Provence, and speaks therein of the polarity of the needle (“Speculi Naturalis,” Vol. II. lib. ix. cap. 19). He cites Aristotle as having written a book, “De Lapide,” containing a notice of the magnet’s use in navigation, but none of Aristotle’s known works appear to have the passage given. Cabæus and others rather judge that book to be the work of some Arabic writer (Thomas Creech, “Lucretius”). Libri, however, says that a translation or abrégé of the MS. of “De Lapide” is at the Paris Library—MSS. Arabes, No. 402 (“Hist. des sc. Mathém.,” Vol. I. p. 101).

Le Sieur Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt (see A.D. 1269) alludes clearly to the polarity of the needle in an epistle, “Ad Sigerum de Foucaucourt—Fontancourt—militem de Magnete,” written toward the end of the thirteenth century, and the magnet is, at about the same period, referred to in the following lines of the minstrel Gauthier d’Espinois, contemporary of the Count of Champagne, Thibaud VI, who lived before the middle of the thirteenth century (“Hist. Lit. de la France,” 1856, Vol. XXIII—chansonniers—pp. 576, 831):

Vincent de Beauvais applies the terms zohron and aphron (not afon) to the south and north ends of the needle, and Mr. J. Klaproth (“Lettre à M. de Humboldt sur l’invention de la Boussole,” Paris, 1834, pp. 49–51), says these words are Arabian, notwithstanding assertions made to the contrary by Martinus Lipenius in his “Navigatio Salomonis Ophiritica Illustrata,” 1660, cap. v. sec. 3, as well as by many others who have written upon the compass.

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It may be added that the “Mirror of Nature”[12] is one of the four pretentious works which, however popular they may at any time have been and however powerfully they may have influenced the age in which they were written, do not, says Humboldt, fulfil by their contents the promise of their titles. The other three are the “Opus Majus” of Roger Bacon, the “Liber Cosmographicus” (Physical Geography) of Albertus Magnus, and the “Imago Mundi” (Picture of the World) of Cardinal Petrus de Alliaco—Pedro de Helico—Pierre d’Ailly. (For the celebrated French theologian Pierre d’Ailly (1350–1420), Chancellor of the Paris University, see “Histoire de l’Astronomie,” J. F. C. Hœfer, Paris 1873, p. 290; “Paris et ses historiens,” Le Roux de Lincy et L. M. Tisserand, Paris, 1867, p. 402 (etched portrait); “New Int. Encycl.,” New York, 1902, Vol. I. p. 231; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. I. pp. 952–954; also works relating to him by Aubrelicque, Compiègne, 1869, by Arthur Dinaux, Cambrai, 1824, and by Geo. Pameyer, Strasbourg, 1840.) The last-named work by Pierre d’Ailly was the chief authority at the time and exercised a greater influence on the discovery of America than did the correspondence with the learned Florentine Toscanelli (Humboldt, “Cosmos,” 1849, Vol. II. p. 621; “La lettre et la carte de Toscanelli,” par Henri Vignaud, Paris, 1901, or “Toscanelli et Christophe Colomb” in the “Annales de Géographie,” No. 56, 11^e année, Mars 15, 1902, pp. 97–110; “Toscanelli in der älteren und neuren Columbus literatur,” E. Geleich Mitteil. Wien, Vol. XXXVI. 10, 1893).

Two of the above-named works partake of the encyclopædic, and in this class likewise properly enter the twenty books “De Rerum Natura” of Thomas Cantapratensis of Louvain (1230), the “Book of Nature,” by Conrad Van Meygenberg of Ratisbon (1349), and the great “Margarita Philosophica,” or “Circle of the Sciences,”[35] of Father Gregorius Reisch (1486). (See the different entries concerning the last-named work at pp. 663–664 of Libri’s Catalogue, Vol. II, for 1861.) One more work bears title “Picture of the World”—“l’Image du Monde”—written by Gautier de Metz, a French poet of the thirteenth century, on the lines of still another encyclopædic “Imago Mundi,” by Honorius d’Autun (Neubauer, “Traductions historiques de l’Image du Monde,” 1876, p. 129; Haase, likewise Fritsche, “Untersuch ... der Image du Monde,” 1879 and 1880; Fant, “l’Image du Monde, étudié dans ses diverses rédactions françaises,” Upsal, 1886. Chas. Bossut, in his “Hist. Générale des Mathém.,” Paris, 1810, Vol. I. p. 229, also mentions an encyclopædic “Mirroir du Monde,” in Turkish Gian Numah; “The Final Philosophy,” Chas. W. Shields, New York, 1877, p. 133).

A.D. 1254.—Albertus Magnus, of the family of the Counts of Bollstädt, one of the most prominent philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages, likewise alludes to the book “De Lapide” already referred to at A.D. 1250, and to the Arabic terms zohron and aphron, giving to these words, however, a wrong interpretation.[13]

Albertus Magnus (1193–1280) was justly styled Doctor Universalis, for, from the time he entered the Order of the Dominican Friars in 1221, as well as throughout his teachings, mainly at Bologna, Strasburg, Freiburg and Cologne, he displayed an intimate acquaintance with almost all branches of the natural sciences. He was especially well versed in philosophy, astronomy and mathematics—in rebus magicis expertus fuit—and was justly considered by many as the most erudite philosopher of his generation; an encomium of the very rarest kind, when such rivals as Alexander of Hales and Thomas Aquinas could dispute the palm with him. Natural science, says Humboldt (“Cosmos,” 1860, Vol. II. pp. 243–245), was intimately associated with medicine and philosophy among the learned Arabs, and, in the Christian Middle Ages, with theological polemics. The latter, from their tendency to assert an exclusive influence, repressed empirical inquiry into the departments of physics, organic morphology, and also astronomy, the last being, for the most part, closely allied to astrology. The study of the comprehensive works of Aristotle, introduced by Arabs and by[36] Jewish Rabbis, had tended to lead to a philosophical fusion of all branches of study (Jourdain, “Sur les traductions d’Aristotle,” p. 256; Michael Sachs, “Die Religiöse Poesie der Juden in Spanien,” 1845, s. 180–200), and hence Ibn-Sina (Avicenna), Ibn-Roschd (Averroës), Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon passed for the representatives of all the knowledge of their time. The fame which in the Middle Ages surrounded the names of these four great men was proportionate to the general diffusion of this opinion of their endowments.

Albertus was the first scholastic who systematically reproduced the philosophy of Aristotle with reference to the Arabian commentators and who remodelled it to meet the requirements of ecclesiastical dogma. The cause of the new development of scholasticism in the thirteenth century was the translation, for the first time, into Latin of the complete works of Aristotle, which latter only came to the knowledge of the scholastics (1210–1225) through the agency of Arabian philosophy. The leading Arabian philosophers were Avicenna, Averroës and Avempace, whilst, in the new movement, Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas and Joannes Duns Scotus represented the culmination of scholastic thought and its consolidation into a system.[14]

Albertus, according to Humboldt, must be mentioned as an independent investigator in the domain of analytic chemistry, improving as he did the practical manipulation of ores, and having actually enlarged the insight of men into the general mode of action of the chemical forces of nature. His “Liber Cosmographicus” is a singularly able presentment of physical geography. He also wrote very extensively upon plant-life, and is the author of commentaries upon practically all the physical works of the Stagirite, although in the commentary on Aristotle’s “Historia Animalium” he is said to have closely followed the Latin translation of Michael Scotus from the Arabic. Albertus doubtless owes the praise conferred upon him by Dante less to himself than to his beloved pupil Aquinas, who accompanied him from Cologne to Paris in 1245, and returned with him to Germany in 1248.

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Gilbert refers to Albertus in “De Magnete,” Book I. chaps, i. and vi., also in Book II. chap. xxxviii.

Of authors prominently cited by Albertus Magnus, or alluded to in the foregoing, the following accounts are given:

Alfarabius—Alpharabius—Abn Nasr Muhammed ... al Farabi—(A.D. 870–950), celebrated Arabian philosopher, native of Turkestan, one of whose most important works, “Liber de scientiis ...” is an encyclopædia, giving in five chapters a classification of all known sciences. It is said he could speak in as many as seventy languages (J. C. L. S. de Sismondi, “Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe,” London, 1846, Vol. I. p. 65). He was a most zealous student of Aristotle, and is one of the authors (Aristotle, Avicenna and Al-gazel being the others) from whom David the Jew compiled his work “De Causis.” Of the latter, Albertus gives a long description, and it is likewise cited both by Thomas Aquinas and Bacon, “Opus Majus,” J. H. Bridges, Oxford, 1897,[38] Vol. I. pp. 100–101, who quotes: Jourdain, pp. 112, 138–145, 184–185, and Wüstenfeld, “Geschichte,” Göttingen, 1840.

Al-gazel—Al-Ghazzali—(1058–1111), another prominent Arabian philosopher, who was for a long time professor of theology in the Bagdad University, and became the ruler of the Sufis or Mystics, in whose behalf he travelled extensively.[15]

Alexander of Hales, so called because he made his studies at the Monastery of Hales in Gloucestershire (d. 1245), called “Doctor Doctorum” or “Doctor Irrefragabilis,” also “Theologorum Monarcha,” was a celebrated English theologian. He became a noted professor of philosophy and then a lecturer among the Franciscans, being succeeded in turn by his pupils, John of Rochelle (who died in 1271) and John Fidanza, better[39] known as Bonaventura (1221–1274). He was the first scholastic acquainted with the whole of the Aristotelian works and with the Arabian commentaries upon them. The only authentic work of his is the ponderous “Summa Universæ Theologiæ” (best edition, Venice, 1576), much of the substance and even the text of which is said to be found in the “Summa” of Aquinas and in the “Speculum Morale” of Vincent de Beauvais.

Avempace—Abn Bekr Muhammed Ibn Yahga, Arabic philosopher, physician and poet (d. 1138), introduced the peripatetic philosophy into Andalusia, and wrote commentaries on Aristotle, in addition to a book, “Conduct of the Individual,” alluded to by Averroës, likewise several works upon medicine and music.

Averroës—Muhammed Ibn Ahmed Ibn-Roschd, “the commentator,” “the last great thinker of the Moslem world in the West” (1120–1198), was an illustrious Moorish philosopher and physician best known by his commentaries and paraphrases upon Aristotle. It is said Averroës was recommended to the Calif as the fittest person to expound the works of Aristotle and make them accessible to all (“History of Classical Scholarship,” J. E. Sandys, Cambridge, 1903, p. 541).

Avicenna—Abohalis, Ibn Sina, Al Rayis or “the chief”—(980–1037), “the greatest thinker of the Moslem world in the East,” a native of Aschena, near Bokhara, was the most celebrated physician of his day. In the “Journal des Savants” for March 1892, “l’Alchimie d’Avicenne” is very extensively treated of at pp. 179–189, and Avicenna is said (“Journal des Savants” for February 1892, pp. 118–128) to be the alchemist most frequently alluded to in the “Speculum Naturale” of Vincent de Beauvais. His writings were so highly esteemed that the Sultan of Egypt ordered them to be translated by the celebrated Jewish Rabbi, Maimonides—Moses Ben Maimon—(born at Cordova, in Spain, about A.D. 1132).

Duns Scotus, John, “Doctor Subtilis” (born about 1270, died in 1308), a very prominent schoolman, who was educated at Oxford, entered the Order of St. Francis, and became one of the great founders of scholastic thought. But little is known as to his origin, except that a monument, erected to his memory[41] at Cologne during the year 1533, bears the following: “Scotia me genuit, Anglia me suscepit, Gallia me docuit, Colonia (Germania) me tenet.”

A.D. 1254.—Bacon (Roger), “the most remarkable man in the most remarkable century of the Middle Ages” (E. H. Plumptre, 1866), sometimes called Friar Bacon (1214–1294), a Franciscan monk of Ilchester, who devoted himself to the study of science at Oxford and Paris and “whose deep penetration into the mysteries of nature justly entitled him to the appellation of “The Wonderful Doctor,” treats of the magnet and of its properties at pp. 383–384 of his “Opus Minus” (J. S. Brewer, “Fr. R. Bacon,” London, 1859), and dwells upon the loadstone as a miraculum in parte notum.

Bacon is also the author of many other works, the most important of which are his “Opus Majus” and “Opus Tertium” (first published in English respectively in 1733 and 1859), the last named having been originally written out for Pope Clement IV and intended to serve as a preamble to the “Opus Minus” and “Opus Majus,”[42] although it was later than either in the date of its composition (Brewer, op. cit. p. xliv). Leland has said that it is easier to collect the leaves of the Sybil than the titles of all of Bacon’s works. At pp. 218–222, Vol. III. of the ninth edition “Encyclopædia Britannica” will be found a synopsis of the six parts into which Jebb divided the “Opus Majus” (pronounced by Whewell “at once the Encyclopædia and the Organum of the thirteenth century”), and likewise an account of his other works, besides numerous references to leading authorities.

In the “Opus Tertium,” the last of the series of three which, it is said, were all completed in about eighteen months, he speaks more than once of A.D. 1267 as being the then current year. This happens to be but two years prior to the date of the epistle of Pierre Pélerin de Maricourt, the great experimentalist (Petrus Peregrinus), whom he commends (p. lxxv) in the following words: “For there are only two perfect mathematicians, Master John of London[16] and Master Peter of Maricourt, the Picard ... who is worth more than any of them ... of whom I have fully written in my ‘Opus Minus’ and of whom I shall write more in its proper place.” Of this Master Peter, whom he calls one of his most illustrious pupils, he further says that, being “struck with the genius that dawned in his countenance,” he took him under his protection from his fifteenth year and instructed him so carefully that he outstripped all of his contemporaries both at Oxford and at Paris. “There is no one,” adds he, “who knows so much of the root of Philosophy ...” and one who, “through experiment, gains such knowledge of things natural, medical, chemical; indeed, of everything in the heavens or earth.”

Gilbert states (“De Magnete,” Book I. chap. i.) that many believe the work of Peter Peregrinus on the magnet owes its origin to the opinions of Roger Bacon. And in the Appendix I to Brewer’s work—p. 537, chap. vi. “De Experimentis Mirabilibus”—will be found Bacon’s views fully exposed on the operations of the magnet.

A.D. 1260.—Brunetto Latini, b. 1230, d. 1294, “maestro del divino poeta Dante,” celebrated Florentine encyclopædist, composes his “Tesoro,” rewritten in French (“Livres dou Trésor”), wherein he speaks clearly of the compass as at some time likely to be useful at sea. But he adds: “No master mariner dares to use it, lest he should fall under the supposition of being a magician; nor would even the sailors venture themselves out to sea under his command if he took with him an instrument which carries so great an appearance of being constructed under the influence of some infernal spirit.”

The “Tesoro” is said to be a kind of abridgment of the Bible, of Pliny, of Solinus, of the Ethics of Aristotle, of the rhetorical writings of Cicero and of the political works of Aristotle, Plato and Xenophon (“New Biog. Dict.,” London, 1850, Vol. IX. p. 205). It would be well to consult “La Table Générale des bulletins ... Sociétés Savantes,” par M. Octave Teissier, Paris, 1873, p. 44, regarding the collection of different manuscripts of Brunetto’s extensive work.

A.D. 1265–1321.—Dante—Durante—(Alighieri), illustrious Italian poet, regarded as the greatest poetical genius that flourished between the Augustan and Elizabethan ages, composed, during his exile, the “Divina Commedia,” which was the first poem written in the Italian language. In Canto XII. vv. 28–30 of his “Paradiso,” translated by Dr. Plumptre, he thus alludes to the mariner’s compass:

Guido Guinicelli (1240–1276), priest and scholar, and whom Dante considered not only the greatest of living Bolognese poets,[44] but his master in poetry (Note: “Purg.,” XXVI. Vol. I. p. 327, v. 92) refers to the nautical compass in nearly the same terms as Dante (“Rime. Ant.,” p. 295). He adds: “The mountains of loadstone give the virtue to the air of attracting iron, but, because it (the loadstone) is far off, (it) wishes to have the help of a similar stone to make it (the virtue) work, and to direct the needle toward the star” (P. L. Ginguené, “Hist. Lit. d’Italie,” Vol. I. p. 413; Guido delle Colonne—Io Colonna da Messina—Mandella Lett. p. 81, Florence, 1856).

At pp. 35 and 130 of Bertelli’s “Pietro Peregrino di Maricourt,” Roma, 1868, Memoria prima, appear verses said to be by Guinicelli and by Guido delle Colonne, judge of Messina, who flourished about 1250, and which are translated literally into English as follows:

The “Paradiso,” translated by A. J. Butler, London, 1885, Canto XII. v. 29, reads: “Si mosse voce, che l’ago (needle) alla stella,” and Fazio degli Uberti in the “Dittamondo” (about 1360) has “Quel gran disio, che mi, traeva addietro come ago a calamita” (III. 2).

A.D. 1266.—It is shown by Th. Torffæus (Latin for Thormodr Torfason), an Icelandic scholar (b. 1636, d. 1719), who published “Historia Rerum Norvegicarum” (Hafniæ, 1711, IV. c. 4, p. 345), that at this date the northern nations were acquainted with the mariner’s compass. In the “History of Norway” here alluded to, he mentions the fact that the poem of the Icelandic historian, Jarl Sturla (Snorri Sturlason) written in 1213, on the death of the Swedish [45]Count Byerges, was rewarded with a box containing a mariner’s compass.

A.D. 1269.—Peregrinus (Petrus), Pierre Pélerin de Maricourt, Méhéricourt—Magister Petrus de Maharnecuria, Picardus—doubtless a Crusader, was, as Roger Bacon tells us (“Opus Tertium,” cap. xi) the only one, besides Master John of London, who, at this period, could be deemed a thoroughly accomplished, perfect mathematician, and was one who understood the business of experimenting in natural philosophy, alchemy and medicine better than any one else in Western Europe.

Peregrinus is the author of a letter or epistle, “Written in camp at the Siege of Lucera (delle Puglie—Nucerræ) in the year of our Lord 1269, on the 8th day of August,” addressed to his Amicorum intime, a soldier, by the name of Sygerus de Fontancourt—Foucaucourt—Foucancort.

Of this epistle, which is the earliest known work of experimental science, there are but few reliable complete manuscript copies. Most of these have been very ably analyzed by P. D. Timoteo Bertelli Barnabita in the exhaustive Memoirs published by him in Rome during 1868, and still better detailed by Dr. Silvanus P. Thompson in his several valuable printed researches and lectures on the subject, but there has been of it only one printed issue in book form, that of the Lindau physician, A. P. Gasser, which appeared at Augsburg during 1558.

Several attempts at translation have been made, notably by Guillaume Libri (“Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques ...” Paris, 1838, Vol. II. p. 487) who admitted that, with the aid of several paleographers, he could not decipher many of the abbreviated faint characters existing in the Bibliothèque Nationale manuscript (No. 7378A in quarto, at folio 67), and by Tiberius Cavallo, who does scarcely better with the Leyden copy (Fol. Cod. No. 227) which was discovered by him, and but a portion of which he transcribes in the supplement to his “Treatise on Magnetism,” London, 1800, pp. 299–320. A translation was also made by Brother Arnold, of the La Salle Institute in Troy, N.Y., and published during 1904, but the most meritorious version now existing is the one entitled “Done into English by Silvanus P. Thompson from the printed Latin versions of Gasser 1558, Bertelli 1868, and Hellmann 1898, and amended by reference to the manuscript copy in his possession,[46] formerly amongst the Phillipps’ manuscripts, dated 1391.” This translation, “printed in the year 1902, in the Caxton type, to the number of 250 copies,” reflects very great credit upon Prof. Thompson, who has given us such a faithful interpretation of the original work as would naturally be expected at his hands, and who has, besides, rubricated this right royal little volume and caused it to be issued in one of the most attractive typographical fashions of the Chiswick Press.

The Hellmann 1898 Berlin version just alluded to, which appeared in “Neudrucke von Schriften und Karten ...” No. 10 (Rara Magnetica), contains a photographic reproduction of the Augsburg 1558 title-page, and, it may be added, the volume of Phillipps’ manuscripts, of which Prof. Thompson became the fortunate possessor, includes one of Chaucer’s treatises on the Astrolabe, besides the Peregrinus’ manuscript in question.

During the year 1562 much of the original epistle was pilfered by Joannes Taisnier Hannonius, who badly condensed and deformed it and incorporated it as new matter, conjointly with some papers of his own, in a book entitled “Oposculum ... de Natura Magnetis et ejus effectibus ...” Coloniæ, 1562; and that much was translated “into Englishe” by Richarde Eden, London, about 1579, under title of “A very necessarie and profitable booke concerning navigation.”

Much has been said at different times regarding the contents of the above-named epistle, the full title of the Paris MS. No. 7378 of which reads

“Epistola Petri Peregrini de Maricourt ad Sygerum de Foucaucourt militem de magnete,”

but no résumé of it could better be given than by quoting here its first page, which has been translated as follows:

This treatise on the magnet contains two parts, of which Part I is complete in ten chapters, and Part II in three.

Of Part I: Chap. I states the object of the work;

Chap. II, of what the investigator in this line of work should be;

Chap. III, of a knowledge of the loadstone;

Chap. IV, of the science of the discovery of the parts of the loadstone;

Chap. V, of the source of the discovery of poles in the loadstone—which of them is the north and which the south;

Chap. VI, in what manner a magnet attracts a magnet;

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Chap. VII, how iron touched with the magnet turns towards the poles of the globe;

Chap. VIII, in what manner a magnet attracts iron;

Chap. IX, why the northern part attracts the southern part, and the converse;

Chap. X, of the inquiry whence the magnet derives the natural power it possesses.

Of Part II: Chap. I, on the construction of an instrument (floating compass) by which the azimuth of the sun and moon, and of any star above the horizon, can be ascertained;

Chap. II, on the construction of a better instrument (pivoted compass) for like purpose;

Chap. III, on the construction of a wheel for perpetual motion.

An analyzation of each chapter in turn will show how satisfactorily Peregrinus has developed, in connected series, all of the early experiments upon which are based his theories of the loadstone.

Gilbert alludes to this perpetual-motion engine as having been devised or delineated by Peregrinus after he had got the idea from others (“De Magnete,” Book II. chap. xxxv.), and says that Jerome Cardan writes (“Opera,” Batav., 1663; “De Rerum Varietate,” Book, IX. chap. xlviii.) he could construct one out of iron and loadstone—not that he ever saw such a machine; that he merely offers the idea as an opinion and quotes from a report of the physician Antonio de Fantis of Treviso published in “Tabula generalis ac mare magnum scotice subtilitatis....”

In the “Magisterium Naturæ et Artis,” P. Francisci Tertii de Lanis, Brixiæ, 1684, Tractatus Tertius, Caput Secundum, p. 489, under Problema, I, Motus perpetuus magnetis, will be found allusion to the machines of (1) P. Peregrinus, as described in his epistle; (2) Taisnier; (3) Ant. de Fantis (cited by Cardan, as stated above); also mention of those of P. Schottus, Athan. Kircherus, Hieronimus Finugius and others; the most important of these being again alluded to throughout the third chapter of the same tract.

Gilbert makes further allusion to P. Peregrinus in his Book I. chap. i.; Book II. chap. xxxv.; Book III. chap. i.; Book IV. chap. i.; Book VI. chap. iv.

The Peregrinus’ Leyden manuscript (Fol. Cod. No. 227) already alluded to, Libri says (“Histoire des Sciences Mathém....” 1838, Vol. I. p. 383, note), is but a poor copy of the manuscript in the Paris Library (No. 7378A), from which latter the words Petri ad Sygerum have been unfortunately transformed into Petri Adsigerii. He adds (Vol. II. pp. 70–71) that Humboldt cites (“Examen Critique,” p. 243) several authors who have alluded to the pretended Adsigerius. Mention is also made of the fact that W. Wenkebach, professor at the Hague Military School, examined the manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Nos. 1629, 1794 and 2458, containing the treatise of Peregrinus, and that not one of them has the passage alluding to the declination. The Leyden manuscript, by the way, is said to be the only one, besides the Vatican copy, No. 5733, bearing the full date, which latter was first made known by Thévenot in his “Recueil de Voyages.” And it was a passage found in the Leyden manuscript (Q 27) which led to the belief that Peregrinus had first observed the variation or declination of the magnetic needle. The[54] passage is as follows: “Take note that the magnet, as well as the needle that has been touched by it, does not point exactly to the poles, but that the part of it which is supposed to point to the South sometimes declines a little to the West, and that the part which looks towards the North sometimes inclines to the East. The exact quantity of this declination I have ascertained, after numerous experiments, to be five degrees. However, this declination is no obstacle to our guidance, because we make the needle itself decline from the true South by nearly one point and a half towards the West. A point contains five degrees.” This passage is unquestionably a late addition, being written in a different hand in a circle which itself is an incompleted outline of one of the figures of Peregrinus’ primitive compass.

A.D. 1270.—Riccioli (Giovanni Battista), an Italian astronomer, member of the Society of Jesuits, b. 1598, d. 1671, asserts that at this period under the reign of St. Louis (1226–1270), French navigators were already using the magnetic needle, which they kept floating in a small vase of water, and which was supported by two tubes to prevent its falling to the bottom.

For a detailed account of the work of this well-known scientist consult: “Biographie Générale” Vol. XLII. pp. 147–149; Fabroni, “Vitæ Italorum,” Vol. II; Jean Baptiste Delambre, “Hist. de l’Astron. Mod.,” 1821; Davis, “The Chinese,” Vol. III. p. 11; Venanson, “Boussole,” pp. 70–71; Klaproth, “Boussole,” p. 54; Becquerel, “Résumé,” p. 59; Alex. Chalmers, “Gen. Biog. Dict.,”[55] 1811, Vol. XXVI. pp. 182–183; Fischer, “Geschichte der Physik,” Vol. I; Tiraboschi, “Storia della letter. Ital.,” Vol. VIII; “English Cyclopædia,” Vol. V. pp. 76–77. Riccioli’s “Almagestum Novum,” Bologna, 1651, in two volumes, gives in book nine of the second volume the sentence of Galileo. This is the work which an old savant called “the pandects of astronomical knowledge” (Morhof Polyhistor, Vol. II. p. 347).

A.D. 1271–1295.—Polo (Marco), Paulum Venetum, is reported by many to have brought the compass from China to Italy. This is, however, supported by no evidence, nor is any allusion whatever made to the fact in the account he rendered of his voyage. Before Marco Polo set out on his travels, as Humboldt states, the Catalans had already made voyages “along the northern islands of Scotland as well as along the western shores of tropical Africa, while the Basques had ventured forth in search of the whale, and the Northmen had made their way to the Azores (the Bracir islands of Picignano).”

Polo relates that he set out from Acre in 1271, and returned to Venice “in the year 1295 of Christ’s Incarnation.” His “Travels” (“Il Milione di Messer Marco Polo”) according to the review of Col. Henry Yule, consists of a prologue and four books. It was dictated by him to a fellow prisoner, Rusticiano or Rusticello, of Pisa, and “it would appear now to be definitely settled that the original was ... of just such French as we might expect in the thirteenth century from a Tuscan amanuensis following the oral dictation of an Orientalized Venetian.”

Polo’s journeyings extended “so far to the north that he leaves the North Star behind him, and thence so far to the south that the North Star is never seen.”

A.D. 1282.—Baïlak, native of Kibdjak, wrote this year, in Arabic, his book on “Stones,” wherein he says that he saw during his voyage from Tripoli to Alexandria, in 1242, the captains of the Syrian sea construct a compass in the following manner: “When[56] the night is so dark as to conceal from view the stars which might direct their course according to the position of the four cardinal points, they take a basin full of water, which they shelter from wind by placing it in the interior of the vessel; they then drive a needle into a wooden peg or a corn-stalk, so as to form the shape of a cross, and throw it into the basin of water prepared for the purpose, on the surface of which it floats. They afterwards take a loadstone of sufficient size to fill the palm of the hand, or even smaller; bring it to the surface of the water, give to their hands a rotatory motion towards the right so that the needle turns on the water’s surface; they then suddenly and quickly withdraw their hands, when the two points of the needle face north and south. I have seen them, with my own eyes, do that during my voyage at sea from Tripolis to Alexandria.”

A.D. 1302.—Gioia—Goia (Flavio or Joannes), an Italian pilot reported born at Positano, near Amalfi, is said by Flamnius Venanson (“De l’invention de la boussole nautique,” Naples, 1808, pp. 138 and 168) to be the real inventor of the mariner’s compass. This view is supported by Briet (Philippe), “Annales Mundi,” Vol. VI: Géog. et Hydrog., lib. x. cap. 8; by Voltaire (“Essai sur les Mœurs,” 1819, Vol. III. chap. cxli.), and by many others, but Klaproth (“Lettre ...” 1834, pp. 132–136) quotes Anthony of Bologna, called the Panormitan, as saying that Gioia lived in the fourteenth century and wrote both “Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis” and “Inventrix præclara fuit magnetis Amalphis.” He adds that a statement to the same effect was made by Arrigi Brechmann in his “Historia Pandectarum Amalphitorum,” Dissertatio I, No. 22, Neapoli, 1735, p. 925, but that both are equally incorrect, for Gioja could not have invented an instrument which had already been in use more than a hundred years before his time.[19]

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In his “Essay on Several Important Subjects,” London, 1676, Joseph Glanvill remarks (p. 33): “I think there is more acknowledgment due to the name of this obscure fellow, that hath scarce any left, than to a thousand Alexanders and Cæsars or to ten times the number of Aristotles and Aquinas’. And he really did more for the increase of knowledge and advantage of the world, by this one experiment, than the numerous subtile disputers that have lived ever since the creation of the School of Wrangling.”

In the “Navigator’s Supply,” published 1597, William Barlowe speaks of “the lame tale of one Flavius at Amelphus in the Kingdome of Naples; for to have devised it (the compass) is of very slender probabilitie.”

M. D. A. Azuni says (“Boussole,” 1809, p. 144) that Gioja may have possibly invented the method of suspending the magnetic needle upon a perpendicular pivot so that it would remain horizontal whatever the movements of the vessel. This is very likely; at any rate, it must be admitted that this particular mode of support permits a freer movement to the needle in any direction and admits of more exact observations than when the needle is floating upon the water.

At pp. 487–505, Vol. II of his “Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques,” Guillaume Libri transcribes all he is able to from the almost illegible Peter Peregrinus’ manuscript, No. 7378A, in the Paris Bibliothèque, and refers to the imperfect mode of suspending the magnetic needle therein shown. It is, says he, similar to that spoken of by Francesco da Buti (Libri, Vol. II. pp. 67–68; Bertelli, “Pietro Peregrino,” pp. 63–66), who makes first mention of the compass in the Dante commentary (“Comment, sopra la Divina Commedia”) to be found in the collection of manuscripts No. 29, held by the Magliabechiana Library of Florence. He adds that the suspension of the needle is likewise alluded to by Guerino detto il Meschino, in a work first composed prior to the “Divina Commedia” (an Italian romance, attributed to one Andrew the Florentine) as imbellico, or in bellico, in bilico, meaning in suspense, throughout the editions of Padua, 1473, Bologna, 1475, Milan, 1482 and Venice, 1480, 1498. Mention is also made by Libri of the writings of Adélard de Bath on the compass, at p. 62 of his second volume.

For Briet (Philippe), b. 1601, d. 1668, see Michaud, “Biog. Univ.,” Paris, 1843, Vol. V. p. 527. The best, most complete edition of Briet’s “Annales Mundi” is the Venice, 1693.

A.D. 1327–1377.—It has been claimed by F. M. Arouet de Voltaire, who asserts it at Vol. III. pp. 251–252 of his “Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations,” Paris, 1809, “that the first well-authenticated use of the compass” was made by the English during this period, which is that of the reign of King Edward III.

By Voltaire, the extraordinary (prodigieuse) antiquity of the Chinese is not questioned. They knew of the compass, but he says “it was not employed by them for its proper use, that of guiding vessels at sea. They travelled only along the shores. Possessed, as they were, of a country that furnished everything, they did not feel the need of going, as we do, to the other end of the world” (Vol. I. pp. 239, 247). Speaking of the Portuguese (Vol. III. p. 257) he says: “It was not before known if the magnetic needle would point to the south on approaching the South Pole; it was found to point constantly to the north during the year 1486.”

From the time of Edward III, the compass was known in England by the names of adamant, sailing needle and sail-stone dial, as has been shown in the writings of Chaucer and others, the most important of which will be duly quoted in their order. The compass was alluded to, more particularly, by John Gower, “Confessio Amantis,”[20] Books I and VI; by Richard Hakluyt, “Voyages,” Vol. I. pp. 213, 215; and by Edward Fairfax, “Godefroy de Boulogne,” Book XV. s. 18.

It may be well to record here that Voltaire was “confessedly the foremost name, the acknowledged head of European literature of his time.” Goethe calls him “the greatest literary man of all time, the most astonishing creation of the Author of Nature” (“Nouvelle Biographie,” Vol. XLV. i. p. 445). Though not the first French author who wrote on the wonderful discoveries of Newton, he was the first to make them extensively known on the Continent.

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Regarding the mariner’s compass, it can scarcely be doubted, from what precedes, that it came to the knowledge of Europeans in the manner indicated under the A.D. 1190 date.

Baïlik of Kibdjak—Baüak Kibdjaki—spoke of its use as generally well known by the Syrian navigators, who constructed it in exactly the same way as did the Chinese (A.D. 1111–1117 and A.D. 1282), and which resembled the compass seen by Brunetto Latini in the possession of Friar Bacon while in England prior to the year 1260 (Knight, “Mech. Dict.,” Vol. II. p. 1397).

Edrisi (Idrisi or Aldrisi), the most eminent of the Arabian geographers, is said by Boucher to have given a confirmed account of the polarity of the magnet, the early knowledge of which by the Arabs has been shown conclusively by Jacob de Vitry, Vincent de Beauvais and Albertus Magnus.

Signor P. T. Bertelli, who has been mentioned under the A.D. 1190 date, could not find any reference, however remote, to the directive property of the loadstone throughout a careful examination of Latin and Greek works dating from the sixth century B.C. to the tenth century A.D. He admits that the directive property was known to the Chinese, who had made rude floating needle compasses before the beginning of the Christian era, although these compasses are likely to have been brought home by the Amalfian sailors, who are, by some writers, represented as having substituted the pivoted needle as well as added the Rose of the Winds.[21] He will not, however, recognize the claims made in favour of Flavio Gioja. On the other hand, A. Botto has shown that the Amalfitans introduced the compass between the tenth and the eleventh centuries (“Contributo agli studi storici sull’origine della bussola nautica,” 1899). Consult likewise Vol. IX of “Annales de Géogr. et de Bibliogr.,” 1899, p. 8.

At p. 195 of the December 1904 issue of “Terrestrial Magnetism”[60] is a short article relative to the claim made that the compass was invented by a Veronese named Salomone Ireneo Pacifico (A.D. 776–846) during the first half of the ninth century. It states that Bertelli considers this due to a misinterpretation of an inscription on Pacifico’s tomb, and it alludes to Bertelli’s previous paper on the subject in “Terrestr. Magn.,” Vol. VIII. No. 4, p. 179 (see also the number of “Terrestr. Magn.” for June 1905, p. 108, and the “Geographical Journal” for March 1905, pp. 334–335).

The earliest recorded use of the compass in a Spanish vessel, according to Capmany (“Memorias Historicas,” 1792), is to be found in the Chronicle of Don Pedro Niño, Conde de Buelna, as follows: “It is reported that Conde’s galleys left the island of La Alharina along the coast of Bombay ... and the pilots compared their needles which had been rubbed with the magnet stone....”

In Dr. Plumptre’s notes on Dante, reference is made to the fact that the European knowledge of the magnetic needle came from Arabia, and, like Humboldt, he quotes in support thereof an allusion from the Spanish “Leyes de las Partidas” belonging to the first half of the thirteenth century. The passage in the last named is spoken of by M. Fern de Navarrete in his “Discurso historico,” etc., 1802 (II. tit. ix. ley 28) and reads thus: “The needle which guides the seaman in the dark night and shows him, both in good and in bad weather, how to direct his course is the mediatrix (medianera) between the loadstone (la piedra) and the north star....” Humboldt adds: “See the passage in ‘Las siete Partidas del sabio Rey Don Alonso el IX’ [according to the usually adopted chronological order, Alfonso the tenth], Madrid, 1829, Vol. I. p. 473.”[22]

On the other hand, the knowledge of the compass by the Arabs in the thirteenth century has been most decidedly contested by E. Renaudot (“Anciennes Relations des Indes et de la Chine,” Paris, 1717, p. 3); by D. A. Azuni (“Dissertation sur l’origine de la Boussole,” Paris, 1809, pp. 102, 127); by Giovanni Battista Ramusio (“Coll. Voy.,” 1554, Vol. I. p. 379); by A. Collina (“Considerazioni,” etc., Faenza, 1748, p. 121, etc.). Buffon says (“Théorie de la Terre,” Paris, An. VIII. tome i. p. 300): “I know that some pretend the Arabs have invented the compass and have used it long before the French (see ‘Abrégé de l’histoire des Sarrazins,’ de Bergeron, p. 119) ... but that opinion always appeared to me[61] devoid of reason; for there is no word in the Arabian, Turkish or Persian tongue which can be made to signify the compass.... They employ the Italian word bossola....”

The same view is entertained by Dr. William Robertson, principal of the University of Edinburgh, who, after announcing in his “History of the Reign of Charles V,” London, 1769, Vol. I. p. 78, that the mariner’s compass was invented soon after the close of the Holy War, gives at pp. 333–335 of his “Historical Disquisition,” London, 1812, a translation of the above passage taken from an early edition of that illustrious French naturalist George Louis Le Clerc, Comte de Buffon. Robertson adds: “This shows that the knowledge of this useful instrument was communicated to them (the Arabs) by the Europeans. There is not one single observation of ancient date made by the Arabians on the variation of the needle, or any instruction deduced from it for the assistance of navigators.... When Mr. Niehbuhr was at Cairo, he found a magnetic needle in the possession of a Mohammedan which served to point out the Kaaba, and gave it the name of el magnetis, a clear proof of its European origin.”

The claims of France to the discovery of the compass have been laid by some to the fact that the north point of the early instruments was generally drawn in the form of a fleur de lys, but Voltaire says (“Essai,” etc., Vol. III. p. 251), that the Italians drew this in honour of the sovereigns of Naples, a branch of the French royal family. The able writer in the English Cyclopædia (“Arts and Sciences,” Vol. III. p. 102) considers the design to be only “an ornamented cross which originated in devotion to the mere symbol; though, as the compass undoubtedly came, he says, into Europe from the Arabs, the fleur de lys might possibly be a modification of the mouasala, or dart, the name by which the Arabs called the needle” (“Phil. Mag.,” Vol. XVIII. p. 88).

A.D. 1391.—Chaucer (Geoffrey), the father of English poetry,[62] thus expresses himself in “The Conclusions of the Astrolabie” (“English Poets,” London, 1810, Vol. I): “I haue giuen thee a sufficient astrolabye for oure orizont compowned after the latitude of Oxenforde.... Now hast thou here, the fower quarters of thin astrolabie, deuided after the fower principall plages or quarters of the firmament.... Now is thin Orisonte departed in XXIIII partiez by thi azymutz, in significacion of XXIIII partiez of the world; al be it, so that ship men rikne thilke partiez in XXXII.”

A.D. 1436.—Bianco—Biancho—(Andrea), was an Italian cartographer living at Venice early in the fifteenth century, who published, in 1436, an atlas exhibiting charts of the magnetic variation. The knowledge of the latter, which is so indispensable to the correction of a ship’s reckoning, was then ascertained less by the sun’s rising and setting than by the polar star.

One of Bianco’s charts, now in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, shows two islands at the West of the Azores, leading many to believe that he possessed some knowledge of the existence of North and South America.

In Justin Winsor’s description of Dr. John G. Kohl’s collection of early maps (“Harvard Univ. Bulletin,” Vol. III. pp. 175–176), it is said that the original of Andrea Bianco’s Map of the World A.D. 1436, now at Venice, was reproduced by Joachim Lelewell (“Géographie du Moyen Age,” Pl. XXXII), and also in M. F. de Barros de Santarem’s “Essai sur l’histoire de la cosmographie et de la cartographie” (Pls. XXIII, XLIII).[23] Reference is also made thereto in Winsor’s “Bibliography of Ptolemy’s Geography,” sub[63] anno 1478. Mr. Winsor adds: “Bianco’s views are of interest in early American cartography from the deductions which some have drawn from the configuration of the islands ‘Antillia’ and ‘De la man Satanaxio’—(two islands on its western verge)—that they represent Pre-Columbian discovery of South and North America.” Humboldt (“Crit. Untersuchungen,” I. 413, 416) has discussed the question, and pointed out that one island, “Antillia,” had earlier appeared on a map of 1425, and D’Avezac finds even earlier references to the same island.

To Andrea Bianco may be ascribed the best of all known forms of wind-roses. Admiral L. Fincati illustrates, in his well-known pamphlet “Il Magnete, la Calamita e la Bussola,” Rome, 1878, all the best-known examples from 1426 to 1612, those of Bianco having upon them either the fleur de lys (referred to at A.D. 1327–1377) or the letter T[symbol], or designs of a triangle or trident, to indicate the north, whilst the east is designated by a cross, in same manner as shown in the 1426 Giraldi and the Oliva 1612–1613.[24]

For other forms and accounts of these rose-of-the-winds or compass cards, it would be well to consult more particularly Nordenskiöld, Nils Adolf Erik (1832–1901), “Periplus” (1897), as well as his “Facsimile Atlas” published eight years previously; Pedro de Medina, “Arte de Navegar”; Francesco Da Buti, “Comment, sopra la Div. Com.”; Simon Stevin’s “Haven-finding Art”; Athan. Kircher, “Magnes, sive de Arte Magnetica”; and Guillaume de Nautonniez, “Mécométrie de l’Eymant ... déclinaison guideymant pour tous les lieux ...” published 1602–1604.[25]

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A.D. 1490–1541.—Paracelsus (Aureolus Theophrastus)—the assumed name of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim—a native of Switzerland, admitted by unprejudiced writers to have been one of the greatest chemists of his time (Hemmann, “Medico—Sur. Essays,” Berlin, 1778). The author of “Isis Unveiled” states that he made use of electro-magnetism three centuries before Prof. Oersted’s discovery, and that he rediscovered the occult properties of the magnet, “the bone of Horus,” which, twelve centuries before his time, had played such an important part in the theurgic mysteries, thus very naturally becoming the founder of the school of magnetism and of mediæval magico-theury. But Mesmer, who lived nearly three hundred years after him, and as a disciple of his school brought the magnetic wonders before the public, reaped the glory that was due to the fire-philosopher, while the great master died in want (“Isis Unveiled,” Vol. I. pp. 71, 72, 164).

Madame Blavatsky further adds (Vol. I. p. 167) that the full views of Paracelsus on the occult properties of the magnet are explained partially in his famous book “Archidoxorum,” wherein he describes the wonderful tincture, a medicine extracted from the magnet, and called “Magisterium Magnetis,” and partially in the “De Ente Dei” and “De Ente Astrorum,” lib. i.

In the words of Paracelsus, we give the following extracts concerning the loadstone, taken from “The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings ...” by A. E. Waite, London, 1894:

Vol. I. p. 17.—“The adamant. A black crystal called ... Evax ... is dissolved in the blood of a goat.”

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“The magnet. Is an iron stone, and so attracts iron to itself. Fortified by experience.... I affirm that the magnet ... not only attracts steel and iron, but also has the same power over the matter of all diseases in the whole body of man.”

Vol. I. pp. 132 and 145.—“A magnet touched by mercury or anointed with mercurial oil, never afterwards attracts iron ... same if steeped in garlic....”

Vol. I. p. 136.—“The life of the magnet is the spirit of iron which can be taken away by rectified vinum ardens itself or by spirit of wine.”

Vol. II. p. 59.—“Wherever the magnet has grown—there, a certain attractive power exists, just as colocynth is purgative and the poppy is anodyne....”

Mr. A. E. Waite says (Vol. II. p. 3) that the ten books of Paracelsus’ Archidoxies stand in the same relation to Hermetic Medicine as the nine books Concerning the Nature of Things stand to Hermetic Chemistry and to the science of metallic transmutation.

A.D. 1492.—Columbus, Colombo, Colon (Christopher), the discoverer of America., is the first to determine astronomically the position of a line of no magnetic variation (on which the needle points to the true north) the merit of which discovery has, by Livio Sanuto, been erroneously attributed to Sebastian Cabot. (Livio Sanuto, “Geographia distincta in XII libri ...” wherein the whole of Book I is given to reported observations of the compass and to accounts of different navigators.)

Columbus did not, as many imagine, make the first observations of the existence of magnetic variation, for this is set down upon the charts of Andrea Bianco, but he was the first who remarked, on the 13th of September, 1492, that “2½ degrees east of the island of[66] Corvo, in the Azores, the magnetic variation changed and passed from N.E. to N.W.” Washington Irving thus describes the discovery (“History ... Ch. Columbus,” Paris, 1829, Vol. I. p. 198): “On the 13th of September, in the evening, being about two hundred leagues from the island of Ferro (the smallest of the Canaries), Columbus, for the first time, noticed the variation of the needle, a phenomenon which had never before been remarked. He perceived, about nightfall, that the needle, instead of pointing to the North Star, varied about half a point, or between five and six degrees to the north-west, and still more on the following morning. Struck with this circumstance, he observed it attentively for three days and found that the variation increased as he advanced. He at first made no mention of this phenomenon, knowing how ready his people were to take alarm; but it soon attracted the attention of the pilots, and filled them with consternation. It seemed as if the laws of nature were changing as they advanced, and that they were entering into another world, subject to unknown influences (Las Casas, ‘Hist. Ind.,’ l. i. c. 6). They apprehended that the compass was about to lose its mysterious virtues; and, without that guide, what was to become of them in a vast and trackless ocean? Columbus tasked his science and ingenuity for reasons with which to allay their terrors. He told them that the direction of the needle was not to the polar star but to some fixed and invisible point. The variation, therefore, was not caused by any fallacy in the compass, but by the movement of the North Star itself, which, like the other heavenly bodies, had its changes and revolutions, and every day described a circle around the pole. The high opinion that the pilots entertained of Columbus as a profound astronomer gave weight to his theory, and their alarm subsided.”

Humboldt says: “We can, with much certainty, fix upon three places in the Atlantic line of no declination for the 13th of September, 1492, the 21st of May, 1496 and the 16th of August, 1498.”

It may be worth noting here that the ashes of Columbus, removed from the Cathedral of Havana, were placed in a mausoleum at Seville, November 17, 1902 (“Science,” Dec. 12, 1902, p. 958).

Amongst the numerous claimants to the discovery of America, some have placed the great navigator Martin Behaim—Behem—(1430–1506), who received his instruction from the learned John Müller (Regiomontanus) and became one of the most learned geographers as well as the very best chart maker of his age. Cellarius, Riccioli and other writers assert that Behaim had, before Columbus, visited the American Continent, while Stuvenius shows, in his treatise “De vero novi orbis inventore,” that the islands of America and the strait of Magalhæns were accurately traced upon the very celebrated globe called the “World Apple” completed by Behaim in the year 1492, and which is still to be seen in Behaim’s native city of Nürnberg.[26] (See Mr. Otto’s letter to Dr. Franklin, in the second volume of the “Transactions of the American Philosophical Society held at Philadelphia for promoting useful knowledge,” likewise Humboldt, “Examen critique de l’histoire de la Géographie,” Vol. II. pp. 357–369; “The Reliquary,” London, Vol. VI. N.S. Jan.-Oct. 1892, pp. 215–229; Justin Winsor, “Narrative and Critical History of America,” Boston 1889, Vol. II. pp. 104–105; “Geogr. Jour.,” Vol. V. March 1895, p. 228.)

It was this same Martin Behaim (Humboldt, “Cosmos,” 1860, Vol. II. p. 255) who received a charge from King John II of Portugal to compute tables for the sun’s declination and to teach pilots how to “navigate by the altitudes of the sun and stars.” It cannot now be decided whether at the close of the fifteenth century the use of the log was known as a means of estimating the distance traversed while the direction is indicated by the compass; but it is certain that the distinguished voyager Francisco Antonio Pigafetta (1491–1534) the friend and companion of Magellan—Magalhæns—speaks of the log (la catena a poppa) as of a well-known means of measuring the course passed over. Nothing is to be found regarding way-measurers in the literature of the Middle Ages until we come to the period of several “books of nautical instruction,” written or printed by this same Pigafetta (“Trattato di Navigazione,” probably before 1530); by Francisco Falero, a brother of Ruy Falero, the astronomer (“Regimiento para observar la longitud[68] en la mar,” 1535); by Pedro da Medina, of Seville (“Arte de Navegar,” 1545); by Martin Cortez, of Bujalaroz (“Breve Compendio de la esfera, y de la arte de navegar,” 1551), and by Andres Garcia de Cespedes (“Regimiento de Navigacion y Hidrografia,” 1606). From almost all these works—some of which, if not all, have naturally become very scarce—as well as from the “Summa de Geografia” which Martin Fernandez de Enciso had published in 1519, we learn most distinctly that the “distance sailed over” was then ascertained in Spanish and Portuguese ships not by any distinct measurement, but only through estimation of the eye, according to certain established principles. Medina says (lib. iii. caps. 11–12): “In order to know the course of the ship, as to the length of distance passed over, the pilot must set down in his register how much distance the vessel hath made according to hours (i. e. guided by the hour-glass, ampoleta); and, for this, he must know that the most a ship advances in an hour is four miles, and, with feebler breezes, three or only two.” Cespedes, in his “Regimiento” (pp. 99 and 156) calls this mode of proceeding echar punto por fantasia, and he justly remarks that if great errors are to be avoided, this fantasia must depend on the pilot’s knowledge of the qualities of his ship. Columbus, Juan de la Cosa, Sebastian Cabot and Vasco da Gama, were not acquainted with the log and its mode of application, and they all estimated the ship’s speed merely by the eye, while they ascertained the distance they had made merely through the running down of the sand in the glasses known as ampoletas.

A.D. 1497.—Gama (Vasco or Vasquez da), celebrated Portuguese navigator, is known positively to have made use of the compass during the voyage he undertook this year to the Indies. He says that he found the pilots of the Indian Ocean making ready use of the magnet. The first book of the history of Portugal by Jerome Osorius—wherein he gives (pp. 23–24, Book I. paragraph 15, 1581 ed.) a very extended “description de l’aiguille marine, invention des plus belles et utiles du monde”—states that, instead of a needle, they used a small magnetized iron plate, which was suspended like the needle of the Europeans, but which showed imperfectly the north.

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Gilbert says (“De Magnete,” Book IV. chap. xiii.) that, as the Portuguese did not rightly understand the construction and use of the compass, some of their observations are untrustworthy and that in consequence various opinions exist relative to magnetic variation. For example, the Portuguese navigator Roderigues de Lazos—Lagos—takes it to be one-half point off the Island of St. Helena; the Dutch, in their nautical journal, make it one point there; Kendall, an expert English navigator, makes it only one-sixth of a point, using a true meridional compass. Diego Alfonso finds no variation at a point a little south-east of Cape das Agulhas,[27] and, by the astrolabe, shows that the compass points due north and south at Cape das Agulhas if it be of the Portuguese style, in which the variation is one-half point to the south-east.

A.D. 1497.—Cabot (Sebastian), a prominent English navigator, lands, June 24, 1497, on the coast of Labrador, between 56 degrees and 58 degrees north latitude.

At p. 150 of the 1869 London edition of Mr. J. F. Nicholl’s “Life of Seb. Cabot” it is said the latter represented to the King of England that the variation of the compass was different in many places, and was not absolutely regulated by distance from any particular meridian; that he could point to a spot of no variation, and that those whom he had trained as seamen, as Richard Chancellor and Stephen Burrough, were particularly attentive to this problem, noting it at one time thrice within a short space.

A.D. 1502.—Varthema-Vertomannus (Ludovico di) leaves Europe for the Indies, as mentioned at p. 25 of his “Travels,” translated by J. Winter Jones, London, 1863, from the original “Itenerario ... ne la India ...” Milano, 1523. He states that[70] the Arabs who navigated the Red Sea were known to have long since made use of the mariner’s chart and compass, and he tells us, in the introduction and at p. 249, that “the captains carried the compass with the needle after our manner,” and that their chart was “marked with lines perpendicular and across.” When the polar star became invisible, they all asked the captain by what he could then steer them, and “he showed us four or five stars, among which there was one (B. Hydrus) which he said was opposite to (contrario della) our North Star, and that he sailed by the north because the magnet was adjusted and subjected to our north, i. e. because this compass was no doubt of European origin—its index pointing to the north, and being unlike that of the Chinese pointing to the south.”

A.D. 1530–1542.—Guillen (Felipe), an ingenious apothecary of Seville, and Alonzo de Santa Cruz (who was one of the instructors of mathematics to young Charles V, King of Spain and Emperor of Germany, and the Cosmografo Mayor of the Royal Department of Charts at Seville), construct variation charts and variation compasses by which solar altitudes can be taken.

A.D. 1544.—Hartmann (Georg) a vicar of the church of Saint Sebaldus, at Nuremberg, writes March 4, to the Duke Albrecht of Prussia, a letter which was brought to light by Moser and which reads as follows: “Besides, I find also this in the magnet, that it not only turns from the north and deflects to the east about nine degrees, more or less, as I have reported, but it points downward. This may be proved as follows: I make a needle a finger long, which stands horizontally on a pointed pivot, so that it nowhere inclines toward the earth, but stands horizontal on both sides; but, as soon as I stroke one of the ends (with the loadstone) it matters not which end it be, then the needle no longer stands horizontal, but points downward (fällt unter sich) some nine degrees, more or less. The reason why this happens I was not able to indicate to his Royal Majesty.” The above seems to establish the fact that Hartmann first observed the dip of the magnetic needle independently of Robert Norman.

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Gilbert refers (“De Magnete,” Book I. chap. i.) to Fortunius Affaitatus—Affaydatus—an Italian physicist who, says he, has some rather silly philosophizing about the attraction of iron and of its turning to the poles, thus alluding to the latter’s small work called “Physicæ (et) ac astronomiæ (astronomicæ) considerationes,” which appeared at Venice in 1549. Nevertheless, it is a question whether Affaitatus was not actually the first to publish the declination of the magnetic needle. (“Biogr. Gén.,” Vol. I. p. 346; Mazzuchelli, “Scrittori d’Italia”; Bertelli, “Mem. sopra P. Peregrino,” p. 115; Adelung, Supplément à Jocher, “Allgem. Gelehrten-Lexicon”; Johann Lamont, “Handbuch des Magnetismus,” Leipzig, 1867, p. 425; J. C. Poggendorff, “Biogr.-Lit. Handwörterbuch,” Leipzig, 1863, Vol. I. p. 15; Michaud, “Biogr. Univ. Anc. et Mod.,” Vol. I. p. 208, Paris, 1843; Brunet, “Manuel,” Paris, 1860; “Biog. Cremonese de Lancetti”; M. le Dr. Hœfer, “Biog. Gen.,” Paris, 1852, Vol. I. p. 346.)

A.D. 1555.—Olaus Magnus, a native of Sweden and Archbishop of Upsala (where he died during 1568) issued in Rome his great work “Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus,” which, for a long time, remained the chief authority on Swedish matters. In this book, Gilbert says (“De Magnete,” lib. i. cap. 1) allusion is made to a certain magnetic island and to mountains in the north possessing such power of attraction that ships have to be constructed with wooden pegs so that as they sail by the magnetic cliffs there be no iron nails to draw out.

To this, reference is made by Thos. Browne (“Pseud. Epidem.,” 1658, Book II. p. 78) as follows: “Of rocks magnetical, there are likewise two relations; for some are delivered to be in the Indies and some in the extremity of the North and about the very pole. The Northern account is commonly ascribed unto Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala, who, out of his predecessors—Joannes, Saxo and others—compiled a history of some Northern Nations; but this assertion we have not discovered in that work of his which commonly passeth among us; and should believe his geography herein no more than that in the first line of his book, where he affirmeth that Biarmia (which is not 70 degrees in latitude) hath the pole for its zenith, and equinoctial for the horizon.”

In a Spanish book entitled “The Naval Theatre,” by Don Francisco de Seylas and Louera, we find two causes assigned for the[72] variation of the declination; one is “the several mines of loadstones found in the several parts of the earth ...” the other being that “there is no doubt but large rocks of loadstones may affect the needles when near them ...” (“Philos. History ... Roy. Acad. Sc. at Paris,” London, 1742, Vol. II. pp. 279–280).

A.D. 1558.—Porta (Giambattista della), Italian natural philosopher (1540–1615), carries on a series of experiments with the magnet for the purpose of communicating intelligence at a distance. Of these experiments, he gives a full account in his “Magiæ Naturalis,” the first edition of which is said to have been published at Naples when Porta was but fifteen years of age (“Encycl. Brit.,” article “Optics”). Prof. Stanley Jones says this is the earliest work in which he has found allusions to a magnetic telegraph.

Porta’s observations are so extraordinary—and they attracted so much attention as to justify eighteen separate editions of his work in different languages prior to the year 1600—that extracts must needs here prove interesting. They are taken out of “Natural Magick in XX Bookes by John Baptist Porta, a Neapolitaine ... London 1658,” the seventh book of which treats “Of the wonders of the loadstone.”

Proem: “And to a friend that is at a far distance from us and fast shut up in prison, we may relate our minds; which I doubt not may be done by two mariner’s compasses, having the alphabet writ about them ...”

Chap. I (alluding to the loadstone):

Nicander thinks the stone was so called—and so doth Pliny—from one Magnes, a shepherd.

In Chap. XVIII he states that “the situation makes the Vertues of the Stone contrary ... for the stone put above the table will do one thing, and another thing if it be put under the table ... that[73] part that drew above will drive off beneath; and that will draw beneath that drove off above: that is, if you place the stone above and beneath in a perpendicular.”

In Chap. XXV, in allusion to “a long concatenation of iron rings,” he thus quotes Lucretius:

Chap. XXVII alludes to the Statue hung by Dinocrates: “... but that is false, that Mahomet’s chest hangs by the roof of the Temple. Petrus Pellegrinus saith, he shewed in another work how that might be done: but that work is not to be found.... But I say it may be done—because I have now done it—to hold it fast by an invisible band, to hang in the air: onely so, that it be bound with a small thread beneath, that it may not rise higher: and then striving to catch hold of the stone above, it will hang in the air, and tremble and wag itself.”

In Chap. XXVIII he says that “Whilst the loadstone is moved under a table of wood, stone or any metal, except iron, the needle in the mariner’s compass will move above, as if there is no body between them. St. Augustine (‘Liber de Civitate Dei’) knew this experiment (likewise alluded to by Camillus Leonardus in his ‘Speculum Lapidum,’ published 1502). But that is much more wonderful that I have heerd: that if one hold a loadstone under a piece of silver, and put a piece of iron above the silver, as he moves his hand underneath that holds the stone, so will the iron move above; and the silver being in the middle, and suffering nothing, running so swiftly up and down, that the stone was pulled from the hand of the man, and took hold of the iron.”

Chap. XXX is headed: “A loadstone on a plate of iron, will not stir iron,” and he again quotes Lucretius:

In Chap. XXXII he tells us that an Italian “whose name was Amalphus ... knew not the Mariner’s Card, but stuck the needle in a reed, or a piece of wood, cross over: and he put the needles into a vessel full of water that they might flote freely: then carrying about the loadstone, the needles would follow it: which being taken away, as by a certain natural motion, the points of the needles would turn[74] to the north pole: and, having found that, stand still.... Now the Mariner’s Compass is made, and a needle touched with the Loadstone, is so fitted to it, that, by discovering the pole by it, all other parts of the heavens are known. There is made a rundle with a Latin-navel upon a point of the same metal, that it may run roundly freely. Whereupon, by the touching onely of one end, the needle not alone partakes of the vertues of it, but of the other end also, whether it will or not....”

Chap. XLVIII is headed “Whether Garlick can hinder the vertues of the loadstone.” By Porta we are informed that “Plutarch saith Garlick is at great enmity with the loadstone; and such antipathy and hatred there is between these invisible creatures, that if a loadstone be smeered with Garlick, it will drive away iron from it,” which is confirmed by Ptolemy, who states “that the loadstone will not draw iron, if it be anoynted with Garlick; as Amber will no more draw straws, and other light things to it, if they be first steeped in oyl.” He found that when the loadstone “was all anoynted over the juice of Garlick, it did perform its office as well as if it had never been touched with it.”

In Chap. LIII Porta denies “that the diamond doth hinder the loadstone’s vertue.” “Some pretend,” says he, “there is so much discord between the qualities of the loadstone and the diamond, and they are so hateful, one against the other, and secret enemies, that if the diamond be put to the loadstone, it presently faints and loses all its forces. (Pliny.) The loadstone so disagreeth with the diamond, that if iron be laid by it, it will not let the loadstone draw it; and if the loadstone do attract it, it will snatch it away again from it. (St. Augustine.) I will say that I have read of the loadstone: how that, if the diamond be by it, it will not draw iron; and, if it do when it comes neer the diamond, it will let it fall” (Marbodeus, of the Loadstone ... Marbodei Galli ... de lapidibus pretiosis Enchiridion ... Freiburg, 1530, 1531):

“I tried this often, and found it false; and that there is no truth in it.”

With reference to the above, see Plat (at A.D. 1653), who also alludes to the fact of the softening of the diamond with Goat’s blood. This is alluded to by Porta in the next chapter.

Chapter LIV contains extracts from Castianus in Geoponic. Græc., Marbodeus and Rhenius, the interpreter of Dionysius.

In 1560 there was established at Naples, by the versatile Giam.[75] della Porta, the first Academy of Sciences—Academia Secretum Naturæ—to which were admitted only those who had contributed to the advancement of medicine or to scientific studies in general (“Science,” December 19, 1902, p. 965).

A.D. 1575–1624.—Boehm—Böhme—Behmen (Jacob), a mystical German writer, known as the theosophist par excellence, is the author of “Aurora,” etc. (1612), “De Tribus Principiis” (1619) and of many other treatises, which were reprinted under the title of “Theosophia Revelata,” and which contain his many very curious observations concerning astrology, chemistry, theology, philosophy and electricity.

A.D. 1576.—Norman (Robert), a manufacturer of compass needles at Wapping, is the first who determined the dip or inclination to the earth of the magnetic needle in London, by means of a dipping needle (inclinatorium) of his own making. Five years later (1581) Norman publishes a pamphlet “The Newe Attractive, containing a short discourse of the Magnes or Lodestone, and amongest other his vertues, of a newe discouered secret, and subtill propertie concernyng the Declinyng of the Needle, touched therewith, under the Plaine of the Horizon ...” from which is taken the following:

“Hauing made many and diuers compasses and using alwaies to finish and end them before I touched the needle, I found continuallie that after I had touched the yrons with the stone, that presentlie the north point thereof woulde bend or decline downwards under the horizon in some quantitie; in so much that to the flie of the compass, which was before levell, I was still constrained to put some small piece of ware on the south point and make it equall againe ...” (Weld, “History of the Royal Society,” 1848, Vol. II. p. 432).

In the fourth chapter of his work, Norman describes the mode of making the particular instrument with which he was enabled to establish the first accurate measurement of the dip “which for this citie of London, I finde, by exact obseruations to be about 71 degrees 50 mynutes.”

Whewell thus alludes to several investigations in the same line:

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“Other learned men have, in long navigations, observed the differences of magnetic variations, as Thomas Hariot, Robert Hues, Edward Wright, Abraham Kendall, all Englishmen: others have invented magnetic instruments and convenient modes of observation such as are requisite for those who take long voyages, as William Borough, in his book concerning the variation of the compass; William Barlo, in his ‘Supplement’; Robert Norman, in his ‘Newe Attractive.’ This is that Robert Norman (a good seaman and an ingenious artificer) who first discovered the dip of magnetic iron” (“Enc. Metr.,” p. 738; read also paragraph 366 of J. F. W. Herschel’s “Prelim. Disc.,” 1855).

In Book I. chap. i. of Gilbert’s “De Magnete,” he says that Norman posits a point and place toward which the magnet looks but whereto it is not drawn: toward which magnetized iron, according to him, is collimated but which does not attract it. He alludes again to this “respective point” (Book IV. chaps. i. and vi.), saying that Norman originated the idea of the “respective point” looking, as it were, toward hidden principles, and held that toward this the magnetized needle ever turns, and not toward any attractional point: but he was greatly in error, albeit he exploded the ancient false opinion about attraction. Gilbert then proceeds to show how this theory is proved by Norman. The original passage in Norman’s “Newe Attractive” (London, 1581, Chap. VI) is as follows:

“Your reason towards the earth carrieth some probabilitie, but I prove that there be no Attractive, or drawing propertie in neyther of these two partes, then is the Attractive poynt lost, and falsly called the poynt Attractive, as shall be proved. But because there is a certain poynt that the needle alwayes respecteth or sheweth, being voide and without any Attractive propertie: in my judjment this poynt ought rather to bee called the poynt Respective.... This poynt Respective, is a certayne poynt, which the touched needle doth always Respect or shew....”

For the means of determining the dip or inclination, see “English Ency.”—Arts and Sciences—Vol. VIII. p. 160.

We have thus far learned that the declination or variation was alluded to by Peter Peregrinus (A.D. 1269) in the Leyden MS.; that Norman was the first to determine the dip or inclination, and we shall, under the 1776 date, find that Borda determined the third magnetic element called the intensity.

In 1581 appeared “The newe attractive ... a discours of the variation of the cumpas ... made by W. B(orough).” This was followed, in 1585 and in 1596, by “The newe Attractive ... newly corrected and amended by M. W. B.,” also, in 1614, by[77] “The New Attractive, with the application thereof for finding the true variation of the compass, by W. Burrowes.”

Norman is also the author of “The safegarde of Saylers, or Great Rutter ... translated out of Dutch ... by R. Norman,” 1590, 1600, 1640.

A.D. 1580.—The celebrated naturalist Li-tchi-tchin, who finished his Pen-thsao-Kang-Mou towards the end of 1580, says: “If the loadstone was not in love with iron it would not attract the latter.” Eight and a half centuries before, about the year A.D. 727, the same allusion had been made by Tchin-Thsang-Khi in his “Natural History” (Klaproth, “Lettre à M. de Humboldt ...” Paris, 1834, p. 20).

A.D. 1580.—In Parke’s translation of the “History of the Kingdom of China,” written by Juan G. de Mendoza, a Spanish missionary sent to the Chinese Empire by Philip II, appears the following (Vol. II. p. 36): “The Chinos doo gouerne their ships by a compasse deuided into twelue partes and doo vse no sea cardes, but a briefe description of Ruter (Ruttier—Routier—direction book) wherewith they do nauigate or saile.”

A.D. 1581.—Burrowes—Borough—Burroigh (William), “a man of unquestionable abilities in the mathematiques,” Comptroller of the English navy in the reign of Elizabeth, who has been alluded to as Robert Norman, is the first in Europe to publish well authenticated observations upon the magnetic variation or declination made by him from actual observation, while voyaging between the North Cape of Finmark and Vaigatch (Vaygates). These are recorded at length in his little book dedicated to “the travaillers, seamen and mariners of England” and entitled “A Discourse of the Variation of the Cumpas, or Magneticall Needle. Wherein is Mathematically shewed, the manner of the observation, effects, and application thereof, made by W. B. And is to be annexed to The Newe Attractive of R. N. 1581 (London).”

At pp. 7 and 8 of his “Terrestrial and Cosmical Magnetism,” Cambridge, 1866, Mr. Walker gives extracts from the twelve chapters of Burrowes’ work which, “containing, as it does, the first recorded[78] attempt at deducing the declination of the needle from accurate observations, must be considered as making an epoch in the history of terrestrial magnetism.”

A.D. 1585.—Juan Jayme and Francisco Galli made a voyage from the Philippines to Acapulco, solely for the purpose of testing by a long trial in the South Sea a declinatorium of Jayme’s invention, from which M. de Humboldt says (“Cosmos,” 1859, Vol. V. p. 56) some idea may be formed of the interest excited in reference to terrestrial magnetism during the sixteenth century.

A.D. 1586.—Vigenere (Blaise de), in his annotations to Livy (“Les cinq premiers livres de Tite-Live,” Paris, 8vo, Vol. I. col. 1316) alludes to the possibility of communicating the contents of a letter through a thick stone wall by passing a loadstone over corresponding letters circumscribing the compass needle.

A.D. 1589.—Acosta (Joseph d’), learned Jesuit, who has been already mentioned under the A.D. 121 entry, says in Chap. XVII. lib. i. of his masterly “Historia Natural de las Indias” (“Histoire Naturelle et Moralle des Indes tant Orientalles qu’Occidentalles,” traduite par Robert Reynault Cauxois, 1598, 1606) that he is able to indicate four lines of no variation (instead of one only discovered by Columbus) dividing the entire surface of the earth: “foure poyntes in all the world, whereas the needle looked directly towards the North.” Humboldt remarks that this may have had some influence on the theory advanced, in 1683, by Halley, of four magnetic poles or points of convergence.

A.D. 1590.—Cæsare (Giulio-Moderati), a surgeon of Rimini, observes the conversion of iron into a magnet by position alone. This effect was noticed on a bar which had been used as a support to a piece of brickwork erected on the top of one of the towers of the church of St. Augustine as is mentioned at the 1632 entry of Pietro Sarpi.

A.D. 1597.—Barlowe—Barlow (William)—who died May 25, 1625, and was Archdeacon of Salisbury—publishes his “Navigators’[79] Supply,” from which the following is extracted: “Some fewe yeares since, it so fell out that I had severall conferences with two East Indians which were brought into England by Master Candish (Thomas Cavendish, one of the great navigators of the Elizabethan Age) and had learned our language.... They shewed that in steade of our compas they (in the East Indies) use a magneticall needle of sixe ynches long ... upon a pinne in a dish of white china earth filled with water; in the bottome whereof they have two crosse lines for the foure principall windes, the rest of the divisions being reserved to the skill of their pilots.”

Barlowe also published in 1613, 1616 and 1618 different editions of his work on the magnet, the full title of the last named being “Magneticall Advertisements or diuers pertinent obseruations and approued Experiments concerning the nature and properties of the Loadstone. Whereunto is annexed a briefe Discoverie of the idle Animadversions of Mark Ridley, Dr. in Physike upon this treatize.”[28] Therein (Preface to the reader), he speaks of “That wonderful propertie of the body of the whole earth called the magneticall vertue (most admirably founde out and as learnedly demonstrated by Doctor Gilbert, physitian vnto our late renowned soveraigne Queen Elizabeth of happy memory) is the very true fountaine of all magneticall knowledge. So that although certain properties of the loadstone were knowne before, yet all the reasons of those properties were vtterly vnknowne and never before revealed (as I take it) vnto the sonnes of man....” Just before the Preface appears the following letter which (as William Sturgeon remarks) affords a good idea of the opinion entertained by Gilbert of Barlowe’s talents in this branch of science: “To the Worshipfull, my good friend, Mr. William Barlow, at Easton by Winchester. Recommendations with many thanks for all your paines and courtesies, for your diligence and enquiring, and finding diuers good secrets, I pray proceede with double capping your Loadstone you speake of, I shall bee glad to see you, as you write, as any man. I will haue any leisure, if it were a moneth, to conferre with you, you haue shewed mee more,—and brought more light than any man hath done. Sir, I will commend you to my L. of Effingham, there is heere a wise learned man, a Secretary of Venice, he came sent by that State, and was honourably receiued by her Majesty, he brought me a lattin letter from a Gentleman of Venice that is very well learned, whose name is Iohannes Franciscus Sagredus, he is a great Magneticall man and writeth that hee hath conferred with diuers[80] learned men of Venice, and with the Readers of Padua, and reporteth wonderfull liking of my booke, you shall haue a coppy of the latter: Sir, I purpose to adioyne an appendix of six or eight sheets of paper to my booke after a while, I am in hand with it of some new inuentions, and I would haue some of your experiments, in your name and inuention put into it, if you please, that you may be knowen for an augmenter of the art. So far this time in haste I take my leaue the XIII of February. Your very louing friend, W. Gilbert.”

Speaking of William Barlowe, Anthony à Wood says: “This was the person who had knowledge of the magnet twenty years before Dr. Will. Gilbert published his book of that subject, and therefore by those that knew him he was accounted superior, or at least equal, to that doctor for an industrious and happy searcher and finder out of many rare and magnetical secrets” (“Athenæ Oxonienses,” London, 1813, Vol. II. p. 375). Under heading of Gilbert, the “British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books,” 1888, has it that “Mag. Adv.” was compiled partly from “De Magnete.”

A.D. 1599.—Wright (Edward), English mathematician, connected with the East India Company and author of the Preface to Gilbert’s original “De Magnete,” published in London “Die Havenvinding—The Haven-finding Art: Translation of Simon Stevinus’ ‘Portuum investigandorum ratio,’” in which is urged the advantage of keeping registers of the variations observed on all voyages. Thus, says Lardner, the variation of the variation not only as to time, but as to place, had at this period begun to receive the attention of those engaged in navigation.

Wright constructed for Prince Henry a large sphere which represented the motion of the planets, moon, etc., and he predicted the eclipses for seventeen thousand one hundred years. He is said to have discovered the mode of constructing the chart which is known by the name of Mercator’s Projection.

Simon Stevinus, above mentioned, also called Stephanus—Simon of Bruges—was a most distinguished mathematician and physicist (1548–1628), and is alluded to by Edward Wright not only in the Preface to Gilbert’s “De Magnete” above referred to, but also in Book IV. chap. ix. of the latter work. The English translation of “Portuum investigandorum ratio” was afterwards attached to[81] the third edition of Wright’s “Certaine errors in navigation detected and corrected.”

A.D. 1599.—Pancirollus (Guido)—Panciroli (Gui)—already quoted at A.D. 121, further remarks: “The ancients sailed by the pole star, which they call Cynosura. The compass is believed to have been found at Amalfi, about 300 years ago by one Flavius. And this unknown fellow (if it was Flavius) hath deserved more than 10,000 Alexanders and as many Aristotles.... This single act hath improved knowledge and done more good to the world than all the niceties of the subtle schools.”

A.D. 1600.—Schwenter (Daniell), Professor of Oriental languages at Altdorff, describes, under the assumed name of Janus Hercules de Sunde, in his “Steganologia et Steganographia,” the means of communicating intelligence at a distance by employing two compass needles circumscribed with an alphabet, the needles being shaped from the same piece of steel, and magnetized by the same magnets.

Under caption “The First Idea of the Electric Telegraph,” the following appeared in the “Journal of the Franklin Institute,” Vol. XXI. 1851, p. 202: “In the number of the Philosophical Magazine for May, 1850, I [N. S. Heineken] observe that Prof. Maunoir claims, for his friend Dr. Odier, the first idea of the electric telegraph. I herewith send you a translation of ‘How two people might communicate with each other at a distance by means of the magnetic needle,’ taken from a German work by Schwenter, entitled ‘Deliciæ Physico-Mathematicæ,’ and published at Nürnberg in 1636 ... upward of a century before the period alluded to by Prof. Maunoir. Indeed, Oersted’s grand discovery was alone wanting to perfect the telegraph in 1636. The idea, in fact, appears to have been entertained prior even to this date, for Schwenter himself quotes, at p. 346, from a previous author.” This “previous author” is either Giambattista della[82] Porta, mentioned at A.D. 1558, or Famianus Strada, who appears herein under the A.D. 1617 date.

The passage from Dr. Louis Odier’s letter relative to an electric telegraph is given at A.D. 1773 (see J. J. Fahie, “A History of Electric Telegraphy to the Year 1837,” London, 1884, pp. 21–22).

A.D. 1600.—Gilbert—Gilberd—Gylberde (William), of Colchester (1544–1603), physician to Queen Elizabeth and to James I of England, justly called by Poggendorff “The Galileo of Magnetism,” publishes his “De magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno magnete tellure; Physiologia nova, plurimis et argumentis et experimentis demonstrata,” to which he had given “seventeen years of intense labour and research”[29] and which he dedicates “alone to the true philosophers, ingenuous minds, who not only in books but in things themselves look for knowledge,” and wherein the phenomena of electricity are first generalized and classified.

This great work is subdivided into six books, which respectively treat of the loadstone, of magnetic movements (coitio), of direction (directio), of variation (variatio), of declination (declinatio), and of the great magnet, the earth[30] of circular movement (revolutio).

After Gilbert has given in this Book an account of ancient and modern writings on the loadstone,[31] he indicates exactly what the latter is, where found, its different properties, and, having introduced[83] us to his terrella-microge, or little earth[32]—a globular loadstone, showing that it has poles answering to the earth’s poles, he tells us all about iron ore, its natural and acquired poles, the medicinal virtues attributed by the ancients to iron as well as to the loadstone; and he ends this First Book with the announcement that loadstone and iron ore are the same, that iron is obtained from both, like other metals from their ores, and that all magnetic properties exist, though weaker, both in smelted iron and in iron ore; furthermore, that the terrestrial globe is magnetic and is a loadstone; and that just as in our hands the loadstone possesses all the primary powers (forces) of the earth, so the earth, by reason of the same potencies, lies ever in the same direction throughout the universe.

The justly famous Second Book contains Gilbert’s electrical work and, as is generally known, the second chapter thereof is the earliest ever published on electricity. We are here introduced to Gilbert’s versorium—a rotating needle electroscope[33]—and are given the results of his many experimental observations[34] and the opinions of others relative to magnetic coition or attraction. We find, throughout the whole of the second chapter, the first systematic study of amber, with an interesting list of electrics and the recognition of a group of anelectrics—non-electrics. After pointing out the different kinds of attractions admitted by Galen and other ancient writers, we are told that:

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This Chapter II ends with the following explanation of the difference between electric and magnetic bodies, viz. all magnetic bodies come together by their joint forces (mutual strength); electric bodies attract the electric only, and the body attracted undergoes no modification through its own native force, but is drawn freely under impulsion in the ratio of its matter (composition). Bodies are attracted to electrics in a right line toward the centre of electricity: a loadstone approaches another loadstone on a line perpendicular to the circumference only at the poles, elsewhere obliquely and transversely, and adheres at the same angles. The electric motion is the motion of conservation of matter; the magnetic is that of arrangement and order. The matter of the earth’s globe is brought together and held together by itself electrically. The earth’s globe is directed and revolves magnetically; it both coheres, and, to the end it may be solid, it is in its interior fast joined.

Of the other interesting chapters in this Book II, attention is called more particularly to:

In this Third Book, we learn of the directive (or versorial) force which is called verticitas—verticity—what it is, how it resides in the loadstone, and how it is acquired when not naturally produced; how iron acquires it and how this verticity is lost or altered; why iron magnetized takes opposite verticity; of magnetizing stones of different shapes; why no other bodies save the magnetic are imbued with verticity by friction with a loadstone and why no body which is not magnetic can impart and awaken that force; of disagreements between pieces of iron on the same pole of a loadstone, and how they may come together and be conjoined; that verticity exists in all smelted iron not excited by the loadstone, as shown by its lying, being placed—or, preferably, by hammering hot iron—in the magnetic meridian; that the magnetized needle turns to conformity with the situation of the earth; of the use of rotary needles and their advantages; how the directive iron rotary needles of sundials and the needles of the mariner’s compass are to be rubbed with loadstone in order to acquire stronger verticity.

The Fourth Book treats of the variation at different places; says that it is due to inequality among the earth’s elevations;[35] shows that variation and direction are due to the controlling force of the earth and the rotatory magnetic nature, not by an attraction or a coition or by other occult cause; explains the different modes of constructing the mariner’s compass, in vogue at the time,[36] and how the deviation of the needle is greater or less according to the distance of place.

In this Fifth Book is to be found everything relative to the dip of the magnetic needle, likewise the description of an instrument for showing, by the action of a loadstone, the degree of dip below the horizon in any latitude; and the announcement that the magnetic[88] force is animate or imitates a soul; in many respects, it surpasses the human soul while that is united to an organic body.

Throughout this last Book, Gilbert glories in the Copernican theory, the open, unquestioned, advocacy and endorsement of which according to many seems, after all, to have been the object of the work. He maintains that the magnetic axis of the earth remains invariable; he treats of the daily magnetic revolution of the globes, as against the time-honoured opinion of a primum mobile, the fixed stars being at different distances from the earth; of the circular motion of the earth and of its primary magnetic nature, whereby her poles are made different from the poles of the ecliptic, as well as of the precession of the equinoxes and of the obliquity of the zodiac.

According to Humboldt,[37] Gilbert was the first to make use of the words electric force, electric emanations, electric attraction, but, he says, there is not found in “De Magnete” either the abstract expression electricitas or the barbarous word magnetismus introduced in the seventeenth century. We likewise owe to Gilbert the words equator, magneticum, terrella, versorium and verticitas, but not the word pole, which had before been used by P. Peregrinus and others.

The second edition of “De Magnete” appeared at Stettin in 1628, “embellished with a curious title-page in the form of a monument ... and a fantastic indication of the earliest European mariner’s compass, a floated lodestone, but floating in a bowl on the sea and left behind by the ship sailing away from it.”[38]

The third edition was also published at Stettin during 1633. Gilbert left, besides, a posthumous work, “De Mundo Nostro Sublunari Philosophia Nova,” Amsterdam, 1651, which latter, says Prof. Robison, consists of an attempt to establish a new system of natural philosophy upon the ruins of the Aristotelian doctrine.[39]

To give here such an analysis as Gilbert’s admirable work merits would be impracticable, but the short review of it made by Prof. Robison (at p. 209 of his “System of Mechanical Philosophy,” London, 1822) deserves full reproduction, as follows: “In the[89] introduction, he recounts all the knowledge of the ancients on the subject treated, and their supine inattention to what was so entirely in their hands, and the impossibility of ever adding to the stock of useful knowledge, so long as men imagined themselves to be philosophizing, while they were only repeating a few cant words and the unmeaning phrases of the Aristotelian school. It is curious to mark the almost perfect sameness of Dr. Gilbert’s sentiments and language with those of Lord Bacon. They both charge, in a peremptory manner, all those who pretend to inform others, to give over their dialectic labours, which are nothing but ringing changes on a few trite truths, and many unfounded conjectures, and immediately to betake themselves to experiment. He has pursued this method on the subject of magnetism, with wonderful ardour, and with equal genius and success; for Dr. Gilbert was possessed both of great ingenuity, and a mind fitted for general views of things. The work contains a prodigious number and variety of experiments and observations, collected with sagacity from the writings of others, and instituted by himself with considerable expense and labour. It would, indeed, be a miracle if all of Dr. Gilbert’s general inferences were just, or all his experiments accurate. It was untrodden ground. But, on the whole, this performance contains more real information than any writing of the age in which he lived, and is scarcely exceeded by any that has appeared since. We may hold it with justice as the first fruits of the Baconian or experimental philosophy.” Elsewhere, Prof. Robison remarks: “It is not saying too much of this work to affirm that it contains almost everything we know of magnetism. His unwearied diligence in searching every writing on the subject and in getting information from navigators, and his incessant occupation in experiments, have left very few facts unknown to him. We meet with many things in the writings of posterior inquirers, some of them of high reputation and of the present day, which are published and received as notable discoveries, but are contained in the rich collection of Dr. Gilbert.”

The Rev. Wm. Whewell says in his “History of the Inductive Sciences” (Vol. III. p. 49) that in the “De Magnete,” a book of only 240 pages, upon which Dr. Gilbert has been engaged for nearly eighteen years, are contained “all the fundamental facts of the science, so fully examined, indeed, that, even at this day, we have little to add to them.”

Dr. John Davy remarks (“Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy,” London, 1836, Vol. I. p. 309): “Gilbert’s work is worthy being studied, and I am surprised that an English Edition (translation) of it has never been published.” He also alludes to the well-known reproach thrown upon Gilbert’s philosophy by Francis[90] Bacon, who, in his “De Augmentis Scientiarum,” observes that “Gilbert has attempted to raise a general system upon the magnet, endeavouring to build a ship out of materials not sufficient to make the rowing-pins of a boat.” On the other hand, Digby and Barlowe place Gilbert upon a level with Harvey, Galileo, Gassendi and Descartes (“Nouvelle Biographie Générale,” 1858, Vol. VIII. p. 494) while the celebrated historian of the Council of Trent, Fra Paolo Sarpi—who will not be thought an incompetent judge—names Gilbert, with Francis Vieta (the greatest French mathematician of the sixteenth century) as the only original writer among his contemporaries (“Lettere di Fra Paolo,” p. 31; Hallam, “Intro. to Lit.,” 1859, Vol. II. p. 464).

In Thos. Thomson’s “History of the Royal Society,” London, 1812, the “De Magnete” is thus alluded to: “Dr. Gilbert’s book on magnetism, published in 1600, is one of the finest examples of inductive philosophy that has ever been presented to the world. It is the more remarkable because it preceded the ‘Novum Organum’ of Bacon, in which the inductive method of philosophizing was first explained.” How far Gilbert was ahead of his time is best proven by the works of those who wrote on magnetism during the first few decades after his death. They contributed in reality nothing to the extension of this branch of physical science. Poggendorff, from whose “Geschichte der Physik,” p. 286, this is extracted, as already stated, calls Gilbert “the Galileo of Magnetism.” By Dr. Priestley, he was named “the Father of Modern Electricity.”

The tribute of Henry Hallam is to the following effect: “The year 1600 was the first in which England produced a remarkable work in physical science; but this was one sufficient to raise a lasting reputation for its author. Gilbert, a physician, in his Latin treatise on the magnet, not only collected all the knowledge which others had possessed on the subject, but became at once the father of experimental philosophy in this island, and, by a singular felicity and acuteness of genius, the founder of theories which have been revived after a lapse of ages, and are almost universally received into the creed of science. Gilbert was one of the earliest Copernicans, at least as to the rotation of the earth, and, with his usual sagacity, inferred, before the invention of the telescope, that there are a multitude of fixed stars beyond the reach of our vision” (“Introduction to the Literature of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” London, 1859, Vol. II. p. 463).

In the “Principal Navigations ...” Edinburgh, 1889, Vol. XII. p. 10, Richard Hakluyt speaks of “... my worshipfull friend M. douctour Gilbert, a gentleman no lesse excellent in the chiefest secrets of the Mathematicks (as that rare iewel lately set forth[91] by him in Latine doeth euidently declare) then in his oune profession of physicke.”

We conclude this account of Gilbert in the quaint words of old Dr. Fuller: “He has (said my informer[40]) the clearness of Venice Glass without the Brittleness thereof, soon Ripe and long lasting is his Perfection. He commenced Doctor in Physick, and was Physician to Queen Elizabeth, who stamped on him many marks of her Favour, besides an annuall Pension to encourage his studies. He addicted himself to Chemistry, attaining to great exactness therein. One saith of him that he was Stoicall, but not Cynicall, which I understand Reserved; but not Morose, never married, purposely to be more beneficial to his brethren. Such his Loyalty to the Queen that, as if unwilling to survive, he dyed in the same year with her, 1603. His Stature was Tall, Complexion Chearful, an Happiness not ordinary in so hard a student and so retired a person. He lyeth buried in Trinity Church in Colchester under a plain monument.”

“Mahomet’s Tombe, at Mecha, is said strangely to hang up, attracted by some invisible Loadstone, but the memory of this Doctor will never fall to the ground, which his incomparable book ‘De Magnete’ will support to eternity” (“The History of the Worthies of England Endeavoured by Thomas Fuller, D.D.,” London, 1662, p. 332—Essex).

In his Epistle to Dr. Walter Charleton, physician in ordinary to King Charles I (Epist. III. p. 15, Vol. XI of the Works of Dryden, London, 1803) the celebrated English poet predicts that:

A.D. 1601.—Brahé (Tycho—Tygge—Thyghe—Tyge), who has been several times mentioned in this compilation and is referred to by Gilbert (“De Magnete,” Book IV. chap. xii. also Book VI. chap. v.), was a distinguished Danish astronomer (b. 1546, d. 1601), the founder of modern astronomical calculations, whose investigations and records of the positions of the stars and planets made possible the brilliant discoveries of Kepler and Newton. As Humboldt expresses it, the rich abundance of accurate observations furnished by Tycho Brahé, himself the zealous opponent of the Copernican system, laid the foundation for the discovery of those eternal laws of planetary movements which prepared imperishable renown for the name of Kepler, and which, interpreted by Newton, proved to be theoretically and necessarily true, have been now transferred into the bright and glorious domain of thought as the intellectual recognition of nature (“Cosmos,” 1860, Vol. II. p. 313).

As his very able biographer, Dr. J. L. E. Dreyer, of the Armagh Observatory, remarks in his admirable work (Edinburgh, 1890): “Without Brahé, Kepler never could have found out the secrets of the planetary motions, and, in the words of Delambre, ‘Nous ignorerions peut être encore le véritable système du monde.’ The most important inheritance which Tycho left to Kepler and to posterity was the vast mass of observations all which, Kepler justly[93] said, ‘deserved to be kept among the royal treasures, as the reform of astronomy could not be accomplished without them ...’ at one breath blowing away the epicycles and other musty appendages which disfigured the Copernican system.... Tycho Brahé had given Kepler the place to stand on and Kepler did move the world!”

Brahé was the first to recognize the variation, i. e. the inequality, in the moon’s motion. In opposition to the opinion of Sédillot, M. Biot maintains that this fine discovery of Tycho by no means belongs to Abul-Wefa, and that the latter was acquainted not with the “variation” but only with the second part of the “evection” (“Cosmos,” 1860, Vol. II. p. 222, wherein are many references to the Comptes Rendus and to the “Journal des Savants”).

The biographical division of the “English Cyclopædia,” 1866, Vol. I. pp. 898–903, gives a list of Brahé’s numerous writings, headed by his earliest publication, “De Nova Stella,” 1573, which is so extremely rare that, until 1890, when Dr. Dreyer gave a description of it, not a single historian of astronomy had ever seen it or been able to even give its title correctly (“Journal of Br. Astron. Assoc.,” Vol. XII. No. 2, p. 95; Houzeau et Lancaster, Vol. II. p. 598). A detailed account of its contents is given at pp. 44–56 of Dr. Dreyer’s 1890 work above alluded to, wherein we are further told of the protection given Brahé by the Landgrave William of Hesse-Cassel, as well as of the consequent aid so liberally extended by King Frederick II. Reference is likewise made to the fact that in December 1584 the King turned to Tycho for help, writing that he was under the impression he had returned a compass made by Tycho, believing there was something wrong with it; that, if this proved to be the case, Tycho was to send back the compass, but, if not, he was to make two new ones similar to the old one (F. R. Friis, “Tyge Brahé,” p. 147).

A.D. 1602.—Blundeville (Thomas) publishes at London, “The Theoriques of the Seuen Planets,” etc., which, as the lengthy title goes to show, indicates “the making, description and vse of two ingenious and necessarie instruments for sea men to find out thereby the latitude of any place upon the sea or land, in the darkest night, that is, without the helpe of sunne, moone or starre; first invented by M. Dr. Gilbert, a most excellent philosopher, and one of the ordinarie physicians to Her Majestie.”

He had previously published, in 1589, “A briefe description of universal mappes and cardes and of their use; and also the use of Ptolemy his Tables,” which was followed, during 1594, by his well-known work on navigation. From the rare sixth edition of the latter (London, 1622) the curious title page is worth reproducing as follows: “M. Blundeville, His Exercises, contayning eight treatises, the titles whereof are set down in the next printed page: which treatises are very necessary to be read and learned of all Young Gentlemen that haue not beene exercised in such Disciplines and yet are desirous to haue knowledge as well in Cosmographie, Astronomie and Geographie, as also in the art of navigation, in which art it is impossible, to profit without the helpe of these or such like Instructions. To the furtherance of which Art of Navigation the sayd Master Blundeville especially wrote the said Treatises and of meere good will doth dedicate the same to all Young Gentlemen of this Realme.” The contents of this curious work treat of Arithmetic, Cosmography, Terrestrial and Celestial Globes, Peter Plancius, his Universal Map, Mr. Blagrau, his Astrolabe, The First Principles of Navigation, etc. etc.

The Mr. Blagrau here mentioned is John Blagrave, eminent English mathematician, author of “The Mathematical Jewel,” as well as of “The making and use of the familiar staffe,” of “The Art of Dialling,” and of “Astrolabium Uranicum Generale, a necessary and pleasunt solace and recreation for Navigators in their long journeying, containing the use of an instrument or astrolabe.” From the last named, it appears that Blagrave was a convert to the heliocentric theory of Copernicus (“New Gen.[95] Biog. Dict.,” by Rev. H. J. Rose, London, 1850, Vol. IV. p. 277). The invention of the dipping needle by Mr. Blagrave was before the discovery of the change of the needle’s variation by Mr. Gellibrand (“Philos. Britan.,” Benj. Martin, London, 1771, Vol. I. p. 46).

A.D. 1609.—Kepler (Johann), who succeeded Tycho Brahé in 1601 as astronomer to the German Emperor Rudolph II, is the author of a treatise “On the Magnet,” which was followed, during 1609, by his greatest work, the “Astronomia Nova.” The latter was deemed by Lalande of such importance that he considered it the duty of every astronomer to read it from beginning to end at least once in his lifetime.

The “Astronomia” contains the extraordinary book “on the motion of Mars,” and is said to hold the intermediate place, besides being the connecting link between the discoveries of Copernicus and those of Newton. Kepler’s doctrine is thus enunciated by Dr. Whewell (“Physical Astronomy,” Chap. I): “A certain Force or Virtue resides in the sun by which all bodies within his influence are carried around him. He illustrates (‘De Stella Martis,’ Chap. XXXIV. p. 3) the nature of this Virtue in various ways, comparing it to Light and to the Magnetic Power, which it resembles in the circumstances of operating at a distance, and also in exercising a feebler influence as the distance becomes greater.” In the Table of Contents of the work on the planet Mars, the purport of the chapter to which allusion has been made is stated as follows: “A Physical speculation, in which it is demonstrated that the vehicle of that virtue which urges the planets, circulates through the spaces of the universe after the manner of a river or whirlpool (vortex), moving quicker than the planets.” It will doubtless be found by any one who reads Kepler’s phrases concerning the moving force—the magnetic nature—the immaterial virtue of the sun, that they convey no distinct conception, except so far as they are interpreted by the expressions here quoted: “A vortex of fluid constantly whirling around the sun, kept in this whirling motion by the rotation of the sun himself and carrying the planets around the sun by its revolution,[96] as a whirlpool carries straws, could be readily understood; and though it appears to have been held by Kepler that this current and vortex was immaterial, he ascribes to it the power of overcoming the inertia of bodies, and of putting them and keeping them in motion, the only material properties with which he had anything to do. Kepler’s physical reasonings, therefore amount, in fact, to the doctrine of vortices around the central bodies and are occasionally so stated by himself; though by asserting these vortices to be ‘an immaterial species,’ and by the fickleness and variety of his phraseology on the subject, he leaves his theory in some confusion; a proceeding, indeed, which both his want of sound mechanical conceptions and his busy and inventive fancy might have led us to expect. Nor, we may venture to say, was it easy for any one at Kepler’s time to devise a more plausible theory than the theory of vortices might have been made. It was only with the formation and progress of the science of mechanics that this theory became untenable.”

It will be well to look at the last-named work of Dr. Whewell for references to Jeremiah Horrox—Horrockes—(1619–1641), the celebrated young English scientist, who wrote in defence of the Copernican opinion in his “Keplerian Astronomy defended and promoted” (“Hist. of the Ind. Sc.,” Vol. I. Book V. chap. iii. p. 276, and Chap. V. p. 303), as well as for references to Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679). Borelli, who has by many been erroneously called a pupil of Galileo, was a distinguished Italian physicist and astronomer, born at Naples in 1608, who founded what has been called the iatromathematical school, which, under the protection of Leopold of Tuscany, became known as the Accademia del Cimento. Whewell speaks of him in Vol. I. at Book VI. chap. ii. p. 323, at Book VII. chap i. pp. 387, 393, 394, and at Chap. II. pp. 303, 395, 405, 406. Horrox is mentioned, more particularly, by Houzeau et[97] Lancaster (“Bibliog. Générale,” Vol. II. p. 167), also at pp. 12 and 220, Vol. II of Hutton’s abridgments of the Phil. Trans.; while full accounts of the many important works of Borelli are to be found in “Biogr. Générale,” Vol. VI. pp. 700–701; Ninth “Britannica,” Vol. IV. p. 53; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. II. p. 1003; “Chambers’ Encycl.,” 1888, Vol. II. p. 328; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. VII. p. 405; Nicéron, “Mémoires,” Vol. VIII. p. 257; Vigneul-Marville, “Mélanges,” Vol. II. p. 122; Sachs, “Onomasticon Literarium,” V. 40; Hagen, “Memoriæ Philosophorum,” Frankfort, 1710.

A.D. 1613.—Ridley (Marke), “Doctor in physicke and philosophie, latly physition to the Emperour of Russia and one of ye eight principals or elects of the College of Physitions in London,” is the author of a small quarto entitled “A Short Treatise of Magnetical Bodies and Motions,” published in London, 1613. Of this treatise, Libri says that the author, in his preface, deals tolerantly with the many and varied theories concerning magnetic bodies, instancing many of the most notable from those of Pliny and Nicander to those of Robert Norman. He is particularly emphatic concerning the production of perpetual motion by means of the loadstone, finding it “by the experience of many ingenious practices ... impossible to be done.”

From the notice given him in “Dict. of Nat. Biog.,” 1896, Vol. XLVIII. pp. 285–286, we learn that in the above-named work, he claims acquaintance with William Gilbert, whom he commends as the greatest discoverer in magnetical science, and that after giving twenty-four chapters on the properties and description of the magnet, he discusses the variation of the compass and methods of estimating it in eight chapters, the inclinatory needle in eight others, concluding with a chapter on finding the longitude and one “of the matter of the magnetical globe of the earth by the needle.”

In 1617, he published “Animadversions on a late work entitled Magnetical Advertisement; or, Observations on the Nature and Properties of the Loadstone.”

A.D. 1616.—Schouten (Guillaume Cornelissen—Willem Cornelisz), Dutch navigator, indicates points lying in the midst of the Pacific and south-east of the Marquesas Islands in which the[98] variation is null. Humboldt alludes to this (“Cosmos,” 1859, Vol. I. p. 182, and Vol. V. p. 59) and says, “Even now there lies in this region a singular, closed system of isogonic lines, in which every group of the internal concentric curves indicates a smaller amount of variation.”

For Schouten, consult “Relation,” published by Aris Classen, Amst., 1617; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. XIV. p. 375.

Under this same date, A.D. 1616, Chas. Pickering tells us that Wm. Baffin (Churchill Coll. and Anders. II. 268) continued North to “seventy-eight degrees,” as far as a Sound called by him “Thomas Smith’s,” where the compass varied “fifty-six degrees to the westward,” making the true North bear N.E. by E. The northern expanse of water received the name of “Baffin’s Bay” (“Chron. Hist. of Plants,” Boston, 1879, p. 933).

A.D. 1617.—Strada (Famianus), an Italian author and Jesuit priest, publishes his curious “Prolusiones Academicæ,” wherein he describes (lib. ii. prol. 6) a contrivance consisting of two magnetic needles attached to two dials each bearing a circle of letters so arranged that when one needle is made to point to any letter on one dial, the other needle points to the same letter upon the other dial.

The description is best given in his own words taken from the original Latin (Stradæ, “Prol. Acad.,” Oxoniæ, 1662, “Magnes cur ferrum aut aurum trahat,” pp. 326–335): “... If you wish your distant friend, to whom no letter can come, to learn something, take a disc or dial, and write round the edge of it the letters of the alphabet in the order in which children learn them, and, in the centre, place horizontally a rod, which has touched a magnet, so that it may move and indicate whatever letter you wish. Then a similar dial being in the possession of your friend, if you desire privately to speak to the friend whom some share of the earth holds far from you, lay your hand on the globe, and turn the movable iron as you see disposed along the margin of all the letters which are required for the words. Hither and thither turn the style and touch the letters, now this one, and now that.... Wonderful to relate, the far-distant friend sees the voluble iron tremble without the touch of any person, and run now hither, now thither; conscious he bends over it and marks the teaching of the rod. When he sees the rod stand still, he, in his turn, if he thinks there is anything to be answered, in like manner, by touching the various letters, writes it back to his friend....”

A.D. 1620.—Bacon (Sir Francis), by many considered the greatest of English philosophers and philosophical writers (1561–1626), who was knighted in 1603, became Earl of Verulam in 1618 and Viscount St. Albans in 1620, produces the masterpiece of his genius, the “Novum Organum,” after having twelve times copied and revised it. The last-named work, observes Macaulay, “takes in at once all the domains of science—all the past, the present and the future, all the errors of two thousand years, all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of the coming age.” Prof. Playfair says of it that “the power and compass of the mind which could form such a plan beforehand, and trace not merely the outline but many of the most minute ramifications of sciences which did not yet exist, must be an object of admiration to all succeeding ages.”

It was Sir John Herschel who remarked that “previous to the publication of the ‘Novum Organum’ natural philosophy, in any legitimate and extensive sense of the word, could hardly be said to exist.” In the address presented in 1623 by the University of Oxford to Sir Francis Bacon, he is represented “as a mighty Hercules who had by his own hand greatly advanced those pillars in the learned world which by the rest of the world were supposed immovable.”

Treating of the electric fluid, Bacon has given (“Physiological Remains,” London, 1648) a detailed list of attractive and non-attractive bodies and the results of his very extensive experiments and observations in physical science generally, as well as of the investigations contained in Dr. Gilbert’s work. To the latter, however, many allusions had already been made in Bacon’s “The Advancement of Learning,” published during 1605, two years before he was made Solicitor-General.

The most satisfactory analyzation of Bacon’s researches is to be found in the attractive edition of his complete works published by Spedding, Ellis and Heath, fifteen volumes, Boston, 1863. Therein will be seen the following references to the magnet and magnetic virtue:

Besides the “Clandestine Instances” or “Instances of the Twilight” alluded to above, mention could have been made more particularly of Bacon’s observations (in s. 3 of the “Nov. Organ.”) under the direct headings of “Instantiæ Citantes ... Supplementi ... Radii ... Magicæ,” as well as of “Motus Magneticus ... Excitationis ... Fugæ,” etc., which are fully explained at ss. 190–200 of Sir John Herschel’s “Discourse on the study of Natural Philosophy.”

They have been analyzed as follows:

The last-named work of Sir John Herschel is alluded to, under the heading of “Prerogative Instances” (“Prærogativæ Instantiarum”) by Thomas Fowler, who calls attention to the fact that among the contemporaries of Francis Bacon by whom the Copernican theory was rejected are: Tycho Brahé (who, however—having died in 1601—did not live to become acquainted with the discoveries of Galileo); Vieta, the greatest mathematician of the sixteenth century (who died as early as 1603); Christopher Clavius (who was employed by Gregory XIII to reform the Calendar and was called the Euclid of his age); and possibly, from his silence, the famous mechanician Stevinus (Delambre, “Histoire de l’Astronomie Moderne”).

A.D. 1620–1655.—Bergerac (Savinien Cyrano de), a very witty French writer, is the author of a fragment on physics, as well as of a curious philosophical romance, “Histoire comique des états et empires de la lune,” a translation from which latter is here given, as in a measure suggesting the phonograph: “On opening the box, I found a number of metallic springs and a quantity of machinery resembling the interior of our clocks. It was, in truth, to me a book, indeed, a miraculous book, for it had neither leaves nor characters, and to read it, one had no need of eyes, the ears alone answering the purpose. It was only necessary to start the little machine, whence would soon come all the distinct and different sounds common to the human voice.”

Another translation reads as follows: “On opening the box I found inside a concern of metal, something like one of our watches, full of curious little springs and minute machinery. It was really a book, but a wonderful book that has no leaves or letters; a book, for the understanding of which the eyes are of no use—only the ears are necessary. When any one wishes to read, he winds up the machine with its great number of nerves of all kinds, and turns the pointer to the chapter he wishes to hear, when there come out, as if from the mouth of a man or of an instrument of music, the distinct and various sounds which serve the Great Lunarians as the expression of language.”

As has been said by one of his biographers, “amid the extravagance of some of his works, Bergerac nevertheless exhibited a pretty good acquaintance with the philosophy of Descartes.”

A.D. 1621.—Helmont (Jean Baptiste van), famous Belgian scientist, publishes in Paris his “De Magnetica,” etc. (on the magnetic cure of wounds). His theories on magnetism greatly[104] resemble those of Paracelsus, but in his treatment of them he shows himself much superior to the Swiss alchemist, whom Dr. Hœfer says he took as his model. “Magnetism,” Van Helmont observes, “is an unknown property of a heavenly nature, very much resembling the stars, and not at all impeded by any boundaries of space or time.... Every created being possesses his own celestial power and is closely allied with heaven ... the spirit is everywhere diffused; and the spirit is the medium of magnetism ... it is not the spirits of heaven and of hell which are masters over physical nature, but the soul and spirit of man which are concealed in him as the fire is concealed in the flint.”

The above-named work of Van Helmont was “translated, illustrated and ampliated,” in 1650 by Dr. Walter Charleton, physician in ordinary to King Charles I, under the name of “A Ternary of Paradoxes.” From its interesting contents, we make the following extracts:

A.D. 1623.—Hervart—Heroart—Herwart—Hörwarth (Joannes Fridericus), son of Johann Georg Hervart ab Hohenburg, the well-known scientist (1554–1622), who during forty-five years occupied the post of Bavarian Chancellor under three reigning princes—completes his father’s work entitled “Admiranda ethnicæ theologiæ ...” which, Larousse says (“Dictionnaire Universel,” Vol. IX. p. 250), was published at Munich, 1624, and in which he demonstrates that the earlier Egyptian divinities were natural phenomena personified and adored under symbolic names. Michaud, who reiterates this (“Biographie Universelle,” Vol. XIX. p. 364), speaks of the edition which appeared at Munich in 1626, and he also states that, at the end of the latter, will be found “Exacta temporum ... chronologiæ vulgaris errores,” which is the continuation of the “Chronologia Nova,” left unfinished by the Bavarian Chancellor. This is, in fact, so mentioned in the only copy possessed by the British Museum, which was published by J. F. Hervart ab Hohenburg at Ingolstadii, 1623, and of which the title reads: “Admiranda Ethnicæ Theologiæ Mysteria propalata. Ubi lapidem magnetem antiquissimis passim nationibus pro Deo-deocultum: et artem qua navigationes magneticæ per universum orbem instituerentur....”

Libri’s “Catalogue,” 1861, Part I. p. 405, No. 3703, has the following entry: “Admiranda Ethnicæ ... ubi Lapidem Magnetem antiquissimis Nationibus pro Deo cultum commonstratur ...” Ingolstadii, 1623. The work itself endeavours to prove that the loadstone’s properties were well known to the ancients.

The “General Biographical Dictionary” of Alexander Chalmers, London, 1814, Vol. XVII. p. 426, makes following entry: “Herwart (or Hervart) John George, Chancellor of Bavaria at the beginning of the seventeenth century, published some works wherein his learning was more displayed than his judgment, in supporting the most extravagant systems. Two of his works are: ‘Chronologia nova et vera,’ in two parts, 1622 and 1626, and ‘Admiranda Ethnicæ Theologicæ Mysteria propalata, de antiquissima veterum nationum superstitione, qua lapis Magnes pro Deo habitus colebatur,’ Monach, 1626, quarto. It was here asserted that the ancient Egyptians worshipped the magnet,” etc. (see Deveria, under B.C. 321).

A.D. 1624.—Gunter (Edmund), professor of astronomy at Gresham College, publishes his work “Of the Sector, Cross-Staff, and other Instruments,” at Chap. V of the second book of which he gives the result of the eight observations he made on the variation of the variation “in various parts of the ground” at Limehouse on the 13th of June, 1622. His observations of the declination, as given by Prof. Gellibrand, are detailed at Chap. I of Walker’s “Ter. and Cos. Mag.,” Cambridge, 1866.

A.D. 1625.—Carpenter (Nathaniel), Dean of Ireland, well-known mathematician, publishes at Oxford, “Geography delineated forth in two bookes, containing the sphæricall and topicall parts thereof,” wherein he thus alludes to Dr. Gilbert’s “De Magnete”: “Magneticall proprieties, I find in ancient writers, as little knowne as their causes; and if any matter herein were broached, it was merely conjectural, and depending on no certain demonstration; neither had we any certain or satisfactory knowledge of the thing vntill such time as it pleased God to raise vp one of our countrymen, D. Gilbert, who, to his euerlasting praise, hath trodden out a new path to Philosophie, and on the Loadstone, erected a large Trophie to commend him to posterity. This famous Doctor being as pregnant in witty apprehension as diligent in curious search of naturall causes, after many experiments and long enquiry, found the causes of most magneticall motions and proprieties hid in the magneticall temper and constitution of the Earth, and that the earth it selfe was a meere magneticall body challenging all those proprieties, and more than haue expressed themselves in the Loadstone; which opinion of his was no sooner broached than it was embraced, and wel-commed by many prime wits as well English as Forraine. Insomuch that it hath of late taken large root and gotten much ground of our vulgar Philosophie.”

A.D. 1625.—Naudé (Gabriel), a celebrated French savant and one of the most learned of his day, also physician to King Louis XIII, and an intimate friend of Gassendi, is the author of “Apologie pour tous,” etc. (“Apology for great men falsely accused of magic”), of which other editions appeared in 1652, 1669 and 1712. The[108] magico-theosophical philosophy, as Madame Blavatsky expresses it, is fully indicated in his work, and he proved to be the warmest defender of the doctrines of occult magnetism, of which he was one of the first propounders.

A.D. 1627.—Hakewill (George), Archdeacon of Surrey, publishes at Oxford, England, the first edition of “An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God,” the tenth chapter, fourth section of the third book of which alludes to the use of the “mariner’s compass or sea-card, as also of another excellent invention sayd to be lately found out upon the loadstone.” As the reviewer justly observes: “While perusing his description one can hardly imagine that the writer had not in his mind’s eye one of our modern telegraphic instruments ... and it will be seen that the date at which his work is written was nearly two hundred years prior to the first attempt made to communicate at a distance by means of magnetic needles.”

Hakewill alludes (“Apologie,” 1635, lib. ii. p. 97) to Hipparchus—Abraxis—“who reports that, in his time, the starre commonly called the Polar Starre, which is in the tayle of the lesser Beare, was twelve degrees and two-fifths distant from the Pole of the Æquator. This starre, from age to age, hath insensibly still crept nearer to the pole so that at this present it is not past three degrees distant from the pole of the Æquator. When this starre then shall come to touch the Pole, there being no farther place left for it to go forward (which may well enough come to pass with five or six hundred yeares) it is likely that then there shall be a great change of things, and that this time is the period which God hath prefixed to Nature” (see Morell’s “Elem. ... Phil. and Sc.,” London, 1827, pp. 116–119 et seq.).

Mention of the star in the tail of Ursa Major is made by Gilbert, (“De Magnete”),[41] in connection (1) with Marcilius Ficinus, who, says he, seeks in that constellation the cause of the magnetic direction, as he believes that in the loadstone the potency of Ursa prevails and hence is transferred to the iron; (2) with Cardan, who assigns the cause of variation to its rising, for he thinks variation is always to be relied upon at the rising of the star; (3) with Lucas Gauricus, who holds that the loadstone beneath the tail of Ursa Major is ruled by the planets Saturn and Mars; (4) with Gaudentius Merula, who[109] believes that the loadstone draws iron and makes it point North because it is of a higher order than is the iron in the Bear.

A.D. 1628.—Leurechon (Jean), a student belonging to the Order of Jesuits (1591–1670), who became the confessor of Charles IV of Lorraine, publishes, under the name H. Van Etten, “La Récréation Mathématique,” carefully revised editions of which were made by Claude Mydorge and Denis Henrion in 1630, 1638 and 1661. In these, Leurechon alludes to the reported transmission of intelligence by the agency of a magnet or other like stone, saying: “The invention is beautiful, but I do not think there can be found in the world a magnet that has such virtue.”

The curious title-page of the English version of Leurechon’s work, published by T. Cotes in 1633, merits reproduction: “Mathematicall Recreations, or a Collection of sundrie Problemes, extracted out of the Ancient and Moderne Philosophers, as secrets in nature, and experiments in Arithmeticke, Geometrie, Cosmographie, Horologographie, Astronomie, Navigation, Musicke, Optickes, Chimestrie, Waterworkes, Fireworks, etc., Fit for Schollers, Students, and Gentlemen ... lately compiled in French by Henry Van Hetten. And now delivered in the English tongue.”

Claude Mydorge, as stated in the “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XXXVII. p. 87, was a French scientist (1585–1647), a very close friend of Descartes, and, according to Baillet, was next to Vieta, the foremost mathematician of his day. The second edition of his “Examen du livre des Récréations Mathématiques (du Père Leurechon),” contains notes of Denis Henrion following the observations of Père Mersenne in “Universæ ...” Paris, 1639 (see Bouillet, “Vie de Descartes,” Vol. I. pp. 36–37, 149–150, and Vol. II. pp. 43, 76, 78, 325).

Denis Henrion was also a French mathematician, who died about 1640. He was the author of many very meritorious papers, notably of a “Traité des Globes et de leurs usages,” 1618, translated from the Latin of Robert Hues, 1593, 1594 (Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. IX. p. 192).

A.D. 1629.—Cabæus—Cabeo (Nicolaus), a learned Jesuit of[110] Ferrara, describes (“Philosophia Magnetica”)[42] numerous experiments made by him to ascertain the possibility of two persons communicating intelligence by means of magnetized needles.

Cabæus was the first to observe electrical repulsion, and he thus announces his discovery in the tenth chapter of the above-named work: “Magnetic attractions and repulsions are physical actions which take place through the instrumentality of a certain quality of the intermediate space, said quality extending from the influencing to the influenced body.... Bodies are not moved by sympathy or antipathy, unless it be by means of certain forces which are uniformly diffused. When these forces reach a body that is suitable they produce changes in it, but they do not sensibly affect the intermediate space nor the non-kindred bodies close by it....”

The “Philosophia Magnetica” is the second Latin book published on electricity, Gilbert’s “De Magnete” being the first.

A.D. 1632.—Sarpi (Pietro)—Fra Paolo Sarpi—Father Paul—Paulus Venetus—Paolo Sarpi Veneto (b. 1552, d. 1623), who was the author of the celebrated history of the Council of Trent (“the rarest piece of history the world ever saw”) is referred to by Gilbert in “De Magnete,” Book I. chap. i. Therein, he says that Baptista Porta, who has made the seventh book of his “Magia Naturalis” a very storehouse and repertory of magnetic wonders, knows little about the movements of the loadstone and never has seen much of them, and that a great deal of what he has learned about its obvious properties, either through Messer Paolo, the Venetian, or through his own studies, is not very accurately noted and observed.

In the introduction to the 1658 edition of his “Natural Magick,” Porta admits that he gained some knowledge of Sarpi, who, says he, is of all men he ever knew the most learned and skilful and the ornament and splendour not only of Venice or of Italy, but of the entire world. Bertelli refers (“Memor. sopra P. Peregrino,” p. 24, note) to P. Garbio’s “Annali di Serviti,” Lucca, 1721, Vol. II. pp. 263, 272, 274, and to Fra Fulgenzio Micanzio’s “Life of Sarpi,” Helmstat—Verona, 1750, in which it is stated that not only Porta but likewise[111] a celebrated ultramontane studied magnetism under him. Garbio asks: “Could this ultramontane be Gilbert of Colchester?”

By Griselini (“Vita de Fra P. Sarpi”—memoria anecdote—Lausanne, 1760), Paolo is said to have written a treatise on the magnet and to have therein recorded many observations, including the earliest mention that magnetic properties are destroyed by fire.

Bertelli—whose afore-named memoir we must confine ourselves to, as it is more satisfactory than are the accounts elsewhere given—makes mention that he has had in his possession, by courtesy of Sig. Giuseppe Valentinelli, the Royal Librarian of the Marciana at Venice, copy of a manuscript (Cod. CXXIX, classe 2, MS. Ital.) containing a brief comparison of Sarpi’s magnetic researches with those of Musschenbroek. This manuscript is again alluded to by Bertelli (Memor., p. 88) wherein it is said that lines 5–38 of the first column, p. 170, are headed “Observations of F.P.S. on the loadstone, collated with P. Musschenbroek’s Researches,” and embrace five paragraphs translated as follows:

Bertelli further remarks that, from information given in the manuscript, it is seen that Sarpi was at that time acquainted with the greater number of the magnetic phenomena referred to by Porta, and developed by Gilbert, viz.:

After detailing the observations of Giulio Cesare Moderati, Filippo Costa (Costæus) of Mantua, Ulysses Aldrovandi, Francesco Acoromboni, Luigi Matteini, Father Garzoni and Father Cabæus concerning the magnetized ironwork of the belfry of the church of St. Augustine at Arimini (the parochial church of St. John the Baptist, which at that time, 1586, belonged to the monks of St. Augustine) and relative to the iron rail in the belfry of the tower of St. Laurence at Rome, Bertelli says: “From all that precedes, we gather at all events, that the fact of the spontaneous magnetization of iron was well known in Italy before Sarpi, Porta and Gilbert. This, Gilbert, and still better Cabæus, explained as the influence of[113] terrestrial magnetism. However, with regard to the observations of the needle’s deviation made by Father Garzoni at Rome, we can, without having attributed it, as does Cabæus, to the magnetization of pieces of iron concealed in its wall, explain it, as is done in the new and important experiments of the illustrious professor Silvestro Gherardi, who attributes it to the magnetic polarity of the Mattoni [bricks] in the structure itself.”

It is said by Humboldt (“Cosmos,” 1849, Vol. II. p. 718, note) that this observation, the first of the kind, was made on the tower of the church of the Augustines at Mantua (Mantova) and that Grimaldi and Gassendi were acquainted with similar instances (instancing the cross of the church of St. Jean, at Aix, in Provence), in geographical latitudes where the inclination of the magnetic needle is very considerable. Some writers give Gassendi’s observation as occurring during 1632 (see Rohaulti, “Physica,” 1718, Par. III. cap. 8, p. 399; or, Rohault’s “System of Nat. Phil.,” 1728, p. 176).

“As the iron cross of an hundred weight upon the Church of St. John in Ariminum, or that load-stoned iron of Cæsar Moderatus, set down by Aldrovandus” (Sir Thomas Browne, “Pseudodoxia Epidemica,” 1658, p. 66).

Consult “Lettera dell’Eccel. Cavallara.,” Mantova, 1586, for a detailed account of this discovery, made January 6, of the last-named year. The iron rod supported a brick ornament in the form of an acorn, and stood on a pyramid at the summit of the belfry of the church of St. Augustine (Cabæus, “Philos. Magn.,” p. 62; “Ulysses Aldrovandi, Patr. Bonon ... Barthol. Ambros ...” Lib. i, cap. 6, p. 134).

For the account given by Aldrovandi of the Arimini observation and for references to Browne’s “Pseudodoxia Epidemica,” as well as to Boyle’s “Experiments,” see p. 53 of the valuable “Notes on the ‘De Magnete’ of Dr. William Gilbert,” by Silvanus P. Thompson, attached to the English translation of the original 1600 edition, which was so attractively produced by the Gilbert Club during the year 1900. Dr. Thompson further gives, at the page following (54), additional references to examples of iron acquiring strong permanent magnetism from the earth.

A.D. 1632.—Gassendi (Pierre), an eminent French savant, professor at the Royal College of France, “ranked by Barrow among the most eminent mathematicians of the age, and mentioned with Galileo, Gilbert and Descartes,” discovers that a part of the iron cross of the Church of St. Jean at Aix possesses all the properties of a loadstone after being struck by lightning and lying in one position a certain length of time. Gilbert mentions, “De Magnete,” 1600, Book III. chap. xii.) that the fact of magnetism being imparted to an iron bar by the earth was first ascertained by examining the rod upon the tower of the church of St. Augustine at Arimini (Sir Thomas Browne, “Pseud. Epidemica,” London, 1650, p. 48; U. Aldrovandi, “Musæum Metallicum,” Milan, 1648, p. 134).

In the “Vie de Pierre Gassendi,” par le Père Bougerel de l’Oratoire, Paris, 1737, p. 14, it is related that during the month of September 1621, while promenading about three leagues’ distance from Aix in a village named Peynier, he observed a light in the heavens to which he gave the name of aurora borealis, as much on account of its location as by reason of its resemblance to the light which precedes the rising of the sun.

From the “History of the Royal Society,” by C. R. Weld, 1848, Vol. II. p. 430, is taken the following, communicated by Humboldt:

“The movement of the magnetic lines, the first recognition of which is usually ascribed to Gassendi, was not even yet conjectured by William Gilbert; but, at an early period, Acosta, ‘from the information of Portuguese navigators,’ assumed four lines of no declination upon the surface of the globe.... In the remarkable map of America appended to the Roman edition of the Geography of Ptolemy in 1508, we find, to the north of Gruentland (Greenland), a part of Asia represented and the magnetic pole marked as an insular mountain. Martin Cortez, in the ‘Breve Compendio de la Sphera’ (1545), and Livio Sanuto, in the ‘Geographia di Tolomeo’ (1588), place it more to the south. Sanuto entertained a prejudice, which, strange to say, has existed in later times, that a man who should be so fortunate as to reach the magnetic pole (Il calamitico) would then experience alcun miracoloso stupendo[115] effecto” (“Cosmos,” translated under the superintendence of Col. Sabine, Vol. II. p. 280). In a footnote to the Otté translation of Humboldt, 1859, Vol. V. p. 58, it is stated that calamitico was the name given to the instruments in consequence of the first needles for the compass having been made in the shape of a frog.

In Gilbert’s “De Magnete,” allusion is made to Martinus Cortez, Book I. chap. i., also Book III. chap. i. and Book IV. chap. i.,[43] and to Livio Sanuto in Book I. chap. i., also in Book IV. chaps. i. and ix. In these several passages, Gilbert tells us that Martinus Cortez holds the loadstone’s seat of attraction to be beyond the poles, and he states the views of other writers in this respect, citing more particularly T. de Bessard (author of “Le Dialogue de la Longitude”), Jacobus Servertius (who wrote “De Orbis Catoptrici”), as well as Robert Norman, Franciscus Maurolycus, Marsilio Ficino, Cardan, Scaliger, Costa and Petrus Peregrinus (M. J. Klaproth, “Lettre à M. le Baron de Humboldt,” Paris, 1834, pp. 16–17, 37).

A.D. 1632.—Galileo (Galileo Galilei), Italian philosopher and mathematician, publishes his celebrated “Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo tolemaico e copernicano,” 4to, Fiorenza, from p. 88 of which is extracted the following passage:

Sagredus: “You remind me of a man who offered to sell me a secret for permitting one to speak, through the attraction of a certain magnet needle, to someone distant two or three thousand miles, and I said to him that I would be willing to purchase it, but that I would like to witness a trial of it, and that it would please me to test it, I being in one room and he being in another.[116] He told me that, at such a short distance, the action could not be witnessed to advantage; so I sent him away and said that I could not just then go to Egypt or Muscovy to see his experiment, but if he would go there himself I would stay and attend to the rest in Venice.”

This Sagredus (Iohannes Franciscus), or Sagredo (Giovanni Francisco), besides being “a great magneticall man,” was a noble Venetian, even a doge, and had represented his country as ambassador at several courts. We read in Mr. Conrad W. Cooke’s very able article on William Gilbert of Colchester, originally printed in London “Engineering,” that this same Sagredus was the intimate friend of Galileo, and that, together with the powerful Sarpi, he used the whole might of his name and influence to protect the great philosopher and mathematician from the attacks of the clerical party. Pietro Sarpi, otherwise known as Father Paul, was, as already shown, a most illustrious Venetian scholar, who attained great proficiency in the medical and physiological sciences as well as in mathematics and in natural philosophy. Sagredus made several meritorious researches in magnetism, and, while on a voyage to Aleppo, ascertained the declination of the magnetic needle at that place. As a tribute to the scientific attainments of Sagredus, Galileo gave his name to one of the characters in his “Systema Cosmicum,” and many references to the work by William Gilbert are put into the mouth of Sagredus.

In further illustration of Galileo’s appreciation of Gilbert, the following is quoted from the great astronomer’s own writing: “I extremely admire and envy the author of ‘De Magnete.’ I think him worthy of the greatest praise for the many new and true observations which he has made, to the disgrace of so many vain and fabling authors, who write not from their own knowledge only, but repeat everything they hear from the foolish and vulgar, without attempting to satisfy themselves of the same by experience; perhaps that they may not diminish the size of their books” (Drinkwater’s “Life of Galileo”).

Galileo had also published, in 1630, the first edition of his “I discorsi e demonstrazioni ...” which Lagrange considers to be Galileo’s most substantial title to scientific glory.

A.D. 1635.—Delambre (J. B. J.) (1749–1822), professor of astronomy at the Royal College of France, refers (Vol. II. p. 545 of his “Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne,” 1817) to the mention made in “Procli Diadochi Paraphrasis Ptolem.,” lib. iv. “de siderum effectionibus,” 1635, p. 20, of the notion long current, especially along the shores of the Mediterranean, “that if a magnetic rod be rubbed with an onion, or brought into contact with the emanations of the plant, the directive force will be diminished, while a compass thus treated would mislead the steersman.”

A.D. 1635.—Gellibrand (Henry), prominent English mathematician, professor of geometry and the successor of Edmund Gunter (A.D. 1624), in the chair of astronomy at Gresham College, publishes his discovery of the secular variation of the declination. The credit of this discovery has been by many given to John Mair. The diurnal and horary variation was found by Graham in 1722, and the annual variation was discovered by Cassini, 1782–1791.

Gellibrand’s discovery is published in a small quarto pamphlet entitled “A discourse mathematical on the variation of the magneticall needle—together with the admirable diminution lately discovered,” and is the result of his study of the observations made by Burrough and Gunter as well as of observations made by himself, all showing that the north-east of the needle was gradually moving to the westward.

Mention has already been made of the fact that the variation of the variation was at this period attracting the attention it deserved, and it is worth while giving here an account of the discovery in the author’s own words:

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“Thus, hitherto, according to the Tenents of all our Magnetical Philosophers, we have supposed the variations of all particular places to continue one and the same. So that when a Seaman shall happly return to a place where formerly he found the same variation, he may hence conclude he is in the same former longitude. For it is the assertion of Mr. Dr. Gilbert’s Variatio unicuiusq; loci constans est, that is to say, the same place doth always retaine the same variation. Neither hath this assertion, for ought I ever heard, been questioned by any man. But most diligent magneticall observations have plainely offered violence to the same, and proved the contrary, namely, that the variation is accompanied with a variation.”

A.D. 1637.—Bond (Henry), Professor of Mathematics in London, and who appears in one of his treatises as “a famous teacher of the art of navigation,” is the author of the “Seaman’s Kalendar ... with a discovery of the ... secret of longitude ...” of which other editions appeared during 1640 and 1696.

This was followed by many papers on the variation (the most important of which are to be found in Phil. Trans. for 1668, 1672, 1673) and, during 1678 by “The Longitude not found, or an answer to a treatise written by H. B. ...” This treatise was in a sixty-five page pamphlet which had been issued by Mr. Bond’s father during 1676, under caption: “The Longitude Found; or a treatise shewing an easie and speedy way, as well by Night as by Day, to find the Longitude, having but the Latitude of the Place and the Inclination of the Magneticall Inclinatorie Needle ...” wherein he explains his discovery of the progress of the deviation of the compass and foretells the variations for London, 1663 to 1716. This treatise led to the controversy with Peter Blackborrow (Beckborrow), the title to whose published work reads: “The Longitude not found: or an answer to a treatise written by H. Bond, senior, shewing a way to find the longitude by the magnetical inclinatory needle: wherein is proved that the longitude is not nor cannot be found by the magnetic inclinatory needle.”

As Humboldt remarks, the resulting controversy, together with Acosta’s view that there were four lines of no variation which divided the earth’s surface, may, as already stated, have had some influence on the theory advanced, in 1683, by Edmund Halley, of four magnetic poles or points of convergence (“Cosmos,” 1859–1860, Vol. I. p. 193, note; Vol. II. pp. 280–281, note; Vol. V. p. 58; also Humboldt’s “Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie,” Vol. III. p. 60. See likewise the Phil. Trans. for October 19, 1668, p. 790, and for 1673, Vol. VIII. p. 6065, also[119] following abridgments: Hutton, Vol. II. p. 78, and Lowthorp Vol. II. p. 610).

A.D. 1641.—Wilkins (John), Bishop of Chester in the reign of Charles II, publishes the first edition of “Mercury, or the secret and swift messenger, showing how a man, with privacy and speed, may communicate his thoughts to a friend at any distance.”[44]

In the above, he thus alludes to the possibility of making a contrivance similar to our modern phonograph: “There is another experiment ... mentioned by Walchius, who thinks it possible so to contrive a trunk or hollow pipe that it shall preserve the voice entirely for certain hours or days, so that a man may send his words to a friend instead of his writing. There being always a certain space of intermission, for the passage of the voice, betwixt its going into these cavities and its coming out; he conceives that if both ends were seasonably stopped, while the sound was in the midst, it would continue there till it had some vent. Huic tubo verba nostra insusurremus, et cum probe munitur tabellario committamus, etc. When the friend to whom it is sent shall receive and open it, the words shall come out distinctly, and in the same order wherein they were spoken. From such a contrivance as this [saith the same author] did Albertus Magnus make his Image, and Friar Bacon his Brazen Head, to utter certain words.”

In the eighteenth chapter, he makes suggestions for “a language that may consist of only tunes and musical notes, without any articulate sound.”

He had previously described a novel mode of telegraphing by the use of only three torches (or lights), to designate the twenty-four letters of the alphabet. These letters were, according to the plan of Joachimus Fortius, to be placed in three classes of eight each. One torch indicated Class I, two torches Class II, three torches Class III, and the number of the letter was shown by the number of times a torch was elevated.

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Bishop Wilkins also described a method of telegraphing by means of two lights attached to long poles, which, he says, “for its quickness and speed is much to be preferred before any of the rest.” To interpret messages at long distances, he suggested the use of the then newly invented telescope; which he called “Galileus his perspective.”

A.D. 1641.—Kircher (Athanasius), a German writer on physical and mathematical science (1601–1680), member of the Order of Jesuits, possessed of immense erudition and believing in the magnetism of all things, speaks in his “Magnes sive de arte magnetica” (Book II. pt. iv. chap. v.), of the recently advanced idea of being able to correspond at short distances by employing two spherical vessels bearing the letters of the alphabet, each of the letters having suspended from it a magnetized figure attached to a vertical wire.

He likewise alludes to Gellibrand’s discovery, A.D. 1635, of which he was informed by John Greaves, the eminent English mathematician, and he communicates a letter received from the learned French philosopher, le Père Marin Mersenne, containing a distinct account of the same.

His definition of universal magnetism, according to Madame Blavatsky, is very original, for he contradicted Gilbert’s theory that the earth was a great magnet. He asserted that, although every particle of matter and even the intangible “powers” were magnetic, they did not themselves constitute a magnet. There is but one Magnet in the universe, and from it proceeds the magnetization of everything existing. This magnet is, of course, what the Kabalists term the central Spiritual Sun, or God.... He demonstrates the difference between mineral magnetism and zoömagnetism, or animal magnetism, and says that the sun is the most magnetic of all bodies.... It imparts the binding power to all things falling under its direct rays (“Isis Unveiled,” pp. 208–210).

Another Jesuit, Jacobo Grandamico (1588–1672), published in 1645, “Nova demonstratio immobilitatis terræ petita ex virtute magnetica,” wherein he shares fully the views of Niccolas Cabæus, Athanasius Kircher, Vincentus Leotaudus and others of the same Order relative to the earth’s magnetism (Larousse, “Dict.,” Vol. VIII. p. 1445).

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A.D. 1644.—Digby (Sir Kenelme), the very famous Englishman to whom allusion has already been made under the B.C. 600–580 entry, publishes, in Paris, “Two Treatises, in the one of which the Nature of Bodies: in the other, the nature of Man’s Soule is looked into: in Way of Discovery of the Immortality of Reasonable Soules.”[45] In a chapter of this work, entitled “Of the lodestone’s generation and its particular motions,” appears the following interesting reference to Gilbert’s work and reputation: “But to come to experimentall proofes and obseruations vpon the loadstone by which it will appeare that these causes are well esteemed and applyed, we must be beholding to that admirable searcher of the nature of the loadstone, Doctor Gilbert: by means of whom and of Doctor Haruey, our nation may claim euen in this latter age as deserued a crowne for solide Philosophicall learning as for many ages together it hath done formerly for acute and subtile Speculations in Diuinity. But before I fall to particulars, I thinke it worth warning my Reader, how this great man arriued to discouer so much of Magneticall Philosophy; that he, likewise, if he be desirous to search into nature, may, by imitation, advance his thoughts and knowledge that way. In short, then, all the knowledge he gott of this subject was by forming a little loadstone into the shape of the earth. By which meanes he compassed a wonderful designe, which was to make the whole globe of the earth maniable; for he found the properties of the whole earth in that little body; which he therefore called a Terrella, or little earth; and which he could manage and trye experiences vpon att his will. And, in like manner, any man that hath an ayme to aduance much in naturall sciences, must endeauour to draw the matter he inquireth of, into some such modell, or some kinde of manageable methode; which he may turne and winde as he pleaseth. And then lett him be sure, if he hath a competent vnderstanding, that he will not misse of his marke.”

A.D. 1644.—Descartes (René), a prominent French philosopher and mathematician, publishes his “Principia Philosophiæ,” divided into four parts; the first giving an exposition of the principles of all human knowledge, the second treating of the principles of natural things, and the third and fourth parts developing his theory of vortices. His main idea was that a rush of subtle matter passes very rapidly through the earth from the equator towards each pole, being opposed by magnetic substances throughout its passage and that the sun is the centre of a vortex of an ethereal fluid, whose whirling motion produces the revolution of planets about the sun, or around the fixed stars. Moreover, as Noad states it, “the vortex moves with the greatest facility in a particular direction, one of its ends being always turned toward the north.”

One of the most prominent fellow-students of Descartes was Marin Mersenne, who joined the religious Order of “Minimes,” and who, after publishing in 1634 and 1639 “Les Mécaniques de Galilée” and “Nouvelles Découvertes de Galilée,” brought out, during the years 1644 and 1647, his well-known “Cogitata physico-mathematica,” which, Montucla says, contains un océan d’observations de toutes espèces ... and embraces a very interesting treatise on navigation besides many letters from leading scientists of that period not elsewhere to be found.

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A.D. 1646.—Browne (Sir Thomas), an eminent English physician and writer, publishes the well-known treatise “Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Inquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors,” which ran through six editions in twenty-seven years, and upon which his fame is principally established.

With regard to the possibility of such a magnetic telegraph as Strada speaks of he says (Book II. chap. iii.): “The conceit is excellent and, if the effect would follow, somewhat divine; whereby we might communicate like spirits, and confer on earth with Menippus in the moon. And this is pretended from the sympathy of two needles, touched with the same loadstone, and placed in the centre of two abecedary circles or rings, with letters described round about them, one friend keeping one and another keeping the other, and agreeing upon the hour when they will communicate, at what distance of place soever, when one needle shall be removed unto another letter, the other, by wonderful sympathy, will move unto the same.”

As the result of experiment, he found that “though the needles were separated but half a span, when one was moved the other would stand like the pillars of Hercules, and if the earth stand still, have surely no motion at all.... By electrical bodies,” he says, “I understand not such as are metallical, mentioned by Pliny and the ancients; for their electrum was a mixture made of gold, with the addition of a fifth part of silver; a substance now as unknown as true aurichalcum, or Corinthian brass, and set down among things lost by Pancirollus. Nor by electric bodies do I imagine such only as take up shavings, straws and light bodies, amongst which the ancients placed only jet and amber, but such as, conveniently placed unto their objects, attract all bodies palpable whatsoever. I say conveniently placed, that is, in regard of the object, that it be not too ponderous or any way affixed; in regard of the agent, that it be not foul or sullied, but wiped, rubbed and excitated; in regard of both, that they be conveniently distant, and no impediment interposed. I say, all bodies palpable, thereby excluding fire, which indeed it will not attract, nor yet draw through it, for fire consumes its effluxions by which it should attract.”

The different chapters of this second book treat of the loadstone, of bodies magnetical and electrical, of magnetical rocks and attractive mountains, and also make allusion to the cross on the church of St. John in Ariminium, to the reported magnetical suspension of Mahomet’s tomb, etc. etc.

At pp. 64, 81 and 87 of Chap. II he says: “Neither is it onely true, what Gilbertus first observed, that irons refrigerated North and South acquire a directive faculty; but if they be cooled upright and[124] perpendicularly, they will also obtain the same.... Now this kind of practice, Libavius, Gilbertus and lately Swickardus, condemn, as vain and altogether unuseful; because a loadstone in powder hath no attractive power; for, in that form, it omits the polarity and loseth those parts which are the rule of attraction.... Glasse attracts but weakely though cleere, some slick stones and thick glasses attract indifferently; Arsenic not at all; Saltes generally but weakely, as Sal Gemma, Allum and also Talke, nor very discoverably by any frication; but, if gently warmed at the fire and wiped with a dry cloth, they will better develop their Electricities.”

At Chapter XVII of the seventh book of the above-mentioned treatise, Browne makes allusion to “the story of Frier Bacon that made a Brazen Head to speak these words: “Time is....”

A.D. 1653.—In the third edition of “The Jewell House of Arte and Nature,” by Sir Hugh Plat, originally published in 1594, and wrongly attributed in Weston’s “Catalogue” to Gabriel Plattes, is to be found the following allusion to the loadstone: “And though the adamant be the hardest of all stones, yet is it softened with Goa’s blood and there is a special antipathy between that and the loadstone, which is of the colour of rusty iron, and hath an admirable vertue not onely to draw iron to it self, but also to make any iron upon which it is rubbed to draw iron also, it is written notwithstanding that being rubbed with the juyce of Garlick, it loseth that vertue and cannot then draw iron, as likewise if a Diamond be layed close unto it.”

This “special antipathy” of garlick, and of the diamond—whether or not the latter be softened with Goa’s (goat’s) blood—is treated of very fully by many other authors, notably:

Rohault—at p. 186 of his 1728 “Syst. of Nat. Phil.”—says: “As to what some writers have related, that a loadstone will not attract iron if there be a diamond near and that onions and garlic will make it lose its vertue; these are contradicted by a thousand experiments which I have tried. For I have shown that this stone will attract iron through the very thickest diamonds and through a great many thick skins which an onion is made up of.”

A.D. 1657.—Schott (Gaspar)—P. Gaspar Schott—a German Jesuit who was sent to teach natural philosophy and mathematics at Palermo, Sicily, is the author of several very curious works on physics, of which the most important alone will here be noted.

“Magiæ Universalis Naturæ et Artis,” etc., appeared at Herbipoli in 1657, 1658, 1659. In the first book of the fourth volume (or part) he indicates, according to Kircher, whom he had met while in Rome, the means of conveying one’s thoughts at a distance by the loadstone, and he alludes to the speaking head constructed by Albertus Magnus, while, in the third and fourth books of the same volume, he gives a long treatise on the loadstone as well as an account of numerous experiments made with it.

“De Arte Mechanica,” etc. (“Mechanicæ,” etc.), Herbipoli, 1657–1658, contains, in Part II. class i. p. 314, the first published notice of Von Guericke’s experiments.

“Physica Curiosa sive Mirabilia Naturæ,” etc., Herbipoli, 1662 (which may justly be considered a continuation of the “Magiæ Universalis”), treats in the eleventh book of St. Elmo’s fire, thunder and meteors in general.

“Technica Curiosa sive Mirabilia Naturæ,” etc., Herbipoli, 1664, alludes, in the first two books, to the experiments made by Von Guericke and by Boyle, and gives the contents of eight letters written him by the first named.

“Schola Steganographica,” etc., Norimbergæ, 1665, gives, at pp. 258–264, a description of the dial telegraph of Daniell Schwenter.

“Jocoseriorum Naturæ et Artis,” etc., published about 1666, alludes to the “Thaumaturgus Mathematicus” of Gaspar Ens, published at Cologne, 1651, as well as to the “Deliciæ Physico-Mathematicæ” of Daniell Schwenter and Geo. Philippi Harsdoerffer (Senator of Nuremberg), to “La Récréation Mathématique” of[126] Jean Leurechon, and to the works of Cardan, Mizauld, Aldrovandi and others.

A.D. 1660.—Guericke (Otto von), a burgomaster of Magdeburg, Prussian Saxony, constructs the first frictional electric machine. It consisted of a globe of sulphur, cast in a glass sphere, and mounted upon a revolving axis, which when rubbed by a cloth pressed against it by the hand, emitted both sound and light. It was Guericke who “heard the first sound and saw the first light in artificially excited electricity.” He proved that light bodies, when attracted by an excited electric, were immediately repelled by the latter and became incapable of a second attraction until touched by some other body; also that light bodies develop electrical excitation when suspended within the sphere of an excited electric.

A.D. 1660.—At the meeting of the English Royal Society, held June 5, 1660, Magnetical Remedies were discoursed of. Sir Gilbert Talbot promised to bring in what he knew of sympatheticall cures, and those who possessed any powder of sympathy were requested to fetch some at the next meeting.

A.D. 1661.—Somerset (Edward), second Marquis of Worcester, an English inventor, announces, in his “Century of Inventions” that he has discovered “a method by which at a window as far as the eye can discover black from white, a man may hold discourse with his correspondent, without noise made or notice taken; being, according to occasion given, or means afforded, ex re nata, and no need of provision beforehand: though much better if foreseen, and course taken by mutual consent of parties.” This method, he[127] asserts, he can put into practice “by night as well as by day, though as dark as pitch is black.”

A.D. 1662.—Rupert (Prince Robert), of Bavaria, son of Frederick V, elector palatine, and one of the founders of the Royal Society of London, is credited with the discovery of the curious glass bubbles called “Rupert’s drops.” These are merely drops of glass thrown, when melted, into water, and thus becoming suddenly consolidated into a shape somewhat resembling the form of a tear. The globular end may be subjected to quite a smart stroke without breaking, but if a particle of the tail is nipped off, the whole flies into fine powder with almost explosive violence.

“Mr. Peter did show us the experiment (which I had heard talked of) of the chymicall glasses, which break all to dust by breaking off a little small end; which is a great mystery to me” (Samuel Pepys, “Diary,” January 13, 1662).

Sir David Brewster discovered that the fracture of these unannealed drops was accompanied by the evolution of electrical light, which appears even when they are broken under water. Mr. Bennet observed that when one of the drops was placed upon a book, the latter was electrified negatively.

A.D. 1665.—Grimaldi (Francesco Maria), Italian philosopher (1618–1663), member of the Order of Jesuits and an associate of the astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli (at A.D. 1270) is the author of the important work “Physico mathesis de Lumine ...” which cites the discovery of magnetism produced by the perpendicular holding of an iron bar.

A.D. 1665.—Glanvill (Joseph), an eminent English divine and philosopher, Chaplain to King Charles II and F.R.S., sometimes called “Sadducismus Triumphatus Glanvill,” endorses in his “Scepsis Scientifica” (“the vanity of dogmatizing recast”)—published originally in 1661—the views advanced previously by the Jesuit Leurechon, and, after discussing the objections of Sir Thomas Browne, expresses the belief that “to confer at the distance of the[128] Indies by sympathetic conveyances may be as usual to future times as to us in literary correspondence.”

A writer in the “Bath Chronicle” reproduced a long extract from Glanvill’s work, the concluding sentence of which, he says, seems to have anticipated the electric telegraph. It is as follows: “But yet to advance another instance. That men should confer at very distant removes by an extemporary intercourse is a reputed impossibility; but yet there are some hints in natural operations that give us probability that ’tis feasible, and may be compassed without unwarrantable assistance from demoniack correspondence. That a couple of needles equally touched by the same magnet, being set in two dials exactly proportioned to each other, and circumscribed by the letters of the alphabet, may effect this ‘magnale’ (i. e. important result) hath considerable authorities to avouch it.

“The manner of it is thus represented: Let the friends that would communicate take each a dial, and, having appointed a time for their sympathetic conference, let one move his impregnate needle to any letter in the alphabet, and its affected fellow will precisely respect the same. So that, would I know what my friend would acquaint me with, ’tis but observing the letters that are pointed at by my needle, and in their order transcribing them from their sympathized index, as its motion directs; and I may be assured that my friend described the same with his, and that the words on my paper are of his inditing. Now, though there will be some ill-contrivance in a circumstance of this invention, in that the thus impregnate needles will not move to, but avert from each other (as ingenious Dr. Browne hath observed), yet this cannot prejudice the main design of this way of secret conveyance; since it is but reading counter to the magnetic informer, and noting the letter which is most distant in the Abecederian circle from that which the needle turns to, and the case is not altered.

“Now, though this desirable effect may possibly not yet answer the expectations of inquisitive experiment, yet ’tis no despicable item, that by some other such way of magnetick efficiency it may hereafter with success be attempted, when magical history shall be enlarged by riper inspections; and ’tis not unlikely but that present discoveries might be improved to the performance.”

Glanvill is also the author of “Philosophical Considerations Touching Witches and Witchcraft,” 1666, and of “The Sadducismus Triumphatus,” 1681.

A.D. 1666.—Denys (William), hydrographer, of Dieppe, observes that the compasses placed in different parts of a vessel give different indications (Becquerel, “Magnétisme,” p. 119; “Journal des Sçavans” pour 1665 et 1666, p. 538).

A.D. 1671.—Richer (T.), French philosopher, who was sent by the Paris Academy of Sciences to the island of Cayenne for the purpose of determining the amount of terrestrial refraction and for other astronomical objects, is the first to make known the electrical powers of the gymnotus electricus.

A.D. 1671.—Rohault (Jacques), a French philosophical writer, and one of the earliest, ablest and most active propagators of the Cartesian philosophy in France, publishes at Paris the first edition of his “Traité de Physique,” at Part III. chap. viii. pp. 198–236 of which he treats especially of amber and of the loadstone. The same passages can be seen at Vol. II. part iii. chap. viii. pp. 163, etc., of Rohault’s “System of Natural Philosophy,” published in London during the year 1723, and at the same chapter, pp. 388, etc., of “Jacobi Rohaulti Physica,” Londini, 1718.

The latter is the last and best edition of the well-known classical translation, originally made in 1697, by Dr. Samuel Clarke, who was the friend of Sir Isaac Newton and chaplain to Bishop Moore, of Norwich. Through this work Clarke introduced very many critical notes exposing the fallacies of the Cartesian system. The “Physica” passed through four editions as the Cambridge University textbook before it was made to give way to the treatises of Newton.

A.D. 1672.—Sturm (John Christopher), a very able German mathematician, who was for thirty-four years professor of natural philosophy at the University of Altdorf (Franconia), and who, after vainly attempting to satisfactorily unite the Aristotelian and Cartesian doctrines finally adopted the Baconian philosophy, establishes the “Collegium Curiosum” on the plan of the celebrated Italian “Accademia del Cimento,” alluded to under the A.D. 1609 date.

The society was founded for the purpose of studying, repeating and even modifying the most notable philosophical experiments of[130] the day, such as those made by Von Guericke, Boyle, Hooke and others, and its proceedings were published in 1676 and 1685 under the title of “Collegium Experimental sive Curiosum, etc.”

A.D. 1673.—Hevelius—Hevel—Hovel—Hövelke (Joannes), an eminent Polish astronomer, member of the English Royal Society, and a great friend more particularly of le Père M. Mersenne, of Gassendi and of Kircher, publishes during 1673 the first part of his great work “Machina Cœlestis”—dedicated to Louis XIV—the entire second part of which, issued in 1679, was destroyed by fire with the exception of seven copies. This explains its extreme scarcity. It was this work which led to the public controversy between Hevelius and Dr. Hooke who published, in London, during 1674 his “Animad. in Mach. Celest. Hevelii.”

It is said that, next to John Flamsteed, Hevelius was the most accurate observer of the heavens in his day (“The Reliquary,” London, Vol. XIV. pp. 149–159 and Vol. XV. pp. 34–38; “Journal des Savants” for March, June and November 1836). He had already published “De Variatione acus magneticæ” (Opusc. Act. Erudit. Lips., Vol. I. p. 103), also a report of the variations of the magnetical needle during 1670, which can be found in the Phil. Trans., Vol. V. for 1670, p. 2059, or in Hutton’s abridgments, London, 1809, Vol. I. p. 514.

A.D. 1675.—Boyle (Robert), Irish natural philosopher and chemist, seventh son of Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, and one of the first members of what he calls the “Invisible” or “Philosophical” College, which has since become the Royal Society,[47] gives, in his “Philosophical Works,” the result of his many experiments upon magnetism and electricity.

John Evelyn in his letter to Mr. Wotton, March 30, 1695 (“Memoirs, Diary and Correspondence,” by Wm. Bray, London, p. 716), says of Boyle: “It must be confess’d that he had a marvailous sagacity in finding out many usefull and noble experiments. Never did stubborn matter come under his inquisition but he extorted a confession of all that lay in her most intimate recesses; and[131] what he discover’d he as faithfully register’d, and frankly communicated....”

Prof. Tyndall remarks (“Lecture,” February 4, 1875): “The tendency to physical theory showed itself in Boyle. He imagined that the electrified body threw out a glutinous or unctuous effluvium, which laid hold of small bodies, and, in its return to the source from which it emanated, carried them along with it.”

A few of his many characteristic remarks and observations are, however, best given in his own words, as extracted from the “Philosophical Works” above alluded to:

“The invention of the mariner’s needle, which giveth the direction, is no less benefit for navigation than the invention of the sails, which give the motion” (London, 1738, Vol. I. p. 62).

“I, with a certain body (rough diamond), not bigger than a pea, but very vigorously attractive, moved a steel needle, freely poised, about three minutes after I had left off rubbing it” (Vol. I. p. 508). Speaking elsewhere of his experiments with diamonds, he says: “But when I came to apply it (the loadstone) to one more, which look’d somewhat duller than almost any of the rest, I found that it had in it particles enough of an iron nature to make it a magnetical body and observed without surprise that not only it would suffer itself to be taken up by the strongest pole of the loadstone, but when the pole was offer’d within a convenient distance it would readily leap through the air to fasten itself to it.”

“I removed a piece of amber in the sunbeams till they had made it moderately hot and then found it would attract those light bodies it would not stir before” (Vol. I. p. 400, and Vol. III. p. 52).

“Whether from such experiments one may argue that it is but, as it were, by accident that amber attracts another body, and not this the amber; and whether these ought to make us question, if electrics may, with so much propriety, as has been generally supposed, be said to attract, are doubts, that my design does not oblige me to examine” (Vol. IV. p. 350).

A.D. 1675.—Picard (Jean), eminent astronomer, who succeeded Gassendi (A.D. 1632) as professor of astronomy at the Collège de France, is the first to observe electric light in vacuo. According to Tyndall (“Lessons in Electricity,” p. 88) it was while carrying a barometer from the Observatory to the Porte Saint-Michel in Paris that he noticed light in the vacuous portion. Sebastien and Cassini observed it afterwards in other barometers (see Tyndall’s “Lecture V.” p. 91, for Priestley’s description of the electric light in vacuo).

It was this same scientist who had already given, in his “Mesure de la Terre,” 1671, Article IV, the description of the measurement of a degree of latitude made with instruments of his own manufacture.

A.D. 1675.—Newton (Sir Isaac), prominent English mathematician and natural philosopher, of whom Macaulay says that “in no other mind have the demonstrative faculty and the inductive faculty coexisted in such supreme excellence and perfect harmony,” communicates to the Royal Society his discovery that excited glass will attract any light bodies even to the surface opposite to that upon which it has been rubbed. This was successfully demonstrated by the Society, January 31, 1676.

He improved the electric machine by substituting a glass globe for the globe of sulphur made use of by both Von Guericke and Boyle, the rubbers in every case being the hands of the operator.

[133]

He appears to have somewhat anticipated Franklin’s great discovery, judging by the following letter he addressed, December 15, 1716, to the Rev. Dr. Law, in Suffolk:

Æther, according to Sir Isaac Newton, is a thin subtile matter much finer and rarer than air. Sometimes, it is termed by him, a subtil spirit, as in the latter part of his “Principia,” and sometimes a subtil ætherial medium, as in his “Optics.” By many it is supposed to pervade all space, also the interior of solid bodies, and to be the medium of the transmission of light and heat. The æther of Descartes was his materia subtilis or his First Element: by which he understood a “most subtil matter very swiftly agitated, fluid, and keeps to no certain figure, but which suits itself to the figure of those bodies that are about it. His Second Element consists of small Globules; that is, bodies exactly round and very solid, which do not only, like the First Element, fill up the pores of bodies but also constitute the purest substance of the Æther and Heaven” (Blome’s translation of Descartes’ “Philosophy,” p. 101; R. Lovett, “The Subtil Medium Prov’d”; Phil. Mag., Vol. XVIII. p. 155).

During the years 1686 and 1687 Newton composed his “Principia,” a work which Lagrange pronounced “la plus haute production de l’esprit humain”: “the greatest work on science ever produced” (Sir Robt. Ball), and “which will be memorable not only in the annals of one science or of one country, but which will form[134] an epoch in the history of the world.” This was published at Halley’s expense. As Brewster says (1686, Chap. XII): “It is to Halley alone that science owes this debt of gratitude. It was he who tracked Newton to his college, who drew from him his great discoveries, and who generously gave them to the world.”

In the twenty-third proposition of the second book, fifth section, Newton says: “The virtue of the magnet is contracted by the interposition of an iron plate and is almost terminated at it, for bodies further off are not so much attracted by the magnet as by the iron plate.” And in Book III. prop. vi. he thus expresses himself: “The magnetic attraction is not as the matter attracted; some bodies are attracted more by the magnet, others less; most bodies not at all. The power of magnetism in one and the same body may be increased and diminished, and is sometimes far stronger for the quantity of matter than the power of gravity; and in receding from the magnet decreases, not in the duplicate, but almost in the triplicate proportion of the distance, as nearly as I could judge from some rude observations.”

Newton is said to have carried in his ring a magnet weighing but three grains, which could raise 746 grains, or nearly 250 times its own weight. This magnet naturally excited much admiration, but is greatly surpassed in power by that formerly belonging to Sir John Leslie, and now in the Physical Collection at Edinburgh, weighing three and one-half grains, and having a carrying power of 1560 grains.

A.D. 1676.—Haward, master of several sailing vessels, and a man of good credit (Phil. Trans., Vol. XI. No. 127, p. 647, of July 18, 1676), states that “being on board of the ship Albemarle, July 24,[135] 1641 ... in latitude of Bermuda ... after a terrible clap of thunder ... it was found that the compass card was turned around, the N. and S. points having changed positions and, though Mr. Grofton brought with his finger the flower-de-lys to point directly N., it would immediately, as soon as at liberty, return to this new unusual posture, and upon examination he found every compass (three) in the ship of the same humour; which ... he could impute to nothing else but the operation of the lightning or thunder mentioned.” The above is also alluded to at p. 33 of Vol. III. of Boyle’s “Phil. Works,” London, 1738, with this addition: “One of the compasses, pointing West, was brought to New England, where, the glass being broke and the air gaining entrance, it lost its virtue. But one of the others is in that country possess’d by Mr. Encrease Mather, the North point of the needle remaining South to this day.”

A.D. 1677.—At p. 14 of an exceedingly curious publication entitled “A Rich Cabinet with a Variety of Inventions,” etc., written by J. W. (i. e. John White, of London), who calls himself “a lover of artificial conclusions,” will be found an article on “Divers rare, conceited motions performed by a magnet or loadstone.”

A.D. 1678.—Redi (Francesco), well-known Italian scientist, physician to the Grand Duke Ferdinand II, publishes his “Experimenta circa res diversas Naturales,” wherein he is first to communicate the fact that the shock of the raia torpedo can be transmitted to the fisherman through the line and rod connecting him with the fish.

A.D. 1679.—Maxwell (William)—Guillelmo Maxvello—native of Scotland, author of “Medicina Magnetica,” offers to prove to various medical faculties that, with certain magnetic means at his disposal, he could cure any of the diseases abandoned by them as incurable (Blavatsky, “Isis,” Vol. I. p. 215).

A.D. 1683.—Arrais (Edoardo Madeira), who had been physician to—João—John IV, the first Portuguese king of the house of[136] Braganza, is the author of this much-delayed edition of a book entitled “Arbor Vitæ, or a physical account of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.” It treats of occult qualities under the headings of “Doubts,” of which latter there are eight separate ones which constitute as many different chapters, from which the following extracts will prove interesting:

The preface to the “Arbor Vitæ ...” is written by Richard Browner M.L. Coll. Med., London, who translated out of Latin “The[137] Cure of Old Age,” by Roger Bacon, wherein he gives quite a good account of the latter’s life and writings, and from which we extract but one passage likely here to be of some little interest, viz. at p. 155, regarding the component parts of a medicine: “By Amber here our author intends Amber Gryse (a bituminous body found floating on the sea): For he calls it Ambra and not Succinum (which is solid Amber). Besides, Succinum was never reckoned a spice as Amber is here. And though both Ambra and Succinum be great restorers of the animal spirits, yet the former is more efficacious.”

The “Biographie Générale,” Vol. III. p. 348, says that Duarte Madeyra Arraess, who died at Lisbon in 1652, was the author also of “Apologia,” 1638, of “Methodo,” 1642, and of “Novæ Philosophiæ,” 1650.

A.D. 1683.—Halley (Edmund), LL.D., who became English astronomer royal, makes known his theory of four magnetic poles and of the periodical movement of the magnetic line without declination. He states that the earth’s magnetism is caused by four poles of attraction, two of them being in each hemisphere near each pole of the earth. By the word pole he means a point where the total magnetic force is a maximum, or, as he himself styles it, “a point of greatest attraction” (Walker, “Magnetism,” p. 317, etc.).

One of the magnetic poles he places near the meridian of Land’s End, not above 7 degrees from the North Pole, the other being about 15 degrees from the North Pole in the meridian of California, while the two south magnetic poles are placed respectively about 16 and about 20 degrees from the South Pole of the earth, and 95 degrees west, 120 degrees east of London.

In order to test Halley’s theory, the English Government permitted him to make three voyages in the Atlantic Ocean (1698, 1699, 1702), in vessels of which he had the command as post-captain. Humboldt states that these were the first expeditions equipped by any government for the establishment of a great scientific object—that of observing one of the elements of terrestrial force on which the safety of navigators is especially dependent.

The result of these voyages was the construction of the first accurate Magnetic Chart, whereon the points at which navigators have found an equal amount of variation were connected together by curved lines. This was the model of all charts of a similar nature since constructed. Halley remarked upon its completion: “The nice determination of the variation, and several other particulars in the magnetic system, is reserved for a remote posterity. All that we can hope to do is to leave behind us observations that may be[138] confided in, and to propose hypotheses which after-ages may examine, amend or refute.”

See copy of his chart in Vol. I. No. I of “Terrestrial Magnetism,” also in Musschenbroek’s “Essais de Physique,” or, preferably, in Bouguer’s “Traité de Navigation,” where the lines for 1700 are in red ink, while those for 1744 are traced in black, thus readily indicating the changes in the declination.

Dr. Halley was the first to give (Phil. Trans., No. 347) a distinct history of this phenomenon, which has certainly an electric as well as magnetic origin, and to which Gassendi originally gave the name it now bears, as has been stated at A.D. 1632.

According to Dr. Lardner (“Lectures,” Vol. I. p. 137), Prof. Eberhart, of Halle, and Paul Frisi, of Pisa, first proposed an explanation of the aurora founded upon the following: 1. Electricity transmitted through rarefied air exhibits a luminous appearance, precisely similar to that of the aurora borealis. 2. The strata of atmospheric air become rarefied as their altitude above the surface of the earth is increased, a theory which has since been countenanced by many scientists. It has been observed, notably by Dalton, of Manchester, that the primitive beams of the aurora are constantly in a direction parallel to that of the dipping needle, and that the latter appears most affected when the aurora is the brightest. Arago noticed that the changes of inclination amounted, upon one occasion to 7’ or 8’. The discovery that the magnetic needle was[139] agitated during the presence of an aurora has been ascribed to Wargentin (Am. Journal Sc., Vol. XXX. p. 227), though it is claimed by the friends of Olav Hiörter (see A.D. 1740), that it was independently ascertained by the latter during the year 1741.

The well-known Swiss chemist Auguste Arthur De la Rive has made many important observations upon the electric character of the aurora, the experiments carried on by him in the mountains of Finland being thus described: “We surrounded the peak of a mountain with copper wire, pointed at intervals with tin nibs. We next charged the wire with electricity, and nearly every night during our stay produced a yellowish white light on the tin points, in which the spectroscope analysis revealed the greenish yellow rays so characteristic of the aurora borealis. On the peak of Pietarintumturi we were especially successful, an auroral ray making its appearance directly over and about 150 yards above the copper coil.”

A complete list of all auroras appearing prior to 1754 is to be found in Jean Jacques d’Ortons de Mairan’s, Paris, 1731, “Traité Physique de l’Aurore Boréale,” and a catalogue of auroræ observed, 1800–1877, has been made up by M. Zenger (Sci. Am. Supp., p. 10915). One of the most interesting displays is known as the purple aurora, alluded to in the Annals of Clan-mac-noise as having appeared A.D. 688 (Biot “Note sur la direction,” etc., Comptes Rendus, Tome XIX for 1844, p. 822). Between September 19, 1838, and April 8, 1839, Lottin, Bravais, Lilliehöök and Siljeström observed 160 auroras at Bossekop (69° 58’ N. lat.) in Finmark and at Jupvig (70° 6’ N. lat.); they were most frequent during the period the sun remained below the horizon, that is, from November 17 to January 25. During this night of 70 times 24 hours there were 64 auroras visible (Comptes Rendus, Tome X. p. 289; Martin, “Météorologie,” 1843, p. 453; Argelander, in the “Vorträgen geh. in der Königsberg Gesellschaft,” Bd. I. s. 259).

A Finnish physicist, named S. Lenström, who had been attached to the Nordenskjold Polar Expedition of 1868, visited Lapland in 1871, and, after a series of important observations, constructed an apparatus that permitted him to “artificially reproduce the light of the aurora.” The intensity of this light is so great at times that Lowenörn perceived the coruscations in bright sunshine on the 29th of January, 1786, and Parry saw the aurora throughout the day during the voyage of 1821–1823.

The height of the aurora has been variously estimated, but it is seldom found to be less than forty-five miles above the surface of the earth. Father Boscovich estimated at 825 miles the height of the one observed by the Marquis of Poleni on the 16th of December,[140] 1737. The extent of the aurora, according to Dalton, has been known to cover an area of 7000 or 8000 square miles.

The earliest account of this phenomenon was given by Don Antonio de Ulloa, as will be seen under date A.D. 1735–1746.

This phenomenon, from its occasional faint resemblance to and association with the auroras, would seem to deserve mention here, though none of the conjectures formed, more particularly by Cassini, Euler, Mairan, Kepler, Laplace, Fatio de Duiller, Schubert, Poisson, Olmsted, Biot, Herschel, Delambre, Olbers or Sir Wm. Thomson attribute to it any electric or magnetic origin.

In the Report of the Proceedings of the Reale Istituto Lombardo, 1876, however, appears the account of many observations confirmed by M. Serpieri which “demand absolutely” the conclusion that the zodiacal light “is an electrical aurora preceding and following the sun round the earth.”

Angstrom asserted that he observed the auroral line in the spectrum of the zodiacal light, and Lewis saw the latter during the aurora of May 2, 1877. Humboldt, who observed it (“Cosmos,” 1849, Vol. I. p. 126) in the Andes at an elevation of 13,000 to 15,000 feet, as well as on “the boundless grassy plains, the Llanos of Venezuela, and on the seashore, beneath the ever-clear sky of[142] Cumana,” believes it to be caused by “a very compressed annulus of nebulous matter, revolving freely in space between the orbits of Venus and Mars.” In this connection he refers to Arago in the Annuaire for 1832, p. 246, and to a letter published in Comptes Rendus, XVI, 1843, p. 687, from which the following is extracted: “Several physical facts appear to indicate that, in a mechanical separation of matter into its smallest particles, if the mass be very small in relation to the surface, the electrical tension may increase sufficiently for the production of light and heat.”

In Chambers’ “Descript. Astronomy,” p. 257, the historian Nicephorus is credited with first calling attention to the existence of this phenomenon, to which Giovanni Domenico Cassini gave the name of Zodiacal Light, after determining its relations in space during the year 1683 (Mém. de l’Académie, 1730, Tome VIII. pp. 188 and 276), but to Childrey belongs the credit of having given to Europe the first explicit description of this phenomenon at p. 183 of his 1661 “Britannia Baconica.”

A.D. 1684.—Hooke (Dr. Robert), English natural philosopher (1635–1703), who, in 1677, had succeeded Oldenburg as Secretary to the Royal Society, gives the earliest well-defined plan of telegraphic transmission, in a paper addressed to the Royal Society “showing a way how to communicate one’s mind at great distances ... 40, 100, 120, etc., miles ... in as short a time almost as a man could write what he would have sent.” His apparatus consisted of an elevated framework supporting an open screen, behind which were suspended as many wooden devices, or symbols, such as circles, squares, triangles, etc., as there were letters in the alphabet. In the daytime these devices were drawn up by a rope behind the screen and made visible in the open space, while during the night use was made of torches, lanterns or lights.

Hooke also showed, in 1684, that iron and steel rods can be permanently magnetized by strongly heating them and by rapidly[143] cooling them in the magnetic meridian (“Enc. Brit.” 1857, Vol. XIV. p. 3).

But, what is still more singular, he had, even previous to the above-named date (i. e. in 1667), alluded to the possibility of telephoning, that is, communicating sound through a wire. He thus expresses himself: “And as glasses have highly promoted our seeing, so it is not improbable that there may be found many mechanical inventions to improve our other senses—of hearing, smelling, tasting, touching.... ’Tis not impossible to hear a whisper a furlong’s distance, it having been already done; and perhaps the nature of the thing would not make it more impossible though that furlong should be ten times multiplied. And though some famous authors have affirmed it impossible to hear through the thinnest plates of Muscovy glass, I know a way by which it is easy to hear one speak through a wall a yard thick. It has not been examined how far acoustics may be improved, nor what other ways there may be of quickening our hearing, or conveying sound through other bodies than the air, for that is not the only medium. I can assure the reader that I have, by the help of a distended wire, propagated the sound to a very considerable distance in an instant, or with as seemingly quick a motion as that of light, at least, incomparably swifter than that which at the same time was propagated through the air; and this not only in a straight line, or direct, but in one bended in many angles.”

A.D. 1684.—Sturmy’s “Mariner’s Magazine” for this year, of which a copy can be seen in the library of the British Museum, contains an account of the deviation of the compass and its tendency to give misleading directions on account of local attraction.

A.D. 1684.—In the “Essayes of Natural Experiments made in the Accademia del Cimento” (Englished by Richard Waller), London, 1684, by direction of the Royal Society, there are given,[144] respectively at pp. 53, 123 and 128–132, accounts of the operation of the magnet in vacuo, details of several magnetical experiments and experiments touching amber as well as other electrical bodies.

A.D. 1686.—Maimbourg (Louis), French historian, relates this instance of the employment of the magnet at Chap. VI of the Rev. W. Webster’s translation of his “Histoire de l’Arianisme”: “Whilst Valens (the Roman emperor) was at Antioch ... several pagans of distinction, with the philosophers ... not being able to bear that the empire should continue in the hands of the Christians, consulted privately the demons ... in order to know the destiny of the emperor and who should be his successor.... For this purpose they made a three-footed stool ... upon which, having laid a basin of divers metals, they placed the twenty-four letters of the alphabet around it; then one of these philosophers, who was a magician ... holding in one hand vervain and in the other a ring which hung at the end of a small thread, pronounced ... conjurations ... at which the three-footed stool turning around and the ring moving of itself, and turning from one side to the other over the letters, it caused them to fall upon the table ... which foretold them ... that the Furies were waiting for the emperor at Mimas; ... after which the enchanted ring, turning about again over the letters in order to express the name of him who should succeed the emperor, formed first of all these capital letters, T H E O. After adding a D, to form T H E O D, the ring stopped, and was not seen to move any more, at which one of the assistants cried out ... ‘Theodorus is the person whom the gods appoint for our emperor’” (“History of Christianity,” by the Rev. Henry Hart Milman, London, 1840, Vol. III. p. 120).

Maimbourg’s biography is given at p. 58, Vol. IV. of the “English Encyclopædia.”

A.D. 1692.—Dr. Le Lorrain de Vallemont relates, in “Description de l’Aimant,” etc., which he published at Paris, that, after a very severe wind and rain storm during the month of October 1690, the new steeple of the Church of Notre Dame de Chartres was found to be so seriously injured as to necessitate demolition. It was then observed that the iron cross was covered with a heavy coating of rust, which latter proved to be so highly magnetic that a special report upon it was made in the “Journal des Sçavans” by M. de la Hire, December 3, 1691, at the request of Giovanni Dom. Cassini, and of other members of the French Royal Academy.

A.D. 1693.—Gregory (David), an eminent mathematician, who, in 1691, had been made Savilian Professor of Astronomy in Oxford mainly through the influence of Newton and Flamsteed, communicates the result of his observations on the laws of magnetic action.

A.D. 1693.—In the first volume (Letter IV. pp. 25–28) of the “Memoirs for the Ingenious ...” by J. de la Crosse, are given accounts of several “New experiments on the loadstone; of a needle touch’d with it, and plac’d directly over the needle of a compass; of two Mariner’s Needles hang’d freely over one another, at several distances; of a touch’d steel-ring. Reasons of these experiments. The earth magnetical.”

In explanation of all this, M. de la Hire supposes “that the mass of the earth is a great loadstone, which directs the poles of the same name in all the loadstones and touch’d needles, towards the same place of the earth; so that the two hang’d needles do but remove from this natural position by the particular force they have of driving away each other’s poles of the same name; which force, in a certain degree, is not sufficient to overcome the power of the great loadstone of the earth.”

An account of M. P. de la Hire’s “new sort of a magnetical compass” had already appeared in the Phil. Trans. for 1686–1687, Vol. XVI. No. 188, p. 344.

A.D. 1696.—Zahn (F. Joannes), prebendary of the Prémontrés Order at Celle near Wurtzburg and provost of the convent of Niederzell, celebrated for his philosophical and mathematical studies, publishes his highly valued “Specula physico-mathematico-historica-notabilium ac mirabilium sciendorum ...” throughout the three folio volumes of which he treats extensively of the wonders of the entire universe.

In his tabulated list of the origin and properties of all the different known gems and stones (Vol. II. chap. vii. p. 55), he states[146] that the loadstone, first discovered at Magnesia in Lydia (Caria—on the Mæander) is heavy, very well shaped, and of a dark colour verging upon blue. The marvellous properties of gems and stones are detailed at pp. 59–73 of the same volume, the fifth paragraph of Chap. VIII treating of the loadstone’s many virtues and admirable qualities, as exemplified in the writings of Guilielmus Gilbertus, Nicolaus Zucchius, Nicolaus Cabæus, Athanasius Kircherus, Eusebius Nierembergius, Laurentius Forerus, Hieronymus Dandinus, Jacobus Grandamicus, Ludovicus Alcazar, Claudius Franciscus Milliet de Chales, as well as of many others.

A.D. 1700.—Bernoulli (John I), son of Nicolas, the founder of the celebrated family of that name, improves upon Picard’s discovery of the electrical appearance of the barometer, made A.D. 1675, by devising a mercurial phosphorus or mercury shining in vacuo (“Diss. Physica de Mercurio Lucente,” etc., Basel, 1719). This procured the favourable notice of King Frederick I, of Prussia, who rewarded him with a medal. John Bernoulli I (1667–1748) was a member of nearly every learned society of Europe and “one of the first mathematicians of a mathematical age.” His exceedingly valuable memoirs, found in all the scientific transactions of the day, were first collected in their entirety during the year 1742, by Cramer, Professor of Mathematics, and published at Lausanne and Geneva.

“Is it not surprising,” remarks Prof. Robison, in his able article on “Dynamics” (Eighth “Britannica,” Vol. VIII. p. 363), “that, twenty-five years after the publication of Newton’s ‘Principia,’ a mathematician on the Continent should publish a solution in the Memoirs of the French Academy, and boast that he had given the first demonstration of it? Yet, John Bernoulli did this in 1710. Is it not more remarkable that this should be precisely the solution given by Newton, beginning from the same theorem, the 40th I., Prin., following Newton in every step and using the same subsidiary lines? Yet, so it is.” This was five years after he had accepted (1705) the chair of mathematics made vacant by the death of his brother, James I.

The Bernoulli family is as well known in the history of mathematics, by the distinguished services of eight of its members, as is[147] the Cassini family through the successes achieved by four of its representatives in the development of astronomical studies.

Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782), second son of John I, constructed a dipping needle, which is described on p. 85 of the Eighth “Britannica,” Vol. XIV, and with which he observed the dip to diminish half a degree during an earthquake in the year 1767. Before Daniel was twenty-four years old he had declined the Presidency of the Academy of Sciences at Genoa, and, at the age of twenty-five, was appointed Professor of Mathematics at St. Petersburg.

John Bernoulli II (1710–1790), youngest of the three sons of John I, gained three prizes from the French Academy of Sciences for Memoirs on the Capstan, on the Propagation of Light and on the Magnet.

John Bernoulli III (1744–1807), grandson of John I, took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the age of thirteen, and, when nineteen years old, was appointed Astronomer Royal of Berlin. He published several volumes of travels, in one of which he relates (A. L. Ternant, “Le Télégraphe,” 1881, p. 32) that he saw, in the last-named city, an instrument constructed of five bells, with which all letters of the alphabet could be expressed.

James Bernoulli I (1654–1705), brother of John I, while at London, was introduced into the philosophical meetings of Boyle, Hooke, Edward Stillingfleet and other learned and scientific men. He opened, in 1682, the Collegium Experimentale Physico-Mechanicum for public instruction, but his lasting fame dates from the year 1684, when the great Von Leibnitz published his treatise “De Gravitate Ætheris.” Three years later, in 1687, James occupied the mathematical chair of the University of Basel, made vacant by the death of the learned Megerlin.

A.D. 1700.—Morgagni (Giovanni Battista), while practising medicine at Bologna and at Venice, uses the magnet to remove particles of iron which had accidentally fallen into the eyes, exactly in the same manner as Kirkringius and Fabricius Hildanus had done before him.

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A.D. 1700.—Duverney (Joseph Guichard), an eminent French anatomist, knew at this date that the limbs of a frog are convulsed by the electric current (as shown in the “Histoire de l’Académie des Sciences,” 1700, p. 40, and 1742, vol. I. p. 187), and the Italian physician L. Marco Antonio Caldani, assistant to Morgagni, alludes to the “revival of frogs by electrical discharges.”

A.D. 1701–1702.—Le Brun (Pierre), French theologian (1661–1729), publishes his “Histoire Critique des Pratiques Superstitieuses,” wherein he makes mention (Vol. I. p. 294) of the possibility of transmitting intelligence in the manner indicated by the Jesuit Leurechon.

He is also the author of “Lettres qui découvrent l’illusion des philosophes sur la baguette divinatoire,” Paris, 1693 (Larousse’s “Dictionnaire,” Tome X. p. 292).

A.D. 1702.—Bion (Nicolas), French engineer and manufacturer of mathematical and astronomical instruments (1652–1733), is the author of “Usage des Astrolabes,” which was shortly after followed by his well-known “Traité de la construction et des principaux usages des instruments de mathématique.” In the preparation of the last named, which was translated into German (Leipzig, 1713, Nuremberg, 1721) as well as into English (London, 1723, 1738), Bion admits the assistance afforded him by Lahire, Cassini and Delisle the younger.

The whole of Book VII (pp. 267–290) of the “Traité,” is devoted to the description of instruments employed in navigation, the compass and the astrolabe in particular, with instructions for ascertaining the declination and variation.

Bion is also the author of “L’Usage des Globes Célestes et Terrestres et des sphères suivant les differents systèmes du monde,” Amsterdam, 1700. Much of the matter, however, is said to have been copied by Bion from Pierre Polinière’s “Expériences de Phisique,” of which latter five editions were printed respectively in 1709, 1718, 1728, 1734 and 1741.

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A.D. 1702.—Marcel (Arnold), Commissioner of the Navy at Arles, publishes a pamphlet dedicated to the King, and entitled “The Art of Making Signals, both by Sea and by Land,” wherein he affirms that he has “communicated frequently at the distance of two leagues (in as short a space of time as a man could write down and form exactly the letters contained in the advice he would communicate), an unexpected piece of news that took up a page in writing.” The particulars of this invention are, however, wanting.

Marcel reports many well-authenticated instances where, as already mentioned by Mæstro Giulio Cæsare (A.D. 1590), iron bars have become temporarily magnetic by position alone.

A.D. 1702.—Kæmpfer (Engelbrecht), German physician and naturalist (1651–1716), describes in his “Amœnitates Exoticæ,” experiments made by him upon the electric torpedo (Leithead, 1837, Chap. XII). He insists that any person may avoid all sensation of the shock by merely holding the breath while touching the animal. This apparently improbable fact has since been confirmed, however, by many scientists; the accurate observations of Mr. Walsh (A.D. 1773) on the subject, reported in the Phil. Trans. for 1773–1774–1775, claiming especial attention (Larousse, “Dict.,” Vol. IX. p. 1144).

A.D. 1704.—Amontons (Guillaume), an ingenious mechanician and scientist, exhibits before the royal family of France, and before the members of the Académie des Sciences, his system of communicating intelligence between distant points through the agency of magnifying glasses—telescopes. The “Mémoires de l’Académie,” 1698–1705, contain an account of his many scientific productions.

A.D. 1705.—Witson (Nicholaes), Burgomaster of Amsterdam, announces at p. 56 of his “Noord en Oost Tartarye,” that the nautical compass was in use by the Coreans in the second half of the seventeenth century.

A.D. 1705.—Hauksbee (Francis), English natural philosopher and Curator of the Royal Society, makes, before the latter, several[150] experiments on the mercurial phosphorus. He shows that a considerable quantity of light can be produced by agitating mercury in partly exhausted as well as in thoroughly exhausted glass vessels. When the mercury is made to break into a shower, flashes of light are seen to start everywhere “in as strange a form as lightning.”

He also showed light in vacuo produced by rubbing amber and by rubbing glass upon woollen. He says (Priestley, “Hist. and Present State of Electricity,” London, 1775, p. 19) that every fresh glass first gave a purple and then a pale light, and that woollen, tinctured with salt or spirits, produced a new, strong and fulgurating light.

Hauksbee constructed a powerful electrical machine wherein the Von Guericke sulphur globe was replaced by one of glass, as had already been done by Sir Isaac Newton (at A.D. 1675). With it he found that upon exhausting the air, whirling the globe rapidly and placing his hand upon the outside, a strong light appeared upon the interior, and that the light would show itself also upon the outside when air was let into the globe (“Physico-Mech. Exp.,” pp. 12, 14, 26, 32, 34).

The machine, which the celebrated mechanician Leupold had constructed at Leipzig for Mr. Wolfius, only differed from the original one made by Hauksbee in that the glass globe turned vertically instead of horizontally.

Other experiments with coated glass globes, globes of sulphur, etc., are detailed in the “Physico-Mech. Exp.,” as indicated at pp. 21–24 the Priestley work above alluded to. At the last-named page he says: “That Mr. Hauksbee, after all, had no clear idea of the distinction of bodies into electrics and non-electrics appears from some of his last experiments, in which he attempted to produce electrical appearances from metals, and from the reasons he gives for his want of success in those attempts.”

Hauksbee also gave some attention to the study of the laws of magnetic force, and the results published in the Phil. Trans., Vol. XXVII. for 1710–1712, p. 506, giving a law of force varying as the sesqui-duplicate ratio of the distances, were subsequently confirmed by Taylor and by Whiston in the Phil. Trans. for 1721 (Noad, “Manual of Elec.,” 1859, p. 579).

A.D. 1705.—Keill (John), M.A., F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Astronomy, is the author of “Introductio ad Veram Physicam, etc.,” of which other editions appeared in 1725, 1739 and 1741, and a good English translation of which was published at Glasgow in 1776.

The last named is entitled “An Introduction to Natural Philosophy, or Lectures in Physics read in the University of Oxford in the Year 1700.” In Lecture VIII he states: “It is certain that the magnetic attractions and directions arise from the structure of parts; for if a loadstone be struck hard enough, so that the position of its internal parts be changed, the loadstone will also be changed. And if a loadstone be put into the fire, insomuch that the internal structure of the parts be changed or wholly destroyed, then it will lose all its former virtue and will scarce differ from other stones.... And what some generally boast of, concerning effluvia, a subtile matter, particles adapted to the pores of the loadstone, etc., does not in the least lead us to a clear and distinct explication of these operations; but notwithstanding all these things, the magnetick virtues must be still reckoned amongst the occult qualities.”

A.D. 1706.—Hartsoeker (Nicolas), Dutch natural philosopher, friend of Christian Huyghens, while Professor of Mathematics at Düsseldorf, writes his “Conjectures Physiques,” four editions of which were published during the three years 1708, 1710 and 1712.

The Tenth Discourse of the Second Book (pp. 140–182) treats of the nature and properties of the loadstone and gives numerous observations concerning magnetical phenomena, which are well illustrated. He says that many ordinary stones have become magnetic after being long exposed to the air, in consequence of iron penetrating them. He believes that the native loadstone is made up of ordinary stone and of iron containing many small bodies through which run magnetic channels; that the latter are held together so strongly as to be disintegrated with difficulty, and that they are filled with a subtile matter which circulates incessantly through and around them.

The First Discourse of the Fourth Book treats of Meteors, and at pp. 91–99 of his “Eclaircissements, ...” published in 1710 he gives further reports of his curious observations on magnetic phenomena.

A.D. 1707.—J. G. S. (not, as many suppose, Jean George Sulzer) publishes “Curious Speculations during Sleepless Nights” 8vo, Chemnitz, wherein appears the first account of the development, by heat, of electricity in the tourmaline, which latter, it is therein stated, was first brought from Ceylon by the Dutch in 1703. Another report of the above appears in the Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences of Paris for 1717.

A.D. 1708.—Wall (Dr. William), a prominent English divine, communicates to the Royal Society (Phil. Trans., Vol. XXVI. No. 314, p. 69) the result of his experiments, showing him to have been the first to establish a resemblance of electricity to thunder and lightning.

He found that, upon holding tightly in the hand a large bar of amber and rubbing it briskly against woollen cloths, “a prodigious number of little cracklings was heard, every one of which produced a small flash of light (spark); and that when the amber was drawn lightly through the cloth it produced a spark but no crackling.” He observed that “by holding a finger at a little distance from the amber a crackling is produced, with a great flash of light succeeding it, and, what is very surprising, on its eruption it strikes the finger very sensibly, wheresoever applied, with a push or puff like wind. The crackling is fully as loud as that of charcoal on fire.... This light and crackling seem in some degree to represent thunder and lightning.”

A.D. 1712.—The great Japanese Encyclopædia, Wa-Kan-san siü tson-ye, describes the compass, zi-siak-no-fari, at Vol. XV. folio 3, recto (Klaproth, “Lettre à M. de Humboldt,” etc., 1834, p. 107).

A.D. 1717.—Leméry (Louis), two years after the death of his distinguished father, Nicolas Leméry, exhibits a stone (the tourmaline) brought from Ceylon, and announces, to the French Académie des Sciences, that it possesses the electrical property of attracting and repelling light bodies after being warmed.

Carl Linnæus (1707–1777) alludes to the experiments of Leméry, in his Flora Zeylanica, and mentions the stone under the name of lapis electricus. (See, for Carl Linnæus, “Thesaurus Litteraturæ Botanicæ,” G. A. Pritzel, Lipsiæ, 1851, pp. 162–169, also “Guide to the Literature of Botany,” by Benj. Daydon Jackson, London, 1881, pp. xxxvi, etc.)

The first scientific examination of the electric properties of the tourmaline was, however, made by Æpinus in 1756, and published in the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy. Æpinus showed that a temperature of between 99½° and 212° F. was necessary for the development of its attractive powers.

Of the electricity of crystals, Gmelin, in his “Chemistry” (Vol. I. p. 319), names the following discoverers: Æpinus (tourmaline)—see A.D. 1759; Canton (topaz)—see A.D. 1753; Brard (axinite)—see A.D. 1787; Haüy (boracite, prehnite, sphene, etc.)—see A.D. 1787; Sir David Brewster (diamond, garnet, amethyst, etc.)—see A.D. 1820; and Wilhelm Gottlieb Hankel (borate of magnesia, tartrate of potash, etc.).

A.D. 1720.—Grey—Gray (Stephen), a pensioner of the Charter House and Fellow of the Royal Society, makes known through his first paper in the Phil. Trans. the details of the important line of investigation which finally led to the discovery of the principle of electric conduction and insulation as well as to the fact, not the principle, of induction (see Æpinus, A.D. 1759). Thus, to Grey is due the credit of having laid the foundation of electricity as a science.

He proved that electricity can be excited by the friction of feathers, hair, linen, paper, silk, etc., all of which attract light bodies even at a distance of eight or ten inches. He next discovered that electricity can be communicated from excited bodies to bodies[154] incapable of ready excitation. When first suspending a hempen line with pack threads he could not transmit electricity, but when suspending the line with silken threads he transmitted the electrical influence several hundred feet. The latter he did at the suggestion of his friend Granville Wheeler—Wheler—(not Checler, as Aglave et Boulard have it in “Lumière Electrique,” p. 20), thinking that “silk might do better than pack thread on account of its smallness, as less of the virtue would probably pass off by it than by the thickness of the hempen line which had been previously used.” They both tried experiments with longer lines of pack thread, but failed, as they likewise did after substituting thin brass wire for the thread. This afterwards led to the discovery of other insulating substances, like hair, resin, etc. During the months of June 1729, and August 1730, Grey and Wheeler succeeded in transmitting electricity through pack thread supported by silken cords a distance of 765 feet, and through wire at a distance of 800–886 feet.

Grey demonstrated also that electric attraction is not proportioned to the quantity of matter in bodies, but to the extent of their surface, and he likewise discovered the conducting powers of fluids and of the human body. Of the cracklings and flashes of light he remarks: “And although these effects are at present but in minimis, it is probable, in time, there may be found out a way to collect a greater quantity of the electric fire, and consequently to increase the force of that power, which by several of those experiments, if we are permitted to compare great things with small, seems to be of the same nature with that of thunder and lightning” (Phil. Trans., abridgment of John Martyn, Vol. VIII. p. 401).

Stephen Grey may be said to have continued his experiments while lying upon his death-bed, for, unable to write, he dictated to the last, as best he could, the progress he had made in his studies to Dr. Mortimer, the Secretary of the Royal Society (Phil. Trans., 1735–1736, Vol. XXXIX. p. 400).

Grey’s own description of a new electric planetarium deserves reproduction here: “I have lately made several new experiments upon the projectile and pendulous motions of small bodies by electricity; by which small bodies may be made to move about larger ones, either in circles or ellipses, and those either concentric or excentric to the centre of the large body about which they move, so as to make many revolutions about them. And this motion will constantly be the same way that the planets move around the sun, viz. from the right hand to the left, or from west to east. But these little planets, if I may so call them, move much faster in their apogeon than in the perigeon part of their orbits, which is directly contrary to the motion of the planets around the sun.”[155] To this should be added the following description of the manner in which these experiments can be made: “Place a small iron globe, of an inch or an inch and a half in diameter, on the middle of a circular cake of rosin, seven or eight inches in diameter, greatly excited; and then a light body, suspended by a very fine thread, five or six inches long, held in the hand over the centre of the cake, will, of itself, begin to move in a circle around the iron globe, and constantly from west to east. If the globe is placed at any distance from the centre of the circular cake, it will describe an ellipse, which will have the same excentricity as the distance of the globe from the centre of the cake. If the cake of rosin be of an elliptical form, and the iron globe be placed in the centre of it, the light body will describe an elliptical orbit of the same excentricity with the form of the cake. If the globe be placed in or near one of the foci of the elliptical cake, the light body will move much swifter in the apogee than in the perigee of its orbit. If the iron globe is fixed on a pedestal an inch from the table, and a glass hoop, or a portion of a hollow glass cylinder, excited, be placed around it, the light body will move as in the circumstance above mentioned, and with the same varieties.”

A.D. 1721.—Taylor (Brooke), LL.D., F.R.S. (1685–1731), an eminent English mathematician, past Secretary of the Royal Society, and one of the ablest geometers of his time—“the only one who, after the retreat of Newton, could safely enter the lists with the Bernoullis”—publishes his “Experiments on Magnetism” in Phil. Trans., No. 368.

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In order to arrive at a proper determination of the laws of magnetic force, Dr. Taylor—and also Whiston and Hauksbee—according to Sir David Brewster, considered “the deviation of a compass needle from the meridian, produced by the action of a magnet at different distances; and the conclusion which they all drew from their experiments was that the magnetic force was proportional to the sines of half the arcs of deviation, or nearly in the inverse sesqui-duplicate ratio of the distance, or as the square roots of the fifth powers of the distances. Dr. Taylor had already come to the conclusion that the force was different in various magnets, and decreased quicker at great distances than at small ones, an experimental fact, as shown by Sir W. S. Harris, ‘Rud. Mag.,’ Part III. p. 224.”

In Dr. Thomas Thomson’s “History of the Royal Society” we read, however (p. 461), that Brooke Taylor, and after him Musschenbroek, attempted without success to determine by experiment the rate at which the magnetic attractions and repulsions vary. This rate was successfully investigated by the subsequent experiments of Lambert, Robison and Coulomb. The nature of magnetic curves was first satisfactorily explained by Lambert, Robison and Playfair. Brooke Taylor gave four poles to a wire by touching it at one end or at various parts, as indicated in Phil. Trans., Vol. XXIX. p. 294, and Vol. XXXI. p. 204.

A.D. 1722.—Graham (George), a celebrated optician and instrument maker in London, is the first to distinctly make known the diurnal and horary variations of the magnetic needle, traces of which had been merely recognized as facts by Gellibrand, in 1634, and by the Missionary Father Guy-Tachard at Louvo, in Siam, during 1682. He finds that its northern extremity begins to move westward at about seven or eight o’clock in the morning, and continues to deviate in that direction until about two o’clock in the afternoon, when it becomes stationary; it soon begins to return to the eastward and becomes again stationary during the night. Graham made nearly a thousand observations, between the 6th of February and the 12th of May, 1722, and found that the greatest westerly variation was 14° 45’, and the least 13° 50’; in general, however, it varied between 14° and 14° 35’, giving 35’ for the amount of the daily variation.

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Graham’s discovery—afterwards amplified by Anders Celsius (A.D. 1740)—attracted but little attention until 1750, when the subject was ably taken up by Wargentin, Secretary to the Swedish Academy of Sciences. Between 1750 and 1759 Mr. John Canton made about 4000 observations on the same subject, and was followed by the Dutch scientist Gerard van Swieten, the favourite pupil of Boerhaave, with like results.

As Dr. Lardner states (“Lectures on Science and Art,” 1859, Vol. II. p. 115), the same phenomenon has been observed more recently by Col. Beaufoy (at A.D. 1813), by Prof. Hansteen (at A.D. 1819) and by many others. He further states that Cassini, who observed the diurnal variation of the needle at Paris, found that neither the solar heat nor light influenced it, for it was the same in the deep caves constructed under the Observatory in Paris, where a sensibly constant temperature is preserved, and from which light is excluded, as at the surface. In northern regions these diurnal changes are greater and more irregular; while, toward the line, their amplitudes are gradually diminished until at length they disappear altogether.

It was Graham who first entertained the idea of measuring the magnetic intensity through the vibrations of the needle, a method subsequently used by Coulomb, and which many believe was invented by the latter. From the observations made by Humboldt and by Gay-Lussac in this manner, Biot has reduced the variation of intensity in different latitudes.

A.D. 1725.—Horrebow—Horreboe—(Peter), was a Danish physicist (1679–1764), who studied medicine for a time and then became a pupil of the celebrated mathematician and astronomer Olaus Rœmer (1644–1710, best known by his discovery of the finite velocity of light), whom he succeeded in the University of Copenhagen.

His earliest work, “Clavis Astronomiæ,” first appeared during 1725, but it is only in the second and enlarged new edition of it in Horrebow’s “Operum Mathematico-Physicorum,” Havn. 1740, Vol. I. p. 317, that will be found the passage (s. 226) in which the luminous process of the sun is characterized as a perpetual northern[158] light. Humboldt, who mentions the fact (“Cosmos,” 1859, Vol. V. p. 81) suggests that a comparison be made of Horrebow’s statement with the precisely similar views held by Sir William Herschel (1738–1822) and Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871). He says that Horrebow, who did not confound gravitation with magnetism, was the first who thus designated the process of light produced in the solar atmosphere by the agency of powerful magnetic forces (“Mémoires de Mathématiques et de Physique, présentés à l’Académie Royale des Sciences,” Vol. IX. 1780, p. 262; Hanow, in Joh. Dan. Titius’s “Gemeinützige Abhand. über natür. Dinge,” 1768, p. 102), and, with reference to the Herschels he thus expresses himself: “If electricity, moving in currents, develops magnetic forces, and if, in accordance with an early hypothesis of Sir Wm. Herschel (Phil. Trans. for 1795, Vol. LXXXV. p. 318; John Herschel, “Outlines of Astronomy,” p. 238; also, Humboldt, “Cosmos,” Vol. I. p. 189), the sun itself is in the condition of a perpetual northern light (I should rather say of an electro-magnetic storm) we should seem warranted in concluding that solar light transmitted in the regions of space by vibrations of ether, may be accompanied by electro-magnetic currents” (“Dict. of Nat. Biog.,” for John and William Herschel, Vol. XXVI. pp. 263–274).

Three of the children of Peter Horrebow, almost equally distinguished for their learning, are: Nicolas Horrebow (1712–1760), who made physical and astronomical observations in Iceland and published an able report thereon during 1752; Christian Horrebow (1718–1776), who succeeded his father in 1753 as astronomer in the Copenhagen University and who wrote several important scientific treatises; and Peter Horrebow (1728–1812), who was professor of mathematics and philosophy, and published works on geometry, meteorology and astronomy.

Much of interest concerning the above will also be found in the “Abstracts of Papers ... Roy Soc.,” Vol. II. pp. 208, 249, 251, and in the “Catalogue of Sc. Papers ... Roy. Soc.,” Vol. III. pp. 322–328; Vol. VI. p. 687; Vol. VII. p. 965.

A.D. 1726.—Wood (John), an English architect of considerable repute, is said to have shown that the electric fluid could be conveyed through wires a long distance, and, during the year 1747, one of the earliest applications of Wood’s discovery was made by Dr.[159] William Watson (see A.D. 1745), who extended his experiments over a space of four miles, comprising a circuit of two miles of wire and an equal distance of ground.

A.D. 1729.—Hamilton (James), who became sixth Earl of Abercorn—also called Lord Paisley—publishes “Calculations and Tables relating to the attractive virtue of loadstones ...” containing very valuable data and wherein he is the first to give the true law of the lifting capacity of magnets, as follows: “The principle upon which these tables are formed is this: That if two loadstones are perfectly homogeneous, that is if their Matter be of the same specifick parity, and of the same virtue in all parts of one stone, as in the other; and that like parts of their surfaces are cap’d or arm’d with iron; then the weights they sustain will be as the squares of the cube roots of the weights of the loadstones; that is, as their surfaces.”

Gilbert treats of armed loadstones, Book II. chaps. xvii-xxii. In connection with the increased energy which magnets acquire by being armed, that is, fitted with a cap of polished iron at each pole, Dr. Whewell remarks that it is only at a later period any notice was taken “of the distinction which exists between the magnetical properties of soft iron and of hard steel; the latter being susceptible of being formed into artificial magnets, with permanent poles; while soft iron is only passively magnetic, receiving a temporary polarity from the action of a magnet near it, but losing this property when the magnet is removed. About the middle of the last century various methods were devised of making artificial magnets, which exceeded in power all magnetic bodies previously known” (“Hist. of the Ind. Sc.,” 1859, Vol. II. p. 220).

Hamilton alludes to a loadstone weighing 139 grains, with a lifting power of 23,760 grains! We have referred, amongst others, to the loadstone belonging to Sir Isaac Newton at A.D. 1675, and to the wonderful collection belonging to Mr. Butterfield at A.D. 1809. A loadstone weighing twelve ounces, capable of lifting sixty pounds of iron, is referred to in Terzagus, “Musæum Septalianum,” 1664, p. 42, while another weighing two and a half grains and lifting 783 grains is mentioned at p. 272, Vol. III. of the “Records of General Science”; and Salviatus (“Dialogues of Galileo,” Dial. III) alludes to one in the Academy of Florence which, unarmed, weighed six ounces and could lift but two ounces, but when armed had a lifting power of 160 ounces. At pp. 317–318, Part III of Nehemiah Grew’s “Musæum Regalis Societatis,” London, 1681—also 1686—allusion[160] is made to a loadstone found in Devonshire, weighing about sixty pounds, which moved a needle nine feet distant. Grew then refers to Athan. Kircher and to Vincent Leotaud as having published what is said of the loadstone by Gilbert and others, and he likewise states: “Those that travail through the vast deserts of Arabia, have also a needle and a compass whereby they direct themselves in their way, as Mariners at sea [Majoli, ‘Colloquia’]; the power of the magnet dependeth not upon its bulk—the smaller being usually the stronger....”

A.D. 1729–1730.—Savery (Servington), English mechanician, succeeds in imparting magnetism to hard steel bars three-fourths of an inch square and sixteen inches long, by fitting one bar with an armature at each end and touching other bars with it whilst held in the magnetic meridian in the line of the inclined needle.

It was shown by Savery that his artificial magnets were preferable to loadstones. The first recorded attempt to make artificial magnets is credited to one John Sellers, believed to be the author of “The Practical Navigator,” of which the earliest edition appeared in 1669, and of “The Coasting Pilot,” published about 1680. An “Answer to Some Magnetical Inquiries Proposed in (the preceding) No. 23, pp. 423–424,” will be found in Phil. Trans. for 1667, Vol. II. pp. 478–479 and in the following abridgments: Baddam, 1745, Vol. I. p. 86; Hutton, Vol. I. p. 166 (as of No. 26, p. 478); John Lowthorp, Vol. II. p. 601. Reference is likewise made to this invention of Sellers at Vol. I. p. 86 of the “Memoirs of the Royal Society,” London, 1739, and in a paper by Réaumur, in the “Mémoires de l’Académie Française” for the year 1723.

A.D. 1731.—On the 25th of November the Royal Society were honoured by a visit from the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Lorraine, the last named being enrolled as a member during the[161] evening. Experiments were performed “On the strength of Lord Paisley’s loadstone,” “On Dr. Frobenius’s phlogiston,” and “On the electrical observations of Mr. Stephen Grey.” These experiments which, it is said, “succeeded notwithstanding the largeness of the company,” showed the facility with which electricity passes through great lengths of conductors and are worth noting as being the first of their nature.

A.D. 1732.—Régnault (Le Père Noël) gives in “Les Entretiens Physiques,” etc., Vol. I. Nos. 15 and 16, the tables of the declination at Paris from the years 1600–1730, and treats at length of the merits of the loadstone and of the magnetic needle.

In Vols. II, IV and V he discourses about the extent of the magnetic fluid and explains the phenomena of meteors, St. Elmo’s fire, thunder, etc., besides recording the experiments of Grey, Dufay and others.

A.D. 1733.—Dufay (Charles François de Cisternay), French scientist and superintendent of the Jardin du Roi, now the Jardin des Plantes, of Paris (in which latter position he was succeeded by Buffon), communicates to the French Academy of Sciences the history of electricity brought down to the year 1732 (Dantzig Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 195).

He is said to have originated the theory of two kinds of electricity permeating matter and producing all the known phenomena of attraction, repulsion and induction, though the honour of this important discovery should be shared by M. White, who was associated at one time with Stephen Grey and who, it appears, independently discovered the fact while in England. Dufay thus announces his discovery: “... there are two kinds of electricity, very different from one another, one of which I call vitreous (positive) and the other resinous (negative) electricity. The first is that of glass, rock crystal, precious stones, hairs of animals, wool and many other bodies. The second is that of amber, copal, gum-lac, silk, thread, paper and a vast number of other substances. The characteristics of these two electricities are that they repel themselves and attract each other. Thus a body of the vitreous electricity repels all other bodies possessed of the vitreous, and, on the contrary, attracts all those of the resinous electricity. The resinous also repels the resinous and attracts the vitreous. From this principle one may easily deduce the explanation of a great number of the phenomena; and it is probable that this truth will lead us to the discovery of many other things” (see Franklin, at A.D. 1752, and Symmer, at A.D. 1759).

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Upon repeating Grey’s experiments, Dufay observed, amongst other things, that, by wetting pack thread, electricity was more readily transmitted through it, and he was enabled thus easily to convey the fluid a distance of 1256 feet, though the wind was high and although the line made eight returns.

A.D. 1733.—Winckler (Johann Heinrich), a philosopher of Wingendorf, Saxony, and Professor of Languages in the University of Leipzig, first uses a fixed cushion in the electric machine for applying friction instead of by means of the hand, and is, by many, believed to have been the first to suggest the use of conductors as a means of protection against lightning (see B.C. 600).

In March 1745, Winckler read a paper before the Royal Society, in which he describes machines for rubbing tubes and globes, also a contrivance with which he can give his globes as many as 680 turns in a minute. Priestley states that the German electricians generally used several globes at a time and that they could excite such a prodigious power of electricity from “globes, whirled by a large wheel and rubbed with woollen cloth or a dry hand, that, if we may credit their own accounts, the blood could be drawn from the finger by an electric spark; the skin would burst and a wound appear, as if made by a caustic.”

During the year 1746 Winckler made use of common electricity for telegraphic communications by the discharge of Leyden jars through very long circuits, in some of which the River Pleisse formed a part, and it may be added that Joseph Franz had previously discharged the contents of a jar through 1500 feet of iron wire while in the city of Vienna.

A.D. 1733.—Brandt (Georg), Swedish chemist, gives in the “Memoirs of the Academy” of Upsal an account of the experiments made by him to show the possibility of imparting magnetism to substances which are not ferruginous. He proved it in the case of the metal cobalt, and during the year 1750 the able discoverer of nickel, Axel. F. de Cronstedt, showed that the latter is likewise susceptible of this property.

A.D. 1734.—Polinière (Pierre), French physician and experimental philosopher (1671–1734), member of the Society of Arts, entirely revises the fourth edition of his “Expériences de Phisique” originally issued in 1709. While the second volume contains but a short chapter relative to electricity, meteoric disturbances, etc., the remainder of the work gives very curious and interesting experiments with the loadstone, making allusion to the observations of John Keill, besides treating of the declination of the needle, etc.

A.D. 1734.—Swedenborg (Emanuel), founder of the Church of New Jerusalem, details in his “Principia Rerum Naturalium,” etc., the result of experiments and sets forth the laws relating to magnetic and electric forces and effects. The first explicit treatise upon the close relationship existing between magnetism and electricity was, however, written fourteen years later by M. Laurent Béraud (1703–1777), Professor of Mathematics at the College of Lyons. Both Swedenborg and Béraud recognized the fact that it is, as Fahie expresses it, the same force, only differently disposed which produces both electric and magnetic phenomena.

In “Results of an Investigation into the MSS. of Swedenborg,” Edinburgh, 1869, p. 7, No. 16, Dr. R. L. Tafel makes following entry:

“A treatise on the magnet, 265 pages text and 34 pages tables, quarto. This work is a digest of all that had been written up to Swedenborg’s time on the subject, with some of his own experiments. According to the title page, Swedenborg had intended it for publication in London during the year 1722.”

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The “Principia Rerum Naturalium” is the first volume of Swedenborg’s earliest great work, “Opera Philosophica et Mineralia,” originally published in Leipzig and Dresden 1734, which has justly been pronounced a very remarkable cosmogony. In the “Principia” Part I. chap. ix., is to be found his treatment of what he calls the second or magnetic element of the world; in Part III. chap. i. he gives a comparison of the sidereal heaven with the magnetic sphere, but he devotes the whole of Part II to the magnet in following chapters:

A.D. 1735–1746.—Ulloa (Don Antonio de), Spanish mathematician, who left Cadiz May 26, 1735, for South America, whither he was sent with Condamine and other French Academicians, as well as with Spanish scientists, to measure a degree of the meridian, returned to Madrid July 25, 1746, and shortly after gave an account of his experiences during an absence of eleven years and two months.

In his “Voyage Historique de l’Amérique Méridionale,” Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1752, he speaks (Vol. I. pp. 14–18 and Vol. II. pp. 30–31, 92–94, 113, 123, 128) of the defective magnetic needles given him as well as of the means of correcting them, and he details at great length the variations of the needle observed during the voyage. He also alludes to the variation charts of Dr. Halley and to the alterations therein made by advice of William Mountaine and Jacob Dooson—James Dodson—of London, as well as to the methods of ascertaining the variation of the magnetic needle pointed out both by Manuel de Figueyredo, at Chaps. IX-X of his “Hidrographie ou Examen des Pilotes,” printed at Lisbon in 1608, and by Don Lazare de Flores at Chap. I, part ii. of his “Art de Naviguer,” printed in 1672. The latter, he says, asserts, in Chap. IX, that the Portuguese find his method so reliable that they embody it in all the instructions given for the navigation of their vessels.

At pp. 66, 67, Chap. X of vol. ii. Ulloa makes the earliest recorded reference to the aurora australis, as follows: “At half-past ten in the evening, and as we stood about two leagues from the island of Tierra de Juan Fernandez, we observed upon the summit of a neighbouring mountain a very brilliant and extraordinary light.... I saw it very distinctly from its inception, and I noticed that it was very small at first, and gradually extended until it looked like a large, lighted torch. This lasted three or four minutes, when the light began to diminish as gradually as it had grown, and finally disappeared.”

Incidentally, it may be stated here that the very learned Dr. John Dalton reported having seen the aurora australis in England, and to have besides observed the aurora borealis as far as 45° latitude south (see accounts in Philosophical Transactions, Philosophical Magazine, Manchester Transactions and Nicholson’s Journal), while Humboldt remarks (“Cosmos,” 1849, Vol. I. p. 192, note) that in south polar bands, composed of very delicate clouds,[166] observed by Arago, at Paris, on the 23rd of June, 1844, dark rays shot upward from an arch running east and west, and that he had already made mention of black rays resembling dark smoke, as occurring in brilliant nocturnal northern lights.

References to the aurora australis are made by the naturalist John Reinhold Forster, in the article on “Aurora Borealis” of the “Encycl. Britannica.”

For Mountaine and Dodson, consult the Phil. Trans., Vol. XLVIII. p. 875; Vol. L. p. 329, also Hutton’s abridgments, Vol. XI. p. 149.

A.D. 1738.—Boze—Böse—(Georg Matthias) (1710–1761), Professor of Philosophy at Wittemburg, publishes his “Oratio inauguralis de electricitate,” which is followed, in 1746, by “Recherches sur la cause et sur la véritable théorie de l’électricité,” and, in 1747, by his completed “Tentamina electrica.”

To him is due the introduction in the electrical machine of the prime conductor, in the form of an iron tube or cylinder. The latter was at first supported by a man insulated upon cakes of resin and afterward suspended by silken strings. M. Boze discovered that capillary tubes discharging water by drops give a continuous run when electrified. He also conveyed electricity by a jet of water from one man to another, standing upon cakes of resin, at a distance of six paces, and likewise employed the jet for igniting alcohol as well as other liquids.

A.D. 1739.—Desaguliers (Jean Theophile), chaplain to his Grace the Duke of Chandos, gives an account of his first experiments on the phenomena of electricity at pp. 186, 193, 196, 198, 200, 209, 634, 637, 638 and 661 of Vol. XLI of the Phil. Trans. for 1739. Some of these experiments were made on the 15th of April, 1738, at H.R.H. the Prince of Wales’ house at Cliefden.

He was the first to divide bodies into “electrics,” or non-conductors, and “non-electrics,” or conductors. He ranked pure air amongst his electrics (Tyndall, Lecture I) and stated that “cold air in frosty weather, when vapours rise least of all, is preferable for electrical purposes to warm air in summer, when the heat raises the vapours” (Phil. Trans., John Martyn abridgment, Vol. VIII. p. 437). It was Desaguliers who announced that he could render bars of iron magnetic, either by striking them sharply against the[167] ground while in a vertical position or by striking them with a hammer when placed at right angles to the magnetic meridian.

His “Dissertation Concerning Electricity” London, 1742, which won for him the grand prize of the Bordeaux Academy, is said to be the second work on the subject published in the English language, the first having been Boyle’s “Mechanical Origin and Production of Electricity,” mentioned at A.D. 1675.

Desaguliers was the second to receive the Copley medal, it having been previously bestowed by the Royal Society only upon Stephen Grey, who obtained it in 1731 and 1732 for his “New Electrical Experiments.” The list of recipients of this distinguished honour, given by C. R. Weld at p. 385, Vol. I of the “History of the Royal Society,” shows that Desaguliers received three Copley medals; these were awarded him during the years 1734, 1736 and 1741, for his “Experiments in Natural Philosophy.” John Canton was given two of the medals, in 1751 and 1764, the only other electrician similarly favoured being Michael Faraday, who received them during the years 1832 and 1838, while Sir Humphry Davy is credited with only one, conferred upon him in 1805.