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Show -r- . ' -. J 0 Official Organ of the Utah Federation of Womens Cluhs. $1.00 PEE "XT PEICE FIVE 33 .A. 33- - SALT LAKE CITY, MAKOH III. VOL. .Ptiogtfess of Science in the Application of Electricity and Aerial flatfigation. t . Orielle Curtis. Delivered before the Salt Lake an's Club , March, Wom- ist, 1898. In Bulwer's charming romance of Zanoni, when the neophyte seeking occult knowledge, crossed the.border-lan- d that divides the unseen from the .seen, he was confronted with the grim dweller of the Threshold, a spirit of terrifying mien, gaunt and strongs and shapeless. But, having fearlessly braved and overcome this 'one guardian of the realms of spiritual power, Lo ! dainty apparitions, light and graceful as air, but strong and resistless as the invincible force of grairtation, thronged to do his , bid-.din- g. . Whether he meant it so or not, Bulwer's imaginative fancy reads like an allegory of the progress of inventive skill. No sooner was the expansive power of steam conquered and harnessed with the trappings of no longer an adversary thwarting man's designs, but a swift and tireless burden bearer in his employ, than the subtle spirits of electricity flew from their myriad hiding places, and in changing guise, became aerial messengers, and toilers of immeasurable strength in every department of industry. What ser-vice-7-m- ade -- torch-lighter- s, then, is electricity? Can lexico- grapher or scientist bound its. etherial 19, 1898. nature in the hard limits of known words and terms ? Thales, 600 B. C., found that amber rubbed with silk, possessed a certain quality ot attraction. He named the newly discovered peculiarity, In the electron or amber-powe- r. year of our Lord, 1600, Queen Elizabeth's surgeon, a certain Dr. Gilbert, wrote a treatise on magnetism, and named this amber-powe- r, (which he considered identical with magnetism,) from its original Greek form, electricity. Franklin, more than a century later, discovered that the lightning, was flashing in the summer-clouneither more nor less than a display of this same unknown quantity electricity. Between Dr. Gilbert and Franklin, other experimenters had made additions more or less valuable to the inexplicable phenomena of frictional electricity; and so, after Franklin, philosophers in Europe and America, sought accumulated data for new .deductions. It rarely happens that an invention, valuable in results, is the work of any one solitary unaided mind. General inquiry is awakened concerning alleged phenomena, and one solution suggests another; one forges a little link, and another adds a bolt to the chain of reasoning, till, at last, with a great blare of trumpets and loud Eurekas, the happy man at the end of the chain, finds the very ultimatum all these others have been seeking. It remained for Morse really to tame the untameable electricity, to teach it to glide safely along d, CZEUSTTS. NO. 11. the gleaming wire, and act as the transmitter of thought through unlimited distances. Since then, hosts of Master Magicians have made electricity answer their summons, and perform their differing offices. From the electric fan that waves away the insect intruders of summer, and cools the heated room, to the dynamos that send the crowded cars rolling swiftly and smoothly through the city streets, there seems almost nothing that electricity is not made to accomplish. .There are electric burglar alarms and electric baths and electric door-matelectric bells, electric clocks and elec; s, trie looms, electric boats and electric harpoons, electric trolleys and electric stoves, electric carriages and electric bicycles; there are even electric pianos to discourse sweet music to- the ear attuned to harmony. Alas, for in her the fair feminine type-writoffice of potent sway! She is in imminent danger of being superseded, is already for the electric type-writin the field. But what then, is electricity ? That is a baffling question and the answer is not easy. All we can now say is, electricity is a spirit; it is a power; it is a certain indefinable something, illusive, mysterious, Protean in form, infinite in adaptability. Just what it is, its strongest, wisest masters cannot tell, because they have not yet learned. - er er i Of whatever nature its ultimate essence may yet prove, its usefulness as an agent of every activity is al- - SALE GREATOurREMOVAL SHOE Entire Stock to at be Closed Out of Shoes Cost, before Moving to Main Street. |
