Stryker's American register and magazine Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: STATISTICS, ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY. On the 12th November, 1746, M. Le Monnier, the younger. read, before the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, a memoir det... more »ailing a series of experiments which he had then recently made, in order to test objections which he entertained to some of M. DuFaye's doctrines in electricity. These experiments prove— 1st. That the electric discharge could be transmitted through metallic circuits of great length; 2d. That he was the first who demonstrated that static or machine electricity could be passed through or over large bodies of water; and 3d. That he was the first who endeavoured to ascertain th velocity with which electricity passes through the circuit. The experiments of Dr. William Watson, in reference to the conductibility of water and the velocity of electricity, were made in 1747. Many experiments were very carefully and skilfully made, at the same time, to deduce the velocity of electricity, by noting the time which elapsed from observing the electric shock and the flash of a gun till the report was heard—a very rude method, it must be admitted. The general conclusion of the observers, however, appears to have been, " that, by comparing the respective velocities of electricity and sound, that of electricity, in any distance yet experienced, is nearly instantaneous." It may be added, that a similar set of experiments on the velocity of electricity were carried out on the 5th of August, 1748, by some of the gentlemen who had assisted Dr. Watson, when the experimenters "were fully satisfied, that through the whole length of the wire, being 12,276 feet, the velocity of electricity was instantaneous.1" See Philosophical Transactions, Martyn's Abridgment, vol. 10, p. 347. Our own Franklin, whose researches furnished so much a...« less