Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

"I am now occupied in some experiments, which may terminate in still greater improvements in the economical use of this principle. While I write I have before me a small, electro-magnetic, rotary machine, in rapid motion. In connexion with it, there is a helix, or coil, of covered copper wire, consisting of two lengths, each four hundred feet, the thicker one transmitting the primary current, the smaller one the induced current. In connexion with one end of the primary wire, I have placed a copper plate to be copied. To the opposite end of the same wire I have connected a spiral coil of copper wire, which is immersed in a porous cell, containing diluted sulphuric acid, with a few drops of nitric acid, the plate to be copied being immersed in sulphate of copper. The electric action, excited by this arrangement, being sufficient to revolve the magnetic machine, while at the same time it is depositing pure copper on the plate to be copied, in one cell, and producing sulphate of copper, by the dissolution of the copper wire, in the other. To each end of the smaller wire transmitting the induced current, I have also attached a similar arrangement; namely, a plate to be copied, and a piece of spiral wire, in a pair of separate cells. This arrangement is also depositing copper on the plate to be copied. My object in this was, to take advantage of the increased amount of electric action always acquired by transmitting the current through spiral coils, and also to avail myself of the induced current which is always eliminated in an opposite direction to the primary. This latter current is generated at absolutely no expenditure of material. For the mere purpose of depositing copper, I might have used the helix without the rotary magnet; but my object was to ascertain the practicability of employing the electricity, generated by the process, for other uses. From this experiment, I can give my opinion, without hesitation, that, should electro-magnetic machines be brought into practical use, of which I entertain no doubt, the same battery that excites them into action, on the one

hand, will, on the other, copy engravings, ad infinitum. For, after all we have heard lately of voltaic batteries of intense power, sustaining ones, slow but equable, are the only apparatus that can be depended on for an indefinite length of time. I have not yet made experiments with the helix, in sufficient number, to justify me in stating, for the present, the increase of deposition that may be derived from its use. I intend trying a number of statical experiments, with coils of different thickness, and also coils of flat copper rolled up in the form of a riband, covered with silk. The results of these may form the subject of another communication."

IX. PAGE 240.

ANCIENT RATE OF TRAVELLING.

LET us here take a slight retrospective glance at the road-communication of Britain.

In 1678, the first coach was started from Edinburgh to Glasgow, a distance of forty-four miles, which distance was accomplished, to and from, in six days.* At the present period, four hours and a half is all the time required to travel, by coach, from one city to the other.

In 1706, the conveyance from London to York was by a stagecoach, which was advertised to perform "the whole journey in four days." This is now accomplished in twenty-four hours.

* In 1678, Mr. William Hume, merchant, of Edinburgh, contracted with the magistrates of Glasgow, that he "should have in readiness a sufficient strong coach, to run between Edinburgh and Glasgow, to be drawn by six able horses, to leave Glasgow ilk Monday morning, and return ilk Saturday night, God willing.'

[ocr errors]

+ Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, (if God permit,) it sets forth, "at five in the morning, and returns from York to Stamford in two days; and from Stamford by Huntington to London, in two days more, and the like stages on their return.

[ocr errors]

In 1712, we find, by an advertisement* in the Newcastle Courant, that the stagecoach conveyed passengers between London and Edinburgh, by means of eighty able horses," in thirteen days without any stoppages. But according to McCulloch's Dictionary, there was only one coach in the year 1768, which set out once a month, taking from ten to twelve days to perform the journey. Other routes were equally tedious.† "In 1760," says a writer in Pinnock's Guide to Knowledge,'" when it was necessary for a journey to be taken from Brighton to the metropolis, (a distance, then, of about sixty miles,) the travellers, after breakfasting, dining, and supping, on the road, were, by great exertion, able to get as far as East-Grinstead, (about thirty miles,) where they stayed all night; and by persevering, in the same manner, the following day, were enabled to reach London, at night, making the extraordinary journey of sixty miles in two days. These were the 'good old times.' Things are now strangely altered, and we are extravagant enough to perform the same journey (now reduced to fifty-two miles) in five hours, and sometimes less."-See Gordon, on Locomotion.

The first stagecoach established in America was in 1784, between Boston and New York. The journey between the two cities was accomplished in four days.

[ocr errors]

* Edinburgh, Berwick, Newcastle, Durham, York, and London, stagecoach begins on Monday, the thirteenth of October, 1712. All that desire to pass from Edinburgh to London, or from London to Edinburgh, or any place on that road, let them repair to Mr. John Baillie's, at the Coach and Horses, at the Head of Canongate, Edinburgh, every other Saturday, or to the Black Swan, in Holborn, London, every other Monday; at both which places, they may be received into a stagecoach, which performs the whole journey in thirteen days, without any stoppages, (if God permit,) having eighty able horses to perform the whole stage. Each passenger paying four pounds ten shillings for the whole journey, allowing each passenger twenty pounds weight, and all above to pay six pence a pound. The coach sets out at six o'clock in the morning. Performed by Hen. Harrison, Robert Yorke, Richd. Speight, Richard Croft."

"A new, fast coach, hung on steel springs, with four horses and two postillions, sets out from the Greyhound Inn, Market-place, Bath, and the George Inn, Drury Lane, London, every Monday, Wednesday,

X. PAGE 241.

INFLUENCE OF IMPROVEMENTS ON HUMAN WELFARE.

"IT is a favorite phrase," says an eloquent countryman of ours," of those who boast of what is called the 'march of intellect,' that things are thus changed, [he refers to the growing distaste for war,] because the 'schoolmaster is abroad.' But I tell you that something far more effective than the schoolmaster,—a mightier than Solomon,-is abroad. It is the steamengine, in its twofold capacity of a means of production and the means of transport; the most powerful instrument, by far, of pacification and commerce, and therefore of improvement and happiness, that the world has ever seen which, while it increases capital, and multiplies, beyond all imagination, the products of industry, brings the most distant people into contact with one another; breaks down the barriers which exclusive legislation would oppose to the freedom of mercantile exchanges; effaces all peculiarities of national character; and promises, at no distant period, to make the whole Christian world, at least, one great family."

And again, speaking of the cultivation of cotton, he says, and says truly, "Whoever shall write the political history of that invaluable plant, will have a more important work to perform than has ever fallen to the lot of a biographer of statesmen or philosophers. I will venture to say, without going more into details, that the single circumstance of bringing the wonderfully cheap fabrics produced by modern machinery within the reach of even the humblest of the laboring classes, of substituting decent and comfortable raiment for the few scanty and filthy rags, the squalid exterior, which makes poverty not only more painful, but at once more and Friday, at seven o'clock in the morning, and arrives at the above inns on the following days, at four in the evening. The coach stops all night at Andover, going and coming.”—Newspaper, 1765.

4

humiliating and degrading, to its victim, and more disgustful to others, than it ought to be, will signally contribute to elevate the condition of the poor in the social scale; to raise their self-esteem, and to increase the sympathy of others for them; in a word, to make them feel themselves men, entitled to a place among men; not pariahs and outcasts, whose contact is contamination. A people well clad and well housed will be sure to provide themselves with all the other comforts of life; and it is the diffusion of these comforts, and the growing taste for them, among all classes; it is the desire of riches, as it is commonly called; that is gradually putting an end to the destructive and bloody game of war, and reserving all the resources hitherto wasted by it, for enterprises of industry and commerce, prosecuted with the fiery spirit which once vented itself in scenes of peril and carnage."

"And how is the face of Europe changing by means of such enterprises? I have travelled in parts of the Continent which the spirit of gain, with its usual concomitants, industry and improvement, has invaded since the peace, at an interval of fifteen years; and been struck with the revolution that is going on. There is a singularly beautiful, though rather barren, tract of country, between Liege and Spa, where, in 1819, my attention had been principally attracted by the striking features of a mountainous region, with here and there a ruin of the feudal past, and here and there the hovel of some poor hind,—the very haunt of the wild-boar of the Ardennes' in the good old times of the House of Burgundy. I returned to it, in 1835, and saw it covered with mills and factories, begrimmed with the smoke and soot of steam-engines; its romantic beauty deformed, its silvan solitudes disturbed and desecrated by the sounds of active industry and the busy hum of men. I asked, what had brought about so great a change, and found the author of it,-a man having a more numerous band of retainers and dependents than any baron bold of the fourteenth century, and in every

« AnteriorContinuar »